I, many visitors this blog and others have, from time to time, been individually or collective guilty of claiming, erhmm.. suggesting we know precisely what GMU “must” do during a plagiarism investigation and how it will unfold. Others are more cautious.
Still, blogs being blogs, it seems to me some people have been making proclamations that there can only be one answer to questions like:
- Must GMU investigate every allegation of plagiarism ‘out there’ (in Mashey SSWR, at Deeps etc.)? Or can they limit to precisely those allegations submitted in writing to them?
- What is GMU’s plagiarism policy as applied to faculty?
- Could they be investigating former graduate students?
- Are Bradley’s citation practices relevant?
- Does Bradley have any further role once the investigation begins? For example, if he told the university he was ” prepared to drop this matter if Wegman makes a request to have his report withdrawn from the Congressional Record.” (as suggested at Climate Audit, would his dropping the matter end the GMU investigation of the allegations?
No. I’m not going to hunt links at 11enty-7 blogs finding evidence that someone somewhere has given a definitive proclamation on these sorts of things.
But, I am going to do something novel. I’m going to try to list the relevant GMU documents I found and we probably ought to read if we wish to begin to guess the answers. Of course, I’ll add a bit of speculation. 🙂
Faculty Handbook
I think it’s best to start with the faculty handbook. The current GMU faculty handbook appears to be this rather brief document available for download here
The portion that seems most relevant to plagiarism investigations at GMU appears to be:
83B2.10.2 Professional Ethics
Although no set of rules or professional code can guarantee or take the place of a scholar’s personal integrity, the University believes that the “Statement of Professional Ethics” and the “Statement on Plagiarism” promulgated by the American Association of University Professors at http://www.aaup.org/aaup serve as a reminder of the obligations assumed by all members of the professoriate. Faculty members must also adhere to the ethical standards of their respective professional associations and to university policies related to professional ethics (e.g., Research and Scholarship Misconduct, Responsible Use of Computing) while employed by the University
AAUP “Statement on Plagiarism”
Naturally, I wanted to read the AAUP “Statement on Plagiarism”. The AAUP policy documents are listed here. But the “Statement on Plagiarism” is not hyperlinked.
This is a shame because this document, might enlighten us more than pages governing undergraduates. Does anyone have a link to the AAUP document? (Those inclined to google might be interested in knowing the AAUP book discussing policies is called “The Red Book”.)
I googled a little and found this tidbit from http://www.umich.edu/~aaupum/plag01.html which appears to be associated with University of Michigan’s Chapter of AAUP:
The AAUP “Red Book” in its Statement on Plagiarism (page 109) defines the offense as: “taking over the ideas, methods, or written words of another, without acknowledgement and with the intention that they be taken as the work of the deceiver.” In this case, attribution for the alleged plagiarized document is given to the Department of Aerospace Engineering. The parent document listed four members of that department as authors. In addition the AAUP Statement acknowledges that issues of academic plagiarism are influenced by “complexities and shades of difference” and they temper their edict that “the professor must scrupulously acknowledge every intellectual debt for ideas, methods, and expressions” with the conclusion “by means appropriate to the form of communication”.
The obvious question vis. Copygate is what means are appropriate in a report to Barton’s Congressional Committee? On the one hand, the report is not a book, journal article, or ph.d. thesis The report is not mere oral testimony, email, or conversation over beer after a conference.
Oddly, as I ponder the question “What is the form of this communication”, the more mystified I feel. After discussion at ClimateAudit, and some hunting around, I doubt it’s part of the Congressional Record, I’m not sure if it’s officially ‘published’ by anyone! That might argue for a very low standard of acknowledgment. Yet, since authors know reports to congressional committees will be widely read, the appropriate form of acknowledgment falls ought to be quite high.
I tend toward the later view. Will GMU thinks so? Are their precedents to tell us what GMU or other Universities decided in the past? I don’t know!
University Policies
Moving away from what is plagiarism and how does it apply to reports to congressional committees, I tried, to learn more about procedures that might govern the Wegman plagiarism investigation itself. I found University Policy Number 4007
Subject: Misconduct In Research and Scholarship is here, which I found by clicking “research” in the sidebar at the top level page discussing University Policies.
Reading the procedure, it seems to me that GMU would start with a list of specific allegations, likely based on a written complaint by someone communicating a finite list of complaints with evidence for each. The committee would form a plan to investigate those specific allegations; the plan need to be designed to investigate allegation “out there” on the web, but not in the formal complaint filed with GMU. If, during the course of investigating those, the committee found evidence to support other allegations, the committee would be required to follow a formal process for expanding the scope of the investigation. So, at least in principle, the list of allegations could expand beyond those in the original complaint.
However, it also seems to me that depending on the precise list of allegations at the start of the investigation there is no guarantee the the committee would discover evidence to add new allegations to the list. This is true even if evidence exists on some blog, somewhere. A focused plan might not include the step of “scour the blogs!”
As I do not know the list of allegations, I can’t guess the likely outcome of the GMU investigation!
Turning to the impact on people other than Wegman: It seems the investigation can spawn investigations of people other than Wegman if, in the course of following their plan to investigate, they find evidence against others in their jurisdiction.
Some have suggested former graduate students could be caught in this snare. I found nothing specifically discussing initiation of investigations of former graduate students for past academic mis-deeds while at GMU. So, for the time being, it seems that GMU would not do anything about that. (That seems a bit odd to me, but maybe it is so.) If you find anything let me know.
Turning to Bradley, one wonders whether Bradley would have an active role in the investigation, and whether his referencing practices of Bradly in his book could, under any circumstances, be relevant.
It seems to me the answer to the former question is, yes. Bradley would likely be interviewed either as a complainant or as a person having information. I suspect his being willing to drop his complaint in return for something he would like Wegman to do would have little effect on further investigation.
Reading GMU’s policies, it seems to me the answer to the second question also appear to be yes, Bradley’s referencing practices might be relevant to the outcome of the investiation. This is not because Bradley is Bradley, or even that he might the one complainant. It is because GMU’s policy reads:
A finding of research misconduct requires that
(a) The misconduct be committed intentionally, knowingly, or recklessly; and(b) The allegation be proven by a preponderance of the evidence; and
(c) There be a significant departure from accepted practices of the relevant research community.
We can argue until the cows come home about (a) and (b). But I think most on the panel investigating Wegman would think practices by Bradley as exhibited in his textbook are relevant pieces of evidence if one wishes to gauge of “accepted practices of the relevant research community”.
Of course, as one blog visitor in particular likes to remind people, nothing we in the peanut gallery say or think matters because it’s all in the hands of the committee at GMU.
True enough.
But the irrelevance and likely invisibility of our opinions, evidence or discussion to the committee, is no reason why we (and voluble he) can’t all continue to share our ideas about the investigation, compare the referencing practices of Wegman vs. Bradley, speculate about the precise allegations of the complaint sent to GMU, or pretty much discuss anything we wish to discuss (provided it doesn’t amount to libel, defamation or what not.)
So, with that, I recommend you curtail discussion on the previous comment thread, and start up here. 🙂
If Wegman is guilty of plagiarism, are his conclusions therefore wrong?
Any finding of plagiarism is irrelevant to determining whether the conclusions are correct.
Lucia you ask in the previous thread “I don’t see how withdrawal would in anyway remedy anything arising from plagiarism” unless it happened to be accompanied by a copyright violation.”
Its common for articles to be retracted when plagiarism is discovered (google will give you lots of incidences) and there have even been retractions where the plagiarism has been from Wikipedia.
Of course, copyright issues go in tandem but I expect you can find cases of retractions where the plagiarism has been from journals of the same publisher.
Thats why I said I’m surprised Said, Wegman et al 2007 hasn’t been retracted yet.
Yeah, that was my take on it too. It just seems, to a dummy like me, that Bradley and others weren’t happy with Wegman’s report and, lacking any other line of argument, came up with a distraction. Thus Bradley’s offer to drop it if Wegman withdraws his report. And by making counterclaims against Bradley and arguing about this, it appears we’ve been officially distracted.
For newcomers (if any) to this debate, a good place to start is the discussion at CA,
Bradley Tries to Deal
Well, maybe not the first — but unless you’ve been visiting Mars, you probably already know the basics. If not, University investigating prominent climate science critic (USA Today).
Anyway, my opinion is, this is a power-play gone disastrously wrong for Bradley and the Team. Time will tell, but Bradley is literally a laughing-stock now. “Clearly, text was just lifted verbatim from my book and placed in the (Wegman) report,” says Bradley — except he didn’t really write the text in question, but instead “lifted” much of it from an earlier textbook! Can we say, “Biter bit?”
AndrewT
I’m not sure this example contradicts what I meant (or even what I said!)
Of course papers in which plagiarism is found can be retracted. But I don’t think this is a “remedy” for the person who was plagiarized. A journal retracting a paper they published is maintaining the quality of the journal’s own brand. In some sense, the “injury” was to the journal– not the person plagiarized. Right? Wrong?
Of course, the person who is plagiarized is likely to be pleased as punch. But the journal would retract it whether or not the person plagiarized gave permission for the plagiarism and whether or not they complained. Heck, if the person plagiarized was a hard working ghost-writer in India making a living selling stuff for academics to submit and publish, the journal would still yank the thing. So, this has very little to do with a remedy for the person whose stuff was plagiarized.
So, in this case, whoever “published” the report (Congress?), not Wegman, might, in prinicple, retract it. If their motivations were the same as journals, that would presumably be to maintain the brand of Congress as “publisher.” But if that’s congress, “retracting” would detract from their “brand” , because no one wants Congress re-writing the history associated with their proceedings.
