The Blackboard

I got the last comment in on that thread before it was closed and subsequently deleted. I said he had backpedaled completely away from his initial assertion. Maybe it hit a nerve.

More likely though that a lawyer had been in contact with him.

DC has re-done the post.

http://deepclimate.org/2009/12.....-revealed/

Interesting. It seemed to me that there was evidence Rapp had plagiarized the Wegman report. Even if he wrote it, it would still be plagiarism. (Yes, you can plagiarize yourself).

Rather than simply apologize to Rapp for a false representation and set the record straight, Deep Climate first back-pedals then pulls the post to avoid risk of a (very legitimate) lawsuit for defamation. No surprise here, deep climate is obviously a worm and a coward.

Closing the comments as he did was also very cowardly and exactly the opposite of the sort of transparency he seems to expect of Donald Rapp.

I just happened to keep a copy of that DeepClimate post before it was modified.

“Wegman’s ghostwriter revealed « Deep Climate”

I converted it to a .pdf.

If it disappears from Google cache you can download here for the next week.

http://senduit.com/66ffe0

R Dunn–
I copied it too! I just didn’t save it as a pdf or upload. The new version edits out things like

And slowly the awful truth dawned on me. The Wegman report section was an early version of the text book chapter, not the other way around. I had just discovered a hitherto well hidden contributor.

I wonder if Deep is going to file a grievance with USC? I’m not really sure how closely the two compare. The examples Deep provides are paragraphs that discuss definitions. It’s generally hard to write definition type paragraphs that differ a lot.

People in comments say there are other bits that are very similar– but for me to judge, I’d have to see the two bits side by side. And… well… I don’t care enough to go get the materials put them side by side etc. (Evidently, either does Deep Climate. But if he files a grievance, I suppose he’d have to to make the case.)

The material that DC reveals as very similar between the Wegman report and the text book is simply mundane tree ring basics. It seems to me like its put in the book and Wegman report for information to those who are unfamiliar with tree ring basics. What’s to plagerize? Its just basic textbook type info. Sorry, but I don’t see anything wrong with lifting even exact wording for such basic info from a book or report.

Its a red herring to deflect from the damning revelation in the Wegman report that the climate scientists are getting their statistics wrong, and most importantly, they are not getting the statistical community involved in their work.

At last, proof positive of teleconnection… or that DC and cohorts have gone off the desperate deep end.

Deep is accusing Wegman of plagiarizing, also adding in wikipedia and some other book as a source. He kept saying that Rapp didn’t plagiarize,without fleshing out why.

Has anyone run the suspected text through UM’s <a href="http://www.dustball.com/cs/plagiarism.checker/”>plagiarism checker program or something like it?

His conclusion of the similarities between the Wegman report in 2006 and Rapp’s book in 2008 is not that Rapp plagiarized…but that Rapp must’ve ghost-written portions of the Wegman report.

Even while strongly criticizing Rapp time-and-time again as part of his blog post, he goes on to say this:

****MikeN // December 19, 2009 at 12:39 am

I’ve only skimmed, but how do you exclude the possibility that Rapp plagiarized?

[DC: Rapp is a fluid articulate writer and has greater knowledge of paleoclimatology than Wegman et al. ]***

So he rips Rapp and then subsequently praises him. ???

“What’s to plagerize? Its just basic textbook type info…”

Are you saying they plagiarized a textbook?

We’re not talking about not attributing ideas, we are talking about copying and pasting stuff from some other source into your own work. That’s textbook plagiarism.

“Sorry, but I don’t see anything wrong with lifting even exact wording for such basic info from a book or report.”

How did you make it past Freshman comp? I’ll agree most people in the real world don’t seem to care too much, but it is really really bad for an academic to do this type of stuff (at least according to other academics)

Boris,

“We’re not talking about not attributing ideas, we are talking about copying and pasting stuff from some other source into your own work. That’s textbook plagiarism.”

Please try to hold your enthusiasm in check. It was NOT copy and paste unless YOU can come up with an identical copy that predates his work.

DC himself claims that there was rewording and gives examples where the comparisons are NOT identical, but, very similar.

As mentioned earlier, when dealing with definitions it gets very clumsy very quickly trying to use completely new formulations without changing languages!!

Lucia,

maybe you can have a regular “Jumping the Shark” post??

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

Who is “Deep Climate”? This is a very peculiar story. Does Deep Climate want people to go back and (re-)read the Wegman Report? Does he or she want Wegman’s prescient social networking analysis revisited and potentially updated?

What impressed me is that being accreditated (perhaps falsely) with being a coauthor of the Wegman Report should be considered defamatory.

Boris,

The attributions I recall where DC said plagiarism appeared:
(1) Wegman et al’s discussions of tree rings

Is this really stealing someone’s ideas or words? If someone asked you or I to explain tree rings, wouldn’t we basically say the same thing? Would we have to find a reference to cite? Maybe Rapp plagiarized from Wegman et al, but DC insists this can’t possibly be the case.

(2) Wegman et al’s discussion of social networks has wording almost identical to the Wikipedia entry at the time. Of course, the Wikipedia entry itself cites no references in these area – can this information be considered “common knowledge” enough that no reference is necessary?

In any case, I would assume this was a citation omission (the “Wegman Report” averages well over one cited reference per page) that would readily be corrected if brought to their attention. It certainly does nothing to discredit the paper, just it’s composition.

DC’s post seems to be simply a means to smear the “Wegman Report” and its authors without addressing the findings. Plagiarism is far more eggregious than typos or incorrect spellings, but as in the cases of those problems, it does not affect the substance or results of the Report.

It appears that Deep Climate has posted the following non-apologetic apology:
[Update, Dec. 19: This post has been substantially revised to remove speculation about Donald Rapp's possible role in the Wegman report. I apologize for any embarrassment caused to Donald Rapp or Edward Wegman by that speculation.

I have re-read the Dec 17 piece but I could find no indication of where changes had been made that did anything to reduce the stridency of the attacks on Wegman and Rapp. Can someone point them out?

After rereading the DC post and all comments I think it’s pretty clear that Rapp copied texts from the Wegman Report without referencing. He also cites other work without quotations. I’m sure if the book would be researched closely a lot more stuff comes bubbling up. I wonder what Rapp’s publisher thinks of all this. I also wonder if Deep Climate will leave it at this. Rapp’s reaction made it clear there is much more than meets the eye. Why didn’t he just give an explanation if things are “baloney, 100% bogus, all wrong, moronic, idiotic”? Reminds one of that famous Shakespeare quote of some lady protesting.

Who cares about Rapp and why? DC is seeking to impugn Wegman for identifying the ‘network’ issue years ahead of the email reveal. If he thinks this will fly, I can only conclude that he wears his shirts back to front. Foot, Aim, Fire!

This was probably the funniest, if not saddest, thread in the Climate Debate. Deep managed to create a time machine and warped himself back into time to re-write history. I asked him to present the so called “facts” he seemed to have which of course he could not present.
The AGW advocates seem to be more and more desperate and keep on shooting themselves in their feet. Their insulting of the intelligence of people who think otherwise seem to have no end…

Kuhnkat

maybe you can have a regular “Jumping the Shark” post??

Well… only when someone does it. Sometimes we find a whole bunch of them packed together; sometimes no one jumps the shark for a while.

Anyway, if Deep really thinks he has some sort of case of Rapp ghostwriting and then self-plagiarizing in some later thing, he should write a formal complaint to USC. Or if the complaint is that Rapp plagiarized anything. Or… whatever.

Nick

What impressed me is that being accreditated (perhaps falsely) with being a coauthor of the Wegman Report should be considered defamatory.

Given the full substance of the post, why do you think it’s that one thing specifically that’s defamatory? And not accusations relative to other actions?

Some of you guys need to review plagiarism again. You can’t just substitute words from someone else’s work–that is still plagiarism. Like I said, this is Freshman comp stuff.

Let’s take a look at DC’s example:

The average width of a tree ring is a function of many variables including the tree species, tree age, stored carbohydrates in the tree, nutrients in the soil, and climatic factors including sunlight, precipitation, temperature, wind speed, humidity, and even carbon dioxide availability in the atmosphere. Obviously there are many confounding factors so the problem is to extract the temperature signal and to distinguish the temperature signal from the noise caused by the many confounding factors.

The average width of a tree ring is a function of many variables including the tree species, tree age, stored carbohydrates in the tree, nutrients in the soil, and climatic factors including sunlight, precipitation, temperature, wind speed, humidity, and even carbon dioxide availability in the atmosphere. Obviously there are many confounding factors so the problem challenge is to extract the temperature signal and to thus distinguish the temperature signal from the noise caused by the many confounding factors.

All I can say is “Wow!” This is an automatic F and a warning letter in your file at any university in the country. You can argue you forgot your quotation marks. And you can argue you forgot a citation. But to forget both strains credulity. It boggles the mind that Rapp would taunt people and ASK for a complaint to be filed against him. Does he not know what plagiarism is? His only real defense would be that he wrote it himself and that Wegman plagiarized him from a draft–and that obviously leaves Wegman high and dry. So I say we give Rapp what he wants–a complaint of plagiarism against him–of which there is ample and compelling evidence.

double post

Nice Boris, now can you please explain, or rather prove how Rapp ghostwrited for Wegman? Because that was spinmeister Deep’s deep thought behind it, wasn’t it? You know if you, or Deep, can’t prove it you both maybe liable for slander?

Boris (Comment#28797)
December 20th, 2009 at 9:35 am

So I guess you’re not in the Nick Stokes camp of Rapp’s compaint being “how dare you accuse me of that scurrilous association with Wegman”.

(Note: Obiously not a direct quote since “scurrilous” is reserved for the suggestion that someone would actually graft or splice an instrumental temperature record onto a proxy reconstruction.)

Boris,

You are STILL confused.

The possible plagiarism you presented would be Rapp (2008) copying text from Wegman et all (2006). But as I posted earlier and as DC points-out several times in his thread, DC insists this is NOT the case! He insists the tree ring paragraphs you quoted where NOT plagiarized by Rapp (2008) from Wegman et al (2006). He insists simply that it is evidence that Rapp was a ghost-writer of Wegman et al (2006) in an effort to smear Wegman et al (2006), or that Wegman et al got a draft copy of Rapp (2008) to use in writing Wegman et al (2006) [which really takes a stretch of the imagination].

Now a lot of posters over at DC seem to be confused by DC’s explanation and efforts, which is why DC has to keep explaining himself that he is not accusing Rapp of plagiarism. But please, please try to keep up with the posts here that clarify the issue. Or are you going to agree with DC that you think Wegman et al (2006) plagiarized Rapp (2008) despite being published 2 years earlier?

I think it succinctly highlights a lot of the warmers paranoiac hysteria. Some basic definitions are, more or less, copied verbosely from another text but this apparently requires some kind of citation, and is proof of fraudulence. What’s more incredible is that according to DC to write such basic definitions requires in depth knowledge of “climate science”. His initial post states he was suspicious that Wegman and gang could have written something like that since they were not climate scientists. He seems to think that making such a statement requires some great climate science knowledge. Absolutely amazing – no wonder they’re faithful followers of the climate science priests.

Boris–
This was never evidence Rapp was a ghostwriter– which is what DeepClimate claimed. Deep made other claims of Rapp’s academic dishonesty that were based on his assumption that Rapp was a ghostwriter.

I think this is certainly excessive lifting from the Wegman report on Rapp’s part. At a minimum, it’s very sloppy citation. This would be a bad thing on Rapp’s part, and if someone wishes to devote their time to pursuing it, then I would say: Have at it.

Deep write this:

So I say we give Rapp what he wants–a complaint of plagiarism against him–of which there is ample and compelling evidence.

