Graham Young posted the following comment last night at an earlier blog post on climate change:
“Good to see we’ve moved on to the Hockey Stick. I find it interesting that while Enron’s auditor, Arthur Andersen, is virtually no more, because of its lack of oversight in “refereeing” (to borrow a scientific term to cover an accounting situation) the accounts of the company; and Enron’s highest executives were sent to jail, nothing much has happened to Mann et al, or their referees. Yet the Mann et al analysis has a lot in common with Enron.
While the original mathematical error was probably accidental, the perpetuation of it couldn’t have been, once the McIntyre and MacKittrick analysis had been released. Enron was a company that once made real profits, but got into modelling the future and counting the results of its models as profits, which it then reported as real, despite the evidence. In the real world, rather than the real climate world, that is called fraud.
Worse, Mann et al set up their blog to, amongst other things, essentially defame their critics. Likewise, Kenneth Lay et al did their level best to defame and discredit their critics.
The climate community seem to just regard this issue as just a bit of a dust-up (including many of the contributors to this blog’s comment box). In fact, it is far more serious than that, and the fact that reasonable people can have that attitude points to the serious crisis that there appears to be in some parts, at least, of the scientific community.
What has gone on here is criminal. Public monies have been directed in ways that they shouldn’t have been on the basis of this graph. The attempt to cover-up the problems is fraud. It’s about time that someone took legal action, assuming there is a law which makes this possible. If the law hasn’t envisaged this particular issue and neglected it, then one should be enacted to take accounts of these facts.
Of course, the irony is that the graph couldn’t have been correct in the first place as it didn’t take account of the medieval warm period, which we know from observation to have been much warmer than now. So why did so many otherwise intelligent people go along for the ride?
And don’t anyone tell me that the medieval warm period was a localised effect. If that was the case, where were the much colder counterbalancing areas in the reconstruction?”
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD is a critical thinker with expertise in the scientific method.
Very good point, Graham.
The variance between the accountability standards for publicly listed companies and those at play in government policy are an absolute disgrace. Listed companies must operate within tight statutory reporting frameworks because their public statements are made with the intention that shareholders and potential shareholders may act upon those statements.
But this is merely the codification of the extensive caselaw on fraud that, with each new ruling, has added more and more clarity to our definition of dishonest and negligent reporting.
Yet, we have a parliament where it is no longer a crime to lie to the law makers and no crime to use knowingly false and misleading information to induce lawmakers to create legislation that defines actions for which people can be punished.
The essence of fraud is a five point test;
1 there must be a misrepresentation,
2 it must be a misrepresentation of fact,
3 it must be made with a knowledge of its untruth or a lack of belief in its veracity,
4 it must be made with the intention that it be acted upon, and
5 someone must act on the misrepresentation to their detriment.
It should also be noted that the courts have made special provision to treat the opinions of “experts” in the same way as facts. Where a person who is of such standing that another person may assume that the “expert” knows things that would validate a stated opinion then any opinion by such expert that would not be reached by reasonable men and women in full possession of the facts can be treated as misrepresentation of fact.
It is clear that Mann et al have held themselves out as experts and have made representations of opinion (projections)that they intended to be regarded with the same weight as facts. The facts clearly would not lead reasonable men and women to the same conclusions as Mann and consequently, Mann’s misrepresentations can be regarded as misreprestations of fact.
The subsequent actions of Mann et al appear capable of establishing that he had a knowledge of the untruth of his representations.
And the intensity of his/their intimidation and criticism of any critics is certainly capable of demonstrating that there was an intention that these misrepresentations be acted upon.
The fact that numerous funding programs have been advanced, and policies put in place to counter an unconfirmed threat, constitutes action by affected parties to their detriment.
At the very least, research funding has been obtained by deception. And it is time these sort of criminal acts were brought under the criminal code. For if we can send an auditor to jail for merely failing to detect fraud then the various departmental senior executives should also be exposed to the same sanctions for failing to detect fraudulent representations to the policy process.
“Mann et al set up their blog to, amongst other things, essentially defame their critics”
– which blog is that ?
Hadn’t seen Ian’s excellent post before commenting. Can’t help but totally agree – but to be fair let’s hold legally responsible any contrarians publishing shonky science that is undertaken to undermine public opinion on this important environmental matter – perhaps even jeopardising our grandchildren to dangerous climate change. Of course we’d have to prove the case at law or perhaps haul them in front of appropriate commissions of inquiry but I’m sure it’s worth the public expense and will progress the issue in the public interest.
Of course finding judges might be interesting – we can’t have any insidious old-boy social networks propping things up. So everyone would have to be independent and not have collaborated with anyone in the field. And of course if we later found any judges that were not squeaky clean we could investigate those as well.
