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."
All publicly funded research needs public release (Score:3, Insightful)
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So if he texts, "I'm sorry I am not going to be in for work today I am receiving medical treatment from my mental health provider," that should be public records?
If he emails, "I am sorry Mrs. Channing, but there is no work you can do in Physics 102 to avoid a failing grade," that should be public record?
Releasing the first email would be a violation of federal law (respecting medical confidentiality) and the second one would likely violate State law or university code on student confidentiality.
The Supreme
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.
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Hmm, wouldn't you want to see an email by a Senator saying "Bloomberg really wants this, and he's promising all of us on the Committee $3 million for our campaign warchests if we make it so"?
Or if you think Bloomberg walks on water, replace "Bloomberg with "Koch Bros" or whoever your favorite bogeyman is....
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Set a precedent of publishing emails between colleagues and the result is they just move any such incriminating conversations to other media, or to face to face meetings.
You ruin the use of a valuable communications medium fishing for something that's unlikely to be there anyway.
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You ruin the use of a valuable communications medium fishing for something that's unlikely to be there anyway. It's not very likely that anyone would offer a senate seat vacancy appointment to someone as a payback, so why bother looking?
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Set a precedent of publishing emails between legislators and the result is they just move any such incriminating conversations to other media, or to face to face meetings.
You ruin the use of a valuable communications medium fishing for something that's unlikely to be there anyway.
Yes, I agree. Just as I did with your last attempt at sarcasm. It's a pointless waste of time rooting through the detritus of the preparation of a project. Even when it's politicians.
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Indeed.
Compare and contrast the achievement of today's congress over the last few months with the achievement of the disparate representatives that drafted the US Constitution in 4 months at the Philadelphia convention.
The difference? With the lack of daily scrutiny from the news media and the resulting posturing from representatives, they could be more honest with each other about those things on which they stood firm, and those things on which they were negotiable.
The US constitution stands on it's own me
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The US constitution stands on it's own merits. The daily tos and fros of negotiating the thing over those 4 months are irrelevant.
And yet, for decades after that original publishing of the US Constitution, those very tos and fros of negotiating were slowly trickled out, leading to some of the most foundational Supreme Court rulings which have preserved our country's freedoms.
Dismissing the process for the results is like missing the trees for the forest. Just as in politics, in the scientific method, the ends do not always justify the means, and pretending otherwise can lead to atrocities like eugenics. Apologies for invoking Godwin's
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"Police offers present their completed incident and arrest reports in court. There is no genuine reason for publicly releasing recordings of what the officers do whilst the incident and arrests were still in progress. Only in-genuine and dishonest reasons."
Just saying. Seems to me if yo
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"Police offers present their completed incident and arrest reports in court. There is no genuine reason for publicly releasing recordings of what the officers do whilst the incident and arrests were still in progress. Only in-genuine and dishonest reasons."
And indeed there is no such reason, even for police officers. Certainly having video surveillance of police officers is a welcome step forward. But these never will and never should be published on the internet in their entirety. Suppose the police come and arrest you and your wife early one morning whilst you were still in bed and they then do a search of your house. For a crime you didn't commit. Clearly that shouldn't be published on the internet for all to see. It would only add the injury of public vie
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But, this was 'freedom of information act' request, and that act refers only to
the records of government civil agencies.
The researcher had a teaching job, and acted as an independent
contractor in pursuing a research topic.
The researcher's phone calls, e-mails, piles of scratchings and musings,
aren't the proper product of his funded research at all. Only the finished report,
and/or any publishable papers (in peer-reviewed, edited journa
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So do I have a right to access the university email records of good looking undergraduates at public universities?
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Yep. Mann was also investigated by former North Carolina AG and failed gubernatorial candidate Ken Cuccinelli, basically for political reasons - Cooch wanted to punish Mann for daring to question Republican orthodoxy on AGW. The case was thrown out for lack of evidence.
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Dah, sorry, s/North Carolina/Virginia/ .
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.
This is not your father's "proprietary" (Score:2)
Here's the definition of "proprietary" the VA Supreme Court upheld:
"a right customarily associated with ownership, title, and possession. It is an interest or a right of one who exercises dominion over a thing or property, of one who manages and controls."
That seems incredibly broad for a situation like this -- in fact, it's hard to imagine a whole lot of meaningful exceptions (likely the reason UVA ultimately produced the 7% of the emails they did was because those emails failed one of the other six factors of the exclusion test). But for better or for worse, the court essentially had to reach that result because there was a precedent on the books defining "proprietary" that broadly, and th
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!
