I love new words! I mean really new freshly made up ones.
As many of you know, JeffId’s blog is known as the first where the link to the “climategate” files appeared. When they appeared, the word climategate did not appear. I always forget who coined “lukewarmer”, and always think it was Steve Mosher, (and then I always forget if he actually takes credit.) Today, I discovered that JeffId may have created one that could potentially stick:
For first use, see Jeff post announcing the Wegman investigation at WMU. I learned of the coinage at Collide-a-scape.
Meanwhile, not long after Jeff came up with “copygate”, Keith Kloor came up with an alternate possibility, used this alternate coinage which appeared in an Andy Revkin tweet:
Keith campaigns in favor of his skepticgate writing:
I don’t think copygate has quite the same ring as skepticgate, but good for Jeff for noting it.
I’m betting one of the other of these words is going to catch on. I like “copygate” because the issue has to do with “copying”, where as “skeptic” could mean any number of possible issues. On the other hand, if literal connection to the precise issue governed these things, “climategate” might have been called “emailgate”.
I’m going to be using copygate for now. We’ll see what catches on.
Meanwhile, I performed a google blog search of “Wegman Plaigiarism”; recent posts include:
- Tom Fuller at WUWT.
- Jeff Id at The Air Vent
- Keith at collide-a-scape
- Things Break.
- Climate World wide.
- Gareth.
- Big City Lib.
- Tim Lambert and, of course
- The Bunny.
- Deep Climate
You can find more at google blogs
Copygate and a resonance with ‘copy cat’ so I think works better.
Lucia,
Just want to note that my use of “skepticgate” was playing off of Andy Revkin’s tweet. So he’s the guy who coined it, if in fact he was the first to do so.
Thanks Keith. I corrected my post. If Andy uses “skepticgate”, it’s likely that’s the one that will catch on.
Thanks Lucia, cracked me up again.
The funny thing is that the Bradley book was cited in the Wegman report.
http://noconsensus.wordpress.com/2010/10/09/as-copygate-turns/
Perhaps someone can help me understand the problem.
The real -gate here is Scandal-gate. The continual creation of new words to describe increasingly pointless “scandals” in an attempt to distract people from meaningful discussion.
Depressing.
Lucia, what is your opinion of the 1988 congressional testimony by James Hansen? You never seem to take a firm stance on anything, I don’t know how anyone can conclude anything other than that the testimony and the hearing itself was a total sham.
The correct term should be desperategate.
This is the kind of straw grabbing fantasies that the ecoloons conjure up over a bong and what ever was in that hand full of pills they washed down with a bottle of Boonesfarm. Then Dr Halpern goes to work on one of his link dropping missions to get it as much attention as he can.
Of course, in the end, they will not be able to distract from the upcoming Congressional hearings on the real issues: Terms such as “hide the decline”… “missing heat”… “delete those emails”…”hijack the literature”… and etc.
They should get on with new careers… I won’t accuse Michael Mann of plagiarism if he appears in a Hair Club fo Men commercial saying, “Now you too can hide the decline.”
I think we’ll see a split with warmers preferring Skepticgate and skeptics preferring Copygate.
As to usage, I think Skepticgate will get more play on the internet simply because warmers will talk it up more than skeptics. I think that is already showing – I searched on skepticgate + Wegman and got many more hits than copygate + wegman. Anthony says his search shows Copygate getting more usage and when I searched for just copygate and skepticgate I did get more hits for copygate – but many of those had nothing to do with Wegman.
MikeC:
How about alarmistconcerntrollgate?
MikeC–
At a minimum, Wegman was sloppy enough in applying standard documentation practices i.e. using quotes for things like Joe Blow concluded “Witches …. are …. related to the devil … and evil” rather than creating paraphrased paragraphs that are very, very similar to the orignials.
Will this be enough for GMU to find against him? I don’t know. Would the American Historical Association have found against someone doing a similar thing in 2005? They didn’t. Other groups? I don’t know. My reading of the GMU honor code (here. Hmmm… I think they might rule “not plagiarism”.
Next will be Spelling-gate where papers will be dismissed due to a spelling error.
Please feel free to plagiarise that sentence. I promise not to sue or throw a tantrum.
Speaking of plagiarism, how does James Cameron fare in this regard?
http://www.thefunnyblog.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/avatar_pocahontas.jpg
If you guys keep coming up with new “-gate” after “-gate”, pretty soon we’ll be embroiled in gate-gate.
Lucia, There is nothing in question here. Plagiarism is simply taking someone’s work and calling it your own. That didn’t happen here. And the only reason it’s being investigated at all is because Bradly filed a formal complaint. This was a report for congress, not a scientific pub, and Bradley was listed 9 times (that I counted) in the Wegman bibliography. Hardly plagiarism… and given that it was prepared for Congress and not a journal, hardly sloppy… just a bunch of BS by people who spend too much time picking magic mushrooms from BS on farms near Seattle
Howsabout Profliegate?
I don’t get what the fuss is about. Bradley’s cited. Doesn’t change the outcome. Seems to be same old same old from the Hockey Team, when in doubt, attack the messenger.
I’d rather roll “Copygate” and “Scepticgate” into “Climategate II – Return Of The Paragraph”.
I’m noting that the “Bradley Bunch” are embracing these new -gates, and as many more as can be imagined up too. These are the same people who recently campaigned so enthusiastically to have the term “Climategate” removed from the lexicon. Methinks the purpose of welcoming new -gates is to dilute, and thus diminish, the potency of “Climategate” via a different route.
It “doesn’t change the outcome?” Whatever happend to “method wrong + answer correct = bad science?” “Skeptics” have turned “don’t matter” into a cottage industry.
And the reason that the alleged plagierism is a “problem” in the case of Bradley is that not only did Wegman et al. copy huge swaths of text without quotation, what few edits were made were done to change the meaning of the source material.