Who’s the publisher? Has the issue come to their attention?
Said, Wegman et al 2007 was published in an Elsevier journal. Elsevier are the publisher of Bradley’s text and have already raised with Springer copyright issues arising from Rapp excerpting extensively from Wegman et al 2006 including the parts due to Bradley – but Elsevier is a big company .
A member of the journal’s advisory board, and an Associate Editor at the time are aware of the plagiarism from Wikipedia and other sources – as they were authors – which is why I’m surprised they haven’t retracted the paper – rather than wait for the journal to do so.
andrewt
Do we know this? I read a snippet at The Bunny’s, but I haven’t seen anything to indicate Elsevier has already raised the issue of copyright with springer.
Anyway, I’m not particularly surprised Wegman and Said haven’t requested a retraction of their own paper.
I understand you think Wegman and Said should retract their paper or, failing that, that the journal ought to retract it. What I don’t see is how it’s in Wegman or Said’s interest to retract their paper. If they disagree with you and think the journal should not retract it, why do you think the would or should retract it?
Retracting it themselves would cause them just as much harm as having the journals retract it. Why wouldn’t they wait for the journal to go through the process of weighing information and let the journal do it?
AndrewT–
Sorry, my mistake on the Rapp letter. It starts:
I still don’t see why Wegman/Said would retract though.
Peter D. Tillman #55879
“Clearly, text was just lifted verbatim from my book and placed in the (Wegman) report,†says Bradley — except he didn’t really write the text in question, but instead “lifted†much of it from an earlier textbook! Can we say, “Biter bit?â€
Please detail the text – any text – that was taken from an earlier book, lifted by Bradley, and then used by Wegman.
The university should ignore the complaint by Bradley since it’s intent was to intimidate a congressional witness… they’ll just end up being accessories thus leaving themselves open to criminal prosecution.
That leaves Nick Stokes with nothing more to do except maybe think of cool care packages that Bradley can share with Bubba in the big house.
Turning to the impact on people other than Wegman: It seems the investigation can spawn investigations of people other than Wegman if, in the course of following their plan to investigate, they find evidence against others in their jurisdiction.
Some have suggested former graduate students could be caught in this snare. I found nothing specifically discussing initiation of investigations of former graduate students for past academic mis-deeds while at GMU. So, for the time being, it seems that GMU would not do anything about that. (That seems a bit odd to me, but maybe it is so.) If you find anything let me know.
Rescinding a degree when plagiarized material is present is fairly routine, e,g.:
“A paragraph of the Ohio Supreme Court’s opinion in Waliga is worth quoting here: We consider it self-evident that a college or university acting through its board of trustees does have the inherent authority to revoke an improperly awarded degree where (1) good cause such as fraud, deceit, or error is shown, and (2) the degree-holder is afforded a fair hearing at which he can present evidence and protect his interest. Academic degrees are a university’s certification to the world at large of the recipient’s educational achievement and fulfillment of the institution’s standards. To hold that a university may never withdraw a degree, effectively requires the university to continue making a false certification to the public at large of the accomplishment of persons who in fact lack the very qualifications that are certified. Such a holding would undermine public confidence in the integrity of degrees, call academic standards into question, and harm those who rely on the certification which the degree represents. Waliga v. Board of Trustees, 488 N.E.2d 850, 852 (Ohio 1986). Quoted with approval in: Hand v. Matchett, 957 F.2d 791, 794 (10thCir. 1992); Crook v. Baker, 813 F.2d 88, 93 (6thCir. 1987); Faulkner v. Univ. of Tennessee, 1994 WL 642765 at *6 (Tenn.Ct.App. 1994).”
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/religion/2118549/replies?c=90
Phil–
Over 10 years ago, I read of an undergrad having their BS rescinded at U of I. What I didn’t see was GMU’s policy, so I can’t read what’s involved at GMU.
I was expecting to find something at the policies page, but clicking can be inefficient.
MikeC–Your theory sounds very fanciful!
“accepted practices of the relevant research communityâ€.
If they are really going to learn that from scratch, they’d need to look at more than one author. But in fact the relevant research community is statistics, not climate science. And Wegman tells us they are a long way apart.
“However, it also seems to me that depending on the precise list of allegations at the start of the investigation there is no guarantee the the committee would discover evidence to add new allegations to the list.”
I doubt if they’ll follow the CA policy of “Look only at Sec 2.1. Under no circumstances look at Sec 2.3 or elsewhere!”. For what if someone later complains about Sec 2.3? Do they hold a new investigation?
Anyway, it’s likely that someone somewhere has drawn Mashey’s report to their attention.
I’d guess that Bradley’s conduct will not be of assistance under:
“(c) There be a significant departure from accepted practices of the relevant research community.â€
The relevant research community is likely to be considered George Mason University and the policy recites that:
“ the George Mason University community will pursue their research and scholarly activities in a manner that is consistent with the highest standards of ethical, scientific, and scholarly practiceâ€
The policy contemplates that the Complainant, Bradley, will be interviewed by the Respondent/s, Wegman and Said? who may be present, with counsel to advise, and direct questions to the Complainant. The Complainant is not compellable and the procedure does not say what happens if he declines to be interviewed.
Paragraph a. may prove more fruitful.
“A finding of research misconduct requires that –
            (a) The misconduct be committed intentionally, knowingly, or recklessly;â€
This allows an obvious defence in multi-authored papers in that the Respondent may not have acted intentionally, knowingly or recklessly in allowing the appropriated material to be published under his/her name. The Respondent may well have read and agreed the full wording but been unaware of the appropriation, and therefore the lack of appropriate credit, because they had never seen the source documents.
If the other persons who prepared the text were professional academics then they were entitled to rely on an implied representation that the text was prepared in accordance with professional ethics. It surely can’t be considered reckless to presume competence and probity in academic peers.
This debate is so strange, given that the Uni is investigating and that’s that.
What’s weirder is that people think the Wegman Report is important for either tribe. Jeepers, the proxy methods discussed (which is a very small part of the document) weren’t being used even when it was new off the press.
Why do people care about it? It’s old and irrelevant
A lot of your questions are answered by DC.
Like the first – you’d better go look there, but my understanding is the have a preliminary inquiry to see if it’s worth having a formal investigation (whic is where they are now). These all have documentedtime frames (or expected time frames) and they are well behind schedule at the moment.
From DC:
[Update, Oct. 11: George Mason University spokesperson Doug Walsch has clarified that the complaint against Wegman has moved past the preliminary “inquiry” phase and is now under formal investigation. ]
From DC
http://i.usatoday.net/communitymanager/_photos/science-fair/2010/10/07/gmuletterx-large.jpg
There’s a letter to Bradley from the Uni, replying to his request for an update. So Bradley lodged the complaint in April?
There’s heaps more about the rules behind plagiarism etc.
People keep getting confused, unsurprisingly, because the complex plagiarism maze (SSWR Appendix A.0) surprises even experienced publishing people.
Bradley’s March & April letters covered 2 different chains:
1) Bradley to WR
(and WR to Rapp is an offshoot, Bradley did not report that to GMU)
Anyone can report plagiarism; copyright needs copyright owner.
Rapp posted some email. He starts:
“I sent this email to Elsevier and Ray Bradley who wrote to my publisher implying that I committed plagiarism in my book Assessing Climate Change:
Dear Mr. Fedor and Dr. Bradley:” ( I *really* recommend reading that in its entirety. It is truly mysterious that Rapp thinks Wegman has no problem.)
Hence, Springer has been informed.
2) SNA (Wasserman&Faust, deNooy, et al)
a) SNA to WR
b) WR to [SAI2008] (paper date, was published online mid-2007, so people get confused). That is Said, Wegman, Sharabati and Rigsby.
Sharabati was a PhD student, who re-used almost-identical material in his dissertation, except forgetting to fix the silly “statues”. Rigsby had finished his MS in 2005. I’m not sure if he’d started working on PhD then.
Bradley mentioned both a) and b), and also mentioned the *funding* issues of b), which would cause VP Research at most universities to react very quickly. Plagiarism is bad. Funding mis-use is worse. Far worse is an institution showing incompetence/unwillingness to handle academic misconduct appropriately. People might be wise to learn about DHHS ORI.
Neither of these were *copyright* complaints; both are published by Cambridge. [SAI2008] injected a mostly-irrelevant citation to famous old paper by an SNA researcher into the middle of text from Wikipedia, likely to make it look good. Amusingly, *that* researcher was also the series editor for both books plagiarized. Probably not a smart choice.
Before someone asks, I have no idea if Cambridge is pursuing the 2 books X 4 separate cases implicit in SSWR W.2.3.
Lucia, the motivation for the authors themselves to retract the paper but would be to basically to bite-the-bullet, show you realize what you’ve done is completely unacceptable and try to move on, rather than have it drag out.
Although they may have endless defenders on this and other blogs, Wegman et al. surely realize what’ve they’ve done is academically indefensible, so they know the journal paper will be retracted.
I don’t share Nick Stokes confidence confidence in GMU conducting a broad investigation – if GMU just look at the Wegman et al 2006 use of material from Bradley’s text then do very little. Maybe Wegman et al then hope to quietly as possible retract the 2007 paper and get the theses fixed. Who knows.
One issue with the 2007 paper is that it acknowledges several federal grants. NIH may feel cutting&pasting Wikipedia isn’t how they’d like their money spent.
” ..Far worse is an institution showing incompetence/unwillingness to handle academic misconduct appropriately..”