As a skeptic, this alarms me. (Score:3)
The biggest problem I have with this is not that Mann's science might be wrong, but that the methods being used to discredit the science are anything but scientific. We have entered a scary, new era in Western thought where conformity of thought is valued above all else, and anyone who dares advocate a position which could be considered controversial or offensive is railroaded into silence by whatever means necessary.
The "Speak No Evil" crowd is destroying a great Western tradition of open and honest debate. These folks are committing offenses against truth itself, destroying civilization in the process.
I was under the impression that the ClimateGate affair was old news and Mann had been discredited already; why would they bother pursuing this more than half a decade later? It seems their objective is not merely to win the debate, or merely suppress an unpopular opinion, but to prevent any debate, research, or independent inquiry from taking place from this point on.
It's called making an example of someone. It's objective is to so thoroughly exasperate the target that their response becomes so extreme as to become unbelievable by the public at large. If they can't keep you from speaking, they can make others believe that either:
Michael Mann's ordeal serves the interest of the fossil fuel companies regardless of the outcome of the case.
It does not, however, serve the greater public interest. Even though I believe Mann to be mistaken, I'm quite certain that we the public cannot be adequately informed in an environment such as this.
While they're at it... (Score:3)
Can they order him to do a reboot of Miami Vice?
Not FOIA, but subpoenas against Mann in his suit (Score:3)
It wasn't the "critics" or the political commentator who brought this to court. It was Mann who sued them, opening the way for discovery subpoenas against him, not FOIA requests. This blocks the defendant from getting to a public employee's communications that may possibly be used to defend one's self against a suit by that employee. This could be a very bad precedent. And don't confuse this with the FOIA stuff, nor with critics/skeptics using it to harass Mann: Bottom line is that if Mann had not sued in order to silence a political columnist, none of this would ever have been necessary.
That is what worries me more than anything else - if a public employee sues you in a matter of free speech (to silence you from criticizing him, via use of libel laws), this precedent gives that government employee a huge shield to hide behind and resist your attempts to discover information to defend yourself with against his lawsuit. This is a terrible precedent because it will provide for government coverups and denials of FOIA requests in the long run. Imagine this being used by a public employee you do not like politically, for a libel suit for your criticism of him - whether justifiable or not, it limits your ability to defend yourself. These folks are public employees, and their correspondence should as a general rule be available (excluding classified information, or personal privacy redacted info). A blanket limit on discovery when defending against a lawsuit from a public employee is a bad thing
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.
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I work in the public sector, not a publicly funded university, but absolutely I assume that all of my company email is potentially subject to FOI requests and govern myself accordingly.
If it was my personal email I would feel differently, but you should not use your companies account for personal business either. That is dumb.
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Do you want all your email and documents published to the public?
I agree that there should be an exemption for documents of a personal nature. Documents of a proprietary nature could include documents that disagree with the published findings.
Scientific transparency does not require laying your entire online life open to muckrakers.
Agreed but it does mean giving access to all the documents and emails that are the basis of published findings. Documents of a proprietary nature would fall into that category.
This looks too much like "don't look at the documents behind the curtain. Just watch the show we are presenting".
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What you said doesn't contradict what I said. What you're actually asking is that Manning provide the evidence that Levin *should have had* when he was running off his mouth. This is punishing Manning for trying to defend himself through the only legal means available to him.
I say - if you're running off your mouth about lies for which you have no evidence then you're just as guilty of libel whether or not what you say is true. Or at least should be discouraged. Otherwise that gives me the ability to g
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Do you want all your email and documents published to the public? If not, what do you have to hide?
If your a public servant sending and receiving Emails via a publicly owned servers, while on publicly paid for time, you had better be prepared for the eventuality that everything will be made public. Sooner or later these Emails will be leaked, all it takes is one FOIA, Manning or Snowden and all your secrets are public!
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If your point is so proved and plain, why hide as AC?
Not the A/C, but this is why [pbs.org], on top of the point that you've utterly failed to disprove his point.
Do you want all your email and documents published to the public? If not, what do you have to hide?
Point of order: No one is asking Mann to lay out his entire life - just the portion of it that we the taxpayers paid for, and the portion that actual science (at least should) demand. ...got any other arguments?
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But the kicker is that you don't seem to understand that this is just a fishing expedition, to find something, *anything*, to take out of context and shit-coat Mann's career. It is the recourse of people who cannot make an intellectual argument against AGW, but think they are correct anyway. The cognitive dissonance is
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no one can actually use that data to reproduce the results he originally presented.