Bring it on. Once we’ve cleaned up the climate science dudes we can then we can progress through the various brown and green NGOs and industry lobby groups looking for any spin/mistruths/collusion/intent to perpetrate public environmental fraud as well.
Yes Luke,
That’s a good idea. With regard to bushfire, misleading ecomythology has led to the accumulation of heavy fuel in large areas. The only way to reduce it is by regular, mild burning in cool weather. When severe bushfires occur due to lack of controlled burning, those guilty of preventing such burning, or misleading the public about its effects, should be charged with environmental vandalism. If coming summers see deaths due to fierce bushfires in long unburnt areas, then charges of manslaughter should be considered. Further, anyone who produces a bland official inquiry report, concealing the true cause of the holocaust, could be guilty of concealing a crime.
Another clear example of such fraud has been the repeated claims by the Great Barrier Reef Management Authority of overfishing and various other threats to the Great Barrier Reef in contradiction to explicit findings from their own research. Such deception has included clear examples of ignoring, misrepresenting and suppressing research findings. It has also included the deliberate misleading of Parliament and consequent substantial detriment to the regional economy and the lives of large numbers of affected persons.
I think the major difference between Enron and Mann is that assumptions of bad faith of business generally are so widely and readily accepted. In fact, it is almost the last fashionable bigotry – private enterprise ( and entrepreneurs )can and are slandered for nothing but assumptions often without any sanction for the accuser.
However , when a supposedly independent and objective scientist provides flawed evidence used by others to advance a quasi-political cause then we should all just “move on”.
I suspect the two examples don’t attract equal media interest because one fraud involves money and the other does not.
In other words , as can be seen throughout this debate , what matters to some is the perceived motive NOT the substance of the deception.
Ironically ( perhaps that was Graham’s yintention ) Enron was apparently an enthusiastic booster of AGW theory and was investing heavily in alternatives to coal and oil.
Oh and Luke? – Agree entirely , let’s prosecute everyone who uses false evidence to persuade investors, cutomers or governments to take an action which is contrary to their interests – excepting information provided in good faith and with an honest belief of accuracy.
The way the corporate watchdogs have addressed this issue is to require the financial statements to include a signed statement to the effect that the attached report amounts to a “true a fair view” of the affairs of the corporation. And this includes divulging any matters, events, trends or potential outcomes that may have a material bearing on the affairs of the corporation. The failure to divulge ALL RELEVANT MATERIAL is a breach of the law which is prosecuted as the signatory making a false or misleading statement by way of partial or fragmentary statement of fact.
The onus is on the person making the statement to ensure that reasonable men and women would not be misled by the statements.
The most appropriate way of applying this to the science community is to place this burden at the point at which it is introduced to the policy or legislative process.
So a PhD thesis would not need to be signed off as it is not intended to be the whole truth but merely an addition to the sum of knowledge. But if the Author, or any other person wants to quote from that thesis in any representation in a context where people are intended to act upon those statements, then the burden should rest on the person making the representation, to certify by way of statutory declaration, that the quoted thesis, or part of thesis, is not quoted out of context, and is included with all other relevant material required to obtain a “true and fair view”.
This would also need a structured policy development process that clearly distinguishes between certified statements of fact, validated assumptions and unvalidated assumptions, and plain old public opinions and perceptions. And these should be given a weighting consistent with their scientific merit rather than their political utility. This could be;
10 for relevant fact,
6 or 7 for validated assumptions,
4 for guestimates,
1 for mug punters wanks and green “fill-in-the-blanks electronic diatribes, and
0 for irrelevant representations of any kind.
All we want is, “the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth”. It is not anything out of left field because this sort of weighting is already incorporated into the definitions of improper, and by implication, proper exercise of power under the Judicial Review provisions.
I think you need either 0.5 or 2 for lobbyists, sychophants, those on the take, and industry apologists.
So who gets to judge the weightings?
And how do they get reviewed?
Given Australia needs 20,000 scientists (anticipated shortfall) I think you can be assured everyone will now do arts/law or hairdressing. And if it’s Gen Y they’ll only be in the job for 18 months anyway before moving on.
Quite a few years ago there were waves in Qld DPI advisory circles when the South Australian Lands Dept lost a damages case brought by a farmer on Kangaroo Island involving high-oestrogenic sub-clover. As I remember (and this may not be the full picture), it was lost because that farmer had been ordered by that department to use that variety, with consequent economic damage.
It was explained that the then advisory staff were not in similar danger, so long as they did not exceed their charter – which was to provide the best information available to them on the subject. The person seeking the advice then made use of that material(or not as the case may be) in arriving at their decision – but the decision was not made by advisory staff.