“Plagiarism means using the exact words, opinions, or factual information from another person without giving that person credit. Writers give credit through accepted documentation styles, such as parenthetical citation, footnotes, or endnotes; a simple listing of books and articles is not sufficient. Plagiarism is the equivalent of intellectual robbery and cannot be tolerated in an academic setting. Student writers are often confused as to what should be cited. Some think that only direct quotations need to be credited. While direct quotations do need citations, so do paraphrases and summaries of opinions or factual information formerly unknown to the writers or which the writers did not discover themselves. Exceptions for this include factual information which can be obtained from a variety of sources, the writers’ own insights or findings from their own field research, and what has been termed common knowledge. What constitutes common knowledge can sometimes be precarious; what is common knowledge for one audience may not be so for another. In such situations, it is helpful, to keep the reader in mind and to think of citations as being “reader friendly.” In other words, writers provide a citation for any piece of information that they think their readers might want to investigate further. Not only is this attitude considerate of readers, it will almost certainly ensure that writers will never be guilty of plagiarism. (statement of English Department at George Mason University)”
http://mason.gmu.edu/~montecin/plagiarism.htm
The NAS panel also had a potted summary of proxies without references, which they present as common knowledge.
In Wegman’s potted summary of proxies, he refers specifically to discussions being “after Bradley 1999”. Also, in a very quick perusal, I’ve noticed a case where Bradley’s phraseology, that he appears to now be claiming as original, can itself be traced back to others. (Perhaps there are others). For example, deepclimate observes and objects to the similarity between the following statements of Wegman and Bradley.
The caption to Bradley Figure 10 is:
Essentially identical wording occurs in Lamarche 1975. New Scientist.
Cronin, 2003:
Bradley:
The Oxford Companion to Global Change, David Cuff and Andrew Goudie
Bradley textbook:
Wegman:
Sure, Steve McI, but did Bradley cite those others? At least Wegman cited Bradley (9 times that I counted)
SteveMc–
I think what you are finding is there are only so many ways to describe a tree ring accurately. If each of these guys was shut in a room and were asked to write a sentence that described a tree ring, the answers would be large similar. After that, they might be asked to write a sentence explaining what affects the width of a tree ring– all those sentences would be largely similar.
This isn’t happening because they are copying. To a large extent, this happens because they are describing the same thing (e.g. a tree ring), the all know what a tree ring looks like and all want to focus on the same relevant details leaving out details that are irrelevant to dendrochronolgy. (None tell us that the inside of the tree is often beige and brown.)
Also, all are accustomed to the writing style currently prevalent in academia.
I read Steve McIntyre’s citations as evidence that the specific citations fall readily into the category of “common knowledge” of the subject area, and therefore would not be examples of plagiarism (by Wegman or Bradley). That’s using the GMU guidelines. Or common sense — those are bland factual statements which contain no original insight which requires attribution.
With regard to comment#53771, I’m curious as to which came first, Cuff/Goudie or Bradley? The first sentence seems to be word-for-word copied.
Wegman did not hold out his potted summary as original. On the other hand, Wahl and Ammann 2007 did hold itself out as original, even though it plagiarized its key ideas from Mann’s reply to our 2004 Nature submission and Mann’s realclimate posts attempting to preempt our 2005 articles. There’s a far better plagiarism case against Wahl and Ammann.
Thanks Steve McIntyre.
I had a good laugh, a healthy way to start the day :).
Lucia, I think there is the saying: “people who live in glass houses should not throw stones”.
It is impossible to write an academic paper without using “well known” introductory platitudes/necessities. One would have to reference every sentence until one reached the original part of the paper. It is usual to just quote papers used and only cite them for crucial points. One does not reference physics textbooks every time the word “momentum” appears.
And this is just a report, not an academic publication.
When Wegmen et al. write:
“This report was authored by Edward J. Wegman, George Mason University, David W. Scott, Rice
University, and Yasmin H. Said” and they include in this report text which actually the work of Bradley and others they commit what is in an academic context at least, regarded as plagiarism.
FWIW, if this was a student’s work the first question I’d ask is if this is in your work, how come you’ve listed these factors (sunlight …) in exactly the same order as Bradley. In these situations the student typically umms and ahhs and eventually admits its not their work, I ask is in their anything to indicate its not their work, and they say no, and I ask isn’t that dishonest to put someone else’s work forward as their’s and often they see the point.
And sometimes they complain that other students commit plagiarism and I tell them doesn’t make what they’ve done any better.
Steve McIntyre (Comment#53777) October 9th, 2010 at 11:38 pm
“Wegman did not hold out his potted summary as original.”
It isn’t just potted summaries. They certainly introduced social networks analysis as a new way of loo0king at climate science processes. And in a technical way. with mathy talk about graphs and triads. But as Mashey details starting about p 119, a lot of that seems to come from elsewhere, and places quite unacknowledged. For example, this section:
the way problems are solved, organizations are run, and the degree to which individuals succeed in achieving their goals.
The shape of the social network helps determine a network‘s usefulness to its individuals. Smaller, tighter networks can be less useful to their members than networks with lots of loose connections (weak ties) to individuals outside the main network. More ―open‖ networks, with many weak ties and social connections, are more likely to introduce new ideas and opportunities to their members than closed networks with many redundant ties. In other words, a group of friends who only do things with each other already share the same knowledge and opportunities. Yet a group of individuals with connections to other social worlds is likely to have access to a wider range of information. It is better for individual success to have connections to a variety of networks rather than many connections within a single network. Similarly, individuals can exercise influence or act as brokers within their social networks by bridging two networks tha
The section is from Wikipedia, “Social Networks”, Feb 2006. The wiki article itself goes baqck to 2003, with minor changes. I’ve bolded the word yet, which has been added, and is the only difference.
And of course, no reference to Wiki, or any kind of acknowledgement.
My own cut and paste error there – the quote finishes:
two networks that are not directly linked (called filling social holes).
And yes, that bit’s from Wiki too.
So Andrewt, given what Steve has found regarding Bradley’s first few sentences. You’d be quite happy to label him a plagiarist? Is that how it works? What’s Bradley’s excuse? Wegman was doing a summary of Bradley’s work, and you are upset that the summary includes direct quoted text without attribution. So what do you say of Bradley’s direct acts of plagiarism. My guess is nothing or the normal hand waving thing.
Is Wiki original work? first time I hear of it. The probability is high that the text is take verbatim from some published work by the Wiki editor too.
How do you know it is not included in the general references of the report? In my opinion for a non original work that is fine.
anna v
“How do you know it is not included in the general references of the report?”