.
Your right…I had completely forgotten how hard Mann’s university came down on him for academic misconduct with funding issues 🙂
#55938
…GMU conducting a broad investigation…
Andrew, check John Mashey’s post. It looks like Bradley’s complaint was broad.
Ed
“Your right…I had completely forgotten how hard Mann’s university came down on him for academic misconduct with funding issues”
Obviously then, Mann’s conduct was fine.
Re: John Mashey ,
Are Bradley’s April and March letters online anywhere?
AndrewT
This just looks like kicking the can further. I get that you think Wegman and Said must think they did something wrong; it’s not clear they do. But even if Wegman or Said think they’ve done something wrong, how would showing they realize what they’ve done is unacceptable be in Wegman or Said’s interest? How would anything “less bad” happen after a voluntary retraction now rather than waiting and seeing what happens?
It seems to me that waiting and seeing has, on the balance, better chances for better outcomes.
Nick like Lucia I’ve never seen Bradley’s letters – but it sounds like you are right.
Lucia maybe you are right – although as he is on the advisory board Wegman should feel an extra duty to inform the journal editor – and I’d think the editor would take one look at the side-by-side comparison with Wikipedia & de Nooy et al and retract the paper immediately – but who knows.
Another possibility is Wegman et al. might think the retraction of the journal paper would increase the pressure for the congressional report to be retracted (if such a thing is possible).
Even if the “Report” was “unpublished”, his Testimony is his testimony, and retracting it has an air of repudiation which is perhaps the theatrical goal of all of this.
The “testimony” is here:
http://archives.energycommerce.house.gov/reparchives/108/Hearings/07192006hearing1987/hearing.htm
Along with his second testimony:
http://republicans.energycommerce.house.gov/108/hearings/07272006Hearing2001/Wegman.pdf
The Wegman Report is still on government servers, here:
http://republicans.energycommerce.house.gov/108/home/07142006_Wegman_Report.pdf
They call themselves an ‘Ad Hoc Committee”. If we knew better how this committee was formed–under what authority, I think that might better explain what the status of the document is.
One more time: people really, really need to learn about DHHS ORI, such as this.
This starts:
“When ORI receives a report of an institutional inquiry or investigation into allegations of research misconduct, it reviews the report for timeliness, objectivity, thoroughness, and competence.”
Side-by-side presentation of obvious plagiarism is so clear that any sensible VP Research
(a) spends a few minutes looking at it, appoints an inquiry committee that ought to meet within a week,
to say “Yep, that’s enough evidence for an investigation” (b) and
(c) get an investigation going.
No sensible VP Research is going to mess around with ORI by taking 7 months to even get to (b)….
well, actually, the evidence is that it’s past 7 months and still not to (b)…
and this sort of thing does *not* amuse ORI.
(Be careful of the general term investigation in USA Today versus the precise meaning of inquiry-vs-investigation in GMU policy 4007 and the ORI documentation.)
Many people have been discussing this without reading the relevant slices of SSWR or noticing interesting comments there and wondering why I wrote what I wrote.
While it was clear in March that the WR had plagiarized material, when Bradley wrote the first letter there was far less evidence regarding who was likely to have done it(other than fact that Wegman as senior and lead author had overall responsibility.)
The WR had 3 authors: Wegman (GMU), Scott (Rice U), Said (GMU). Hopefully, that’s enough of a hint, as I say no more in that direction.
bob dention
““A finding of research misconduct requires that –
(a) The misconduct be committed intentionally, knowingly, or recklessly;â€
well GMU has been shown the way by the committe that cleared Jones. AR4 chapter5 was a multiple author affair and jones was cleared on that account.
Given the writing assignments on the WR ( who was assigned what sections) it is likely that they cannot find that Wegman actually “wrote” the sections in question.
steven mosher (Comment#55973) October 22nd, 2010 at 11:32 pm
There was nothing wrong with AR4 Chapter 5.
This debate is so strange, given that the Uni is investigating and that’s that.
.
Best comment in the thread. In the last few threads, even.
Just considering possible outcomes based on GMU Research Misconduct Policy:
“The committee then prepares a final investigation report to the Vice President. In the report, the committee –
———–
(iv) identifies any publications that need correction or retraction; —- “
This is not specifically expressed to be contingent on a finding of research misconduct. It’s possible that the Vice President (who makes the determinations based on findings and recommendations of the investigating committee) could make a finding that there was no research misconduct yet still recommend that administrative action – in the form of a direction to issue a correction – could be made to the Provost. Again administrative action against the Respondent is not expressed to be contingent on a finding of research misconduct.
So one possible outcome is that some or all of the Respondents are cleared of plagiarism but a direction is nonetheless made to correct the report by appending appropriate attribution.
Nick–
In principle, yes, they would have to look at many authors to fully and truly understand the full range of referencing practices in a field, sub-field, niche or what have you.
But the investigation requires them to formulate a “plan” to investigate. This is probably necessary to limit the scope and make sure that an investigation doesn’t suck up an infinite amount of time. With respect to the question of plagiarism of Bradley (as opposed to the social network stuff), I could perfectly well imagine that the “plan” could involve examining and compare referencing practices of those most closely involved: Bradley in the book Wegman allegedly plagiarized from Wegman in his report. (Also, Wegman has a change to respond, and he could do this.)
I some sense, the chapter on dendro-climatology the Wegman report must correspond to the niche in which Bradley’s book falls. If it did not, how would any alleged plagiarism arise? So, that could easily be interpreted as the appropriate field in which Wegman was working when writing his report. Also, the field of paleo-climatology has not raised any uproar over Bradley’s book– so presumably, they accept that citation practice–non?
After this modestly time consuming step, the panel could decide if they need to know more or whether they have sufficient evidence to say “Based on practices of Bradley, we have some evidence Wegman, when writing chapters on dendro-climatology– followed the citations practices in the niche for both works. At a minimum, there is reasonable doubt Wegman violated them.” (Reasonable doubt is mentioned as a standard in the GMU policies. So, if one case creates reasonable doubt, that might suffice.)
Of course, the panel could be wrong. It could be the case that both Bradley and Wegman are well outside the practices in paleoclimatology or dendro-climatology and all would scream bloody murder if they only realized…..
But, in terms of “legal” process, I could see a finding that there is at least reasonable doubt that Wegman citation in the “Bradley” sections was outside the standards of paleo-climatology. I don’t see why they need to start from scratch or do a ph.d. study to establish the full range of accepted referencing practices in dendro-climatology.
Of course, if we turn to the social network stuff, this line of figuring out acceptable practices doesn’t apply. Bradley doesn’t represent the niche for the social network stuff.
As is stands, the WR has:
a) Various chunks of simple plagiarism.
b) Most of the summaries of papers include various elements of *misrepresentation* as the sources are identified. Some are marginal, but all that I found are enumerated in SSWR W.11.
c) As it stands, WR 2.1 on Bradley on tree-rings is plagiarism, unless all the cut-and-paste gets quoted. As it stands, it contains about 11 instances of *fabrication* of which at least 2 are major. If the vague cite of Bradley is taken as covering that whole section, then the 11 cases are *misrepresentation* of Bradley. Either one is deadly, take your pick.
John–
Are Bradley’s March and April letters on line? You seem to know what’s in them and are revealing some of their contents. Have you gained access and read them?
Lucia, Not really fanciful. The purpose of Bradley’s complaint was to intimidate a witness and obstruct congress.
… and since Mashey seems to be working hand in hand with Bradlwy on this, I wonder if he might be criminally charged as an accessory.
MikeC–
The fanciful part is that GMU should ignore complaints about plagiarism based on the complainants motive. If there is evidence of plagiarism, their policies require them to investigate. There is no exemption for “unless the person who lodges the complaint has impure motives.”
Lucia, No, because if they pursue the complaint after they were made aware that it was part of a plan to obstruct congress, then continuing the investigation makes them part and party to the crime.
MikeC–
You are getting really fanciful.
“A” makes request “B” does something illegal in exchange for “A” doing something he thinks “B” wants. “B” acceeds. GMU pursues plagiarism charge. “B” doesn’t get anything B could really want– which might be for GMU to not pursue the plagiarism charge.
“A” makes request “B” does something illegal in exchange for “A” doing something he thinks “B” wants. “B” refuses. GMU pursues plagiarism charge. “B” doesn’t get anything B could really want– which might be for GMU to not pursue the plagiarism charge.
When deciding to how to respond to A’s request, “B” knows GMU will be unaffected by “As” request. It’s their policy to investigate anyway.
How is GMU pursuing plagiarism charge abetting A?
A’s request that B do the possibly illegal thing doesn’t affect their decision. B knows it. “B” knows that his complying with A will not get him what B wants. So, GMU’s decision can’t influence what B does.
I see that “The Blackboard” got a mention in Scientific American in the piece about Judith Curry.
MikeC,
I’m not sure how you are possibly able to justify the “plan to obstruct Congress” charge. The report was submitted years ago. Testimony has ended. How can there be obstruction?
On the other hand, any accusation which casts doubt on the credibility of testimony already given to Congress should certainly be pursued. It’s not in any way hindering Congress to look into the possibility of false past testimony.
And as far as I know, the accusations are three fold.
The first, that material has been plagiarized, has implications for the careers of the parties involved, irrespective of the veracity of the document or any impact on Congress.
The second, if the material has been plagiarized, speaks to the integrity and position of a group claiming to be experts in a field in which a large amount of the material submitted was plagiarized, which puts the veracity of their testimony and any report into question. At a minimum, their claim to authority before Congress hints of something approaching perjury.