Steve McIntyre has written extensively on his blog about the difficulties in getting data from the authors of papers.
Here is what he wrote in Feb, 2005;
“It is unheard of for a peer reviewer to actually check the data and calculations. In 2004, I was asked by a journal (Climatic Change) to peer review an article. I asked to see the source code and supporting calculations. The editor said that no one had ever asked for such things in 28 years of his editing the journal. He refused to ask for source code; the author refused to provide supporting calculations. Out of my involvement, the journal ended up with a new data policy, which was all to the good. But there is nothing at the journal peer review stage in climate publications which is remotely like an audit.”
http://www.climateaudit.org/index.php?p=66
And using Ian’s five point fraud test, I’d classify the so-called Uniform Gun Laws of 1997 as fraud
So how would you suggest one tests a supercomputer run that generates terabytes of data and runs for hundreds of hours. Won’t be feasible.
The other issue with sharing code and data is not necessarily to hide fraud but to not give opposing teams a leg-up in valauble data sets and analytical techniques. So one can be gazumped in the next research phase by giving away your technology. Would drug companies share their latest data sets with the competition? It ought to be fair and open – but research is competitive. No funding means letting staff go and possibly years of investment wasted.
Recommendation 3 of the Wegman Report:
“With clinical trials for drugs and devices to be approved for human use by the FDA, review and consultation with statisticians is expected. Indeed, it is standard practice to include statisticians in the application-for-approval process. We judge this to be a good policy when public health and also when substantial amounts of moneys are involved, for example, when there are major policy decisions to be made based on statistical assessments. In such cases, evaluation by statisticians should be standard practice. This evaluation phase should be a mandatory part of all grant applications and funded accordingly.”
I had a similar problem trying to get the data sets from Kevin Wormington’s thesis on nutrient requirements of arboreal mammals. This study combined two data sets from the one set of plots but taken over two years, a dry one and a wet one. And under the full supervision of Lamb, he proceded to pick out the record from each plot with the highest number of animal sightings and and then analyse those.
Naturally, I wanted to see both sets, particularly as it would indicate the depth of population decline in drought and the rate of population recovery once a good season came along. This thesis had already been circulated by DNRM staff as an input to the drafting of the Code applying to native forest practices on freehold land.
But Mr Wormington was only willing to provide the data on the condition that I agreed to allow him a right of veto over any conclusions I might draw from the data.
And such was the eagerness to defend the official position, particularly in relation to the density of hollow bearing “habitat” trees required by this fluctuating population, that other researchers in the field, namely Lindenmayer, was moved to label my conclusions as “absolute rubbish and not based on any credible science”, before he had even had access to the paper.
And private forests are now lumbered with 6 big useless old hollow trees/ha providing about 15 nest sites for an animal population that rarely exceeds 0.1 dependent family per hectare.
Good point Ian Beale. If the staff are up to speed then they should also be aware of the unknowns and contradictory research. One couldn’t say that about the people promoting DPIF Joint Venture Plantations who neglect to mention that the cost of removing all the stumps at the end of the project (borne by the landowner) may exceed the value of the land itself and make the rate of return on the project look very ordinary indeed.
At last,
Critical, correct, analysis here and hat up to the usual suspects :-).
But we should wait for the thought police to comment before any of us comment further?
Thanks for the comments. I’m not sure that we might not be tending to take this a little too far. I think the Mann case is a little out of the ordinary, although by no means unique.
A lot of science is speculative, so you can’t necessarily equate it directly with accounting situations. If Mann et al had cooperated with data and admitted errors as they were pointed out, I don’t think there would be any sort of ethical case against them because their original research got it wrong. If their defence had been merely vigorous, I think the same applies.
What makes them special is that faced with contrary argument, which they must have known was correct, they persisted in prosecuting their case, and trying to frustrate investigation, to the point where they would not provide data to the Wegman committee. I think it is reasonably to infer an intention to mislead to them.
So you wouldn’t necessarily collect many scientists for fraud. I’d certainly be interested to look at any examples of contrarians that Luke thinks might have committed fraud, but I can’t think of any. In fact I can’t think of too many examples of AGW proponents who would be caught.
Most of the arguments are about things which are difficult to prove one way or the other, and which aren’t susceptible to observational proof over anything but the very long-term, if then. There is room for legitimate dispute on most of these matters.
However, while we’re discussing these things on Jen’s blog, it would be appropriate to note that CSIRO’s claims about salt in the Murray River probably fall into the same category as the Mann et al graph.
The last case of scientific fraud in Australia was that of Dr William McBride. The Wikipedia entry is brief but instructive http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_McBride_%28physician%29. He lost his qualification to conduct research for changing results in an effort to hurry research along.
