Wegmania: The Denouement

The longer version can be found here, but, essentially the serial plagiarism of Ed Wegman and his protege Yasmin Said has begun to catch up with them.  They are both off the editorial board at Computatoonal Statistics, and Said seems to be out entirely at George Mason University.  Congrats to DC and John Mashey, who ferreted out the pair's dirty deeds.

More Wegmania  from this site can be found here.  And on Desmogblog, here.

Wegmania: Xmas Edition

As my readers will likely know, GMU (George Mason University) statistician Edward Wegman has been accused of plagiarism and other more serious offenses in the preparation of his Wegman Report, a document commissioned by U.S. Rep. Joe Barton (R-Texas) back in 2006, that questioned some of the scientific evidence behind AGW. This piece is the latest I've found on the topic, and the first to mention some of the other irregularities in the report that blogger Deep Climate and John Mashey were able to uncover. A few highlights:

1) It gives a brief account of Wegman's "social network analysis', which concluded that Mann and his collaborators operated as an illicit gang of rogue scientists. This analysis was mostly plagiarized but, as the story points out, the rest of it was crap:

...Camille Parmesan, a biology professor at the University of Texas and a lead author of the Third Assessment Report of the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, says this academic network is simply a function of a scientific career.

“It’s very clear that of course Mann is well-connected,” said Parmesan, who has not co-authored with Mann. “I mean, he’s a top researcher in the field.”

2) It makes the case that the Wegman report conclusions were shaped by Joe Barton and his staff:

Mashey...lays out a series of communications with think tanks and others -– events preceding Barton’s commission of the Wegman panel — that Mashey claims demonstrate active political interference in the findings.

The Mashey report says that the Wegman findings, which criticized evidence for climate change, could amount to materially false information presented in a report commissioned by a congressional committee, an act prohibited by federal law.

“I think these questions need asking, although it is not my role to judge the results, and some questions would likely only ever get answered by congressional or [Department of Justice (DOJ)] investigations,” Mashey said in the report.

The article goes on to note that, in the current political climate (Republicans rule The House), even if Wegman did commit a crime, he will probably not be called to account for it.

3) It updates us on the latest in the GMU investigation of the charges against Wegman:

GMU spokesperson Daniel Walsch said the university is reviewing the allegations against Wegman. But he was not authorized to say whether that review is narrowly tailored to the allegations of plagiarism or is examining the more-serious allegations of bias and intentional misinformation.

So there you have it. More bakcgorund on Wegman here.

Edward Wegman Under Investigation For Plagiarism

John Mashey's hard work, which I have written about on occasion (most recently here), has finally paid off. Professor Edward Wegman, best known for his criticism of climate science in "The Wegman Report" and in his testimony before the U.S. Congress, has come under investigation for misconduct and plagiarism by George Mason University, where he is employed.

If you look at the name of the person who demanded that the university launch its investigation (he is the addresee in the letter above) you can see that its "Raymond S. Bradley". Mr. Bradley co-authored of one of the papers Wegman attacked in his report, and he is also one of the people Wegman allegedly plagiarized:

"Talk about irony.[Mr. Bradley noted] It just seems surreal (that) these authors could criticize my work when they are lifting my words."

The article suggests that Wegman has initiated legal action. Perhaps John Mashey will show up in the comments and let us know more about that, particularly if it is directed at him.

PS. John tells me that the litigation has nothing to do with him.

Mashey on Wegman

Edward Wegman is a professor at George Mason University. In 2006,at the request of U.S. Rep. Joe Barton and U.S. Rep. Ed Whitfield (both Republicans), he led a small team of statisticians in examining the claims, made by Michael Mann and others, to have reconstructed past temperatures based on various proxy indicators, and to have therefore shown that present temperatures in the planet's Northern hemisphere were "unprecedented" over the past 1,000 or so years. Wegman's report criticized these claims quite harshly and, though Mann's arguments have been largely sustained by mainstream scientists, The Wegman Report has nevertheless been embraced by denialists and members of the Republican Party in the U.S. Congress.

John Mashey is an American computer scientist, best known as the creator of the "Mashey Shell". He has also done some fascinating research on, for example, the demographics of the AGW denialist movement, which I have written about here and here. However, his latest project, appearing on the Deep Climate website, is more important by several orders of magnitude.

Because, in essence, Mashey is accusing the writers of The Wegman Report (whether these were Wegman himself or others on his team) of plagiarism, among a host of other forms of academic mis-conduct:

Of 91 pages, 35 are mostly plagiarized text, but often injected with errors, bias and changes of meaning. Its Bibliography is mostly padding, 50% of the references uncited in the text. Many references are irrelevant or dubious. The team relied heavily on a long-obsolete sketch and very likely on various uncredited sources. Much of the work was done by Said (then less than 1 year post-PhD) and by students several years pre-PhD. The (distinguished) 2nd author Scott wrote only a 3-page standard mathematical Appendix. Some commenters were surprised to be later named as serious “reviewers.

In his recommendations, Mashey suggests:

George Mason University ought to investigate many problems, as should several other universities and journals, the US Office of Research Integrity and perhaps the American Statistical Association (ethics issues). At least 4 agencies may have possible fund mis-uses to consider. Some authors or publishers might pursue copyright issues. Congress and the DoJ should investigate the manufacture of the Wegman Report. Possible felonies are covered by the US Code, 18.U.S.C §1001 (misleading Congress), §371 (conspiracy), §4 (misprision), which might involve many more people. The report lists about 30 issues, not all for Wegman Report itself, but including derivations and related activities.