The third is that, to my knowledge, some of the copied sections of text were changed in ways which alter their meaning, and result in erroneous statements. This, especially if it was done intentionally to achieve a predetermined aim and to mislead Congress in a specific direction, is the most serious charge.
Your easy willingness, even rabid vehemence, to dismiss the crime of plagiarism, when the act itself was performed in pursuit of a rabid attack on a climate researcher… well, it speaks volumes to how willing people are to take sides based on political beliefs and personal preferences, rather than integrity and justice.
Hank– Interesting. I’ll have to read what they wrote.
Bob–
It seems to me you’re notion in B are almost as fanciful as MikeC’s but in the other direction! Perjury? Nonesense.
This is simply incorrect
The “copied” sections aren’t necessarily “copied”. The “changes” in the “copied” bits correspond to includeing correct information that is discussed in othertext books on dendrochronology. That is: Fritts (an text book written earlier) said CO2 affects tree ring widths. Bradley does not. Wegman included CO2 in his list of things that affect ring widths.
Bob–
This is also nonsense:
The Wegman report is not a “rabid attack on a climate researcher”. It answers a question about uncertainty (or problem) in climate reconstructions. People were arguing about this at the time, and congressman wanted to know. The correct answer happened to be that the uncertainty identified by MM really was an uncertainty (i.e. problem for MBH).
It also addresses a question about how “independent” different groups work is. Since all the “different” work was done by the “same” people, it’s not quite the same as totally different people getting the same result independently. This matters for analysis whose results are strongly influenced by choices like which proxies to use, or whose methods of creating reconstructions might be largely similar. (It doesn’t always matter.)
Few dispute the correctness of these findings. So, I don’t know why you would think Wegman was gunning for a climate scientist.
#56078
“So, I don’t know why you would think Wegman was gunning for a climate scientist.”
Well, presenting an image like this (Fig 5,3 WR) to Congress does suggest a rather personal focus. And yes, I’m sure Barton and Co were only interested in the graph theory aspects and what it might mean for decentred principle components analysis.
How does that represent “an attack”? There was more than one question being considered. One had to do with decentered principle component analysis. The other question had to do with whether the various hockey stick analyses were “independent” — a claim often advanced. The social network analysis relates to the second question, which is a perfectly legitimate question to ask under the circumstances that existed and given the types of choices that must be made when creating any proxy reconstruction.
Since Lucia pretty much took care of the BS from Bob and Nick, let me address the crime aspect. Bradley is simply telling Wegman… Pull your report from the congressional record or I’ll do (or try to do) something to harm you. Bradley and team are more than welcome to dispute the report, but to try to have it removed from the record is obstruction of congress. I see a blackmail aspect to this as well…. all punishable by hard time in the big house… and I doubt that the university would want to help Bradley achieve his criminal goals unless they want to be an accessory.
Further, I’d say Cuccinelli should take a look at this since his investigation considers the content of the Wegman report… but since his investigation is civil, it probably wouldn’t result in prison time for Bradley and Mashey if they were found trying to obstruct the VA AG investigation.
Lucia #56083
“How does that represent “an attackâ€?”
Well, from the caption:
“The cliques are very clear in this layout. In addition to the Mann-Rutherford-Jones-Osborn-Briffa-Bradley-Hughes clique there are several others that are readily apparent. They are Rind-Shindell-Schmidt-Miller, Cook-D’Arrigo-Jacoby-Wilson, Folland-Vellinga-Allan-Knight, Stahle-Shugart-Therrell-Druckenbrod-Cleveland, Sangoyomi-Moon-Lall-Abarbanel, and Clement-Zebiak-Cane.”
Straight from Heathers. This goes on for about 8 pages. Then there are just 2 pages on other reconstructions. Mainly 2 big diagrams – one on commonality of proxy sources, and one of actual results. And on the results, they don’t refer to the clique analysis once. If you want to know what clique the actual reconstructors are in, you have to look it up yourself.
Give it up, Nick, Bradley’s little criminal plot has been exposed.
Nick Stokes (Comment#56087) October 23rd, 2010 at 4:48 pm
QFT. They didn’t want a simple answer on a technical point. That would have taken one person a few pages to do. Instead there was 91 pages and, IIRC, four authors, most of which did not answer the question.
It came to four conclusions that had nothing to do with the analysis, that appeared to be based on the conclusion that a travesty of science had been committed.
At the same time Wegman was quite content to accept a temperature reconstruction that no one knew the provenance of, that had been put in the first report when the IPCC was getting started, for which there was not documentation or any backing evidence at all. It is mind boggling the to see the most raked over report in history dissected 100 ways used as evidence of gross incompetence, conspiracy and malpractice, while a graph that has no backing evidence whatsoever is accepted without question. It would appear to me that the graph that is accepted is not attacked, for it should never have been in the first report, and was an embarrassment.
If you look at the findings, they have nothing to do with the recommendations. As for the network analysis, Mann was doing leading edge research. He should be commended for it, not criticized.
Re: Nick Stokes ,
Ok.. so you kicked the can. Now, how does the caption to the figure represent an attack?
Lucia #56099
A statistician invited to analyse the statistics in MBH99 has to resort to school-yard gossip about scientists? And if it’s not an attack, what use is it? He never relates it to anything.
Nick (#56087)
Exactly what in your post do you think constitutes evidence of an “attack” ? That Wegman et al. uses real examples?
And, by the way, there is a reference to the social network analysis. From the findings:
[Wegman et al., “AD HOC COMMITTEE REPORT ON THE ‘HOCKEY STICK’ GLOBAL CLIMATE RECONSTRUCTION”, 2006.*]
[*That oughta keep me out of trouble with the p.p.]
Nick (#56087)
Sorry, the first part of my previous (#56105) has already been answered (post crossed). However, this isn’t “schoolyard gossip.” It supports the finding I cited, and
[Wegman et al., op.cit.]
Nick Stokes (Comment#56102) October 23rd, 2010 at 6:31 pm
It was done with a very nice fig leaf of ‘social analysis’. I would have liked to see the chart for the Curies and their research into radiation, or the early research into quantum mechanics. When you research a new field of science, the number of people researching it will necessarily be small. To criticize people for that is nonsensical.
Look at the early days of quantum mechanics.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_mechanics
Highly statistical, no statisticians. They also got it ‘wrong’, in that the research is still ongoing into this field of science. Why didn’t they just get it perfectly right back in the twenties. Maybe if they had used the services of a statistician it would have happened?
HaroldW, he never makes use of the analysis of who’s in what clique. If he wants to say that they don’t write papers with statisticians – you don’t need pages of graphs to show that. And titghtly-knit? All he’s shown is that they write joint papers.
Mathematicians long ago made a joke (appropriately) of this sort of stuff with the Erdos Number.
Nick– So what if mathematicians made a joke about the Erdos numbers. Are there any statisticians in that network? There is nothing wrong with showing whether there are some statiscians or none using a tool of social network analysis which reveals that the tight-connections and lack of statiscians are a measurable objective fact rather than a vague guess. Being specific about the connections and using an illustrative tool to show what they are doesn’t make the observation of a fact “an attack”. It just makes the fact clearer to the audience.
Uhmm… of course… uhmmm… if that’s a fact people don’t want other to know… maybe being clear is a “bad thing” in their mind. They would prefer ambiguity. But it still doesn’t transform presenting objective facts clearly into “an attack”.
Dr. Wegman, from the hearings:
> Dr. Mann has an unusually large reach in terms of influence.
Source: http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/getdoc.cgi?dbname=109_house_hearings&docid=f:31362.wais
How are the figure or the caption “school yard gossip”? Anyway, I’ve never thought there is anything particularly wrong with “gossip”. It’s often difficult to find the specific important feature that distinguishes “gossip” form “news”. Are stories about Bernie Madoff gossip or news? Is who got a grant from the government gossip or news? Are discussions of Alexi Giannoulias’s family bank lending to the mob gossip? Or news? &etc.
In my experience, the word gossip is quite used by people who want to suggest that some particular fact is “news one should not talk about for fear too many people will learn the facts”. Tagging on “school yard” usually means we should add “really really fear way tooooooo many people will learn incontravertable facts.”
http://wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn?s=attack
– attack, onslaught, onset, onrush ((military) an offensive against an enemy (using weapons))
.
– attack (an offensive move in a sport or game)
.
– fire, attack, flak, flack, blast (intense adverse criticism)
.
– approach, attack, plan of attack (ideas or actions intended to deal with a problem or situation)
.
– attack, attempt (the act of attacking)
.
– attack, tone-beginning (a decisive manner of beginning a musical tone or phrase)
.
-attack (a sudden occurrence of an uncontrollable condition)
.
– attack (the onset of a corrosive or destructive process (as by a chemical agent))
.
– attack (strong criticism) “he published an unexpected attack on my work”
The fact is that Wegman showed a network of Mann’s coauthors (big surprise, Mann is in the center of the network) which is not a network analysis of those who study paleoclimate, although the Wegman Report treats it as such.
Here is an example of what can be done. BTW, the tool used was Pajek, and yes Lucia, the Wegman Report plagiarized from the Pajek handbook.
sorry bugs
chapter 4.
Lucia #56099
I think McIntyre lets the cat out of the bag in this topic. He berates the North report for not ‘grasping the nettle’ and beating up on MBH. He is bitterly disappointed that they didn’t see the Wegman report for what it truly was.
http://climateaudit.org/2006/06/22/nas-panel-report/
He wants an attack, and is accusing them of being weak in not pursuing one.
steven mosher (Comment#56150) October 23rd, 2010 at 10:22 pm
Chapter 4 looks fine too.