So, is Deep going to file a complaint against Rapp at USC? Then we can learn any defense, and what USC migth or might not do.

Quite often, Universities go lightly on faculty who do this sort of thing. Universities don’t really like to find against tenured faculty because it reflects on the culture of the university itself. So proof has to be much stronger than one might otherwise suspect. So.. oddly, faculty are often held to a lower standard than students. Just the way it is.

Boris, I agree. DC should file a plagiarism complaint and see what happens.

It does look like Rapp lifted text from the Wegman report. I know that must be disappointing to y’all because the stated goal of digging up dirt was to smear Wegman and not to hit somebody nobody had heard of before.

So beyond the issue of potential plagiarism, I’m not very impressed here. Nobody here is in Rapp’s “camp” (unlike you alarmists, my first reaction isn’t to circle the wagons), and which part of Wegman’s report does this call into question?

As to the original premise…

But then I started thinking about something that had always bothered me. How could a trio of statistical experts, all on their own, hope to write a report on a field, climate science, of which they had no previous knowledge or experience?

News flash here… this isn’t advanced quantum field theory or some advanced mathematical field that requires a lifetime of training to wrap your head around.

There is absolutely no reason to suspect it would require any massive prior training to write material on this level. Grab a couple of standard reference textbooks. Makes some notes, and write it in your own words.

* And attribute your sources.

Lucia,

***Deep write this:

So I say we give Rapp what he wants–a complaint of plagiarism against him–of which there is ample and compelling evidence.***

…and yet “Deep” had written several times on that page things along the lines of,

***[DC: I consider Rapp plagiarizing highly unlikely, as I've said all along. I will update each of these to make that clear.]***

and

***MikeN // December 19, 2009 at 12:39 am

I’ve only skimmed, but how do you exclude the possibility that Rapp plagiarized?

[DC: Rapp is a fluid articulate writer and has greater knowledge of paleoclimatology than Wegman et al. ]***

Deep’s latest heading says he removes and attribution that Rapp may have been involved in writing the Wegman report.

So what is Deep’s whole premise?

(1) that Rapp plagiarized? Nope…says several times he/she doesn’t believe that to be the case
(2) that Rapp ghost-authored portions of Wegman et al (2006)? Nope…clearly states, “This post has been substantially revised to remove speculation about Donald Rapp’s possible role in the Wegman report. I apologize for any embarrassment caused to Donald Rapp or Edward Wegman by that speculation.”
(3) that Wegman plagiarized from Wikipedia and also from a draft copy of Rapp (2008)?

#3 seems to be the only item still standing. I think the wikipedia issue is a molehill and not a mountain, and I think trying to say a 2006 report plagiarizes a 2008 book is an extremely difficult stretch.

But plenty of readers over there (Boris included) took to the blood in the water, and nothing at this point is going to change their minds. Wegman is guilty, Rapp is guilty, and so all the “skeptics” are guilty. The only thing missing is an attribution from “big oil.”

Everyone,

I don’t agree with DC that Rapp was an unnamed co-author. It is possible, but there is no evidence.

So, yes I was illustrating that Rapp would be guilty of plagiarizing the Wegman Report, which is why I found it odd that he would come over and invite DC to “file a complaint” so he could sue him.

As for Wegman, I think he shredded his objectivity by signing on to a petition that claimed “global warming stopped in 1998.”

By far the most interesting revelation (for me) in the DC thread on Wegman was that as Wegman hammered Mann in his social network analysis, 75% of the people he was working with on the report were former students. If true, that is some sweet hypocrisy.

Michael Jankowski
I know Deep is totally inconsistent in his post and comments. So is Deep going to file a complaint of plagiarism against Rapp? Or not?

Boris–
Presumably, Rapp has more information on what, specifically, he did, and also knows what universities do and do not consider actionable on the part of faculty members.

Because universities are know be VERY reluctant to find against faculty members, Rapp may well know that even if investigators find some obvious lapses, USC would “investigate” and then likely decree there was some minor sloppiness. Then he would be “officially” cleared. Sort of like… uhmm… what was that other investigation of academic dishonesty discussed in comments recently…. Having to do with allegations something was made up in China… what was that????

Plus, Deep alleged some stuff that was almost certainly false and loonie about ghostwriting and other infractions related to the non-existent ghostwriting. A law suit about that in court could lead to Deep being in deep doo-doo. Meanwhile, Deep has nothing to pursue in court because he’s not alleging Rapp or Wegman violated Deep’s copyright.

So…. all in all it’s totally understandable Rapp would tell Deep to put up or shut up.

Lucia,

If the plagiarism is as bad as it looks at first glance, the university would be virtually forced to take action against Rapp, otherwise every USC underrad who has been busted for plagiarism is going to have a legitimate gripe agianst the university. Now, such action would probably be a slap on the wrist, but it could be significant.

Of course, we can’t know that Rapp didn’t write the Wegman report. One way to ferret out such information would be to file a complaint.

Boris–
Ok. That’s your theory.

One way to ferret out such information would be to file a complaint.

Are you or Deep going to go to the trouble to file a formal complaint?

I might if Rapp doesn’t bother to answer some pretty basic questions about what happened. Of course, I’d want to look at the facts very, very carefully and lay out the case in detail so maybe sometime after the new year. I’ve busted many a plagiarist in my time

Boris:

If the plagiarism is as bad as it looks at first glance, the university would be virtually forced to take action against Rapp, otherwise every USC underrad who has been busted for plagiarism is going to have a legitimate gripe agianst the university. Now, such action would probably be a slap on the wrist, but it could be significant.

Slaps on wrist are by definition not “significant”, but I would like the full story to come out on this, and let the chips fall where they may.

What is your goal here anyway, to show that there are other people besides your climate heros who are slime balls?

I already knew that.

Boris,

DC had repeatedly stated that Rapp had not plagiarized, but I assume you disagree.

Of course, DC’s repeatd commnets on Rapp being innocent of plagiarism makes the comment about filing a complaint extremely interesting.

Carrick: Boris’ goal is presumably as stated here…

“Of course, we can’t know that Rapp didn’t write the Wegman report. One way to ferret out such information would be to file a complaint.”

Personally, I’m less certain of the causal relationship between global warming and leprechauns.

Go for it, Boris. We’ll be sure to pass the hat around should it all go pear-shaped… what with Rapp apparently keen to take names and kick a$$.

I think it’s quite funny (and illuminating) to note that – when presented with similar passages in a 2008 book and the 2006 Wegman report – the first thing that occurs to Deep is that Rapp was a ghost writer for Wegman and lifted his own work for his book.
.
Deep so badly wants to find something wrong with Wegman that he is making a fool of himself.
.
On the other hand, Rapp looks like quite the fool in my opinion, too – despite Deep’s insistence that Rapp’s left toe knows more about climate than Wegman and his glowing recommendation of Rapp as a writer.

lucia (Comment#28793)
Given the full substance of the post, why do you think it’s that one thing specifically that’s defamatory? And not accusations relative to other actions?
Simple – it’s the one DC withdrew, with what sounds like a lawyer-influenced apology. But why is it defamatory?

ha ha ha ha ha

“Like gas stations in rural Texas after 10 pm, comments are closed.”
.
conspiracy theorist alarmistas unite!
ha ha ha ha

What is the point of all of this?

Is no one else amused by DC’s denial that a professor of statistics could write a few sentences recounting entry-level concepts of tree rings as temperature proxies while apparently accepting the thought that the statistically-naive climate-scientist Mann has made a purportedly useful innovation to principal component analysis applied to statistics?

How does any of this vast effusion of speculation on who plagiarised whom – speculation which the speculators seem totally disinclined to actually check out – alter the fact that Wegman a leading statistician agreed with McIntyre and McKitrick that the statistical methodology of Mann et al., a.k.a. the hockey stick team, a.k.a. ClimateGate, was so massively flawed that it would produce a hockey stick out of random numbers? What has any of this got to do with a ‘Republican war on science’? I an Australian with no fixed affiliation with either side of US politics get sick of this sort of repeated intrusion of trendy political advertising into scientific issues. Over here the worst warring on science comes from leftist Greens fanatically opposing genetic modification. I spent years fighting their totally preconceived and blatantly ideological position on the matter. Much of their agitprop material appeared to come from abroad including the US.

Before making public accusations of plagiarism wouldn’t you want to check that the copier had not asked the copied for permission?

Nick

Simple – it’s the one DC withdrew, with what sounds like a lawyer-influenced apology. But why is it defamatory?

How would DC’s actions tell us what Rapp considers defamatory? Based on what Rapp wrote, if and when he discovers who DC is, he may sue for defamation. Then we’ll know what Rapp considers defamatory.

My impression is DC is Canadian, so that might influence a defamed American’s decision to pursue anything at all. After all, who wants to pursue a suit in Canada? But, if DC takes an action that is clearly tied to California’s jurisdiction, Rapp who– apparently– works for USC might avail himself of American law. Though… who knows?

That article is just hand waving, fuss about nothing, move along – nothing to see here, honestly. Crap.

The changes in “plagiarised” text are no different than would be expected of a student who, having studied the available literature, must express it in his/her own words to show he/she understands it. So obviously, a conspiracy.

IMHO, nothing in the article undermines Wegman or the criticisms of MBH98. Nothing says the tree ring crap as analysed by “the team” is worth another look. It’s just more team-style rubbish dressed up as exposing conspiracy.

It is amazing that they (the man-made-climate-change church) still don’t realise that THEY are now the climate establishment. The orthodoxy that the plucky dissenters strive to dent. They won the war, all the main politicians are trying to implement their agenda. The pesky rear-guard actions, however, are on-going. Some people just don’t know when they’re beat.

Nothing from the “success” of Copenhagen can really give hope to the deniers. They have a mountain of vested interests to climb.

lucia (Comment#28837)
How would DC’s actions tell us what Rapp considers defamatory?
Well, Rapp made threats, and presumably DC interpreted the basis for them. But what else is there? An allegation of coincidence of text, which is not denied. An explicit non-accusation of plagiarism. What else?

Nick–Uhmmm… who says DC interpreted what Rapp intended correctly?
I think you are seriously forgetting the accusations of “ghost writing” etc. in the first post. There is plenty beyond mere plagiarism that is either implied or stated outright in DC’s post. For one thing the whole “ghost writing” thing could be defamatory– given that DC seems to think it’s sordid and tried to make it sound so.

Either it’s a) not sordid and there is nothing wrong with it or b) it is sordid, Rapp was involved and he would have cause for claiming defamation.

So, is “ghostwriting” sordid or not? Did it happen or not? Also, did Rapp later self cite in some weird, academically dishonest way, or not? Etc.

Lucia,
Ghost writing isn’t really much of a charge re a multi-author scientific report. The usual complaint there is lack of crediting, made by the ghost who thinks he should have been on the author list. But in any context, a charge of ghost writing potentially defames not the ghost, but the falsely credited author.

DC isn’t saying it would have been wrong for Rapp to have been a co-author, but just drawing attention to the lack of transparency in the genesis of the Wegman Report.

“DC is Canadian”
.
Look at the photo header and its source file name:
“cropped-malahat-2.jpg”
DC is probably from Victoria, British Columbia.

DC has made an ass of himself with his ghostwriting accusation. Correctly attributing ideas and quotes is not easy, but surely it is an essential part in the process.

Nick Stokes–
Did you even read the post in its first version? ‘Cuz…. your theories….sheesh.