No, Anna, that won’t work. In the Wiki article, the phrases “(weak ties)” and “social holes” are active links to other Wiki articles. They don’t make sense just as words, but Wegman pasted them anyway.
There are no html docs referenced by Wegman.
The 2006 version of the Wiki article is here.
Similar paras have been there since at least march 2005.
Nick Stokes (Comment#53781)
Are you and Mashey claiming that Wegman claimed to invent Social Network Analysis? If so, it is not true.
From Wegman’s reply to Stupak:
“Ans: Social network analysis is a powerful tool with a more than 50-year history of making obvious potentially hidden social relationships. In the case of our analysis, we took a social relationship to be a co-author relationship. This type of relationship does not imply friendship or any other social relationship. Our social network analysis identified the fact that there are several intensively coupled groups within the paleoclimate community.”
Source: http://www.uoguelph.ca/~rmckitri/research/StupakResponse.pdf
There is no need for citations to well know analysis methods.
Nick, correlation is not causation works whenever a time element enters.
Wiki is not a peer reviewed reference anyway, and it has no original content.
Since it is not original, it must be copied from someplace. One cannot exclude that the report copied from the same source that wiki did, but to demand that wiki is cited in a formal report as original content is a bit strange.
p.s. weak ties and social holes could very well be in the lexicon of the original reference. For all we know it might be typical language of sociologists.
Here’s a list of 94 other “gates”:
http://notrickszone.com/2010/08/03/climate-scandals-list-of-94-climate-gates/
Wegman also found climate scientists were reviewing each other and pointed to a social network in climate science ( and they use the same value added data over and over again too IMHO); then leap to proclaiming to the public that “independent studies” confirm GW is real.
All this ado about copying words now…must be some sort of projection!
Anna, #53793
They are the titles of the Wiki posts to which they are linked. The way the phrases are used in the text makes sense only in that context.
Nick–
Thanks for the page call out. The social networks stuff is the first bit I see that looks bad for Wegman. It’s too bad the report features an overwhelming number of examples of clearly not plagiarism as evidence of plagiarism.
That’s not what matters. What matters is whether
a) Wegman is doing original work. In the “social network” part, he isn’t summarizing someone else’s work; that bit is supposed to be Wegman’s.
b) Even doing non-original work, you can’t not attribute at all. If Wegman is going to use Wiki as a source he should cite it. If he has another source, he should cite it. I’m scanning near page 19, and I see no sources— but this is word for word stuff.
Nick-
While you’re at it, why don’t you peruse Bradley’s actual research papers for examples of plagiarism. Hint- it’s being done elsewhere on the web.
You guys are pathetic.
You can’t plagerize Wikipedia. It has no standing of originality. The fundamental nature of anonymous editing makes its originality unassignable. If cited quotations are lifted, that’s another matter. Plagiarism is dependent on the original text being fixed in time and space to a specific author. Wikipedia doesn’t afford that (notwithanding the history trace). It all becomes further complicated by editors who revert or otherwise modify edited text. A citation to Wikipedia is fundamentally useless. Wikipedia is probably the closest thing you get to info being placed in the public domain.
As to “original work”, a review committee is hardly doing original work. While there may be a lead author (somebody, after all, has to write the damn thing), the outcome is a product of group-think (or least mutual capitulation). Even the conclusions cannot be said to be original work – they (should) follow as a natural consequence of the material reviewed.
I went through the bibliography of the report and did not find a sociological reference that could connect to chapter 2.3, “Background on Social Networks”.
So this background is without attribution, at least in the Bibliography.
Certainly unacceptable in a publication. I suppose we will see what happens with a report. ( Though I have not heard a sociologist claiming he was plagiarized, as I said, Wiki is open to plagiarism by its construction)
Rabett has a post which sheds some light on the ‘litigation’ mentioned by Dr Wegman. Apparently, Elsevier, which owns Academic Press and is the publisher of Bradley’s Reconstructing Climates of the Quaternary is pursuing copyright violation issues.
If true, then to some degree, this has already spread beyond the internal investigation/inquiry of GMU. I hope that all is settled amicably. But the tone of Dr Rapp’s reply at USA Today suggests more than a little heat.
http://rabett.blogspot.com/2010/10/auditing-assessing-climate-change.html
Dang it. Meant to post this in the first Wegman/GMU thread. This thread is about names. My apologies for what will be double posting.
AnnaV
Well… it’s possible to do it without copying the platitudes word for word from another source.
I would ordinarily expect many of these papers to begin with very similar sentences containing loads of identical words as caught by a “plagiaris ‘bot script”. But when writing, I would never, ever, ever copy an introductory sentence word for word from someone else’s article.
I might do as Oscar Wilde and copy sentences I used previously in some paper. Or, if a co-author wrote that bit, I might not notice they copied a sentence word-for-word mostly because I would have no clue where that sentence came from and I’m not going to run their stuff through some expensive commercial plagiarism checker.
But if I wrote the intro, I would never copy the first sentence word for word from someone else’s article! I wouldn’t even do this with attribution, because it’s both unnecessary and, well…. lame.
I wouldn’t intentionally copy any sentence anywhere word for word without using quote. Being human, I could imagine a slip up where I had somehow gotten a bit of text and ended up missing quote somewhere in the body of a report.
But I can’t imagine even doing it accidentally in the introduction or abstract of a paper, nor even the introductory sentence of a section. (Of course, maybe this is just my lack of imagination…. Still…)
Pandora’s box is now open for business… I see thousands of climate activists reviewing the work of the worlds leading climate activist scientists looking for paragraphs, sentences and phrases which are not attributed in a manner consistent with the demands of Halpern et al… oh, this is gonna get good.
Lucia, It will not turn up in the investigation because Bradley’s complaint is not about social networks.
MikeC (Comment#53813) “oh, this is gonna get good”
I suspect you’re right about hordes of blog-readers examining the writings of climate scientists — of all flavors — seeking “gotcha” moments. But I don’t think this is to the good. One effect will be accentuation of ad hominem arguments in the debate: “X plagiarized, hence his conclusions should be ignored”. And people are going to create pressure to remove inconvenient authors from academia — if you think there’s a chilling effect upon expression of non-consensus views due to journal editorial selection, this will only add to it. I don’t think that there is an overall gain if everyone keeps his head in the trenches for fear of getting shot.
