VA Supreme Court: Michael Mann Needn't Turn Over All His Email 348
RoccamOccam sends news that the Virginia Supreme Court has ruled that Michael Mann, a climate scientist notable for his work on the "hockey stick" graph, does not have to turn over the entirety of his papers and emails under Freedom of Information laws. Roughly 1,000 documents were turned over in response to the request, but another 12,000 remain, which lawyers for the University of Virginia say are "of a proprietary nature," and thus entitled to an exemption. The VA Supreme Court ruled (PDF), "the higher education research exemption's desired effect is to avoid competitive harm not limited to financial matters," and said the application of "proprietary" was correct in this case. Mann said he hopes the ruling "can serve as a precedent in other states confronting this same assault on public universities and their faculty."
Re:Why do these people always have something to hi (Score:5, Informative)
Re:All publicly funded research needs public relea (Score:5, Informative)
This wasn't a request to release research. This was a request to release emails between colleagues.
As was seen with the hacking into the East Anglia university mails, the objective of which is to find phrases to misrepresent.
Scientists publish their completed research in scientific journals. There is no genuine reason for publishing emails that were exchanged whilst the research was still in progress. Only in-genuine and dishonest reasons.
Re:Huh? (Score:5, Informative)
The tradition is you make an accusation after you have evidence, not before so you get sued and can go hunting through someones correspondences looking for muck to rake. If there is evidence that the emails not being released here are relevant to some ongoing legal action then you might have a point, but there is precisely no evidence Mann has done anything other than do a PCA in a way which might have introduced some ambiguity. This was corrected in numerous later publications which validated his findings. If you suggest I'm a murderer with no evidence then you may find yourself with a lawsuit and you can be sure I'm not going to let someone who throws around frivilous accusations have access to my correspondences without a court mandate.
Re:A bit of background for slashdotters (Score:5, Informative)
This isn't a case "insisted upon by a conservative group". This is Mann suing a journalist for libel, and the journalist requesting info from the university under FOIA to prove his case.
That would be interesting, if it were true. Here's what TFA says:
The ruling is the latest turn in the FOIA request filed in 2011 by Del. Robert Marshall (R-Prince William) and the American Tradition Institute to obtain research and e-mails of former U-Va. professor Michael Mann.
"Del." I assume is short for "delegate". According to their website, the American Tradition Institute's tag line is "Free Market Environmentalism through *Litigation*" I assuming this means they aren't pals with Greenpeace, or even The Sierra Club, any more than the National Socialists in Germany were pals with the socialist Republicans in 1930s Spain.
Re:Why do these people always have something to hi (Score:5, Informative)
Wasting 30 seconds searching would have given you http://simplex.giss.nasa.gov/s... [nasa.gov], or http://www.cesm.ucar.edu/model... [ucar.edu] or http://www.mi.uni-hamburg.de/S... [uni-hamburg.de]
Funny thing, the code, the data, the explanations, everything has been avalable for years, and yet so many of the public believe they're not. I wonder why that is?
It's like there was this massive political campaign against science. Of which you just became part of. Congratulations!
Re:So what? (Score:4, Informative)
Sigh. The Fuck'in hockey stick is accurate, and you can see the data he used with a simple search on Wolfram Alpha. It doesn't even take that much effort to look for yourself.
http://www.wolframalpha.com/in... [wolframalpha.com]
You can see what is projection and what is actual data. You can see the names of all the different data sets. You can do research on them to figure out if they're accurate or not. It's not even hard. But... You keep believ'in that it's all a hoax by scientists for that big flush grant money.....
http://imgur.com/n4XNJ
Re:So what? (Score:4, Informative)
But Mann - the scientist who warns us that global warming is real and dangerous based on a computer model - refuses to give out the computer code and data that he used to form his assertions. To me, this doesn't sound very scientific or very honest.
Exactly. But...well...I think he needs to work on hiding stuff. Because...I mean, whenever I try to hide something I don't make a website about what I'm trying to hide and post it on the internet: http://www.meteo.psu.edu/~mann... [psu.edu]
Do you know how to use a search engine?