Nick
Note for example

Words fail me, almost literally. For I’m not sure there is even a name for this nadir of scholarship, whereby an author relies so completely on a work that included his own unattributed contribution, while professing to give a balanced overview. And it certainly makes the publisher’s blurb even more disturbing:

This is an accusation of academic dishonesty and is levied against Rapp not Wegman. You may not think this sort of accusation against Rapp is somehow not sufficiently important to be “defamatory”, but DC calls it the “nadir or scholarship” and it’s possible that Rapp sees himself as standing accused of such a thing. And it’s pretty clear that CD thinks what he accuses Rapp of is a very, very bad thing for an academic (which Rapp is).

If other academics, students etc. thought Rapp did this, he could consider his reputation harmed. If he did not do this, and his reputation was harmed because DC accused him of this can conviced others, I’m pretty sure that would be defamation (i.e. “# a false accusation of an offense or a malicious misrepresentation of someone’s words or actions
# aspersion: an abusive attack on a person’s character or good name “)

So.. there yah’ go.

I’m waiting to see if DC files anything and if he does I’m waiting to see what Rapp does. And after that… what the courts and USC do.

lucia (Comment#28845)
Well, this sort of criticism of public writings is routine on blogs, and common elsewhere. But the key issue is the appearance of slabs of text from the Wegman Report in Rapp’s book, unattributed. DC may think the possibility that Rapp may in fact have written them originally is a particularly aggravating feature, but for a court the issue is whether the public, not DC, would think so. I can’t see it myself.

Deep reopened comments. In those he writes

For the record, I would assume the apparent plagiarism discussed here is of the unintentional variety, and would not rise to the level of misconduct under many of codes of conduct. But at the very least, it does bespeak shoddy scholarship.

So, I suspect he will not file any formal complaint because he thinks USC would see his complaint as being of the stupid pesky variety and not alleging anything consequential. Though… of course, he may still file or may not file for other reasons. (Possibly, he might not wish to break his sheild of invisibility which is convenient to have in place when he accuses other so of having bad characters and/or does posts technical articles that show he knows no more about trend analysis than George Will.)

Lucia,

I bet DC won’t lift a finger. All he wanted to do is add to the ‘alarmist talking points’ on the web that get repeated over and over until their origins are forgotten and are accepted as truth. He does not care about Rapp.

Maybe you could start a betting pool on how long it takes for the ‘wegman is a plagiarist’ meme to show up on alarmist websites.

Hello world. Raven said that “Wegman is a plagiarist”. Do tell, Raven.

Nick

Well, this sort of criticism of public writings is routine on blogs, and common elsewhere.

Oh? And even if true, what, pray tell, would that have to do with whether or not Rapp could file a suit and prevail? Exceeding the speed limit is routine on US highways, but I wouldn’t use that as a legal defense when fighting a speeding ticket.

What you see as the “key” issue in terms of whatever it is you think is “key” in DC’s article may have nothing to do with what Rapp perceives as defamatory.

C may think the possibility that Rapp may in fact have written them originally is a particularly aggravating feature, but for a court the issue is whether the public, not DC, would think so. I can’t see it myself.

Oh? Do you think that would be the key issue in a defamtion suit? ‘Cuz, while INAL, I serious doubt it. The key issue in a defamation suit is the part that might be defamatory whether or not that was the main point of DC’s post.

There is no “Yeah. I said Joe was an axe murderer, but that was not the main point of my post. My post was really about what the how Joe burned the turkey” defense in defamation.

Anyway, who do you consider to be “the public”? I’m pretty sure that US courts only are about whether people important to the plaintiff came to believe he had a bad character as a result of the allegations. The question would presumably be whether Rapp’s circle of academics, neighbors, friends, students, potential employers etc would see what DC alleges as being evidence of Rapp’s bad character.

So, DC alleged this (among other things):

Words fail me, almost literally. For I’m not sure there is even a name for this nadir of scholarship, whereby an author relies so completely on a work that included his own unattributed contribution, while professing to give a balanced overview.

So… Do you think DC’s defense is going to be that everyone knows academics think this behavior is just fine and dandy? Do you think academics think it’s fine and dandy?

Because if you think academics think this is just find and dandy, say so an thereby let people know that DC is nuts to think there is anything wrong with the behavior DC calls the “nadir of scholarship”.

Out of interest, doesn’t someone claiming defamation have to prove harm? As an example, me calling Some Important Dude a criminal is unlikely to cause that important dude any harm, because my opinions are unlikely to influence his life in any way. Thus, a defamation case would fail. (At least in Australia).

It is interesting to see how the ‘new media’ – in quotes because it is not so new anymore – is affected by this. In Australia, many politicians made cash by suing media organisations for defamation and getting paid off in out-of-court settlements. The internet makes it easy for people to make all sorts of claims. It makes it much harder to prove harm, however, unless the internet site is one that has many viewers who are likely to be influenced by the writer.

Raven

Maybe you could start a betting pool on how long it takes for the ‘wegman is a plagiarist’ meme to show up on alarmist websites.

I’ll be very surprised if Deep Climate files anything at all. I’m virtually certain he will a) not want to put together a full case b) not want to break anonymity and c) not risk any suit in court.

Of course, I could be wrong. But that’s my guess.

Boris,

“Let’s take a look at DC’s example:……..”

Your copying and pasting from DC’s blog leaves much to be desired, like all of the formatting with strikeouts etc.

You really do need some refresher courses.

Boris,

“By far the most interesting revelation (for me) in the DC thread on Wegman was that as Wegman hammered Mann in his social network analysis, 75% of the people he was working with on the report were former students. If true, that is some sweet hypocrisy.”

So, in your estimation, Wegman understands social networks by having used them and observed them being used in academia and society as a whole??

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

David Gould –

Out of interest, doesn’t someone claiming defamation have to prove harm?

I’m not a lawyer, but I think you do have to prove that. But I think the harm need not be monetary– it could just be to one’s reputation or even emotional distress. Hollywood celebrities have sued the National Enquirer (an American Tabloid) and won even though the harm was entirely social or emotional and not financial.

Some Important Dude a criminal is unlikely to cause that important dude any harm, because my opinions are unlikely to influence his life in any way.

Yeah– but this is also where DC deciding to file a complaint at USC could matter. It also matters whether or not the meme gets picked up by others.

In anycase, you don’t have to prove harm to file a suit. Who knows if Rapp would file– but if he did, that could be a worry for DC.

In Australia, many politicians made cash by suing media organisations for defamation and getting paid off in out-of-court settlements.

Well… now that doesn’t happen much in the US because it’s much harder for public figures to prevail in a defamation suit. The standard for defamation are different for public figures and private figures! I don’t think Rapp is likely to be public figure. I’ve never heard of him…. Wegman might be. We’d have to consult an attorney on that one.

Lucia,

“… I’m pretty sure that would be defamation (i.e. “# a false accusation of an offense or a malicious misrepresentation of someone’s words or actions
# aspersion: an abusive attack on a person’s character or good name “)…”

Careful Lucia. you didn’t attribute, or, did you ghost write this for wherever you got it?? DC may be watching!! ;>)

If DC is from Canada, Rapp might have a good case for “libel” if it were filed there. Perhaps a Canadian lawyer could comment?

Lucia,

I don’t think DC should be too worried about defamation suits. Given that post, I imagine the jury would buy the insanity defense in a heart beat.

I have a question:

Are Deep Climate and/or Boris going to use their real names in any official proceedings?

Andrew

Bender,
DC is from Canada – he says so in the About section on his blog.
Canadian libel laws are also very generous to the people suing.

http://www.cs.uwaterloo.ca/~shallit/libel3.html

Under the current legal regime, you can be sued for anything you say about another person that damages their reputation. If sued, the onus is on you to prove the truth of your statements; the fact that you genuinely believed them to be true is not good enough. Even truth is not an absolute defence — if the court finds you told the truth but your intent was malicious, you might lose anyway. Canadian libel law is so draconian that people come from all over the world to file libel suits in Ontario.

DC is in big trouble if Rapp takes him on.

Raven,

Note that even with such draconian laws, it would have to be proved that the other person’s reputation was damaged. It is unclear to me that some random guy saying bad stuff on the internet about someone else necessarily damages that someone else’s reputation.

A lot may depend on context, also – who the person is who is saying the bad stuff. As an example, if, say, Ann Coulter ever said bad stuff about me, I would consider that a boost to my reputation.

Raven,
I think Rapp could only sue in Canada for the damage he has sustained in Canada, where it’s unlikely anyone has heard of him. But I’m still struggling to see what is libellous here. There’s strong criticism of a book, which is hard to construe as libellous in any jurisdiction.

If this is libellous, just check this thread:
#28741 “deep climate is obviously a worm and a coward”
#28742 “Closing the comments as he did was also very cowardly”
#28824 “there are other people besides your climate heros who are slime balls?”
or even Lucialucia (Comment#28804)
“At a minimum, it’s very sloppy citation. ”
So DC accused Rapp of a “nadir of scholarship”?
Ho Hum

Nick,
I agree that Rapp undermined any case that he might have had with his comments.
As for what DC says – I guess it really depends on what the search engines pick up and associate with Rupp. It may just sink into the ether and be forgotten.

Nick:

I think Rapp could only sue in Canada for the damage he has sustained in Canada, where it’s unlikely anyone has heard of him.

I believe this is not correct on many accounts.

First, the act was committed in Canada, which requires redress in that country, and under that country’s laws. That’s how international law works, otherwise you could be accountable in the US for acts you committed in your own country.

Secondly, Canadian law allows suit over attempts to commit malicious harm. I.e., the offense is the words, and not just their consequence. Legally this makes sense, if I shoot a gun at you and miss, I still suffer liability for the act.

Here’s a bit of commentary on that:

As noted by Dietrich, it is not necessary for the plaintiff to prove that the defendant intended to defame. Nor must it be proven that the defendant did lower the plaintiff’s reputation in the minds of persons accessing the materials and that the plaintiff actually suffered any damages from the defamatory materials.(14) The onus lies with the defendant. As the threshold for what is defamatory is low, the majority of the courts time is spent assessing whether the defendant has one of the defences available.

DC, in attempting to reframe his comments as directed towards Wegman and away from Donald Rapp, is clearly seeing Donald’s threat as a very real problem, and probably views Wegman as much less likely to follow legal recourse. (No doubt if this degenerates further, Wegman will be made familiar with this situation, and we can see what happens then.)

Dude was foolish in my opinion for writing this inflammatory nonsense to start with. I’ve seen blogs closed down in the US for much less. The internet doesn’t give people free reign to say anything they like, spoken in the heat of the moment (*wipes tears for Sanders*) without any ramifications of that act.

So Carrick, I’ve also mentioned your comments above calling DC cowardly, and suggesting climate heros are slime balls. What words of DC do you think are defamatory?

It’s not true that you have to sue where the defamation originated. Here’s a locally famous Court case where Dow Jones was sued by Gutnick in Victoria, Australia, the jurisdiction issue being affirmed by the High Court here.

Nick Stokes, Opinions are protected speech. Of course you knew that. But nice attempt at distracting us from your erroneous argument.

As to that decision…well there’s no accounting for the insanity of the court system, and this is a particularly insane ruling even by most court standards. I also noticed that there was discussion of reform of Australian law. Has this happened?

Nick Stokes (Comment#28873) December 20th, 2009 at 11:34 pm
So Carrick, I’ve also mentioned your comments above calling DC cowardly, and suggesting climate heros are slime balls. What words of DC do you think are defamatory?

Nick Stokes 1. Cowards dont sue – they are cowards, slanderers and liars – so they slink off and hide with their tails between their legs. Besides they are wrong so they would lose if they did sue.
2. Is anyone bothered about about being wrong? and arguing wrongly from a ridiculous position? And having egg on their faces?
3. Donald Rapp // December 18, 2009 at 10:27 pm
“I have yet to see a more moronic set of comments on any topic in my life.” It appears he thinks that people who have sided with Deep (shallow?) climates ridiculous claims were morons. That couldnt make you very happy.