Lucia,
When I speculated at CA that Bradley’s textbook text-reconstructions might have been with the approval of Fritts and his publisher and that they might have been paid for the material, you reminded me, correctly, that we were discussing plagiarism not copyright.
We’ve all been advised that plagiarism is not a tort which would suggest to me that it has not been contemplated in all of its possibilities and variations by our legal minds over the centuries. Without this rich heritage of interpretation, we have to make it up ourselves.
I see that “intent to deceive” (my paraphrasing) is a part of the definition you’ve printed above.
If intent is a requirement to raise copying or reproduction to the level of plagiarism, than you need intent. And intent seemed to me not yet known in the Bradley text issues.
Yes, I know that Steve has clearly demonstrated the loss of references to Fritts’ work in successive issues of Bradley’s textbook, but I continue to think the even though the “copying” or “reproduction” is obvious, the plagiarism is not. Intent.
I might add, that applying the requirement of “intent to deceive” to the Wegman papers would make me also doubt that the copying there has risen to the level of the academic naughtiness of plagiarism.
I thought the accusations with regard to Wegman silly and Steve’s discovery and exposition of the glass house Bradley seems to live in interesting but not entirely compelling without the context I refer to above.
Now if we were looking at simony, maybe we’d be on to something.
You seem to miss the difference between original research and a textbook.
J Ferguson if you think the allegations against Wegman et al. are silly you can’t understand them, for example, Said, Wegman et al 2007 has almost 100 words from Wikipedia including a complete paragraph verbatim. And they have 3 paragraphs largely verbatim and totalling almost 300 words from de Nooy et al (uncited in the paper). Not to mention ~200 words from Wasserman & Faust who at least get cited elsewhere in the paper.
A single plagiarized paragraph can be enough for a paper to be retracted and also enough for an academic to be disciplined by their institution. And even less for students I’ve mentioned here a student expelled for taking 3 phrases totalling 25 words from wikipedia (and Phil. said his institution would react similarly).
And its not just this paper, similar very obvious problems exist with the 2006 report and several dissertations.
I do like Wegman’s audacity in his social network analysis in his paper. While berating Climate Scientists for not taking on the expert services of a statistician in their paper, he then proceeds to make a social network analysis, an area in which he has no expertise, and relies upon Wikipedia for the information.
andrewt.
I think I can continue to feel the charge of plagiarism against Wegman silly even given the examples you quote. Had he been representing his paper as an advance in the art or science it might have been another thing entirely. Without doubt, there was carelessness here. That witches would be burned at an academic institution over lesser outbreaks doesn’t mean that the heat is warranted here.
Bugs, expand a little. I thought we were talking about the incorporation of words and text from one textbook to another. If the books were posing as original research than I’m less confident of my opinion above.
btw, I have frequent problems understanding your points. I don’t know if you intend to be cryptic, but a few more words might help.
bugs (Comment#56235) October 24th, 2010 at 6:24 am
” an area in which he has no expertise, and relies upon Wikipedia for the information.”
Oh Bologna! The social network is totally obvious anyway and Wegman is NO FOOL with no experience. YOU ARE.
http://www.uoguelph.ca/~rmckitri/research/StupakResponse.pdf
Look at how you all act over a supposed fraction of one degree of temperature!
andrewt,
I should add that I limit my characterization of the plagiarism charge as silly to the Wegman congressional report, I don’t know his other publications where the charge might be appropriate.
I don’t come from academia. I spent 35 years with design of construction where the designs very frequently, and inadvertently, included evolved ideas of others. When I got around the world a bit more after I retired, I was astonished to see buildings whose designs were quite similar to the sorts of things I did and thought highly original at the time. I don’t doubt that my cohorts thought the same thing.
So maybe for this reason, i have less outrage that Wikiwords would find their way into a report on another subject without attribution. And do we know those words weren’t themselves children of some other publication?
J Ferguson
“Had he been representing his paper as an advance in the art or science it might have been another thing entirely.”
Outline, then, what you think his paper was representing. It was supposed to be a criticism of the methods used by Mann, if it wasn’t supposed to be an ‘advance’ on science, what do you think it was?
BTW I agree that it wasn’t an ‘advance’ in the science, it was a trivial analysis of an outdated method.
“That witches would be burned at an academic institution over lesser outbreaks doesn’t mean that the heat is warranted here. ”
What? Is there something wrong with you mind? An institution conducting a proper investigation into plagiarism is a witch-hunt? That’s hilarious… And a little insulting to the people that died in the real witch-hunts.
I find it strange that you think it needs to be an ‘advance’ to be plagiarism.
Nathan,
I think your comments and mine can coexist. Wegman didn’t represent his paper as anything other than a critique of Mann’s paper(s). I do think that’s different from research – but this is getting a bit arcane.
As a descendant of a Salem “witch” and having read her letter of goodbye to her children, I don’t take the real thing lightly, but “witch-hunt” is a common usage term here in the US and I suspect UK for runaway organized reactions to imagined misdeeds. I meant it in that context.
And as to Advance. I think there has to be a claim of advance or originality to provide a clue as to intent. So no such claim, then maybe no intent and no plagiarism.
Look around you Nathan. How many people do you see doing original work, one in a hundred? Fewer? And what are the rest of them doing? Moving the words around so they won’t plagiarize?
Originality seems to me to require both smarts and maybe conceptual dissonance. Add persistence to do anything with it.
Add self skepticism to do anything useful.
And I repeat that if the claim for originality isn’t there, such a claim is a basis for assessing intent, and a charge of plagiarism requires intent, then show me why I should get excited over this.
What was Wegman’s mandate, again?
Fercrissakes….John Mashey’s whining about plagiarism is totally hypocrite and a silly smoke screen, we all know Bradley doesn’t give a rat’s ass about plagiarism. All he wants is discredit Wegman and make him going to Canossa to withdraw his report. All the rest is just bullshite and I don’t understand why Lucia’s spending 4(four!) threads on it with kazillions of messages. I mean, enough is enough geeezzz *yawn*
edit: Wrong thread. Deleted content and pasted into right thread. ‘Cuz I can. 🙂
Hoi Polloi, I disagree with you… I think Lucia should keep doing threads on this issue… all to the way to when the other inmates make Bradley wear a red dress while mopping up the cell block.
MikeC– Wow! Your fanciful ideas are now going hyperbolic!
(having fun, but shush, don’t tell anyone)
Willard has the right of it. The social network analysis botch is one of the rotting fishes, another is that they did not redo the analysis using the same data and the methods they recommended. Indeed in his testimony when asked this question Wegman strenuously resisted, pleading poverty and rush.
MarkC
No, all she did was try to dismiss it with a wave of the hand because it’s not something she wants to believe, just as you are pushing your own agenda because it’s something you want to believe.
Academic standards apply to everyone. You can’t say “no big deal” just because it was part of a political hack that you wanted to see happen (and yes, it was a political hack).
As far as accusations that Brady is somehow guilty of a crime because he has complained about Wegman’s plagiarism, you’ll have a pretty hard time proving your point in a court of law, no matter what you personally think, and the fact is that if the academic underpinnings of the paper are untenable, then it should be withdrawn as well as subject to investigation, even though there is no way to withdraw the obscene and unjust damage that it has already done to climate science.
As far as an accusation of “perjury,” the term is probably inappropriate, but ten years from now when the temperature of the globe has risen another .18C, some people are going to have to be held accountable for their actions, congressmen and “researchers” alike.
Bob, Are you on drugs? None of your claims apply to adhoc committees before congress. Second, Bradley tried to coerce a congressional witness to change his report and testimony. That’s a crime punishable by time in the big house. So take a little time today and think of some useful advice you can send Bradley, care of cell block C.
Bob (Sphaerica)
Uhmmmm, actually, academic standards apply to academics and/or those sometimes doing academic work. With respect to the discussions here, they apply to Wegman and Bradley both of whom are academics. I’ve said it applies to them many times.
I don’t think anyone has suggested Bradley is guilty of a crime for complaining about plagiarism. I have specifically told MikeC many of his theories of criminal behavior are fanciful.
Withdrawn from where? What are the rules for withdrawing the WR from wherever you wish it to be withdrawn?
Only inapproriate? It’s nuts. Your suggestion that the possible problems in the WR amount to perjury is flat out nutso. It’s nutso whether or not the temperature of the earth rises 0.18C ten years from now and whether or not people would have to be held accountable.
The amount of traffic on this topic is UNBELIEVABLE.
Could someone please answer the following simple questions?
Has Bradley been doing research in a remote and inaccessible part of Yamal or such like since the Wegman Report was written?
Is Bradley actually aware of what is going on in and around his field of study?
Does Bradfley actually know what plagiarism is?
If the answer to the last question is “yes”, why did Bradley wait FOUR years before making a complaint?
The whole thing beggars belief!
“If the answer to the last question is “yesâ€, why did Bradley wait FOUR years before making a complaint?”
They’re affraid of the Cuccinelli investigation where the Wegman report is being used against them.
OK Lucia, then let’s set up a contest where those useless quatloos can be wagered on whether Bradley gets a pass from congress or a pass from the guard to go to his classroom where he’ll be teaching Climate for Convicts.
Bugs,
Earlier you said that Mann was doing “cutting-edge research” in 1998.
The question is whether this research was only ‘cutting-edge’ because neither Mann, nor anyone else involved, really knew what they were doing.
