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Politics : The Environmentalist Thread -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Wharf Rat who wrote (31888)	1/30/2011 11:19:01 AM
From: Wharf Rat	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 36917

Wegman Report’s “abysmal scholarship” revealed by Gareth on September 30, 2010 A detailed investigation into the genesis of the 2006 Wegman Report — much beloved of climate sceptics because it was critical of the “hockey stick” paleoclimate reconstructions of Michael Mann (et al) — has shown it to be deeply flawed, stuffed with poorly-executed plagiarism, and very far from the “independent, impartial, expert” effort it was presented as to Congress. The new 250 page study, Strange scholarship in the Wegman Report (exec summary, full report) by John Mashey (with considerable assistance from Canadian blogger Deep Climate) finds that: a third of the Wegman Report was plagiarised from other sources, without attribution half of the references in the bibliography are not cited in the main text, and one reference is to “a fringe technology publication by a writer of pseudoscience” a graph of central England temperatures from the first IPCC report was distorted and misrepresented the supposedly impartial Wegman team were fed papers and references by a member of Republican Congressman Joe Barton’s staff Wegman’s social network analysis of the authorship of “hockey team” papers was poor, and did not support the claims made of problems with peer-review in the field Mashey points out that Wegman “claimed two missions: to evaluate statistical issues of the “hockey stick” temperature graph, and to assess potential peer review issues in climate science”. Instead, its real purpose was to: #1 claim the hockey stick broken and #2 discredit climate science as a whole. All this was a façade for a PR campaign well-honed by Washington, DC “thinktanks” and allies, under way for years. If you’ve ever attempted to follow the “hockey stick” controversy, Mashey’s study is an incredibly thorough and detailed dissection of the extent to which the whole effort has been underpinned by the usual suspects — the network of well-funded think tanks and their political allies. His conclusion is telling: I think this was a well-organized effort, involving many people, to mislead the American public and Congress. The former happens often, but the latter can be a felony, as is conspiracy to do it, and not telling about it. [...] The Wegman Report misleads by avoidance of good scholarship, good science and even good statistics. hot-topic.co.nz Wegman under investigation by George Mason University Posted on October 8, 2010 by Deep Climate\| 277 Comments By Deep Climate [Update, Oct. 11: George Mason University spokesperson Doug Walsch has clarified that the complaint against Wegman has moved past the preliminary "inquiry" phase and is now under formal investigation. ] [Update, Oct. 15, 19: I have added pointers to my previous discussions and updated side-by-side comparisons relevant to allegations of plagiarism forwarded to George Mason University last March and April. The allegations concern not only the Wegman report, but also the federally-funded Said et al 2008 (published in Computational Statistics and Data Analysis, with Wegman and two other Wegman proteges as co-authors). ]Update, Oct. 15: Here are pointers to material most relevant to the allegations of plagiarism that were sent to George Mason University by Raymond Bradley last March and April. Wegman et al 2.1 Tree Rings: Discussion Comparison Wegman et al 2.1 Ice cores and corals: Discussion Comparison Wegman et al 2.3 Social Networks: Discussion Comparison Said et al 2008 (Computational Statistics & Data Analysis): Discussion Comparison (Same discussion as Social Networks above) As noted in the comments and in my original discussion, the latter allegation regards federally-funded scholarly work. It is thus subject to oversight by the Office of Research Integrity, with potential serious consequences. ] deepclimate.org