Richard, for what it’s worth, Nick misrepresented my comment. He attributed to DeepCimate a comment I made with respect to the closing of comments on that blog, an act I still view as cowardly under these circumstances.

Make charges such as this: “given the egregious falsification of key information about authorship and apparent plagiarism in the Wegman report” then prevent any one from commenting on it?

Even for Nick’s heroes, this is a new low.

re: bender – 28842

Hmmm,

Could DC be prof. weaver?

For what it’s worth, I’ve just visited the DC blog…and the comments are open again. Not sure what gives with that. This is rather bizarre if you ask me.

Carrick (Comment#28876)
Opinions are protected speech.
You haven’t helped with my quest for whatever DC said that is supposed to be defamatory. Lucia offerred “nadir of scholarship” etc, but apart from being weak tea, it’s also opinion. The only fact alleged that might be controversial, was Rapp contributing to the Wegman Report. And I’m still curious about whether that is held to be defamatory.

The Wiki account of the Gutnick case is here. AFAIK, the High Court decision stands as law here.

I consider myself quite the skeptic, and I follow a lot of what goes on without commenting much, but the argument, as a defense, that there are only so many ways you can state the same principle is disingenuous. The sentence structure, order, and format of the paragraphs cited means that there was copying and pasting with minor editing. You have to be willfully blind to insist those paragraphs could have had separate authorship. Deep Climate is right about that much.

I’m more inclined to think that Rapp plagiarized from Wegman (using somebody else’s work without attribution fits the definition). Deep Climate looks foolish in trying to use this to cast aspersion on Wegman, when Wegman published two years prior to Rapp.

I don’t think it matters much, largely because Rapp is unknown, and none of this changes the quality or content of the argument that Rapp/Wegman are making. Deep Climate suggests that this somehow discredits Wegman, yet his post addresses none of the actual content of Wegman’s argument. He uses plenty of argument from intimidation, with the tone and implication that if you believe McIntyre, Wegman, and so on, there’s something wrong with your judgment, but without elaborating on why that should be the case. The whole thing is a red herring that distracts from substantive questions.

Nick Stokes:

You haven’t helped with my quest for whatever DC said that is supposed to be defamatory

Why you think that is suddenly my responsibility is beyond me.

Donald Rapp appears to have thought there was something defamatory about DCs original comments, enough so to threaten to sue. You made this claim about Canadian law not being applicable:

I think Rapp could only sue in Canada for the damage he has sustained in Canada, where it’s unlikely anyone has heard of him.

I was only addressing this statement, not whether defamatory comments had in fact been made (though I noted that DC appears to have felt he/she crossed the line on this one).

I already said I thought a plagiarism complaint should be filed and let chips fall where they may.

[...] December, 2009 (08:48) | politics Written by: lucia In the wake of Deep Climate shark-jumping post accusing Rapp of ghost-writing portions of the Wegman report, blog visitors are [...]

Nick– I just posted an article quoting from today’s opinion column in the WSJ. Given UK libel laws, it looks like Rapp might be able to sue Deep in the UK. And since Deep probably doesn’t keep all his money in the US, he’s probably not going to find the province of Ontario swooping in to protect him from the UK’s absolutely ridiculous defamations laws!!!

Nick Stokes–
Deep accused Rapp of

an author relies so completely on a work that included his own unattributed contribution, while professing to give a balanced overview

That is a specific act.

Deep characterizes it as the nadir of scholarship. If academics share Deeps view that those who commit this act are poor scholars that would harm Rapp’s reputation. Harming one’s good name (i.e. reputation) in the circle of important to the plaintiff is what matters in defamation.

Mind you, if Deep’s defense was that he was simply incorrect and those acts were not viewed disfavorably by academics, then Deep would be in the clear on that. So…. what do you think academics think of the action Deep attributed to Rapp?

Nick–

’ve also mentioned your comments above calling DC cowardly, and suggesting climate heros are slime balls. What words of DC do you think are defamatory?

It might also be difficult for a pseudonym to prevail in a defamation suit. Of course, I can’t be sure about this. But, presumably, the harm is to the reputation of “Deep Climate”, not “The person who blogs as ‘Deep Climate’”… right? Or not right? Beats me.

“DC is in big trouble if Rapp takes him on.”

Right. Rapp would have to be enormously stupid to sue DC–I mean I know he’s a skeptic and all, but I don’t think he’s that dumb

If he sues DC, then it is assured that the plagiarism allegations will be dealt with–and they don’t look pretty to me. Given the media’s love on the topic, there will no doubt be some newspaper articles on the topic (I’m sure DC would see to that). Just to be clear, here is USC’s policy on plagiarism from the student handbook:

Plagiarism is the unacknowledged and inappropriate use of the ideas or wording of another writer. Plagiarism undermines the intellectual collaboration — the exchange of ideas — that should mark academic discourse because it permits the writer to avoid any genuine involvement with the concepts or opinions of others. Because the false discourse of plagiarism corrupts values to which the university community is fundamentally committed — the pursuit of knowledge, intellectual honesty — plagiarism is considered a grave violation of academic integrity and the sanctions against it are correspondingly severe (sanctions recommended by the university range from a grade of “F” in the course to suspension from the university). Most simply, plagiarism can be characterized as “academic theft.”

It would be nearly impossible for USC to whitewash a clear case of plagiarism by faculty. If this is such a clear case, it would be a huge headache for Rapp to pursue DC. Maybe he’s close to retirement and doesn’t care, though. Still whatever perceived harm he can claim from a blog post that maybe a hundred have read will pale in comparison to the bad press he’ll get from even an investigation of plagiarism.

I still think it’s funny that DC spent days repeatedly saying he didn’t think Rapp plagiarized, and now he/she has gone back and edited all of his/her comments on the matter.

Boris–

If he sues DC, then it is assured that the plagiarism allegations will be dealt with–and they don’t look pretty to me.

Oh? Well, in the first place, Rapp can’t sue DC until he knows who Deep is. How would he discover this? Well.. he’ll probably only learn it if Deep files a grievance. If that happens, then Rapp could perfectly well file the defamation suit after any plagiarism investigation is complete. If Rapp did this, Rapps suit would have no effect on any plagiarism investigation.

I suspect there will be no suit because Rapp can’t know who Deep is unless Deep files the plagiarism allegations formally, and Deep isn’t going to do that.

DeNihilist asks:
“Could DC be prof. weaver?”
.
Deep Climate makes errors in fact and, obviously, errors in judgement. I find it hard to believe that an accomplished acadamic climate modeler would be so strident, so vocal, AND so wrong. I wouldn’t put it past a graduate student. however. And given Deep Climate’s familarity with dendrochronology, there are some possibilities there at the University of Victoria.

Boris:

It would be nearly impossible for USC to whitewash a clear case of plagiarism by faculty

There is your theory, which I believe is misinformed.

Whitewashing happens all of the time. It’s all about how much political clout you have on the faculty and whether there are people with axes to grind.

Tenure and faculty rights, and the reputation of the University if the faculty is found guilty, go along way to immunize them except from the most egregious behavior. As does the context in which the accusations are being made.

Most observers would assume Deep Climate has an axe to grind for anybody daring to write anti-alarmist documents, and that would influence the outcome too: The charges would likely be reacted to as if they were an attempt to stifle Rapp, which impugns on his academic freedom, and that is taken more seriously than the putative relatively minor academic misdeed of reusing un-copyrighted but slightly modified material without full attribution in a later copyrighted manuscript.

The only serious issue would be, IMO, if Rapp did not write the original paragraphs. However, it is probable he did author the material, and that this material, as part of some earlier draft of his book, was used by Wegman with his permission. We don’t know the circumstances here, and it is worse than unseemly for DeepClimate to not only speculate but make charges of malfeasance without that prior knowledge.

So of course the first reflex is to acquit (academic freedom). As is the second, more deliberate response (reputation of the University, political clout of the professor). You have a lot of inertia to overcome here.

I’ll point out that even straightforward cases like with Wang end up getting decided in favor of the accused. Even the Ward Churchill case, as obvious as a case could ever be (involving sock-puppetry amongst other things) was nearly overturned within the legal system, and that outcome remains still in doubt.

“Oh? Well, in the first place, Rapp can’t sue DC until he knows who Deep is. How would he discover this? Well.. he’ll probably only learn it if Deep files a grievance.”

I guess Rapp could subpoena DC’s ISP, but who knows if it would be neforced. Also, one could simply write a letter including the plagiarism reports and send it to USC’s president, provost and student paper. That could be done anonymously.

Lucia:

Well, in the first place, Rapp can’t sue DC until he knows who Deep is.

I think this is not true.

You simply file charge againstthe persona DeepClimate, get a court injunction for the IP provider to produce the legal name of the blog owner, and everything else follows from that.

Not that I’m suggesting Rapp sue or anything like that.

“Also, one could simply write a letter including the plagiarism reports and send it to USC’s president, provost and student paper.”

Or better yet, the president, provost and student paper of UCLA

Boris–
Well, if Deep wants to go the informal route, he’d better try the student paper or a very sympathetic to Deep faculty member. Because unless the story goes viral, I bet the provost, president, department head or a randomly chosen faculty member would not make pursuing this a priority. None of those people would want to devote time and effort digging into a story that has two possible outcomes: a) Rapp cleared and b) University loses prestige as a result of investigation.

Carrick–

Not that I’m suggesting Rapp sue or anything like that.

In the US, it’s usually stupid for people to sue for defamation unless they have been harmed a lot. The suit is usually more visible than the original defamation!

bender (Comment#28905) December 21st, 2009 at 10:14 am
Deep Climate makes errors in fact and, obviously, errors in judgement. I find it hard to believe that an accomplished acadamic climate modeler would be so strident, so vocal, AND so wrong. I wouldn’t put it past a graduate student. however. And given Deep Climate’s familarity with dendrochronology, there are some possibilities there at the University of Victoria./i>

Agreed that there are stronger possibilities than Weaver. I’m not sure I agree with the reasons it couldn’t be him though. This is the same man that claims a computer theft and rifling of papers from his office “proves” some grand anti-AGW conspiracy funded by the Russians. It’s also the same man, who, in several local interviews over the past few years stridently claimed that newspapers should not publish any stories or interviews with skeptics.
There are, however, 2 non-profits, Weavers lab, and several dendros who could be involved at UVic as well as a handful of non-profit and lobby groups external to the university but in the city (it’s the seat of government for the province, after all). Funding for all depends entirely on AGW being the consensus.

Boris (Comment#28907) December 21st, 2009 at 10:32 am
I guess Rapp could subpoena DC’s ISP,”

Yeah, not so much. The person (or persons) that post at Deep Climate have gone to interesting lengths to hide their identity….including using an American privacy service to register the domain name.
That’s highly unusual behavior…and quite possibly in violation of ICANN’s rules.
All contact listed is through that registrar only, with no clue as to who you are.
The host is Wordpress, which doesn’t exactly have much due diligence in confirming the identity of the blogger.
It would appear that someone has something to hide.

Oh, and btw….the behavior that deepclimate has exhibited in pulling the post, modifying content to a new tack, and reposting (and all the while maintaining the originals comment) is deeply unethical and more than slightly questionable from an honesty standpoint. Correct behavior would have been to retain the original post, visibly strike out the old content and leave it beside the new, and post a mea culpa and apology to the focus.
At the very least leave the original content and post a correction update.
The way it was done in this case makes it appear as if the comments are in relation to the new content….which skews the impression of many of the comments in drastically different directions than they were originally intended.