Dave Andrews (Comment#56317)
You said it. Amusing how many different directions the goal-posts are being moved in by the various Bradley defenders, and all at the same time. I especially love Nathan’s comment that using the word “witchhunt” is disrespectful to those wrongly burned as witches! I’m surprised you manage to overcome what must be a finely-honed sense of empathy and remarkable sensitivity, in order to come on these blogs and tell the skeptics they’re all “nutters” Nathan. Personally I find that disrespectful to the many innocent souls of Victorian times who were shut up in Bedlam and other such nefarious institutions for merely daring to challenge the “consensus” sanity of their day – all labelled “nutters”!
By the way, in my house, Mashey is something made with small potatoes. (I hope this isn’t plagiarism?)
Elton prophetically sang about this whole saga way back in the 70’s.
“It’s sad, so sad, it’s a sad, sad situation, and it’s getting more and more absurd.”
j ferguson you’ve been misinformed – academic plagiarism can occur when describing the research of others. There have been high-profile cases with journal papers retracted when the plagiarism was restricted to the introduction of the paper (describing the work of others) and the remainder of the paper was said to report significant research by the authors. There have been also survey articles retracted because of plagiarism – and survey articles don’t contain original research.
And Wegman did say their 2006 report contained original research. He indicated they were writing multiple journal papers from the material in the report. But the only one so far published is the 2007 paper with the plagiarism I mention above.
And you can consider academic standards silly – but Wegman et al. knew these standards applied to their workand GMU will judge their publications by these standards – and even if they convinced GMU not to consider their 2006 report, and I don’t think they can, – the allegations are serious.
Andrewt
Why don’t we call it uninformed. If I have it as wrong as you say, I have no one but myself to blame.
I don’t think I said or implied that I thought academic standards for characterization of a work as plagiarized silly, but the examples you give suggest a possibly overzealous application.
If Wegman did claim originality in his work for the congressional report and the combination and treatment of the SN issues (the Mann tree-ring ring) was not original, then there is a problem. If the Wikiwords were descriptive of the techniques applied or the theory supporting social network analysis, you have a point although I would have thought it not worthy of the strict focus it seems to be getting.
Copying somone else’s stuff is so alien to me that it’s hard for me to understand why anyone would do it. I can certainly screw it up without help from others, as I may be demonstrating here. I never had any trouble being original – ever. But useful or worthwhile is another question – maybe inconsistent.
But in the specific case of complaints of plagiarism in Wegman’s report to Congress, I still suspect want of gravity.
Eli Rabbett,
.
Looking for “redo” into the transcript of the Hearings, I find this interesting comment from Dr. Hans von Storch regarding the “sharing” of code:
.
> [T]he documentation must take the form of a mathematical description of the algorithms used. This is in many if not most cases sufficient for replication. Also, the intention of
replicability is not to exactly redo somebody’s simulation and
analysis, but to find the same result with a similar code and
different but statistical equivalent samples. The problem is usually
not that the codes contain errors (even if many of the more complex ones likely contain minor, mostly insignificant errors), but that specific elements of implementation and specific aspects of the considered sample of evidence will lead to conclusions, which do not hold if another sample is considered or a different but equally good algorithm is employed. The reason is that we want to learn about the dynamics of the real world, and these insights should not depend on random choices in sampling and implementation. We generally do not expect scientists to manufacture results, or that unintended but significant errors will affect the eventually published conclusions. Having this situation in mind, I consider Rep. Barton’s requests to the three scientists as inadequate and out-of-scale. However, the language used by Rep. Barton makes me perceiving this request as aggressive and on the verge of threatening.
Source: http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/getdoc.cgi?dbname=109_house_hearings&docid=f:31362.wais
Lucia it looks to me that Bradley is being accused of committing a crime for asking GMU to be lenient. For journal papers containing plagiarism, retraction of the offending publication is the first and least step that seems to be taken (amendment of plagiarized publications seems rare).
I haven’t seen what Bradley said to GMU, but perhaps he wanted to avoid the severe penalties that some institutions apply in plagiarism cases (loss of tenure etc). He wouldn’t be suggesting retraction as an alternative to other actions by GMU as in general you’d expect if any actions are taken regarding plagiarism, the actions would include retraction of the offending publication.
Of course GMU have their own interests & procedures and much of the matter doesn’t involve Bradley and there may be other complainants, so I’ don’t understand whyBradley would think GMU would listen – but again I haven’t seen what he actually said to GMU.
Re: bugs (Oct 23 17:36),
> At the same time Wegman was quite content to accept a temperature reconstruction that no one knew the provenance of…
Bugs, what is this a reference to?
.
Seeing the original charges by Deep Climate and then those by John Mashey, the WR sure looked to me as though it included broad swathes of material that seemed plagiarized. I’m not saying they definitely were — there could be some explanations or mitigating factors that I haven’t read or don’t understand. But none of what I have seen in these Blackboard threads has struck me as a particularly compelling defense.
I keep coming back to : if the WR doesn’t include plagiarism, it seems to me that it would be very difficult to determine that some other work with seemingly-copied, seemingly-unattributed passages could be called an act of plagiarism. You’d be left with a null-set violation.
Bradley might also have engaged in seeming plagiarism with respect to earlier works. That could provide some limited context (and may be the cause of headaches for Bradley at his institution). But it is unclear to me why GMU would seize on that to exculpate the WR’s authors.
Only to the extent that the GMU policies are supposed to interpret the allegations in terms of norms in a particular subject matter area.
With respect to close paraphrasing, the panel might look to how close paraphrasing typically is in the field in question. But, I think this could only help Wegman in bits that are alleged to be plagiarized from Bradley. Those are bits where norms in dendroclimatology might matter, and one might use Bradley to assess the norms.
But even if the committee looks to Bradley stuff, that steal leaves Wegman Social Network stuff, which looks bad. It’s very difficult to look at the wikipedia copying and not see plagiarism by someone. (Might not be Wegman though. What will the committee do about that? Don’t know.).
AndrewT
I don’t think anyone has. What people have is a letter where Bradley mentions that he requested something. But we don’t have the request itself and we don’t know the context.
Well… we don’t know what he would or would not have been suggesting because none of us have seen the wording of the request or the context!
Well… I don’t know why he would expect them to listen either. I also don’t know why Wegman would comply with the request.
Sadly, no one seems to have taken advantage of my hint about GMU (Wegman, Said) & Rice (Scott).
But, it may be helpful for the general discussion:
1) Read Collide-a-scape #337.
2) Quickly look at the 3 side-by-side examples provided by DC. I also mentioned the terms fabrications and misrepresentation, which would be familiar to KK. People might want to look those up as well.
3) Then look at the analysis at Collide-a-scape #344.
Give it up mashey, Bradley’s little criminal plot has been exposed
AMac,
The WR does include sections which we can broadly call plagiarism in a variety of forms. Personally I’d tell Wegman to do the same thing I suggested for briffa who stole some words from Wahl ( with Wahl’s consent which makes no difference) Rewrite the section in question and ammend your notation accordingly. It’s the same advice that I would give a student who made mistakes like this.
Wegman is also just a blatant liar, as are MM who he took the figure from.
Fig 4.1.
http://www.uoguelph.ca/~rmckitri/research/WegmanReport.pdf
What do you notice about the graphs? They look very similar. What do you notice about the left had scale?
Who audits the auditors?
Offtop:
What with JAXA minimum bet?
AMac (Comment#56385) October 24th, 2010 at 8:36 pm
Figure 4.5 of the WR.
Bugs.
It’s not the size that counts… It’s what you do with it 😉
Amac
“Bradley might also have engaged in seeming plagiarism with respect to earlier works.”
There’s been a lot of speculation on this, and Mosher and mcIntyre were getting very excited about it. Looked pretty lame to me (not that that matters) Truth will be told if they make a complaint. What it looks like to me is a PR campaign to try and tar Bradley with the same brush…
We should all bet on whether they actually take it further. I’m betting on “No”.
Re: bugs (Oct 25 02:58),
You linked the Wegman Report.
> What do you notice about the graphs? They look very similar. What do you notice about the left had scale?
Here’s the caption of WR Figure 4.1 —
What are you highlighting? That the top panel is +0.02 C to -0.08 C, while the bottom one is +0.20 C to -0.40C? Does that invalidate or undermine Mc & Mc? (I don’t know — I’m asking for you to flesh out your interpretation.)
Thanks for supplying the reference to WR Fig. 4.5. As far as its provenance, the caption reads “Here we have digitized the temperature profile as presented in the IPCC Assessment Report 1990.”
You are saying that this figure isn’t in the 1990 report? (I don’t like this kind of guessing, much.)
Amac,
The figure was in the 1990 IPPC report, but it’s origin is a bit of a mystery. But there it had no temperature scale, so was virtually useless. Wegman has added one – on what basis, goodness knows. He seems to say nothing more about it beyond the caption.
Nick Stokes (Comment#56453) October 25th, 2010 at 5:52 am
Exactly. Wegman will believe a graph with no data source, no code, no references. But he accepts it without question, and even dresses it up to look nicer.
Their claim is that they can replicate a hockey stick using red noise. Only they can’t, they had to fudge the scale to make it look like they could.
bugs demonstrates that Bradley’s folly was to try and distract from the statistics review paper that confirms Wegman and further undermines Mann. The true believers cling to Mann because they know that if there is no hockeystick there is no climate crisis to demand billions more in tax payer subsidy of climate science. That means there is no credible basis to demand world wide changes that profit climate profiteers so well.