And even though Bradley’s complaint does not concern social networks, once the issue is brought to GMU, they’re bound (I should think) to consider the entire paper. They’re looking into whether Wegman’s conduct was proper, by their standards.
Nick’s citation (#53781) is a clear case of copying without attribution, and is inappropriate. But Lucia(#53796) – why did you post about whether Wegman et al. is doing original research here or not? The section containing the copied Wiki entry is entitled “Background on Social Networks” — clearly not original content. It’s not as though Wegman created the concept of a social network, nor (I assume) the metrics used. [And yes, you’re quite correct that it should be attributed, and doubly so if they’re recycling text word-for-word. Perhaps they were ashamed to admit it came from Wiki?] The only original part is down in section 5, where they apply social networking analysis to Mann’s articles and temperature-reconstruction articles.
See, Harold, You’re thinking like Nick Stokes who doesn’t read paragraph 1 of the report he’s criticizing. The university has a complaint from Bradley, claiming that Bradley was ripped off. As it turns out, Bradley was cited at least 9 times in the bibliography. Further, some of the very comments he claims were stolen from him, appear to have been stolen by Bradley from another author. And unless someone from wikipedia comes fourth and claims their work was plagiarized, something you say is not plagiarism because the title in fact said it was a summary, then there will be no charges in the social networks section.
And, yes, what is good for the goose is good for the gander. Many people feel that climate science is weak, (exaggerations were evident in the climategate emails) so if there are two sides looking to snipe, then perhaps it will be beneficial to the science since it will force participants in the debate to present higher quality evidence.
So SteveM has found that the Oxford Companion to Climate Change also plagiarized from Bradley.
He also says “Wegman did not hold out his potted summary as original.”
You do realize that when you do not enclose text in quotation marks, you are holding out that text as original, right?
Oh, next time Steve, post the dates of the sources so we can see who is copying whom.
Boris,
I see you conveniently ignored the reference to the NAS panel’s “background” information and the Lamarche citation relevant to Bradley’s words.
Since we appear to now have established how heinous exact phraselogy is, one need only sit back and see the results of text-matching software being let loose on Google.
The NAS didn’t rip off any language that I am aware of. If you can show that they have, I’d be interested.
As for the Lamarche example–that’s pretty close. One sentence probably isn’t going to be a problem for Bradley, but if there are a lot more as close as that one, I’m sure you guys will have your fun.
Boris,
My point is that there will be plenty of these. Somehow, climate scientists and their supporters think Wegman’s purported problems are a reason to be dancing in the streets.
All this is doing is putting the Wegman report back on the blogs and causing climate scientist’s writing to be examined.
Even you’ve tried to throw the author of the Oxford Climate Companion under the bus as a talking point. I’m willing to bet he’s not a skeptic.
Since you think one sentence isn’t enough to be a problem, I guess we’re now “just haggling over the price.” (George Bernard Shaw).
I doubt he’s a skeptic either. But if that section is as SteveM describes, then it is plagiarized.
I agree that this does nothing but divide people into their respective camps.Ticky-tack BS arguments are a hallmark of skeptic sites like Climate Audit, so it’s not surprising that others will respond in kind. Maybe instead of digging through stolen emails and quote mining we could actually talk about the issues that matter. However, I have a feeling most skeptics would be disappointed in finding out that the Wegman report didn’t really matter in terms of AGW science. Even if we accept every word of it as true, it doesn’t weaken the consensus even a tiny bit.
“However, I have a feeling most skeptics would be disappointed in finding out that the Wegman report didn’t really matter in terms of AGW science.”
Actually, the Wegman report is exactly where climate science is now. MBH 1998 and 1999 are now recognized even by climate scientists as “old studies” that have been “improved on”. The improvements? Why, maybe that thar baseline wasn’t so flat after all, and maybe there are better statistical techniques to use. And, oh yes, maybe it is a good idea to release code.
Boris
it doesnt matter whom is copying whom.
bloodsport. Lets face it the writings of climate science will be a target rich environment. if somebody else copied from bradley, then they become the target. Next.
if somebody else copied from bradley, then they become the target.
.
Did they also lie and distort to gain a certain end, like ‘breaking’ the HS?
Neven:
Translation:
It’s ok to make ad hominem attacks on people, as long as they were, in Neven’s opinion, lying and distorting.
It’s ok to make ad hominem attacks on people, as long as they were, in Neven’s opinion, lying and distorting.
.
Carrick, you always come across as a level-headed guy. You do not seriously see Mashey/DC’s work as an ad hominem, do you?
Re: HaroldW ,
I agree Wegman’s original contribution on social networks is application of the idea to people in dendro-climatology. He’s not pretending to have invented social networks. But he also isn’t just presenting of “Summary of Joe Blow discussion of what a social network is”. The description of what social networks are is presented in a manner that suggests he and co-authors are writing their own description, and not summarizing someone elses. The distinction is a bit subtle (and I may not be explaining it well.) But that discussion of “what is a social network” should have either
a) Had no citations at all– and been treated as “common knowledge”. In which case, the words could not be word for word copied from someone else or
b) Citations to whose ever words they copied.
MikeC—
GMU got a complaint from Bradley. So, I assume they will at least investigate that. Nothing prevents them from going further. Universities may investigate plagiarism even if no formal complaints are filed. They rarely do– but they may. So, GMU is certainly free to look at everything in Deep Climate and Mashey’s long, poorly organized confusing tomes. I think Wegman needs to hope the go through sequentially, read the seemingly never ending “examples” that look like “not plagiarizm”, and stop before they hit the section on social networks.
Given the amount of stuff on blogs, I bet the won’t do that. Oddly, I can imagine things that could make the social network stuff ok — but the possibilities I can dream up seem unlikely to be true. (For example of the sort of thing I can dream up: Who wrote contributed to the wikipedia page? If it’s Said, well, plagiarism charge goes “poof”! I estimate the probability that the explanation is Said wrote the wiki page at… <0.001%. That value was determined using the "seems to me" method. )
Lucia,
As long as we’ve been dragged into the plagiarism swamp—and some academics here have been huffing and puffing about “integrity”—even self-plagiarism is not OK under many circumstances.