So does anyone know if Rapp’s book is any good?

My mom asked for climate book a few years back and i wanted to give her a good skeptics one but i did not want one that denied evolution or called everyone Hilter…just a good synopsis of the issues and the science that a layman can read.

Is Rapp’s book like that? Is there a better one?

“Is Rapp’s book like that?”

Why by Rapps
book when you can download the Wegman report for free?

Zing!

lucia (Comment#28891)
That is a specific act.
It’s not. It’s a criticism of a book. And
…nadir of scholarship. If academics share Deeps view that those who commit this act are poor scholars
“nadir of scholarship” is also criticism of a book. And sure, DC is expressing an opinion that Rapp is a poor scholar. As Carrick says, you’re allowed to express negative opinions. About books too.

Nick:

“nadir of scholarship” is also criticism of a book. And sure, DC is expressing an opinion that Rapp is a poor scholar. As Carrick says, you’re allowed to express negative opinions. About books too.

The opinion certainly is protected.

The part that isn’t protected is making specific claims like Rapp ghostwriting for Wegman or Wegman plagiarizing Rapp.

Whether that amounts to anything in a court of law…that’s really not my burden to carry.

Also, in Canadian law innuendo can be treated as defamatory, so what you say can be manifestly true but if what you are trying to imply is untrue and defamatory, you’ve till got problems. Something else to consider.

As I said another place, really this exchange has helped Rapp more than it hurt him, and I think for neutral observers, left DeepClimate in a poor light. That wouldn’t preclude Rapp from suing if he thought it was in his interests.

James Annan has stepped up to the plate offering to to take the plagiarism charge forward. Deep teases the crowd with the prospect of new revelations…

Zer0th–
Well…. then we’ll see what happens, won’t we?

Another complication seems to be that Rapp may not be affiliated with USC. If not, it’s not clear who Annan or Deep coud complain too. (Also, if he’s not a tenured professor, the whole thing might be dealt with by just not renewing any contracts etc. Universities really, really hate this sort of thing. It’s a time sink and brings bad publicity.)

“Oh, and btw….the behavior that deepclimate has exhibited in pulling the post, modifying content to a new tack, and reposting (and all the while maintaining the originals comment) is deeply unethical and more than slightly questionable from an honesty standpoint.”

Please forward this comment to Anthony Watts and Steve McIntyre. Thanks.

Boris point us to an example like this for McIntyre or Watts.

AFAIK, bothg use the ethical method of blog article modification discussed above. Certainly any articles I can think of that were modified, followed recognized guidelines.

Boris,
I don’t understand why taking posts down is ‘unethical’. I only ever hear that argument from people upset that they lost an opportunity to bash an opponent for saying something stupid.

Lucia:

Another complication seems to be that Rapp may not be affiliated with USC.

He lists himself as a research professor at USC.

He is fairly old (50 years post Ph.D experience) which puts him at the retirement age in any case.

James Anan, like most of his colleagues, appear quite willing to engage in career assassination of people they disagree with.

Charming.

Carrick,
.
SteveMc has had his own ‘jumping the shark’ moments and pulled articles shortly after they were posted with no mention of the original. I was frankly surprised to see that the alarmist blogs picked them up because the ones I noticed were not up very long.

Raven:

I don’t understand why taking posts down is ‘unethical’. I only ever hear that argument from people upset that they lost an opportunity to bash an opponent for saying something stupid.

In my opinion, pulling an article is fine, if you recognize it as unfair, misleading or wrong, and replacing that with a note for why it was pulled is fine.

There is one circumstance where not including a comment is justified (to protect an individual), and AFAIK the only time McIntyre made an article disappear was because of this circumstance.

Raven:

SteveMc has had his own ‘jumping the shark’ moments and pulled articles shortly after they were posted with no mention of the original.

I was unaware of that. Can you think of an example. It would be more appropriate scholarship to explain what was done and why.

Carrick–
If James sees this as plagiarism, he has the right to file any papers to bring it to USC’s attention. I didn’t think Deep would do it– but I think James may well do it.

After that, let the chips fall where they may.

Unlike Boris, I’m not entirely sure that USC will be eager to make any formal finding. If Rapp were a tenured prof. I’m almost certain they would find some way to squint their eyes and figure out some way to ignore this– that is, unless publicity became too adverse. If he’s just affiliated, they will probably look for some less embarrassing and less time consuming way to deal with this rather than a full investigation.

That said… I could be wrong. We’ll see.

Carrick,
.
I can’t remember the exact article but it was an over the top attack on Gavin. He replaced it with something much more nuanced/appropriate but he did not mention that there was an original. Of course, the alarmist crowd was more than happy to remind everyone.
.
I don’t have a feel for the right etiquette when it comes to these things. I think that pulling an article with no explaination soon after it is posted is ok because mistakes happen. If an article has been up for awhile and you have been publically criticized for it then pulling it requires an explaination.

It’s a matter of percentages. What’s McIntyre’s record on bad snap judgement calls vs that of “Deep Climate”? I like McIntyre’s %. Deep Climate? When you’re a minor-leaguer like the deepster oh-for-one is Deep Doodoo.

Raven, if I really thought my original blog comment was inappropriate in tone, I’d probably feel a need replace it with an apology.

There are strategic reasons for doing that as well as for reasons of comment courtesy.

“Boris point us to an example like this for McIntyre or Watts.”

Given that they changed their posts I have no examples to show you. They know what they’ve done, however.

Will someone please tell me why any of this matters. It is entirely unconnected to any of the scientific issues dealing with AGW.

TAG–Why what matters?

Boris,

do YOU think Rapp plagiarised someone??

Boris:

Given that they changed their posts I have no examples to show you. They know what they’ve done, however.

If you can’t give, or don’t know of, concrete examples, this rather undermines your original assertion, doesn’t it?

I can point to dozens of examples where McIntyre has modified his comment… because he’s made the update in a transparent fashion. Like with the Russian data he posted on the other day.

Seems to me you’re just using the incredibly lame “they’re doing it too” rationalization here in any case. Though, in reality, it appears they really aren’t “doing it too”.

TAG,
The topic is the ethics of pulling posts without informing people what’ been pulled. Deep Climate did exactly that. Others are suggesting that that other bloggers do it too. So the debate has devolved to “who’s less ethical” without actually stating what “ethical” is.

kuhnkat (Comment#29048)
Do you think the text of Rapp and Wegman are unrelated? As quoted by DC, there are only three words different in this para:

The average width of a tree ring is a function of many variables including the tree species, tree age, stored carbohydrates in the tree, nutrients in the soil, and climatic factors including sunlight, precipitation, temperature, wind speed, humidity, and even carbon dioxide availability in the atmosphere. Obviously there are many confounding factors so the problem challenge is to extract the temperature signal and to thus distinguish the temperature signal from the noise caused by the many confounding factors.

Of what importance is any of this controversy?

What has this to do with the science of AGW is any way?

Postmodern philosophers are ridiculed when they say that science, as it is practiced, is a social act and as a social act is a type of politics. Now, personally, I think that they are correct but I am not happy about that. Why are we all so eager to prove them correct.

Tag–
You seem to have certain standard for posts. I suspect I don’t share them. Deep Climate current thread is hilarious. He put up a new post, which is even more poorly thought through.

The Lesson of Deep Climate:

Don’t Behave Like Deep Climate

Andrew

“Boris,
do YOU think Rapp plagiarised someone??”

Yep.

Boris–
Are you going to file anything with USC? Or are you going to wait for Annan to do it?

“If you can’t give, or don’t know of, concrete examples, this rather undermines your original assertion, doesn’t it?”

I wouldn’t make the assertion if I didn’t know of an example. All I meant is that there is no Google Cache of the posts.

The post I remember is when McIntyre called the guys at RC vicious little men. It was in a post making fun of some climate scientist who said that women should be attracted to men who drive fuel efficient cars rather than Ferraris (which is a pretty hilarious comment in itself). There have been others.

Lucia,
I’ll wait and see what happens.

Boris— Ah… so it’s as they say ” mañana…..:

Now I’d better google to see if Deep’s notion is being picked up by anyone.

Boris:

The post I remember is when McIntyre called the guys at RC vicious little men. It was in a post making fun of some climate scientist who said that women should be attracted to men who drive fuel efficient cars rather than Ferraris (which is a pretty hilarious comment in itself). There have been others.

Sorry if I don’t take your recollections of this at face value. You obviously have an axe to grind with McIntyre and that distorts memory, even if you are acting in good faith (as I think you are) in recounting as best you can the events in question. There’s a reason we don’t accept anecdote as evidence in science.

The post in question (which I vaguely remember) was satirical in nature, so I’d hardly get my panties in a twist over it getting pulled in any case, and accusing somebody of being a meanie-poo-poo head isn’t exactly the same as accusing them of plagiarism.

“Because I’ve encountering journal peer review systems rather late in my life, I tend to view journal peer review merely as a form of due diligence (realizing that there are other forms of due diligence); I sometimes feel a bit like an anthropologist studying a tribe (of academics) who do not realize that their customs (for due diligence) are only customs.”

I wonder if Mr. McIntyre is going to delete the post that has this in it?

I hope he doesn’t… it’s classic dude.

Andrew

“Sorry if I don’t take your recollections of this at face value.”

I don’t really care if you believe me or not. McIntyre knows. Watts knows.

“Boris— Ah… so it’s as they say ” mañana…..:”

Well, I’m certainly not going to do anything “hoy” just before Xmas.

Boris,

“Well, I’m certainly not going to do anything “hoy” just before Xmas.”

Does this mean you are going to celebrate Christmas?

Andrew

Has anyone read the latest nonsense by Deep Climate about Wegman? http://deepclimate.org/2009/12.....#more-1321

He simultaneously accuses Wegman of plagiarizing from Raymond Bradley and with disagreeing with Bradley. Yes, seriously. Does he realize how absurd he sounds? He is somehow trying to argue that Wegman plagiarized Bradley, but plagiarized so badly that he reversed the conclusion. Deep has never struck me as a rocket scientist, but this is some of the most strained logic I have seen.

Deep takes an overt finding of the Wegman Report (“tree ring proxy data alone is not sufficient to determine past climate variables”) and says that because it disagrees with Bradley, Wegman is guilty of misconduct. He goes so far as to say: “But the real shocker comes in two key passages in Wegman et al, which state unsubstantiated findings in flagrant contradiction with those of Bradley, apparently in order to denigrate the value of tree-ring derived temperature reconstructions.”

A “shocker”, eh? Well, it may shock Deep to realize that Wegman’s comment is not that controversial and has been well discussed, even at places such a Real Climate. Gav, for example, agrees with Wegman on this point (though not on a bunch of others) at this link: http://www.realclimate.org/ind.....ment-15663

Deep really should take off a few weeks before posting anything further. Though he is a good source of merriment for some of us…

Boris:

I don’t really care if you believe me or not. McIntyre knows. Watts knows.

Pfft.

You’re so full of yourself you need a shovel.

thanks for a great site/posts lucia, merry X mas & happy new year.
Boris/Nick are persistent & useful to the debate (but misquided in my opinion), so your inclusivity is to be admired.

cheers
dougie

ps. hope your dad is ok.

Boris,

““Boris,
do YOU think Rapp plagiarised someone??”

Yep.
”

what is the evidence?? Please include enough information so we can verify.

Andrew:
“Does this mean you are going to celebrate Christmas?”

Yes, I celebrate Christmas.

Carrick:
“You’re so full of yourself you need a shovel.”

Thanks for your opinion.

kuhnkat
“what is the evidence?? Please include enough information so we can verify.”