Cling in, bugs.
Bugs, Nick —
Thanks for the added information. Using the qualitative cocktail-napkin reconstruction (by Lamb?) seems okay to me. Adding a y-axis scale: not at all acceptable. At least not without explicitly stating what one is doing.
Re: red noise, I’ll go back and look at some point. But my strong impression from various the Air Vent posts is that autocorrelation of proxy time series is a serious problem, and one that in 2010 is recognized by almost everybody doing reconstructions. It seems to me this was one of McIntyre’s fundamental claims. While fighting tooth-and-nail, AGW Consensus scientists have essentially conceded the battle, moving from “Stupid evil McIntyre” to “Duh, of course we take red noise into account!” If you distill away the poisonous personal and political pieces of this, it’s probably a pretty ordinary bit of scientific progress.
In comments somewhere a few weeks back, I think that even Gavin acknowledged the issue. IIRC, he then went on to claim that all the autocorrelation in tree ring series was due to the temperature signal, and not to noise (or “noise” as I have started to think of it). When challenged, he failed to offer backup for that assertion. But I don’t have a citation for that thread…
Bugs – you miss the point. What Wegman was arguing was that the Mann method could be used to get any shape you want. So he showed that using the 1990 profile plus 69 white noise series ans using Mannian “principal components” what you got was the 1990 profile. He could equally have chosen any other shape. the point is that Mann’s method is just a way of giving huge weight to whatever target shape you want – just so long as one of the series you use has the desired shape. This to me seems a devastating criticism of the Mann method. Arguing about axis labels just looks like pettyfogging attempts to concentrate on the twigs and not the forest.
Amac
You should also note that the re-digitised version that Wegman made of that 1990 figure isn’t actually accurate. The scales have moved markedly and so it is useless as a comparison. I think Rabbett Run has a good discussion of the figure.
MikeP
Yet if you present all the data at the same scale, the red noise version doesn’t look much like a Hockey Stick. Remember the Hockey stick is as much about magnitude as shape.
Nathan,
I don’t understand what you mean. Wegman says
“Although there has been much discussion about the ‘hockey stick’ shape, the point of Figure 4.6 is that the offset procedure used in MBH98 (CFR) algorithm will reproduce any desired shape depending on what shape exists in the proxies. Recall in Figure 4.6 only one proxy of 70 has the shape, but the offset version of the PCA clearly picks out the shape.”
Figure 4.6 has 69 white noise proxies and one 1990 profile.What exactly is your point? McIntyre and Mckitrick similarly showed that Mann’s offset method applied to a group of red noise proxies would produce a hockey stick shape IF the deviation from the calibration/instrumental period mean was used instead of the whole period mean. The point is the Mann method introduces obvious biases (in the technical sense) into reconstructions. It’s just a poor method. Surely by now we can all agree on this. Then we can move on to whether the relatively few “proxies” that were actually doing all the work in generating hockey sticks are good proxies or not.
Re: Nathan (Oct 25 08:36),
> the red noise version doesn’t look much like a Hockey Stick.
Such assertions carry no weight in this thread. I went to Jeff Id’s and input the search term “red noise”; there is post after post demonstrating that issues with autocorrelation in time series have to be considered with great care, in considering a large range of problems.
It’s not too late to engage with Jeff on these issues. You can be sure that he will give a great deal of attention to plausible mathematical arguments — he can’t stay away from them. His comments are basically unmoderated, so you’ll be able to make your best case, even if he disagrees with you. Come back with link-rich comments when you’re ready.
My sense is that the casual treatment that prominent research groups gave to autocorrelation and related issues has become something of an embarrassment. The pro-AGW Consensus line is now “the studies you’re criticizing were done way back in (1998, 1999, 2007, 2008); of course modern work takes those concerns into account.”
Sorry to be so blunt.
Nathan:
The part that isn’t in the calibration period doesn’t look like a hockey stick (more like the handle). Nor does it look like climate data. And the part that is in the calibration period can be made to fit to any shape you want.
This one was particularly a darling. (Focus on 1400-current to compare against MBH)
Anyway, if MBH98 had nailed it, there wouldn’t be any need to continue to improve the reconstructions. However, new ones don’t have much in common with MBH.
John
Sadly, you have a bad habit of communicating by “hinting” and then sending people on wild goose hunts.
If you have a point, and hope for people to get it, you should just say it instead of “hinting” and hoping they will do the all the work of communicating points lodged in your head for you.
Nick Stokes:
Why they should have gotten a paleoclimatologist involved in the report, had they been serious about vetting the science. When I learned of the composition of the board, I brushed the whole thing off as a political exercise and left it at that.
The arguments about PC1 scale simply show that the commenters (including climate scientists who latch onto this issue) don’t understand the algorithm. A PC has a sum of squares adding to 1 over say the 1400-1980 period and has a commensurate y-scale. In an MBH style algorithm, the PC is re-scaled to have a standard deviation of 1 in the 1902-1980 period and then enters into a linear regression, which is then rescaled again.
The y-scale of the MBH NOAMER PC1 is commensurate with the synthetic PC1s. You can get reconstructions that are just as “good” in the RE statistic as MBH from the synthetic PCs or from unrelated things like tech stock price data.
The stupidity of the argument about the y-scale of the PCs is shown by the fact that even Wahl and Ammann, who advanced some pretty absurd arguments, didn’t even bother making it.
Nick Stokes, bugs, AMac – Wegman didn’t just add a y-axis, he shifted the x-axis at least 50 years and truncated part of the modern era – see the discussion and links in comments here:
http://scienceblogs.com/stoat/2010/06/ipcc_1990_fig_71c_again.php
Arthur, don’t forget to criticize font size.
And word choice while you’re being petty.
Carrick (Comment#56560) October 25th, 2010 at 2:06 pm
That’s more or less saying you have nothing to rebut the criticisms with.
bugs:
Actually it’s about the nicest thing I have to say about the criticisms.
It was obviously a sloppily put together figure. BFD.
Get a life.
Arthur,
And this makes not a jot of difference to the point Wegman was making – which was that the Mann method could produce any shape you want provided that even just one of the series used was of teh target shape. That’s the important point which should not be lost sight of.
Carrick #56560,
These issues aren’t petty. I see just making up numbers to put on the y-axis (which is what it looks like) as very serious.
Carrick petty to you maybe, but if the GMU investigators work in areas where great care is taken with quantitative data they may be little concerned to see a y axis invented and an x axis changed, despite the graph only being an example.
And if they work in areas where careful search of the literature is important they may a bit little concerned that Wegman et al weren’t able to obtain a copy of the 1990 IPCC report but were able to obtain this obscure reference:
Valentine, Tom (1987) “Magnetics may hold key to ozone layer problems,†Magnets, 2(1) 18-26.
Google suggests Wegman et al might be the only academic publication to cite this paper or perhaps even this journal – which seems to have been ephemeral and covered fringe topics such as “free energy” – and sadly Wegman et al didn’t report what they inferred from this interesting source.
mikep (Comment#56576)
“And this makes not a jot of difference to the point Wegman was making – which was that the Mann method could produce any shape you want provided that even just one of the series used was of teh target shape. That’s the important point which should not be lost sight of.”
Exactly, and it really does boggle the mind how not a single one of the Wegman attackers, on this or any other blog, care to mention or even challenge this simple assertion. The posts after Steve McIntyre’s above are notable for not engaging with his argument, ie that all the sniping about the y-axis is utterly redundant to the central conclusion that Mann’s statistical methods led inevitably to hockey-sticks, and were therefore fundamentally worthless.
In a debate about ethical standards in publishing, one must wonder about the worth of contributions from those whose own ethical principles do not lead them to point out that none of this scandal-mongering affects the conclusions. (Or if you say they do affect the conclusions, then perhaps you’d care to show why Steve is wrong?) These guys play the man and not the ball. It’s dirty stuff, but they’re obviously desperate.
Well
I’ll happily admit that I was wrong… I don’tknow anything about PC analysis.
andrewt:
They got the scale wrong when they digitized. BFD.
You guys are geniuses, obviously. Not petty at all.
AnyColour You Like (Is that a Pink Floyd reference?) and MikeP
“And this makes not a jot of difference to the point Wegman was making – which was that the Mann method could produce any shape you want provided that even just one of the series used was of teh target shape. That’s the important point which should not be lost sight of.”
The point wasn’t Wegman’s. The point was Steven McIntyre’s.
Steve should have audited the Wegman report. Given that he was responsible for the sole part of that report with any substance, if he was going to wave it about as vindication he should have taken the time to use his auditing skills on the report.
Carrick
“They got the scale wrong when they digitized. BFD.”
They invented a scale after claiming it was the same figure…
Nick Stokes:
LOL. “very serious”.
Geez, you guys could use some chill pills.
This whole issue is petty x 1000. All it is is more sh*t slinging, with the hope that some of it sticks. Nobody is fooling anybody here, except maybe themselves.
You could address why they choose that data to digitize, that choice is clearly unadulterated nonsense. Instead you choose to inhabit of the bottom of the sewer on this argument.
Your choice.
Nathan, McIntyre addressed the y-scale. It doesn’t even have the same label. That should be enough of a clude.
The x-label looks like a screw up to me. Somebody’s digitization program needs tweaking.
Again, let’s talk about something beyond boring character assassination here, shall we?
Why plot 15-year old data of uncertain providence?
Nathan. It is from DSOTM yes, bit of an old hippy, generally green and left-leaning, and a former CAGW believer. (We’re not all Tea Partyists or Tories!) I’ve seen the light now of course (well, I’ve looked at some of the shoddy science and gone “you’ve got to be kidding me right?”).
