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:4, Insightful)
If your point is so proved and plain, why hide as AC?
Do you want all your email and documents published to the public? If not, what do you have to hide?
"Why do these people always have something to hide" may not be the very stupidest question to ask in this situation, but it's certainly high on the list. Scientific transparency does not require laying your entire online life open to muckrakers.
All publicly funded research needs public release (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Why do these people always have something to hi (Score:3, Insightful)
This is the problem at the heart of climate science. The key details for models are not published, and (despite being largely paid for by our money), not even available apparently under FOIA to "avoid competitive harm".
That sounds very much like commercial software development and very little like reproducible science, or even open source! WTF, guys? You wonder why so much of the public has a hard time taking climate science seriously? This shit is why.
Good science defeats skeptics through openness. "Look, here's the experiment, do it yourself if you don't trust me." Heck, even experiments on vastly expensive particle accelerators eventually become reproducible through cleverness or technological advance at other universities.
Openness, and beyond openness: the willingness to explain clearly, in detail, and in layman's terms led to the talk.origins FAQ, [talkorigins.org] which takes seriously and answers seriously every common popular question and dispute about evolution, and likely led to the shift from old-school creationism to ID (which at least is progress). This is severely lacking in climate science.
Re:Why do these people always have something to hi (Score:5, Insightful)
Odd to see someone arguing on Slashdot in favor of publicly funded academic research being kept from the public.
Nobody is arguing for that. His private emails are not "publicly funded academic research". Publicly funded researchers should be required to publish their data and research results. They should not have to give up their private lives.
Re:So what? (Score:5, Insightful)
Just remember what Neil Degrasse Tyson said in Cosmos, "Question Everything".
Why should we?
Re:Why do these people always have something to hi (Score:5, Insightful)
Odd to see someone arguing on Slashdot in favor of publicly funded academic research being kept from the public.
I'm sorry, is the research somehow being hidden from the public? The public funding argument applies to papers, software, and not hiding them behind a paywall. It does not mean the public gets to see EVERY freaking email ever sent by someone who happens to get grant money through a government organization. You're just being ridiculous now. Should every private company who received ARRA funds have to lay down all their private emails for the entire public?
(Though note that the public does fund classified work they can't ever see as well, we can ignore that for the sake of argument.)
Re:So what? (Score:5, Insightful)
What seems to be missing from this article: Mark Steyn, a conservative talk show host, called Mann a fraud. So, Mann is suing Steyn for defamation. As his defense, Steyn is trying to prove that the data was manipulated and cherry picked. Therefore, proving that Steyn's comments were justified. So, Steyn requested the data under the FIOA, since Mann's work was publicly funded.
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.
Re:Why do these people always have something to hi (Score:5, Insightful)
The key details for models are not published
Citation Needed
Re:Public Work should not be "proprietary" (Score:5, Insightful)
Public employees working for hire on public research paid for by the public should have no "proprietary" exemption to FOIA for papers related to the public work for hire.
It's not papers. Papers are available in scientific journals. This is an attempt to root in the trash looking for something to misrepresent.
Another question is about the scientific integrity here. If the data is true and supportive of his assertions, he should WANT to publish it.
What wasn't published? His work WAS published.
Show the papers and the data, unless of course you have something to hide.
Ah yes. The age old excuse of the surveillance state. Please post the web site where your own work emails are published, HighOrbit. Unless of course you have something to hide.
Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Why do these people always have something to hi (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Why do these people always have something to hi (Score:2, Insightful)
Nobody is arguing for that. His private emails are not "publicly funded academic research". Publicly funded researchers should be required to publish their data and research results. They should not have to give up their private lives.
Emails are only one part of it, according to TFA there are other research documents and data too. Emails are one thing, it is communication with an expectation of privacy (and the ruling of being proprietary shouldn't apply to that anyway), documentation and research data is another thing entirely. A fundamental concept of science is that documentation and research are meant to be shared.
Here is the Virginia Freedom of Information Act section at the crux of the case, one of the law’s exemptions from disclosure: ...