At this link you can find references to about 10 different independent reconstructions that find the same result as Mann. [skepticalscience.com]
Regarding Sullivan's assertions about the ongoing lawsuit, Michael Mann's lawyer basically said the guy is serially wrong, and doesn't know what he is talking about, and I quote:
Response from my lawyer in response to latest claims by #TimBall (more info on him here: http://www.desmogblog.com/timo... [desmogblog.com]) & #JohnOSullivan (more inf on him here: http://www.desmogblog.com/affi... [desmogblog.com] ): Th
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.
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Using your company email for your "private life" is profoundly stupid.
I know a lot of people do it, but it is still stupid.
Re:Why do these people always have something to hi (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Why do these people always have something to hi (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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His private emails are not "publicly funded academic research".
The issue is not his private email, but email sent and received as a public employee working at a public institution. Were this about his private email, UVA would have no standing in the case and could not claim an exemption.
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There is lots of administrative stuff, human resources details, meeting arrangements and much more in daily mails, which all belong to your work, and none of them belongs into the public.
Yes, you've said that before, and your example is why there are HR exemptions to FOIA. That's why open meetings laws also exempt some kinds of meetings. But discussing the interpretation and use of data is not an HR issue and does not merit an exemption, and the fact still remains that his private email is not the issue at all. (And "meeting arrangements" don't merit HR exemptions, either. Nor do the nebulous "much more" which is part of your argument.)
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People have an expectation of privacy in email. It is as simple as that. In addition, they have some duty to not release certain information to the public, for instance, anything involving students' work or the work of others (who also have an expectation of privacy), anything regarding privileged information (such as medical) or of a purely personal nature.
Does the public have a right to email that directly involves publicly-funded research? Possibly. They certainly do not have a right to ask an indivi
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A university is an ISP for students and faculty and university email accounts are little different than for-profit ISP email accounts.
Most universities have a privacy policy that protects the contents of the email of students and faculty and only allows viewing of contents for reasons similar to why an ISP would be allowed to view customers' email, like in compliance with a court order. Students, professors, and people who send them email have a reasonable expectation of privacy.
And, in this case, it is ir
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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 stud
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Your point is correct if and only if all emails are used for the project only. However, I doubt that they create multiple email addresses for him to use in different project! In other words, there would be other emails that are used for other projects and other stuff as well. Even though 1/13 is not that much, it is still a possible number of emails used for the project communication. Just my two cents...
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Re:Why do these people always have something to hi (Score:4, Insightful)
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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".
...then perhaps he shouldn't use them for such a purpose? Odds are very near-perfect that he did use private email to at least promote his public research (via certain blog sites), and it is a valid and legitimate target for litigation discovery.
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:Why do these people always have something to hi (Score:5, Informative)
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If you read the article, it what was denied was unpublished research. The research the plaintiff's are challenging is available to them. He doesn't have to defend arguments that he hasn't made.
That makes perfect sense to you, because you're looking at it in terms of the AGW denier versus alarmist debate. But that really has nothing to do with the question of whether the FOIA should apply to unpublished research performed using public funds.
But of course the AGW debate is a fun way to look at it, too, and it cuts both ways. "Hide the decline" and all that. That email dump was a convenient (if unwilling) compliance with a bunch of unfulfilled FOIA requests.
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And the one that frantically pleaded with the respondent to "delete all emails" was perfectly innocent, too.
(1) What are you talking about?
(2) Did you ever bother to get both sides?
(3) Smear campaigns are the fall back for those who cannot make an academic argument.
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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. "Lo
Re:Why do these people always have something to hi (Score:5, Insightful)
The key details for models are not published
Citation Needed
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By providing one, I would refute myself. :p
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!
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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.
Got something to hide, Anonymous Coward? (Score:3)
An revealing comment from someone who even posts anonymously on Slashdot.
First off, you might know that there was a big flap over the NSA hoovering people's personal communications (content plus metadata), and people generally weren't quite satisfied by the argument that if they had nothing to hide they had no reason to object against having their lives laid bare.
And here *you* are, posting anonymously, suggesting that if an academic has nothing to "hide", his entire email exchange is
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.
It's a Brave New World. (Score:2)
Mann via the courts proves that Secrecy is Science.
Congratulations.
How many other 'scientists' get away with pleading the fifth?
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This is slightly inaccurate: the case is not directly connected with Steyn. True, Steyn's case might be helped (or hurt) by some of the undisclosed data and documents, but this is an earlier FOIA case that has been dragging on for a long time.