This link (including the comments) shows how tied up in its own shorts the publishing and academic community can get when talking plagiarism/self-plagiarism/copyright.
Ooops
http://www.the-scientist.com/blog/display/57676/
long, poorly organized confusing tomes
.
The 25 page main discussion of SSWR is concise, well-organized and to the point. Like Mashey says: “The complexity of the WR and surrounding events often defies easy simplification, as comprehensive backup evidence must be included. Common properties are given terse codings, and numerous cross-references included.”
.
Complexity is long, yes, but not necessarily poorly organized and confusing. That’s because you tend to side with the karma point people on these issues, Lucia. Eye, beholder, etc. Nevertheless I hope that after some thought you will get the implications of this.
.
Of course, everything would be much easier if someone would just hack the computers of all players involved in the Wegman Report and retrieve e-mails from the last 10 years, but well… Maybe this way is more interesting. Tom Fuller has already cracked, for instance.
Sure. But it’s more likely to happen by accident and rather innocently– as in people repeat the same introductory paragraph of these sort,
“The study of X is super-dooper important because Y.’ or
“Questions about Z have engaged the interest of everyone on the planet, since, yah know, eons….”
Of course ‘super-dooper important’ would be written in some conventional form. “X” is the little nit the researcher is looking at. Y is some large reason that sounds swell to someone. The ‘sinc, yah know, eons’ would be replaced by something that sounds like it’s not written by a surfer dude.
The sentences aren’t really important in the sense that the new results could be communicated with these little introductory bits stripped. But people want that first sentence to sound swell, sophisticated, academic etc. So, I suspect people self plagiarize those all the time.
I don’t think many schools would slap a faculty member who was caught having used the same introductory sentence twice.
Neven
Agreed. Some documents can be and are simultaneously long, complex and well organized.
Mashey is a mess.
Implications of what?
Do you mean at some point, after slogging through it, I will find something I think might be plagiarism? You must not be reading all the comments… ‘cuz… I did. The social networks stuff.
Mashey’s document is still a mess.
Mashey’s document is still a mess.
It’s not a document. It’s a database written by a computer scientist in an English-like language.
But it is searchable, and does have data.
“We need to get rid of the MWP” has morphed into “We need to get rid of the Wegman Report.” I repeat, you guys are pathetic.
Searchable? Well… I guess if someone tells you what search term to use to find something important. It’s a pdf, I searched “plagiarism”, and went through serially. The result was to come across in order:
a) mostly accusations with no support on that page.
b) the first example was one of “clearly not plagiarism”.
c) a collection of examples that were clearly not plagiarism.
I needed to do other things and so paused. (It is the weekend after all. I do socialize, do other things etc). I’m not sure I would have even gotten to the social networks stuff searching by searching. Or maybe I would have– some time next week.
The way I did happen to find that bit– which is the only bit that seem like evidence of plagiarism to me is because you mentioned the page numbers.
I don’t think it fits the literal definition of a database either. Or does it? How?
Pdf documents are searchable these days. I don’t think that would make “gone with the wind” published as a pdf a database– not even if I could search for “Rhett Butler” and find all appearances. My browser lets me search web pages; that doesn’t turn them into databases.
Anyway, maybe there is some way to define Mashey that, under that definition, it is not a mess. But it’s certainly unreadable.
Just a note, for completeness’s sake, although I don’t know how likely it is. One possibility that doesn’t seem to have been mentioned is that Wegman wrote the Wikipedia passage, in which case he is perfectly entitled to use it without attribution.
lucia (Comment#53863):
Thanks, now I understand what you were trying to say. I first read you as suggesting that Wegman et al. are making original observations in section 2.3, which isn’t the case. What I think you’re saying is that, without any footnote or attributive clause, that section will be presumed to be original *phrasing*. Given that the words were copied directly, Wegman et al. should have used quotation marks with a citation of the Wikipedia source. [I.e., your option b.] Alternatively, they could have restated the information in their own words; as “common knowledge” in the field, it would then not have required attribution. [Your option a.]
MikeC (Comment#53830)
I haven’t said that Wegman et al. plagiarized Bradley. Indeed, on this thread I haven’t seen any evidence to that effect; well #53771 contains one very general sentence that closely matches but is also in close proximity to a citation of Bradley(1999). [I admit that I haven’t read Mashey’s presentation — given its length and evaluations by persons whose opinions I trust, it doesn’t seem to be worth my time.] Where plagiarism is present, evidence — side-by-side citations of a paragraph or more — is usually quite easy to produce. And indeed was produced for the social networking background section. Hence my statement above that Wegman et al. should have given attribution in that section to Wikipedia. And it *is* possible to plagiarize Wikipedia; the fact that a Wikipedia article may have many authors, doesn’t excuse the behavior of not giving credit where credit is due.
This is an extreme example of how seriously plagiarism can be taken: http://chronicle.com/blogPost/Plagiarism-Allegations-Boot-a/4196
Not the student copied a few short phrases from Wikipedia – much less than the 170 word chunk that Nick pointed to and Wegman et al copied far more from other sources completely without attribution.
Although I think the student treatment is very unreasonable – at least at my institution the response would have been mild.
Re: Dave ,
I actually mention something about this on one of the threads. (I don’t remember which.)
If he wrote it himself, it would at least mean he didn’t copy it. But things get dicey if you are copying too much of your own stuff. People are allowed to cite themselves.
It’s true citing wikipedia as a source is frowned on, but the purpose of citing isn’t solely to credit sources. It’s sometimes done to merely mention that related work exists. Sometimes you’ll see sentences like “Many have studied the impact of X on Y (7-34), but the question of Z remains unresolved. This paper is an investigation into the effects of Z on…”
In this case, the references 7-34 often merely point to related work, especially the more important of the “many”. The citation isn’t really used “proof” of the claim that many have studied the impact of X on Y. One could probably just have said that without providing any citation.
If the author was quoting their own passages from wikipedia, it would be best to cite to flag the connection between the wikipedia article and the current document.
Still, I have to admit that if it turned out Wegman or a co-author wrote the Wikipedia article, I would be seriously disinclined to throw the book at them. I’d see lack of citation as more of a formatting/scholarship issue and not quite a plagiarism issue. I’d be scratching my head a bit.