“Data, records or information of a proprietary nature produced or collected by or for faculty or staff of public institutions of higher learningin the conduct of or as a result of study or research on medical, scientific, technical or scholarly issueswhere such data, records or information has not been publicly released, published, copyrighted or patented.”
In a decision written by Justice Donald W. Lemons, the court ruled that “the higher education research exemption’s desired effect is to avoid competitive harm not limited to financial matters.
And now here's the part that really bugs me:
Mann said after the ruling, “This is a victory for science...
No, it's not! Our high schools really need to do a better job teacher students what science is and not just memorizing the first 6 steps in the first week of class and then memorizing facts that were found using science (biology, chemistry etc). Just because in this case the other side who is trying to get your data has even less understanding of what science is (and will no doubt intentionally misconstrue your data) does not mean this is a victory for science. There is no concept of proprietary knowledge in science, quite the opposite in fact.
Re:Public Work should not be "proprietary" (Score:5, Insightful)
My understanding of the idea and purpose of an academic research paper is to lay out a hypothesis, method to collect data to test the hypothesis, data (results), statistical analysis of data, and conclusions. A properly written research paper will not be published in a peer reviewed journal unless the method of data collection is clear. This makes the research reproducible. The publication of reproducible research is a crux of the scientific process.
What the proponents of the FOIA request are doing is trying to cheat. If you want to disprove research, you may:
- Show that the method of data collection produces biased data
- Show that using the same method of data collection produces different data than that shown in the original research
- Show that statistical analysis was not done properly
- Etc.
All of this is done by hiring experts to analyze the methodology and statistical analysis and by commissioning a study to reproduce the original research. If the research is not reproducable, then there is something wrong.
That is how science works--you make reproducible research and then other people reproduce it. When they can't, the scientific community tries to figure out what went wrong. Maybe the underlying scientist made an error, maybe s/he made up data, maybe there is no explanation.
But this idea that you can cheat by looking at the researcher's emails? That's new. And not useful. If the study was not done properly, then reproducing it will catch that. If the research was done properly, then it needs to be reproduced anyway in order to determine the strength of the conclusions. So, don't try to cheat the system, just do this the old fashioned way--reproduce the research.
Re:Why do these people always have something to hi (Score:5, Insightful)
Creepy Stalkers of the World Unite (Score:5, Insightful)
Does your daughter work an on-campus job? Does she ever use a university email account? Does she use university networks?
These all are public resources, and as a creepy stalker, I demand to be allowed full access to the email and browsing history of all attractive undergraduate students. I want to know who their professors are, which websites they visit using university networks, and any other private information that I can find out.
I demand full access! The government should not be able to hide the information from me. We don't want to be forced to go back to the dark days of rooting through trash and peeking through windows!
Re:Why do these people always have something to hi (Score:5, Insightful)
Depends on what you consider "hiding the research". A fishing expedition through a scientist's personal correspondence is an invitation to judge his work on *political* grounds.
In science your personal beliefs, relationships, and biography are irrelevant. There are evangelical Christian climate scientists who believe climate won't change because that would contradict God's will as expressed in the Bible. These scientists may be regarded as religious crackpots by their peers, but that hasn't prevented them from publishing in the same peer-reviewed journals as everyone else. Since their papers invariably are climate-change skeptic, clearly they are publishing work which supports their religious beliefs. But their motivations don't matter. What matters is in their scientific publications.
In 1988, Gary Hart's presidential bid and political career were ruined when he was photographed cavorting on a yacht named "Monkey Business" with a woman that wasn't his wife. Now I didn't care how many bimbos he was boinking, but a lot of people *did*, which made it a political issue (albeit a stupid one in my opinion). Do we really want to use the coercive power of the state to dig through the private lives of controversial scientists?
It's a pretense that that would serve any scientific purpose. Maybe Mann is intent on overthrowing capitalism and creating a socialist utopia. That would be relevant if he were running for dogcatcher, but it's irrelevant to what's in his scientific papers. Scientists publish papers all the time with ulterior motives, not the least of which is that they're being paid to do research that makes corporate sponsors happy. As long as what's in the paper passes muster, it's still science.