A few more McBride-like cases might make researchers more circumspect in fiddling their results, which is exactly what Mann et al have done.
Interesting point, Graham. While a lot of science is certainly speculative and not in the same class as accounting, the same cannot be said about the law covering Prospectuses. These have conditions that do go to the reasonableness of conclusions and, more importantly, a realistic range of modelled projections.
One that would certainly trigger negligence, if not outright fraud, would be the projections of annual clearing in NSW done by John Benson of the NSW Botanic Gardens as justification for the first clearing laws under SEPP46 in 1995.
This was nothing more than an extrapolation over the entire state from regrowth clearing on the northern half of the Moree Plain. This produced an estimate of 150,000ha each year that was subsequently shown by satellite scans to be only in the order of 8,000 to 16,000ha during that period.
Clearly, any high school science student would exercise caution in making such an extrapolation from specific data. So there are very strong grounds to conclude that the opinion of Benson was an opinion that reasonable men and women in possession of the facts would not hold.
And this is not an isolated instance. Basically, whenever a policy process brings in a so-called “Expert Panel” one can be quite certain that senior departmental officers are attempting to shift responsibility for questionable inputs away from themselves to avoid potential negligence claims. They may be hopeless, they may get by on rat cunning rather than competence, but they are not stupid.
So! 150,000ha corrects to 8-16000ha. Sounds like someone didn’t know that, in modelling, “correct to within an order of magnitude equals wrong”.
A form of scientific fraud which seems quite prevalent in the ecological literature is ‘statistical caricaturing’. This involves telling only part of the truth, so creating a very false impression. The courts are wise in demanding the ‘whole truth’. Somebody on this thread (Jim Beale?) suggested that referees should be required to examine the raw data, rather than accepting graphs or analyses at face value. I could not agree more. Unfortunately some biological referees may lack the statistical insight needed. One crook paper in the ecological literature will be widely quoted as authoritative if it suits some ideological point of view.
Yes, Ian. This wasn’t even dignified by modelling. It was a guestimate backed up by the usual shock horror stories by the ABC and SMH.
In the justification for the Native Veg Act the official position called “Setting the Scene” by the same John Benson, had a table listing the cleared areas of each bioregion but for some reason it didn’t include a total for the state.
When I compiled that total area of cleared land in the state (as you do) I found that this 28 million odd hectares was a full seven million hectares less than what the same author, in the same document, had claimed to have been cleared by the 1930’s.
The omission of this total obscured the fact that there had been an increase in native vegetation, net of all clearing, of seven million hectares since the 1930’s. A matter of considerable relevance when investigating the need for vegetation legislation.
When I referred this matter to the NSW Independent Commission Against Corruption for investigation I discovered that ICAC regards the proper discharge of it’s duties in such matters as thinking up any number of plausible explanations in Benson’s defence, without actually conducting any sort of investigation.
The body charged with investigating corruption, ie. “the partial OR dishonest exercise of public official functions”, actively sought out excuses for not investigating the matter. They even used the fact that there was no record of explanation for the omission from Benson, as a reason for not asking him for one.
And contrary to a mountain of case law to the contrary, ICAC claimed that the fact that Benson did not appear to benefit from any of his representations, meant that he was not subject to Sec 185A of the Crimes Act 1900.
The fact that a thief may give all the proceeds to someone else has never been a defence but it was good enough for ICAC.
Just another day in the brave new green utopia.
Very good blog. Loved the five point test for fraud, Ian. Your experience in trying to bring accountability for misrepresenting facts is not alone. I can give an example from South Australia.
Some years ago I lodged a complaint with the Commissioner for Public Employment against a Native Vegetation officer for underminig process by misrepresenting events (evidence provided) in briefings to inform decision makers, and for altering a document without noting the alteration or citing any authority to make that alteration.
(It was some years before we became aware of the existence of those briefings or that the document had been altered.)
After about a year, the Commissioner concluded that there had been some communications problems, and the officer concerned would be interviewed about improving future communications.
Now the Enron boys had some, er, “communications problems”, didn’t they? But they were not public officers, so they could be brought to account.
Yes Helen, it seems the level of personal responsibility in the public sector changes in inverse proportion to the level of authority they seek to exercise.
What a marvellous life? Control everything, pay for nothing, claim all credit, accept no blame.
The latest trick in avoiding consequences of misrepresentation to policy and legislative processes is to shift the key personnel a month or two before the decision is made. This allows everyone to make their views known to the relevant person but then allows the new person in the post to “forget” or “fail to grasp” the significance of any considerations that the Department might regard as inconvenient. So after “extensive consultation” the departmental preferred option gets up anyway.
And they then wonder why no-one wants to enter into “strategic partnerships” with scum.