In the end, if you are a scholar, submit to wikipedia and want to re-use that text, it would probably be wise to reveal your true identity when contributing at wikipedia. That would minimize the likelyhood of being accused of normal plagiarism as a result of copying your own stuff. (Imagine if it’s stuff you added after finalizing your paper, but before it was published? But the time stamps look like the ‘original’ is wikipedia? Lots of potential for problems for the author.)
Steve McIntyre (Comment#53771) October 9th, 2010 at 10:21 pm
The Oxford Companion to Global Change, David Cuff and Andrew Goudie
Variations in tree-ring widths from one year to the next have long been recognized as an important source of chronological and climatic information. The mean width of a ring in any one tree is a function of many variables, including the tree species, its age, the availability of stored nutrients in the tree and surrounding soil, and a host of climatic factors, including temperature, precipitation and availability of sunlight.
Bradley textbook:
Variations in tree-ring widths from one year to the next have long been recognized as an important source of chronological and climatic information… 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, and their distribution throughout the year).
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, and even carbon dioxide availability in the atmosphere.
Nice try but no cigar!
Try putting them in chronological order, you ‘forgot’ to mention that “The Oxford Companion to Global Change” is copyrighted in 2009.
Do you know who authored the section on dendrochronology?
andrewt (Comment#53884) October 10th, 2010 at 7:52 pm
This is an extreme example of how seriously plagiarism can be taken: http://chronicle.com/blogPost/…..oot-a/4196
Not the student copied a few short phrases from Wikipedia – much less than the 170 word chunk that Nick pointed to and Wegman et al copied far more from other sources completely without attribution.
Although I think the student treatment is very unreasonable – at least at my institution the response would have been mild.
At mine it would likely have been the same as in this case, except for timing, as far as I’m aware such cases can only be heard by the discipline committee which can only be convened in term time.
Phil:
Yes maybe Wegman et al wrote the Wikipedia entry and maybe they wrote De Nooy et al 2005 and Wasserman&Faust 1994 under pseudonyms.
I actually mention something about this on one of the threads. (I don’t remember which.)
.
Opening three threads about a certain subject, with discussions going on in all three of them. Now that’s what I call a mess. :-p
.
Implications of what?
.
The Wegman Report was not independent or unbiased. It was a (very successful) PR effort. People involved with it cannot be trusted. I’m not saying you have to dismiss what they have to say out of hand, you can have a look at it, but be on guard.
.
Wegman and his group is not unbiased or independent. He’s a cog in the denial machine.
.
I would say that’s the implication of this whole exercise. If people don’t want to see it like that, they are karma point people. You’re a skeptic? Apply the skepticism.
Nick Stokes (Comment#53878) October 10th, 2010 at 6:01 pm
Mashey’s document is still a mess.
It’s not a document. It’s a database written by a computer scientist in an English-like language.
But it is searchable, and does have data.
######
as i said over on Watts, John needs to give the data to somebody who knows how to put a proper case together, and somebody who knows what a bibliography is for. That way people can make an informed judgement. its a bad data base as well. Take that from an ex university english instructor and computer science guy.
its a mess.
Dave
“Wegman wrote the Wiki article>”
Very unlikely. Boballab has found a very similar text from 1991 – the Wiki entry itself has antecedents.
It seems Wegman himself is not the SNA person – that is Yasmin Said, whose PhD in 2006 was very recent.
Yasmin was probably embarassed by sourcing wikipedia in a congressional report. dope.
Neven,
Much as Mann and the paleo’s have moved on from early mistakes in their writings without a full disclosure of the mistakes or proper attribution to those who pointed out the errors ( the rain in seine) so too the skeptic movement has “moved on” from the criticisms made by the wegman committee.
Funny how the defenses used for wegman mirror the defenses used for mann and others.
Mosh:
LOL. Probably it.
ISTM that John Mashey and Deep Climate have done “the community” a service by discovering serious problems with the integrity of the Wegman report.
Discovering and publicizing problems isn’t the same as creating them. To the extent that the Wegman Report contains plagiarized passages (etc.), that’s Prof. Wegman‘s fault, as he is the primary author.
Reading through these comments (and those on earlier DC threads), it seems as though possession of the ball has changed. Defense has gone over to Offense, and vice versa. There aren’t enough eyelashes being batted — Huh?! If it’s wrong when somebody on their side cuts corners and violates norms, it’s wrong when somebody on our side does it, too. (And if it’s OK in the one instance, it’s OK in the other.)
There have been many instances when Bad Behavior has been exhibited by pro-AGW Consensus climatologists. That doesn’t make the science wrong, or right. It sure damages the Argument from Authority, though.
Now there’s an instance of Bad Behavior by a leading skeptical light. Likewise, that doesn’t change the merits of the report’s arguments. But it sure undercuts any Argument from Authority.
Feynman would say to pro-Consensus partisans: What about the core of the Wegman Report, which are challenges to mainstream paleoclimatology’s statistical practices?
Feynman would say to skeptical partisans: You should be consistent in how you discuss deviations from good practices, irrespective of the position being advocated. Avoid special pleading.
I discovered the “striking similarities” in section 2.3 with Wikipedia and two SNA text books some time ago.
http://deepclimate.org/2010/04/22/wegman-and-saids-social-network-sources-more-dubious-scholarship/
Complete, colour-coded side-by-side comparison:
http://deepclimate.files.wordpress.com/2010/07/wegman-social-networks-v-2.pdf
At the same time, I noted that some of the SNA material was recycled, again without proper attribution, in a partly federally funded study by Said et al (co-authors being Wegman and two other Wegman students).
Side-by-side comparison of Said et al:
http://deepclimate.files.wordpress.com/2010/09/said-et-al-social-networks-2.pdf
Neven
Agreed! Look out, now there are four!!!
Implications of what?
Thanks for clarifying. It’s just best if you finish the thoughts. No one can guess which implications you mean if you don’t say. The context was not making it clear.
But as for this:
You think the issue of whether or not Wegman of unbiased and independent is the implication of the exercise in investigating plagiarism? I have to say, I would never have guessed that’s the implication you were driving at. With respect to on going discussions of plagiarism, I would call that changing the subject to an entirely different allegation.