Re:So what? (Score:5, Insightful)
Probably not. My thinking is that this is a precedent that states that any information that is used to guide public policy (read: laws that affect you and me) can be hidden from the public, skirting the intent of FOIA laws, by having that data be produced and/or curated by a private entity or person. This has further implications than just global warming squabbles; this could give groups like the NSA incentive to privatize spying, among other things.
An easy fix for this IMO is that nothing can be used to guide public policy or legislative actions unless the information used to glean them is already public. That would allow people like Michael Mann to keep their data private if they want, but stuff they produce can't be used to guide government decisions and/or actions unless he publishes it into the public domain before that process even begins. That would also satisfy climate skeptics IMO.
And really, why shouldn't it be this way? I mean I really don't like the idea that some derp could in theory dictate laws by claiming the world is about to end if we don't do it his way, meanwhile being able to hide his source of information and claim we just have to trust his work.
Re:So what? (Score:0, Insightful)
Indeed he never did release the proper birth certificate. What form he did release has been forensically analyzed and shows signs of being a forgery, though it is an unusually high quality forgery.
Correction: you birthers have worked yourselves up into believing these dumbfuck talking points. That doesn't mean it's a reasonable belief system. I have seen the claimed evidence of forgery and it is classic, obvious motivated reasoning and fake-experting of the worst kind. Nobody with two brain cells to rub together has been fooled. Same goes for the idea that it's not the REAL PROPER certificate. Obama asked the state of Hawaii to release the form it normally would. You asshats couldn't handle the truth, so you invented an alternate universe where that wasn't good enough.
What amazes me is the hostility so many people have. There is nothing wrong with wanting to know that the most powerful man in the world is legitimate and is who he claims to be. This is a legitimate and valid question. Yet half the internet acts like you're some kind of monster for wanting this issue to be investigated. Exactly what harm would it do to look into this? Letting your personal feelings of offense get in the way of legitimate inquiry is the hallmark of small minds.
You get hostility because it's transparently obvious what this is really about: you're a bunch of far-right racist chucklefucks whose real objection is that a black man won the Presidency, so you've been desperate to find some way of overturning the two elections which put him in office.
Please leave my country. You are a disgrace.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:So what? (Score:5, Insightful)
Science. Truth.
Correct. They are distinct. Science doesn't deal in truth. It wouldn't be useful otherwise.
Truth is squarely the domain of logic and philosophy.
Re:Why do these people always have something to hi (Score:4, Insightful)
Taxes go TO the government. Payroll comes FROM the Taxpayers.
Besides, the NSA already read all the emails anyone.
ATI != Skeptics. (Score:5, Insightful)
You want Mann's data? - Here, chew on this [realclimate.org].
Mann's unpublished work has nothing to do with government policy making. As for abusing the intent of FOIA, Mann and others have received thousands of them in an organised campaign to bury them in paperwork. At the height of the "climategate" beat up they were receiving ~25 FOI requests a day (mostly for stuff that was already published). There have been dozens of high level political inquisitions of Mann and co since the hockey stick paper was published, not to mention constant death threats. Everyone from the VA attorney general to the US senate have had a go at him, none of them found a scrap of evidence showing impropriety on Mann's part.
All they have done is waste millions in taxpayer funds trying to prove he's a witch on behalf of their corporate sponsors. That US politicians are willing to do the bidding of FF corporations by character assassinating a world renowned scientist is sad, but somewhat expected these days. For so called "educated" citizens to cheer them on is fucking disgraceful.
That would also satisfy climate skeptics IMO.
The American Tradition Institute who filed the suit are not skeptics, they are "for hire" lobbyists masquerading as a charitable institution. The only way they will be satisfied is if Mann is shut down permanently and his work expunged from the collective knowledge of mankind. Mann is the skeptic in this story by virtue of the fact that all scientists are skeptics. Lobbyists don't believe in anything but a pay check, they are paid liars, the very definition of "propagandists". If you want to be a real patriot there's no better place to start than by learning to spot political propaganda when you see it.
Re:Why do these people always have something to hi (Score:4, Insightful)