I know you warmist guys are On The Run from the truth but there’s still Time for you, it doesn’t have to be an Us and Them thing, accusing each other of Brain Damage is so unnecessary. Your arguments are undergoing an Eclipse I know, but just Breathe, Speak to Me…it’s all about the Money! This old place probably won’t be much warmer (as a result of CO2 anyway) by the time you and I have gone to The Great Gig in the Sky Nathan!
Carrick (Comment#56574) October 25th, 2010 at 3:13 pm
McIntyre set the bar, he wants blood for any problems like that from climate scientists, and can’t even provide an audit of a paper he champions with obvious problems. Not much of an auditor.
And those two graphs, one on top of the other, are clearly intended to give the idea that they are directly comparable. The other problem with his ‘red noise’ theory is that it is statistical. How many samples do you have to take to get the shape that you want. How many proxies have been used.
Carrick (Comment#56601) October 25th, 2010 at 5:30 pm
That’s what it’s all about, isn’t it. Doesn’t take much reading of CA, or even here, to realize that.
AnyColourYouLike
I like Echoes best… Awesome album.
You read some research that convinced you AGW is not real? What research was that?
In fact it’s the IPCC that has remained entirely consistent for about twenty years now, the ‘skeptics’ have recently, without any fanfare, become the ‘luke warmers’.
Why I think the x-scale matters here:
* They got the MWP timing wrong – the figure caption to Figure 4.5 says “The early period between 1100 to about 1400 of above
average temperatures is known as the Medieval Warm Period” – but actually the MWP is believed to have been about 950–1250, and was well over (cooling beginning) by 1400.
* They eliminated most of the 20th century, but by shifting it forward 50 years it looks like the upward trend at the end is the 20th century warming. It’s not – it’s the warming up to about 1920 or 1930 at most. It’s warmed a whole lot more since then – something certainly known by 2006! And even the IPCC 1990 sketch went to about 1960 or 1970, so there’s some real truncation going on, in addition to the time shift.
Why doesn’t McI want the Wegman code? Does that make him a hypocrite? Or does he already have it, in which case he is still a hypocrite.
bugs:
Or any warmingist blog for that matter.
Pot meet kettle.
“You read some research that convinced you AGW is not real?”
Yes. All of it.
Andrew
Why I don’t think the x-axis matters: The figure in question is really of peripheral value to the report, and the report itself is of limited/dubious utility.
Yes they got the figure wrong, they used the wrong data, the wrong x-axis, they misconstrued the importance of the late 20th-century warming, etc. Here we have one small portion of a non-technical summary written by people who were not experts as a product to be used as a tool by politicians to argue a particular policy position. As far as I can see, it is full of errors and of dubious scientific value.
The only point to keep going on about this is to drag Wegman personally through the mud for daring to be involved in a political exercise abetting the enemy. The motive for this microscopic examination is obvious here, I don’t think anybody really is fooled that this is about science.
If you were interested in science, you’d spend the same amount of energy examining the IPCC AR4 in similar detail. You aren’t and that says everything that needs to be said.
It’s not about science it’s about character assassination.
Nathan
“I like Echoes best… Awesome album.
You read some research that convinced you AGW is not real? What research was that?”
=========
Love Echoes and the rest of Meddle isn’t bad either. Most of WYWH, Bits of Animals and The Wall wonderful. Always loved Gilmour’s (much underrated in terms of guitar heroes) solo and rhythm work.
As for the “show us your citations” ritual…mmm…that’s the one wherby the defendant (me) digs around the web copy/pasting links, only for the insinuator (you) to wave them all away as having been debunked by another bunch of links….nah, can’t really be bothered.You may now begin the customary 2nd phase of the gambit, whereby you hold me up to ridicule for not supporting my sweeping assertions. I can take it, really… it’s better than wasting time pretending that we might actually change each others minds. So, what’s the point really?
We’ve probably looked over many of the same papers, and it all comes down to which group of scientists/researchers you believe I guess. I’m not a McIntyre, a McKittrick, a Schmidt a Curry or a Lucia. My grasp of the maths is sketchy on many topics, but I believe, like you, that I can spot BS in an argument when I see it.
I’ve found precious few Road to Damascus conversions occuring on the blogs I’ve been lurking on for the last 18 months or so. I don’t expect any on here. What drove me to recently start posting was the pathetic character assasination of Wegman in order to obfuscate his legitimate findings. I genuinely believe this is shameless and pretty disgusting actually.
Read some of McIntyres rants at climateaudit. The whole point of the wegman report is character assasination. His findings are of little consequence, but they are blown up out of all proportion, and used to repeatedly beat up on climate scientists. At the same time, he has made several errors in his own paper, and according to the latest Deepclimate topic, has hidden his code and made his own statistical errors. Carrick says ‘pot meet kettle’, but I believe it is simply a matter of standing up to the continual acts of anti-scientific attacks.
bugs:
Like this one.
It’s a real rant, unlike bugs “balanced” comments.
I read the new DeepClimate post… it looks like they’ve started lacing their crack with LSD
So Wegman hid the incline. Big deal. It’s not like he hid the decline or anything serious like that.
Carrick I’m actually sympathetic to a view that Wegman et al were apparently ill-equipped & ill-advised to undertake their report and although they produced an appalling piece of gray literature, it would be better forgotten than investigated. And you might well find sympathy at GMU too, except the problems were repeated in theses & paper(s). And if I was at GMU – personally all I’d want is the publications retracted & the theses rewritten and resubmitted (assuming the problems with the theses are only those found by DC) .
Carrick (Comment#56848) October 26th, 2010 at 8:15 pm
I don’t know what you are saying. That because he puts on his reasonable face sometimes, he hasn’t gone on a rant about the an independent body not attacking Mann enough to suit him.
It was Wegman who set the bar. He said if they got experts like him involved, there would not be any more errors and mistakes in the statistics. So he goes and makes several in his own paper where he makes the claim. Hoist on his own petard.
AndrewT–
Ok… But this sounds like pie in the sky notion that assumes Academic dreams supersede everything else on earth.
I know how a thesis might be rewritten and resubmitted to GMU. Their policies may be able to permit them to yank a ph.d contingent on this.
But let’s focus on what you would want if you were GMU and how it applies to the Wegman report“, which you admit is grey literature. It also appears it was not submitted to GMU. If it was never submitted to them, how can they request it be resubmitted to GMU?
If the WR testimony to Congress then it would be very bad public policy to suggest that Academic notions can or should prevent individuals from presenting their testimony to Congress. If Congress wanted GMU (or Joe’s, AndrewT’s, Boris, or my) testimony, they would call in GMU (or Joe, AndrewT, Boris, or me) .
So, in some sense, no matter what any academic might thing, GMU doesn’t have a “right” to request or demand that Wegman resubmit new version on the report to Congress. They also can’t insist Congress “retract” the thing, and Congress almost certainty won’t.
If GMU also published the report as some sort of GMU publication (and some universities have these– U of Il. does. Stanford does), then they could request he rewrite that and resubmit. Likewise, with respect to journal articles or not-self-published books, the journal or publisher can retract their ‘publication’ of the item. They would likely do so should GMU find “plagiarism”. But an individual publisher can only retract things they published. Just as I can’t retract what you wrote, a publisher has no right to “retract” something published by someone else.
So as far as I can see, GMU has the right to:
1) Investigate a charge of plagiarism.
2) Find it or not according to their standards for what is expected in the sort of Grey literature the WR is. (Which is… what? I think written testimony to congress should be more formally presented than email. But, what are the standards? Is there precendent?)
3) If they find he plagiarized, do whatever GMU’s policies dictate.
But (3) cannot not include rewriting the report and resubmitting to Congress. It would violate public policy to permit an external body to dictate testimony to Congress. Moreover, once testimony is given, changing it is a practical impossibility. That report is that report!
ucia I didn’t say that GMU would succeed in getting the Wegman report retracted – I said if I was at GMU I would want to see it retracted.
GMU might announce that the report fails to meet normal academic standards and they’d ask for it to be retracted if it were a normal academic publication but won’t ask because its publisher is congress. This would have at least some of the impact of a retraction. Some journals don’t disappear retracted papers, they announce retraction and mark the on-line version as retracted.
GMU shouldn’t and I doubt they will suggest amendment. Not that retraction prevents amendment and submission to the same or another venue – but this seems rare with journals.
Or GMU might ask Congress to retract and I’ve no idea what would happen.
Andrewt–
Maybe. And if I were a 6 year old, I would want a pony.
Would it have the same impact as a retraction? What is that impact? You can’t list it on your VITA? It becomes grey literature? What?
Isn’t it more likely true that most don’t disappear retracted papers. None even could when all journals were dead tree journals and none can disappear anything in dead tree form.
But anyway, how does GMU saying or asking something put any mark on the on-line version of the Wegman report?
The most I think they can do is report their finding.
Maybe they could say, if this was a journal, we would want it retracted. Or, if it was email, we’d say we are disappointed that one of our faculty wrote the email. Then, we have a not-retracted thing that GMU expressed disapointment in?
My guess is nothing. How would a “retraction” be done? If it even can be done, wouldn’t it involve a committee?
Elections are coming up. Looks like Republicans are going to take the house. Do you think a committee is going to convene over this? Even if Dems retake in 2012, the issue will be stale by then. Plus, what would a Dems chair gain by spending time on this?
So, maybe GMU asks something– maybe. Congress does nothing. Then what?