If I were writing a report for a bunch of moron politicians, I would do exactly what Wegman apparently did- copy with loose attribution the background material, then concentrate my original thoughts on the core issues. I guess you guys will be investigating Steven Colbert’s remarks next. Or perhaps Mann’s recent WaPo editorial.
Sleeper,
“Loose attribution”? Try no attribution whatsoever. The Wasserman & Faust and de Nooy et al text books don’t even appear in Wegman et al’s reference list. Yet they were the basis of the “cut and paste” section 2.2 background section of the Wegman report- all five pages of it.
In addition to Bradley’s book, Elsevier publish Computational Statistics and Data Analysis which creates a headache for them. Its where Said, Wegman et al. 2007 paper was published, accepted 6 days after it was received.
Like Wegman et al. 2006 DC found slabs of text in this paper from Wikipedia, De Nooy et al and Wasserman&Faust with only the last of these 3 getting any mention in the paper.
What creates the headache for Elsevier is, that as DC noted, Wegman is on the journal’s advisory board and Said was an Associate Editor of the journal.
From what Nick and other people said, there are substantive issues that could be explored.
Deep Climate actually undermines this by what many people view as an ad hominem smear campaign.
Carrick (Comment#54017) October 11th, 2010 at 8:18 pm
My source was Deep Climate, via Mashey.
My question, Nick is if there are basic problems with the quality of the science in Wegman’s report, why go after plagiarism? What’s with the orchestrated smear campaign?
Proving somebody’s science wrong is one thing.
Trying to destroy them, well frankly, it’s plain evil.
Carrick, there is very little science of any quality in the Wegman report. We’re told that secs 1-3 are now so insignificant that it doesn’t matter if they came from Wikipedia. Sec 4 just recomputes MM results, with one or two other PC noise simulations. Glaringly absent is any attempt to redo the analysis as they think it should be done. Sec 5 is the network analysis, which is itself a fancy ad hominem smear campaign.
Then there is Appendix 1, which is elementary stuff on PCA, and then the summaries of papers, which extensive transported text.
Nick–
I don’t understand the energy devoted to people explaining that Wegman did not answer more “interesting” (to someone) questions that others eventually did answer.
I suspect the Wegman report answers questions that Wegman was being asked by the Congressional committe. Two that congressman would likely have wanted to know answers to were: Is it true the MBH technique is not robust to red noise? Are the different groups doing reconstruction really independent?
These may not be the most scientifically interesting questions out there, but they were the questions the committee asked and were answered for that reason. Many American’s would think it their duty to expend energy to answer the questions actually asked by Congress. On that basis, criticizing the report for not answering better questions that the Congressional committee was not asking, or coming up with a better analysis is rather silly.
Lucia,
Carrick’s query was about the quality of the science in the Wegman report. And I responded that there wasn’t science to which one could attach quality. Can you point to good quality science in the Wegman report?
Nick–
If the Wegman report does appropriate science to get the correct answers to questions asked, that would be “quality science”. Given the questions asked ” just recomput[ing] MM results,” would be quality, provided it was done correctly. The network analysis would also be quality, provided the work was done correctly.
Doing the analysis you think they should have done would not have met the scope requested. It might be quality in some other sense, but it would not be an application of relevant science to obtain a correct answer to the questions actually asked. That means: Not quality in the context of applying science appropriately to learn the information one was actually seeking.
Carrick,
“Proving somebody’s science wrong is one thing.
Trying to destroy them, well frankly, it’s plain evil.”
Well, lets remember the long-running attempt to destroy Michael Mann, of which the Wegman report was one stage:
Called before the House
Wegman
Rifling through his emails
U Penn investigations
Cuccinelli (more rifling)
And on the other hand, DC noting text copying in plain sight. No emails were stolen in DC’s investigation.
Nick:
The old evil begets evil argument?
Wegman didn’t try to destroy Mann personally, he went after the science (poorly).
As far as anybody knows for certain, no emails were “stolen” period. Unless you are using stolen in the sense of :
stolen (n): Airing of inconvenient facts (first used by Nick Stokes, circa 2010).
Carruck:
Wegman didn’t try to destroy Mann personally
What else is the “social network analysis” about? Mann’s science?
As to this:
This undermines any possible moral authority that DeepClimate has in trying to destroy other people’s lives. If it is such an open and shut case, there is simply no excuse left.
I don’t excuse bad behavior regardless of who does it.
Why do you?
Nick Stokes:
I can see the headline now:
“Michael Mann loses tenure over social network analysis.”
Too much scotch?
lolz
To be clear hear, Wegman put himself in a very awkward position (at best) by agreeing to participate in Barton’s witch hunt.
Probably that will have longer term ramifications by itself for Wegman than anything that Deep Climate could ever do.
Beyond that, if the analysis is as bad as Stokes claims, calling public attention to the analysis could be career ending for Wegman (and probably Said). I don’t condone sloppy academic work, and I certainly don’t condone plagiarism, by whatever source.
If DeepClimate had noticed an act of plagiarism in passing, it would be one thing. But it’s obvious that he himself set out on his own personal witch hunt to destroy other people’s lives.
And people like Joshua Halpern cheered him on, all the way.
Tactics like this may destroy your enemies, but you won’t have many friends left when you are through.
Carrick, I didn’t say the analysis was bad, I said there wasn’t any to speak of. But if you’ve seen some, do tell.
Mann was never going to lose his job over the House shenanigans. But it wasn’t for want of trying. And Wegman rigging up the “network analysis” was part of that. Again, what did it have to do with Mann’s science?
Wegman’s report and evidence to Congress was very critical of Mann. But it wasn’t based on analysis done in the report. It was based essentially on Wegman’s authority. Plagiarism goes to the heart of that.
Re: Nick Stokes (Oct 12 00:14),
The exchange between Nick and Carrick gets to the heart of the matter. We are faced with the science issues — the work products of the various actors — and we are also faced with the conduct of the actors themselves.
Four issues that are largely separable from one another. But most parties and onlookers to the imbroglio(s) are interested in keeping them mixed-up.
Science issues
1. The strength and validity of the paleoclimate reconstructions — temperature traces and uncertainties — presented by Mann et al.