I do find it troubling that publicly funded research now seems to have giant carve-outs rendering it substantially not subject to FOIA. Increasing the power and secrecy around already-powerful politicians and bureaucrats, even those in a state-funded university, is tro
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What's wrong with judging scientists on their published science instead of some quote mining expedition? The papers are an expression of their understanding of an objective reality. Anyone can research that objective reality and come up with their own answers. Anything else is just secondary.
Re:So what? (Score:4, Interesting)
So why hasn't Steyn demanded the data under ordinary discovery rules? FOIA is an odd way to go about getting data you're supposedly entitled to in order to defend yourself in court.
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So why hasn't Steyn demanded the data under ordinary discovery rules? FOIA is an odd way to go about getting data you're supposedly entitled to in order to defend yourself in court.
I was wondering the same thing. However, it appears (based on other comments) that the FOIA request was not directly related to the defamation case. I would assume Steyn will still be able to use the discovery process for this.
If I were betting on this, I would say Steyn's lawyers may have put up the FOIA so that Mann's legal team would have to fight a fire on another front and possible redirect some resources to that request. The FOIA is probably much easier to file than it is to fight against it. But th
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He has, and it remains to be seen what Steyn will get in his case.
A favorable ruling here would have helped him a bit in his case, and of course the data itself may or may not be a help to his defense. Couldn't have hurt him though.
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?
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Does that mean that President Obama was actually a secret Kenyan born Muslim socialist until he finally produced his birth certificate to the public?
Be careful when you get into the "what are the hiding" line of thinking... because while sometimes you are right... other times you can be wrong... and in the case of the birth certificate, it was played quite well... not producing it made the birthers look rather crazy.
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You might actually want to look up that McCain claim as you are wrong on it.
Of course if you did that, you might appear as if you know what you are talking about. But then your racism argument falls apart until you invent something else.
Here is a hint, McCain's eligability was challenged at the same time Obama's was by a hillary supporter. McCain put it all on the table and it was dropped quickly. Obama resisted and created useful idiots. And yes, i'm lumping you into the same group of manipulated tools as
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:5, Insightful)
Just remember what Neil Degrasse Tyson said in Cosmos, "Question Everything".
Why should we?
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Just remember what Neil Degrasse Tyson said in Cosmos, "Question Everything".
Why should we?
I see what you did there, but your punny play aside we really should. Some people might miss the humor of your remark.
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.
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: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: (Score:2)
I'll leave it for others to work out which behavior is theirs.
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.
Is this all "Public Work"? (Score:2)
Hold the phone. You're assuming all of this is public work. There are 12k somethings that haven't been released. What are they? Papers? Emails? Datasets? TFA doesn't say, and you don't know what they are either.
If they're his emails, then they are not public work and should not be released. Full Stop.
If they're papers, then a case can be made that they should be released. That said, all researches have work that isn't for public consumption. I'm a researcher at a public university. Do I have to publish my n
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: (Score:3)
So if your daughter works at a student job at the university, can I request access to all of her university email? How about any records of her internet activity, like the websites she visited using university networks? After all, she is a public employee using government resources and as a creepy stalker, I certainly have a right to know what classes she is taking, where she hangs out, what websites she visits, and any other information I might be able to learn through a FOIA request.
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: (Score:2)
Or maybe convert all postings to monotype courier, so we're reminded that slashdot's still only a handsbreath above a BBS?
above?
The last BBS I used supported extended ascii just fine so accented e's and such were fully supported. :p
Re: (Score:3)
it's called precedent. once you set the precedent that all records are subject to public scrutiny if you take a dollar of public money... i think you'll have effectively crippled any kind of public funding for... well anything.
Excuse me, but.. why again is public scrutiny a bad thing?
Re: (Score:3)
Public scrutiny is a big reason we have a lot of laws protecting the environment and the public from irresponsible companies, currently. Public is and should be interested in what companies are doing behind closed doors, and those aren't even examples of a publically funded project.
Now we shift to a public entity and they want to keep things hidden because.. it might be used to do harm to someone? Puhleeeze, that is a pretty feeble argument. It's a good thing that public scrutiny has harmed a lot of peop
Re: (Score:3)
We have no right to the information.
This is merely an attempt to attack the messenger. An honest critic would do their own scientific work to discredit it and get peer review. The only purpose of anal probing him is to find something scandalous (even personal) like that cooked up email scandal years back which they dragged out for years into some global super conspiracy.
He might be fooling around with an intern and that is in the emails or the HINT of it is in there... So then he must be made an example s