Have you been following this at all? Rapp has apparently lifted passages verbatim from the Wegman report without citation.

The more interesting discussion now, in terms of the AGW debate, is that it appears Wegman may also be guilty of plagiarizing Bradley.

“Andrew:
“Does this mean you are going to celebrate Christmas?”

Yes, I celebrate Christmas.”

Excellent! A very Merry and Peaceful Christmas to you and your family, Boris!

Andrew

Boris:

The more interesting discussion now, in terms of the AGW debate, is that it appears Wegman may also be guilty of plagiarizing Bradley.

This coming from the person who thinks its OK to make completely unverifiable accusations against other people. How charming. “They know they did it. I’m a psychic.”

“The more interesting discussion now, in terms of the AGW debate, is that it appears Wegman may also be guilty of plagiarizing Bradley.”

The possibility that Wegman plagiarized Bradley in his tree ring comments is completely irrelevant to the AGW debate — it in no way changes the validity of Wegman’s findings upholding McIntryre and McKitrick’s criticisms of Mann’s methodology.

It’s an ad hominem attack and as such it’s utterly fallacious.

“This coming from the person who thinks its OK to make completely unverifiable accusations against other people. How charming. “They know they did it. I’m a psychic.””

I witnessed McIntyre changing his post. You acting like a total douchebag doesn’t change that fact, nor the fact that Wegman’s report contains blocks of text clearly derived from Bradley’s work and utterly unattributed. Nor the fact that “statistics expert” Wegman signed onto a stupid “no global warming since 1998″ petition. Nor the fact that Wegman’s dubious “social network analysis” was performed by a group of five people with extremely close ties to Wegman himself.

But keep going. You entertain me.

“Excellent! A very Merry and Peaceful Christmas to you and your family, Boris!

Andrew”

And to yours, Andrew.

Boris,

You are on very shaky ground if you are basing claims of plagiarism on an “intellect” such as Deep Climate. Use some common sense. The Wegman Report was largely a criticism of MBH. Who do you think the “B” is? You don’t think he read the Wegman report and would have raised a charge of a plagiarism of his own work if it was appropriate? That chapter is also replete with references to Bradley. The inescapable conclusion is that Bradley did not see this as plagiarism. But you and Deep know better.

Boris, your repeated and largely unsubstantiated claims of misconduct by those you don’t agree with really does you no credit. Stop acting like a jerk.

Boris,

“Have you been following this at all? Rapp has apparently lifted passages verbatim from the Wegman report without citation.”

So, you are going to hide behind DC’s statements and not present what YOU think is evidence??

Sounds like a typical warmer. Can’t think, or check data/evidence for yourself!!

Yes, I did read the DC post from the cache. No, I do not find his limited presentation compelling in the least. If he had presented the rest of the information he CLAIMED to have looked at I might change my mind. He hasn’t. You haven’t.

I don’t think what has been presented is important enough to waste more time on unless YOU or HE wants to back up the thin accusations with something more substantive.

Merry Christmas!!!

HOHOHOHOHOHOHOHOHOHOHOHOHO

It would appear Wegman’s report on ’social networking’ cliques is verified in the emails, or is it a coincidence?

“The inescapable conclusion is that Bradley did not see this as plagiarism. But you and Deep know better.

Boris, your repeated and largely unsubstantiated claims of misconduct by those you don’t agree with really does you no credit. Stop acting like a jerk.”

A lot of people don’t know what plagiarism is. Wegman’s text is obviously based on Bradley’s. It is only changed slightly–which is plagiarism (For example, you cannot simply take someone’s work and substitute synonyms in their sentence.)

From the USC page on plagiarism:

In paraphrasing, you take the writer’s ideas and put them in your own words. It is not a process of substituting synonyms or rearranging the order of words. Even if the version above gave credit to Postman for his ideas, the passage would be considered plagiarized.

http://www.usc.edu/student-aff.....g_plag.htm

As for why Bradley didn’t point this out–you’d have to ask him.

Boris:

You acting like a total douchebag doesn’t change that fact, nor the fact that Wegman’s report contains blocks of text clearly derived from Bradley’s work and utterly unattributed.

On my planet, affectionately called “Terra”, people who make unprovable accusations are the douche bags.

On your planet, named I suppose HotAir World, apparently people who notice how slimy you are acting and have the temerity to point it out, are the douche bags.

Even if your accusations are true, which, based on the hostile way you have responded to my probing of your account, I’m now certain is 90% fabrication, that still doesn’t excuse DC’s bizarre behavior.

End of story.

Boris,

you STILL have no causality or linkage. For all you or anyone else know Rapp did not read the Wegman report before writing his own work. As I pointed out Rapp may not have written that part of his own paper.

WHERE IS YOU EVIDENCE OTHER THAN A CORRELATION in two papers!!!!!

Boris,

Note that the Wegman report is not an academic paper so your link is meaningless. Note also that Wegman never pretends that this chapter is his own work. Do you have any idea what the standard is for attribution for a pro-bono report commissioned by a congressional committee? I suggest you do some research. Until you do, your charges are highly irresponsible.

Look, it is not just Bradley. Pretty much every paleoclimatologist (certainly including Mann) would have read the Wegman report and no-one has yet raised these charges. And all of them would have been familiar with Bradley 1999. If this doesn’t give you pause, you have no scruples.

brid:

Note that the Wegman report is not an academic paper so your link is meaningless

That’s kind of my thought on it to. It’s basically a “for policy makers report” where you do a lot of cutting and pasting to try and generate a coherent picture. Nobody confuses those with primary academic research.

I don’t even think Boris or DeepClimate does either, so I’m not sure what their goal is, other than to look snitty.

Kuhnkat–
I think striking similarity usually is the standard for assessing plagiarism. People don’t generally find photos of the plagiarist copying a text. Rapp’s stuff does look very similar to Wegman. I just don’t think Deep has the gonads to file a formal complaint– Annan might. Also, given the history of Universities dealing with faculty, I’m not sure what USC will do anyway.

On the Wegman stuff– I’m not convinced there is a good case of Wegman plagiarizing Bradley. Wegman’s outline seems to be this:
Outline:
1) Describe treerings and factors that affect their grown.
2) Discuss how temperature information is reflected in tree rings.
a) General effect of temperature on rings.
b) Modifying factors: Effect of stress.
i) Discuss types of stress.
c) Confounding factors
i) environmental:
natural factors. (moisture)
anthropogenic. (nitrites, CO2)
ii) innate (growth pattern as tree matures.)
3) Implementation of to create temperature record.

Report is specifically addressing issue of Anthropogenic warming.

Sure, the description of a tree ring in Bradley and Wegman are similar– but not identical. But of course they are similar. How many ways can one write a concise sentence that explains that the cross section of a tree from a temperate forest tree has a bunch of light and dark band that go around the circumference of the tree? This isn’t fiction– Wegman doesn’t get to discuss sub-tropical trees just for variety.

Also, it’s not as if one can complain that Wegman stole ‘the idea’ of a tree ring from Bradley. The idea of a tree ring is not exactly like stealing the theory of evolution to get credit. You get a lot more flexibility paraphrasing simple facts that paraphrasing actual unique ideas.

I think people would have a very difficult time getting accusations of plagiarism to stick against the Wegman report.

“But of course they are similar. How many ways can one write a concise sentence that explains that the cross section of a tree from a temperate forest tree has a bunch of light and dark band that go around the circumference of the tree?”

There are lots of different ways. It is obvious that Wegman’s prose is Bradley’s prose, slightly altered. It’s textbook plagiarism. And it doesn’t matter if it’s a report for congress* or a blog post, plagiarism is plagiarism. Wegman teaches at a university, so he should know what plagiarism is.

* I guess Carrick and brid think that a report to congress should have a lower ethical bar than a freshman composition essay. Utterly bizarre.

Boris–
What, precisely, is copied? The prose differs. The only sentences close to being similar are definitional (i.e. that cross-sections of trees from temperate forest show tree rings that,well, look like tree rings.)

The organization inside paragraphs differ. The ‘ideas’ sometimes over lap Wegmans, and sometimes differ. But, the degree of overlap amounts to describing things like “what is dendro-climatology”. Obviously, accuracy requires overlap. After all, the field on dendro-climatology need not be described as tapestry weaving to avoid the accusation that you plagiarized.

Heck, Deep even complains much of the substance and emphasis differs. This means the ideas in Wegman are different form the ideas in Bradley and therefor there is no plagiarism of ideas.

So: No sentences plagiarized. No ideas plagiarized. The resemblance that can be explained by noting that treerings really are light and dark bands that wrap around the circumference of a tree, or by noting that the goal is to describe the field of dendro-climatology and not tapestry weaving.

At the end, Wegman cites Bradley for more information. The presence of the citation to the supposedly plagiarized work would make it pretty difficult to make a plagiarism case stick.

So, is the notion that Wegman plagiarized an idea? But how can you copy the idea of a tree ring? Or the idea of what paleoclimatology is? It is what it is.

If the widely-read Wegman report was textbook plagiarism, Bradley would have complained long ago.

Boris what is utterly bizarre is somebody like you making unprovable accusations of wrong doing at other people, then turning around and complaining about other people’s ethical behavior.

Even you should be able to tell the difference between original academic research and documents for policy makes. Unlike a freshman essay, it’s not necessary for it to be original work, it just needs to be accurate.

Even if it is plagiarism (which Lucia points out, it probably isn’t) , it’s not relevant. The point of the document is to confer the current state of knowledge, not to claim original academic effort for the authors of the report.

I know that is too much for Boris to grasp, but we can always pray for a Christmas miracle.

[snipped by author]

The only sentences close to being similar are definitional.

There’s a real simple solution if the sentence in question is too hard to paraphrase: USE QUOTATION MARKS! There is no “definitional” exemption for plagiarism. The plagiarism in Wegman’s report is inexcusable for an academic. Here are some examples:

Bradley:

A cross section of most temperate forest trees will show an alternation of lighter and darker bands, each of which is usually continuous around the tree circumference.

Wegman:

A cross section of a temperate forest tree shows variation of lighter and darker bands that are usually continuous around the circumference of the tree

Bradley:

The mean width of a ring in any one tree is a function of many variables, including the tree species, tree age, availability of stored food within the tree and of important nutrients in the soil, and a whole complex of climatic factors (sunshine, precipitation, temperature, wind speed, humidity…

Wegman:

The average width of a tree ring is a function of many variables including the tree species, tree age, stored carbohydrates in the tree, nutrients in the soil, and climatic factors including sunlight, precipitation, temperature, wind speed, humidity…

He didn’t even bother to change the order…

Bradley:

Trees growing near to the latitudinal or altitudinal treeline are mainly under growth limitations imposed by temperature and hence ring-width variations in such trees contain a strong temperature signal.

Wegman:

Trees growing near to their ecological limits either in terms of latitude or altitude show growth limitations imposed by temperature and thus ring width variations in such trees contain a relatively strong temperature signal.

These are pretty clear examples of plagiarism. Now, I can see that Lucia and Carrick are already attempting to redefine plagiarism so one of their impartial heroes doesn’t look so bad. But the sentences are essentially stolen and no credit is given. Shame, shame.

Boris,

You’re obsessing. Seriously. Nobody cares.

Andrew

Boris–
Example 1 is definitional. Two people describing tree rings are all going to used words like “darker and lighter bands”, “circumference”, and point out that the bands are nealry always continuous, and also mention they are discussing something seen in temperate as opposed to tropical trees.

Example 2: The article needs to discuss factors affecting tree ring growth. It’s normal for people to list factors in order of importance. Why would anyone list “windspeed” before “sunlight”?