2. The validity of the statistical critiques (and, secondarily, the social-networking discussion) discussed in the Wegman report.
Conduct issues
3. Whether Mann’s view of himself as a Galileo-like martyr being pilloried for speaking Truth to Power is a compelling explanation.
4. What the evidence for extensive plagiarism in the background sections of the Wegman report indicates about the extent to which the report’s authors adhere to the standards of intellectual, academic, and scientific performance.
Mann and his partisans share something with Wegman and his partisans. They all want their champion to be able to argue from authority, while seeing the arch-villians of the case dragged through the mud… as the bad guys’ arguments (and the consequent policy implications) are discredited.
My two cents
1. Much unimpressive science that wouldn’t survive scrutiny, were Mann working in a more-established branch of the physical sciences.
2. I don’t know. Nick dismisses Wegman’s arguments. I suspect that the report makes some important and underappreciated points about proxy reconstruction methodologies. Worth discussing.
3. Pro-AGW Consensus advocates have been very unwise in their choice of champion. Or in acceding to Mann’s appointing himself to the role.
4. A report that includes plagiarism has lost any claims to Authority. Stones and glass houses. If Deep Climate’s and John Mashey’s charges pan out — and they sure seem to — why is anyone spending their Special Pleading quatloos to defend such behavior.
You don’t read WUWT or Climateaudit much, do you? That’s all it takes to have Mann branded a charlatan, and AGW the biggest scientific fraud in history.
bugs:
What does this have to do with anything?
You think Mann’s going to get fired because Watts doesn’t like him?
Nick Stokes: Wegman’s report and evidence to Congress was very critical of Mann. But it wasn’t based on analysis done in the report. It was based essentially on Wegman’s authority. Plagiarism goes to the heart of that.
Not really.
If it’s “bad science”, it would speak for itself.
There isn’t any action on the part of Wegman you can point at that’s comparable to DeepClimate’s hate-campaign.
That’s just a fact.
Amac:
Of course I’m not defending plagiarism. The best I can give Wegman is the benefit of the doubt until we hear back from the GMU committee.
Nick Stokes nor bugs have yet to give an explanation for why it’s OK to try and destroy another person’s life.
It’s something for the “haters” on the right to think about too—if Mann’s scholarship is bad, it’s ok to go after him for that. But if you don’t like his WaPo editorial, too bad. There’s a thing called “free speech”.
And while we’re at it bugs…let’s see if you are capable of thinking logically.
I know you have an irrational hatred towards McIntyre. In my universe, it’s perfectly OK to question somebody’s scholarship. In fact, it’s even OK to address acts of plagiarism, if that’s incidental to the scholarship.
Most of what McIntyre publishes on his blog are science related. (You may not like the tone, but so what.)
You really want to to a point-counter-point of McIntyre against DeepClimate? Or even Rabbet for that matter? One side deals with science, the other with infantile hatred (right down your ally).
Re: Carrick (Oct 12 06:37),
> Of course I’m not defending plagiarism.
Understood — I am not entirely in accord with your views on this issue, but they are entirely reasonable.
It does seem to me that others in the Wegman threads at The Blackboard and elsewhere are putting forth arguments that amount to defenses of plagiarism. I do not think they would be doing so if the (alleged) plagiarism benefitted the AGW Consensus position. Sauce, goose, gander.
Carrick
“One side deals with science, the other with infantile hatred (right down your ally).”
Whereas you just indulge in stupid hyperbole…
Here let me do better
One side battles under the crushing weight of wannabee Communists to try and save the world from poor science, the other attempts to rule our lives and crush our spirits through the anti-human, anti-capitalist agenda run by the United Nations to stop Freedom….
There, is that better?
Am late to this. But I would call it “Triviagate”, “Pettygate.” I have seen nothing that would undermine Wegman’s statistical analysis, and everyone has to have known that he did not perform his own independent climate research.
JD
AMac
Some people are defending plagiarism. They aren’t just discussing what they think is or is not plagiarism, some are saying plagiarism is ok, on the following theories:
a) the professor is not earning college credit. (Irrelevant.)
b) the copying is done in a report to congress. ( This might affect a copyright claim, but not a plagiarism claim. We expect faculty to not plagiarims in reports to congress.)
c) the discussion of “what social networking is” is not sufficiently original. (Irrelevant.)
I’m sure there were others.
Arguments about plagiarism should revolve around whether an example is or is not plagiarism, and I think the key indicators are whether
a) There was insufficient (improper) citation when material was copied or paraphrased.
b) The item was some soft of final report of any sort.
c) Whether it was intentional or really just some sort of sloppy editorial lapse.
People don’t worry so much about unintentional plagiarism in drafts or a quickly written comment posted at a blog or email– but a report to Congress? That’s sufficiently formal to expect a professor to not plagiarize!
I think many of the examples in DC and Mashey are “not plagiarims”. But I think the social networks stuff…. well:
a) There was word for word copying from wikipedia.
b) There was no citation at all.
c) The material was in a final report to congress.
d) I think whoever did this did it to spare the effort of writing a description of “what are social networks” in their own words. They could have spared a lot of effort by just quoting and citing. Or, since that stuff is common knowledge, they could have rewritten, drawing from many sources and not cited at all. They did neither.
This section is plagiarism. That’s really the only unambigious example I can see.
Nathan:
The word Nathan and stupid appear together a lot.
There’s a reason.
Amac, the way I see it, the most comparable situation to DeepClimate’s smear campaign is Cuccinelli’s witch hunt.
Can you find any support for Cuccinelli from Watt’ or McIntyre?
(Not the commenters, I don’t hold anybody responsible for their commenters opinions.)
I didn’t know DC was an AG. What power he possesses.
Re: Neven (Oct 12 09:55),
> I didn’t know DC was an AG. What power he possesses.
This may be meant as sarcasm. In that case, it is humorous, but it’s not responsive to the point Carrick made in Comment#54101.
Lucia-
You apparently don’t get CSPAN.
Deep Climate-
While conducting your exhaustive investigation of Wegman, I’m sure you must have examined some or all of his research papers looking for other instances of plagiarism. You know, the pattern-of-behavior thing. What did you find?