I should emphasize once again that this is serious stuff. For one thing, the accusations leave Mr. Mashey and the folks at DC open to a possible lawsuit. However, the instances of plagiarism, padding, and "dubious" citations are so thoroughly documented (here)that I think their case has been pretty much demonstrated. To give just one example, the Wegman Report bibliography references:

Valentine, Tom (1987) "Magnetics may hold key to ozone layer problems," Magnets, 2(1) 18-26.

It turns out that Mr. Valentine has no relevant scientific background. Furthermore, he has also written about engines that consume no fuel, psychic surgery, and other like topics in addition to the ozone hole. Remember again that The Wegman Report was presented to the U.S. congress as a piece of reputable science.

In any case, Mashey's research is also serious stuff because of its timing. The U.S. Republicans may walk away from November's mid-term elections with control of the House, Senate, or perhaps both chambers, and they have already promised to launch witch-hunts against climate scientists. It would be useful to have Mr. Wegman, should he be on the witness list in one of these show trials, confronted with some of the irregularities in his own research.

For more information, Joe Romm has a good account here.

The APS Petition: Portrait Of The Denier As An Old Man

John Mashey's career in computer science/programming-- especially his work on early operating systems for Bell Labs in the 1980s--is storied enough to warrant several brief wikipedia entries . However, his more recent efforts at tracing the sociological underpinnings of the climate change denialist movement have received far less attention.

Mashey's Science Bypass is a close analysis of the demographics and interlocking social networks of the men (and occasional woman) behind the APS (American Physical Society) petition, a recent attempt by a tiny sub-set of APS Members to have the Society revise its official policy statement on climate change to suggest that the basic science behind AGW is still in question. In examining the machinations behind this one effort, Mashey uncovers several interesting truths re the denialist movement in general.

Here are some of the highlights from his report.

The APS document serves as a fairly typical example of an anti-AGW petition. Usually, these originate in a free-market "think tank" like The Cato Institute (or in this case most likely The Heartland Institute) and serve a political rather than scientific purpose; specifically, serve to

...create impressive lists of names to help maintain an illusion of serious scientific disagreement for the public.

The chart below provides a quick history of the various petitions, events, and miscellaneous actions used to challenge arguments for (and more importantly, prevent action on) climate change. The red diamonds count as well-known, often long running petitions; the red squares are events like the Heartland Conference in NYC:


What becomes obvious from this chart is that these kinds of petitions, and other forms of denialist activity, tend to spike "whenever the US Government might actually do something meaningful" on the issue. So the first petitions (Leipzig Declaration, OISM) appear between the founding of the IPCC and the signing of the Kyoto accord, and within the past year or so there has been a frenzy of activity, designed to score political points in the lead-up to Copenhagen and in advance of action on Waxman-Markey in the U.S. House and Senate.

In contrast, official IPCC reports (shown as blue circles) proceed on a schedule relatively unconnected to events in the political landscape.

The next chart, comparing the demographic profile of signatories to the APS petition vs APS members as a whole, reveals the denialist movment's dirtiest little secret.

Of the APS petition signers, 86% were born before 1950, as compare to mere 40% of the APS membership as a whole. I've touched on this point before--and of course it is always possible that good scientific work can be done late in life--but the fact is that the denialist movement is basically filled with old men who have either retired or are at the very end of their careers, and in almost all cases these careers were in fields well distant from anything related to climate science. To suppose that APS signatories have a relevant contribution to make to the AGW debate is akin to imagining that Wayne Gretzky could have hung up his hockey skates circa 1997 and become a successful NFL linebacker. Not impossible, in other words but highly unlikely.

Finally, Mashey was able to track the political donations of 47 of the petition's American signers. His result

...shows a strong skew towards the Republican Party and Republican Presidential candidates (McCain or Bush).

Unfortunately, it was not possible to replicate this table for the small contingent of Canadians on the APS petition. However, given the connections between the Canada-based Friends Of Science (who have their produced their own petitions/open letters and etc.) and the Conservative Party of Canada via, among others, Conservative activist Barry Cooper, one would suspect a similar tilt towards the right side of the political spectrum among Canadian deniers.

And, oh yes, in November of this year the American Physical Society overwhelmingly rejected the petition's proposal to replace the Society's 2007 Statement on Climate Change with a version that raised doubts about global warming.

At Least THIS Guy Isn't Subject To Uncontrollable Erections

John Mashey is the "Buckets" of the Climate Science end of the blogosphere, and he's been going through the Cato Institute's latest list of Climate Change deniers to root out the unknown loonies from the more familiar loonies that tend to appear on such lists on a weekly basis.

Among other things, he's found a Creationist:

Edward Blick, PhD, retired professor at U of Oklahoma (aerospace, mechanical, nuclear) who also has published books including:Scientific Analysis of Genesis (1991), and Correlation of the Bible and Science (1976) and Special Creation Vs. Evolution (1981).

Excellent work, John, though not quite on the level of Eli's research into James DeMeo who, when he is not saving the nation from drought by draining Orgone from the atmosphere, may be getting it on solo style while crouched inside one of Wilhem Reich's "sex boxes".