Example 3: The article needs to discuss which groups of trees are likely to have rings most affected by temperature rather than something else. These are trees growing in… uhmmm… the ecological limit where temperature matters a lot. These happen to be high altitude or high latitude.

Do you really think someone plagiarizing would change hence to thus?

Have you ever graded undergraduate students laboratory reports on the same material? Very strong similarities often arise because they are all describing the same thing.

My estimation: Rapp probably did copy Wegman. Wegman did not copy Bradley.

But if you want to file something with Wegman’s academic institution, knock yourself out. With Rapp, I suspect there will be resistance to action because universities like to avoid that sort of thing– but if they do investigate, quite a few people will blink hard. With Wegman? I think anyone will be able to show plenty of non-plagiarized work with this level of similarity between independent works. Plenty. Heck, if someone wants to dig, they’ll probably find some document that pre-dates Bradly that also describes the fact that tree rings have lighter and darker bands that …omg…. go around the circumference of a tree. And are almost always continuous… omg!!!

Afterwards, they can go after everyone who observed that “Columbus discovered America in 1492″, or later failed to cite the orginal writer when they wrote “In 1492, Columbus discovered America”

I would also advise that before you start making your case to file at Wegmans university, you consult what is not plagiarism:
http://www.enotes.com/topics/how-avoid-plagiarism

“1) Common knowledge. One important thing to know is that information considered common knowledge or in the “public domain” does not need to be cited. Certain facts are so well-known that you don’t need to worry about finding verification. For example, saying that “the sun rises in the East and sets in the West” or that there are “fifty states in America” need not be cited.”

Note that the fact that tree rings are alternating dark and light bands is common knowledge. Most people learn this in grade school. Moreover, within fields lots of information included in textbooks ends up considered “common knowledge”. So, one doesn’t need to riddle every parapraph with 150 footnotes to indicate 7 different text books that mentioned that tree rings form in trees from temperature forests!

So, when preparing your complaint about Wegman, scratch off the complaints about his failing to cite sources for things that are common knowledge among those who took a class in dendro. ‘Cuz those don’t require citation!

All this plagiarism makes me wonder where we draw the line between ‘plagiarism’ and árguing from authority’ — if Boris quotes Hansen and makes it clear is he guilty of the árguing from authority’ and so we will dismiss him or is he just following the proper rules and avoiding ‘plagiarism’. In the climate debate there is a lot of both going on.

Wegman is no hero of mine, sorry to disabuse you, Boris. And frankly it’s dishonest on your part to have asserted that without any statement from me of the sort.

I will also admit (and I have never said otherwise), I have never even read his report (other than some summary sections and portions of his text reproduced here and elsewhere), let alone endorsing his viewpoints on anything, so I’ve simply got no dog in this race.

Finally, you also still seem to trouble distinguishing between original research reports and cut-and-paste non-copyrighted reports for policy makers like this.

If Rapp’s book were to contain plagiarisms, that’s an issue of academic concern. This is not. Indeed, this analysis has no relevancy whatsoever, other than trying to settle old scores…not exactly an academic highbrow pursuit by itself.

Boris is engaged in argumentum ad hominem because he has no valid argument to offer in support of Mann, whose hockey stick studies stand as discredited and fraudulent.

Wegman’s possible plagiarism of Bradley is as irrelevant as his sex life to the issue at hand — neither bears a whit on his confirmation of McIntyre and McKitrick’s exposure of Mann’s methods.

From your own link on plagiarism, Lucia:

“Recheck any suspect language. Review your paper, and if a word, phrase, or passage doesn’t seem like your own thinking and/or writing, type a few words into a search engine such as Google to verify its originality. Better you should catch it now and properly cite it than to be accused of plagiarizing!”

1. The sentences are too close to have arisen by chance.
2. Wegman consulted Bradley for his report.

Once again, there is no “definitional” exemption for plagiarism. If you like someone’s words so much, quote them. The plagiarism in Wegman is a slam dunk. I’ve seen students suspended from university for a year for less.

“You’re obsessing. Seriously. Nobody cares.”

Apparently Lucia cares enough to mount a defense of Wegman even against overwhelming evidence.

Boris–
Look– you are trying to say sentences that are similar are paraphrased. But the sentences aren’t necessarily paraphrased. They can very easily be similar because they are describing the same thing.

Have you ever graded 20 or so student laboratory write ups on the same lab experiment that includes a “theory” section? Or even results? All the theories contain very similar sentence. Example,
“The drag crisis, or sudden drop in drag coeffiecient, was observed to occur near Re=300,000″.

“A sudden drop in drag coefficient, i.e. drag crisis was observed near Re=300,000″.

“Near Re=300,000, the drag coefficient was observed to drop; this is called ‘the drag crisis’”.

You’ll get 16 slightly different variations of this. Do you think they all copied? NO. They all say the same thing because they all observed the same thing. Moreover, that same thing is called the ‘drag crisis’ and has been for years and years and year.

All relatively concise descriptions of how dendrochronologists estimate past temperatures from tree rings are going to
a) describe treerings.
b) describe how temperature affects tree ring widths.
c) describes factors that cause them to differ
etc.

All accurate descriptions of treerings are going to be similar– because they are describing tree rings, not french toast. The lists of important factors are going to be identical because those are the factors. They aren’t going to throw in “and presence of Leprechauns” for variety.

You are trying to hang a case of plagiarism on similarities that are inherent to describing the subject itself. Moreover, a) Wegman cited Bradley as a general source and b) expressed different ideas.

This is a proper way to cite.

“You’re obsessing. Seriously. Nobody cares.

Apparently Lucia cares enough to mount a defense of Wegman even against overwhelming evidence.”

I think she’s just being polite.

Andrew

Boris:

I’ve seen students suspended from university for a year for less.

Yet another one of Boris’s many unverifiable claims.

Given how he has played sloppy with the truth in places I could test it, at this point, I don’t buy anything he says that he can’t substantiate.

Gee, somebody may have made a mistake and forgot to attribute a quote properly. Stephen Ambrose, and Doris Kearns Goodwin both were caught at it. Did they do it on purpose? Who really knows. Does it affect the truth of what was written? No.

Boris–
I’ve never known students anywhere suspended for plagiarism. I’m sure some are, but I also suspect it’s pretty rare. Given how rampant paraphrasing is, can you name more than 20 cases at big 10 universities in 2008? That would give a large swatch of students over a broad range of majors. If this sort of writing is plagiarism, and students are suspended for this, you should be able to find examples. Then we can compare and contrast.

When people do research many will memorize the words they have read as a way to remember the concepts. When it comes time to write their own words they will unconsciously reproduce phrases that they read during their research without realizing that they have done this. From their perspective the words are their own.

Lucia, in 30+ years of academic experience (starting with my first year of college), I know exactly of one case where anything substantive happened, and this is still second-hand. As I heard the story, the student’s scholarship was revoked, but the student was not suspended from class participation.

That former student is now a journalist, an occupation where you can safely practice plagiarism anytime you want. True story.

Carrick–
In journalism, (and sometime fields of law) it’s called “boilerplate”.

I’ve read of students suspended for plagiarism. The violations generally involved turning in papers that were 100% word for word copies of other papers. Steven Ambrose’s presentation are of a different nature and the similarity different from what Boris is complaining about in Wegman. Ambrose writing is specifically to popularize of history. He can’t resort to a boiler plate defense like a journalist, lawyer or author of a chemistry book who writes “A water molecule consists of two atoms of hydrogen and one atom oxygen.”

(Heck, after writing that all by myself, I googled and found

http://web.jjay.cuny.edu/~acarpi/NSC/5-bonds.htm
which ways “A water molecule consists of 2 atoms of hydrogen bonded to one atom of oxygen”. Gosh. My sentence is almost the same, but I left out the word bondeded. OMG. I must have plagiarized!!! Or, if I were a student, I better figure out how to vary that sentence so my chem lab TA doesn’t suspect me of plagiarizing!!!
But look, I also found http://www.lenntech.com/water-chemistry-faq.htm

“A water molecule consists of three atoms; an oxygen atom and two hydrogen atoms, which are bond together like little magnets.”

OMG! Other than rearranging and stripping off the extra information, I must have plagiarized!!!

http://hep.physics.wayne.edu/~.....ture13.htm
A water molecule consists of an oxygen atom with two hydrogen atoms bound to it.

http://www.tutorvista.com/cont...../water.php
A molecule of water consists of two hydrogen atoms joined to an oxygen atom by covalent bonds

From: http://www.journaloftheoretics...../6-1/K.pdf
A water molecule consists of one oxygen atom and two hydrogen atoms.

http://www.iapws.org/faq1/molecule.htm
A water molecule consists of two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom.

Look. All these sentences include the words “molecule” “water”, “oxygen” “atom”, “one” and “two” and most include the word “bond” or “bonds”. And they all express the same idea. How could that happen by accident?!?! Plagiarism by chemistry profs is rampant I tell you. Rampant!! Let’s file complaints against all of them!!!

Couldn’t they all have found more words to substitute for “atom” and “molecule”. Like say checking the thesaurus for synonynms and history books

“Adam’s ale is a substance that consists of two elements, one of which is the stuff they filled the Hindenberg with and the other which animals need to breath”?

Now that’s the way to avoid having your chemistry instructor think you plagiarized.

When people are writing terse synopsis of facts, following the style expected in science (or journalism) the range of variation is smaller.

“Given how rampant paraphrasing is, can you name more than 20 cases at big 10 universities in 2008?”

Given FERPA requirements, you are not just going to find such cases in any public search.

And the punishment of suspension for this Wegman-type of plagiarism isn’t what I would call standard, though it does happen. It just depends on the university, the committee, the individual circumstances. Most of the time, for a first offense, this kind of stuff will get you an F in the course and a letter in your file. Some U’s will be more lenient, giving only an F on the specific project.

Lucia,
If you can’t see that Wegman’s sentences are nearly exactly the same as Bradley’s, I don’t know else to say. It’s pretty intellectually dishonest to say that Wegman’s many sentences which share the same words and structure and which come from a source which we KNOW he had contact with are somehow equivalent to the definition of a water molecule.

But I can play Google games too! I took a simple, small phrase shared by both Wegman and Bradley:

“growth limitations imposed by temperature and”

Now, according to your theory, this phrase is surely common and probably anyone who has written about tree rings has used it. So what does Google say?

Results 1 – 4 of 4 for “growth limitations imposed by temperature and”

Of the three places on the entire internet where you can find this phrase, one is the Wegman report, one is Bradley, and one is Deep Climate’s post.

How many pages on the internet deal with tree rings and dendro stuff? And yet, the only two people who use this six word collection of text are Bradley and Wegman (a few years later, after reading Bradley.)

As I said already: slam dunk.

“If you can’t see that Wegman’s sentences are nearly exactly the same as Bradley’s, I don’t know else to say.”

Boris,

Since you can recognize ‘plagiarism’ in someone else’s writing, do you think it’s possible for humans to recognize ‘design’?

Just curious.

Andrew

Boris–
Are you actually claiming your three examples are “exactly the same”? Do you know the definition of either “exactly” or “the same”?!

The sentences are similar–in ways that can be explained by covering similar content. Only the second example is sufficiently similar to even create a question in my mind and that’s the fact that the factors are listed in the same order. But it’s absolutely conventional to list factors in order of importance.. so that leaves me… where? With what appears to be utterly ambiguous evidence.

Of course you are permitted to have the opposite opinion.

But seriously, if you want to convince people of you intellectual honestly, you should use terms like “exactly the same” when you mean “differing in some ways, but more similar than I, Boris, would expect to happen when two writers are describing the exact same thing”.

Now to your notion that I think everyone writing about tree rings would write the phrase “growth limitations imposed by temperature and”… I never made any such claim.

Afterall, not all discussions of tree rings discuss temperature at all. Some have nothing to do with dendroclimatology, and were not specifically addressing the use of tree rings to estimate historic temperatures.

Wegman and Bradley weren’t just writing about tree rings. They are writing specifically about reconstructing historic temperatures from tree rings with Wegman having a madandated assignment to explain conventional practice, and uncertainties in the light of a particular published analysis.

What I have claimed is that people describing similar things will give similar descriptions.

You gave an an example of supposed plagiarism a specific description of a tree ring that describes them as having light and dark bands. Tree rings have dark and light bands. Other than discussing tree rings using dark/light bands, being circumferential etc. Wegmans description is organized differently from Bradley’s. Does Wegman need to call them pink and blue to not be a plagiarist?

No, onto your specific example. Let’s google, stripping off the “and”. After all, some people might transition with a semicolon, right?
Visit http://www.ace.mmu.ac.uk/Resources/gcc/3-3-3.html
you will find

“Trees growing near the latitudinal or altitudinal treeline are mainly under growth limitations imposed by temperature” author Joe Buchdahl

You will also find:
http://books.google.com/books?.....38;f=false

“growth limitations imposed by temperature” (published in 1967)

But even more interstingly, in the Buchwald article, we find evidence Bradley may have breeched the Boris/Deep criterion of plagiarism. Because Buchdahl writes:

A cross section of most temperate forest tree trunks will reveal an alternation of lighter and darker bands, each of which is usually continuous around the tree circumference. These are seasonal growth increments produced by meristematic tissues in the cambium of the tree. Each seasonal increment consists of a couplet of earlywood (a light growth band from the early part of the growing season) and denser latewood (a dark band produced towards the end of the growing season), and collectively they make up the tree ring. The mean width of the tree ring is a function of many variables, including the tree species, tree age, soil nutrient availability, and a whole host of climatic factors (Bradley, 1985). The problem facing the dendroclimatologist is to extract whatever climatic signal is available in the tree-ring data from the remaining background “noise” (Fritts, 1976).

Is that final attribution to Fritts 1976 correct? If so, how could Bradley legitimately end his version of what is a tree ring with the idea contained in the sentence, “The problem facing dendroclimatologists is to extract whatever climatic signal is available in the tree ring data and to distinguish this signal from the background noise. ” without including the citation to Fritts 1976. Did Bradley paraphrase? A direct quote? OMG!!!

Anyway Boris, when you start filing and putting together your case, are you going to report Joe Buchwald too? He quotes Bradley directly without adding quotes!! And then, he modified by adding a citation to the last sentence– once again without including quotes.

Also, are you going to check to see if Bradley blundered by not citing Fritts?

Are you going to get a hold of this Fritts reference (which is not on line) and discover just how he words things? Or what?

Boris,
.
“1. The sentences are too close to have arisen by chance.”
.
Please compute the odds and show your work.
.

Boris:

And the punishment of suspension for this Wegman-type of plagiarism isn’t what I would call standard, though it does happen. It just depends on the university, the committee, the individual circumstances. Most of the time, for a first offense, this kind of stuff will get you an F in the course and a letter in your file. Some U’s will be more lenient, giving only an F on the specific project.

Oh give us a break. Are you suddenly the world’s expert on how universities handle plagiarism?

What a poser.

“What a poser.”
Do you think its impossible for other people to know things? This pretty much sums up the skeptical community: How could anyone know more than me on this issue?

Denialists one and all. You can’t even accept obvious plagiarism when you see it. You have to make excuses. but but definition. but but congressional report.

Boris (Comment#29225)
December 27th, 2009 at 9:17 am

You can’t even accept obvious plagiarism when you see it.

One is therefor left to wonder about your silence wrt to Lucia’s own “slam dunk” find here.

lucia (Comment#29212)
December 26th, 2009 at 1:58 pm

Boris, it’s possible you know things, but you keep giving us examples of “knowledge” of yours that is unverifiable, as you admit yourself.

If it can’t be verified, how do you yourself “know” that you know it?

From my experience, the vast majority of plagiarisms I’ve seen, the teacher handled it with the student. Sometimes with an “F”, sometimes with just a redo of the assignment.

You made this comment:

And the punishment of suspension for this Wegman-type of plagiarism isn’t what I would call standard, though it does happen. It just depends on the university, the committee, the individual circumstances. Most of the time, for a first offense, this kind of stuff will get you an F in the course and a letter in your file. Some U’s will be more lenient, giving only an F on the specific project.

Really, while what you say is reasonable (most of it is commonsense), I don’t know how you would know what you claim you know, especially given your comment:

Given FERPA requirements, you are not just going to find such cases in any public search.

Since many (most) cases are protected by privacy rights, how do you know what is “typical” and what isn’t?

You have an academic reference for us substantiating your claims?

And btw, I never said it wasn’t plagiarism, I just pointed out why it doesn’t matter for a nonacademic report that the author isn’t claiming as original work, anymore than when the NY TImes plagiarizes almost on an article-by-article basis it doesn’t matter.

Boris–
You won’t admit features that make things obviously not plagiarism. One does not need to cite sources for common knowledge and the threshold for common knowledge in academia is that it appears in many sources. “What is a tree ring?” is common knowledge, and appears in many sources. Accurate, concise, complete use similar words in slightly different orders because there are no alternatives other than a) being incomplete, b) using incorrect terminology c) leaving out important information.
That you include examples like this in “proof of plagiarism” shows that you clearly do not know what is not plagiarism.

Is Boris just a troll?

After taking a break from the internet for the holidays, I was surprised in checking back to here to see that Boris is clinging to his untenable position. He is not at all concerned that no mainstream paleo seems to agree with him. He is not concerned with the absurdity of the original claim by Deep Climate (as I pointed out in my original comment) that Wegman simultaneously both plagiarized and disagreed with Bradley. He is not concerned that Bradley is cited multiple times in that chapter (I count 6), and there is clearly no attempt by Wegman to present any of Bradley’s ideas as his own. He is not concerned by Lucia’s cogent rebuttal of his analysis.

Instead of apologizing for his reckless claims, Boris doubles down and accuses those who disagree with him (which appears to be the entire paleo community) of being “denialists one and all”. He reminds me of the old legal aphorism: “If you have the facts on your side, pound the facts. If you have the law on your side, pound the law. If you have neither on your side, pound the table.”

“You won’t admit features that make things obviously not plagiarism. One does not need to cite sources for common knowledge and the threshold for common knowledge in academia is that it appears in many sources. “What is a tree ring?” is common knowledge, and appears in many sources. Accurate, concise, complete use similar words in slightly different orders because there are no alternatives other than a) being incomplete, b) using incorrect terminology c) leaving out important information.”

Once again, you and brid need to retake freshamn comp. Just because something is common knowledge, that does not mean you can steal somebody’s words. The “similar words” argument is just stupid as we have multiple sentences that share the same words and order. I already showed how one phrase from Bradley is ONLY shared by Wegman on the entire internet. Your intellectual dishonesty on this issues explains a lot.

” He is not concerned by Lucia’s cogent rebuttal of his analysis.”

If you think Lucia’s analysis of this issue is “cogent,” you are an idiot.

But I’ll put up. I’m willing to bet $500 dollars that if we sent the examples to any director of undergraduate studies at any decent University, they will confirm my finding of plagiarism. Any takers?

Boris–

Once again, you and brid need to retake freshamn comp. Just because something is common knowledge, that does not mean you can steal somebody’s words.
Of course not. But you are pulling examples that are similar because they describe the same thing. It is common knowledge that treerings are light and dark bands that wrap around the circumference of trees. If someone makes a bullet list of the features of tree rings and then asks someone else to compose a sentence listing all features, adding no fake features and using standard language like “circumference”, they sentences will be similar. You are diagnoising this similarity into “stealing people’s words”!

already showed how one phrase from Bradley is ONLY shared by Wegman on the entire internet.

Clearly, you did not read the rely, (lucia (Comment#29212)) which shows that if we strip “and”, the phrase is in a book from 1967.

And anyway, what type of proof is that? You can’t just go by word count. The phrase “”water consists of two elements called” only appears once on the web. Same for “”green beans are tasty and not”. Do you think that means the next person who writes these two phrases plagiarized from the one who wrote those on the web? If you do, you are deluded.

So are you under the notion that your string is a gotcha because there is something unusual about juxtaposing those words? Well, google “growth limitations imposed by”. It’s ubiquitous in papers discussing ecology (and heck, it appears in papers on economics). The phrase “growth limitations imposed by X” is formulaic and hence unlikely, and hence, not the fact that two authors use the same formualic structure is not evidence of using someone elses words.

I mean… sheesh!

Boris–
If you are convinced, submit a complaint. I think you will be surprised by the lack of unanimity on this. I could be wrong of course, but that’s what I think you will find.

If this were obvious, Bradley would have complained. He has presumably read Wegman and his own stuff.

Lucia,

How do we know that Wegman — as opposed to one of the other co-authors — wrote the section in question?

Boris,

“But I’ll put up. I’m willing to bet $500 dollars that if we sent the examples to any director of undergraduate studies at any decent University, they will confirm my finding of plagiarism. Any takers?”

Nothing like no fault.

Make that, YOU bring formal charges and the bet is decided by whether the officials censure the accused or find them blameless!!

I’m a little late to the conversation and this may have been covered (and of course different jurisdictions have different standards) but in general there is slander/libel per se and per quod.
Per se is falsely accusing someone of being a criminal, unfit for work, diseased or sexually unchaste, etc. It is defamatory on its face and therefore damage is presumed to have occurred without requiring proof by the plaintiff.
Per quod depends on context and ordinarily damage must be proved.
These days per se cases often require more proof of damages than previously as precedent has diluted the differences between the two and the ‘presumption’ part of the equation has been greatly constrained.

As to a pseudonym prevailing in a defamation case it is not a defense to merely disguise the name of the one you are defaming if by the context of the comments it is clear to a reasonable man who is being defamed.

BrianB–
In this case, the Rapp– an actual know person– accused “Deep Climate” — the pseudonymn of defaming Rapp. So the question is: How could Rapp file a suit and prevail? Who would he file against? He would need to prove the defamation and also prove the identity of this Deep Climate fella’.

I suspect Deep is not going to reveal his identify voluntarily.

Isn’t Wahl and Ammann 2007 a more interesting plagiarism question?

Wahl and Ammann wrote up various lines of argument initially presented in the Mann et al 2004 reply to our Nature submission (a version of which was posted on the internet at Schneider’s website) and summarized in realclimate posts e.g. increasing the number of North American PCs to 5 from 2; not using PCs etc. Wahl and Ammann didn’t cite any of these original sources (which had been cited in our 2005 E&E article in which we discussed and refuted these salvage attempts).

Wahl and Ammann didn’t even include Michael Mann in their acknowledgements though they acknowledged others. It’s an unusual non-acknowledgement, since the purpose of non-acknowledgement was presumably to give an appearance of “independence” as opposed to a lack of appreciation of their associate and frequent coauthor.

SteveM,

“Isn’t Wahl and Ammann 2007 a more interesting plagiarism question?”

An excellent point. Sadly, there are no exciting libel or slander charges involved at this time!!!

Any chance of you pressing for an investigation?? ;>)

Hey Bugs,
.
what is your opinion of SteveM’s plagiarism example??
.
Think he should press charges??
.
Why or why not??

Lucia,

Even later than my first comment.
I understand the anonymity situation is reversed from my example. I was giving the general overview of anonymity in relation to defamation.
In this case, Rapp would need to file suit listing John Doe(s) as defendants and then seek DC’s identity in discovery.