Bishop Hill On the accountability of universities
Jul 14, 2012 Climate: CRU Climate: Mann Rand Simberg looks at the aftermath of the Sandusky affair at Penn State University and considers what it means for public perceptions of the investigation of Michael Mann.
Michael Mann, like Joe Paterno (and to a lesser degree, Jerry Sandusky) was a rock star in the context of Penn State University, bringing in millions in research funding. The same university president who resigned in the wake of the Sandusky scandal was also the president when Mann was being
whitewashedinvestigated. We saw what the university administration was willing to do to cover up heinous crimes, and even let them continue, rather than expose them. Should we suppose, in light of what we now know, they would do any less to hide academic and scientific misconduct, with so much at stake?It’s time for a fresh, truly independent investigation.
I'm not sure why Simberg has used strikethrough style on the word "whitewashed". That the Climategate "inquiries" were devoid of any integrity is beyond question.
Simberg's hope for a meaningful inquiry will undoubtedly turn out to be forlorn. Universities do not investigate their own. They are accountable to nobody and, as Edward Acton showed during the CRU investigations, the vice-chancellors can thumb their noses at politicians with complete impunity.
The question is, why then should the public pay for them?
Reader Comments (42)
Simberg could have taken the comparison a step further. It was a series of emails between Penn State officials that the Freeh Report cited, which indicated a coverup of Sandusky's crimes dating back to 1998. The emails also clearly show that legendary coach Joe Paterno, who died in January, knew about the allegations and lied to the grand jury about them last year.
Beyond that, however, the comparisons end. Michael Mann was at Penn State for a relatively short time and is guilty of no crime save colossal arrogance and general bad science, and I doubt anyone not in the field of climate science would recognize him on campus, then or now. It is no exaggeration to say that were it not for Joe Paterno and the football program he built, Penn State would still be a small college in rural Pennsylvania, and Mann would never have given it a second look.
Does any one of you imagine that any organization would behave differently in a Sandusky sort of affair? Maybe some would have removed him, or restricted his opportunities, or possibly fired him, but turn him in to the authorities? No Way, given the high likelihood of adverse publicity.
It may be that no-one ever expects the inquisition, but when it's an inside enquiry, no-one should expect anything but a white-wash.
In the two episodes of discovery of undoubted felony, financial in both cases, in organizations I worked at, neither was exposed to the authorities. in each case, the miscreant was dealt with gently but firmly and sent on his way to seek his fortune, by whatever means, elsewhere.
I'm sorry, but putting U Penn's handling of investigations into Mann's scientific activities on a comparable plane with its handling of allegations of child-rape within its athletics operation comes across as low-rent, childish propaganda.
Academic misconduct is not a matter of a few "bad apples", it is more a way of life, throughout the university systems. Any untenured university instructor or research associate can tell you anecdotes about his/her experiences with the "politics" (meaning, systemically accepted, expected and encouraged abuses of power for personal gain) of academia. For professors, it is all about getting tenure, and continuing grants, to get past most of that politics, and for research associates, it is all about just keeping your head down, because you have no rights and can be terminated for no reason (although in such case, the termination will be given a cover story, such as "due to cuts in funding"). History tells us all well-funded institutions will develop such institutional "dry rot", which those subjected to it quickly recognize as the very antithesis of what the institution is supposed to be about. The on-going climate science fiasco, with academics still broadcasting their fantasies of "settled science", is just the presently most-visible symptom of a quite general academic dry rot. Modern science is in a general crisis of incompetence, and Science itself, as the pure search for objective truth, across all fields, may well be likened to all those young people who have been sexually abused by a person in power, in the church or in the university setting. Academic abuse is no different than sexual abuse.
Eddy,
Why not? One onside you have a child/children being rapped and on the other you gave science being raped. Both were coveted up by the University.
Mailman
@Eddy
Your comment makes no sense.
At issue isn't Manns's behaviour, but Penn State's investigation of Mann's behaviour.
Penn State has already shown itself willing to compromise on the integrity of an investigation in an abuse case - a far more serious situation to my mind than any question of scientific misconduct.
It is perfectly reasonable - responsible even - to question the integrity and competence of an investigation into a less contentious issue that has similar implications for the finances and reputation of PS.
People insinuating that it's somehow exploitative to mention parallels the investigation of the abuse scandal and wilfully misreading the point being made are themselves cynically exploiting it.
I don't see how universities could regulate themselves at the moment. And how strong is the evidence that, for example, banks or markets are regulating themselves more properly than universities?
Appropriate investigations are even more difficult when we are threatened -- on nearly every occasion -- by "existential risks".
Confer the answer of Marcus Agius (Oral Evidence, Taken before the Treasury Committee on Tuesday 10 July 2012) to the Treasury Select Committee's question: "Libor manipulation went on for three years. Is Barclays in denial on the scale of this?"
Until the CAGW bubble finally bursts, nobody in a government, is going to dig in the right place & to the right depth.
There's still too much money & face invested in it.
Maybe organizations always see themselves this way.
The two are analogous and this is why. Football was big business at Penn State and brought in huge sums. It was unacceptable to endanger that flow of revenue so they covered up Sandusky's crimes.
The US National Science Foundation has been channeling huge sums through its Behavioral Sciences Division into colleges of education and math and science education to remake the nature of math and science around constructivism. The new, more political correct name for constructivism is modelling. Preferably designed to be transdisciplinary as in modelling potential solutions to humanity's problems. There are campuses now where the colleges of education selling off what kids in K-12 can learn are the largest beneficiaries of outside research grants on campus. That's a lot of clout. I know Penn State is involved with some of these MSPs and this remaking of science and math. It then plays into the sums that a Mann can bring in through his "climate science."
At UVa his modelling work plays in nicely to the partnership between the college of ed there and the new $12 million Contemplative Sciences Center that is pushing Eastern notions of the mind-body connection and emotion as entitled to as much deference as reason.
These huge grants were designed to corrupt the modern research university in the US. A few months ago I wrote a post about hearing the President of one of the premier engineering universities in the US (the one where Judith Curry teaches) describe the modern economy as requiring an alliance among Big Business, Government, and research universities.http://www.invisibleserfscollar.com/and-governments-must-facilitate-everything/
That's also the template the administrators at Penn State envision. The Pres I quoted had previously been head of UC-Boulder so we can guess just how deeply this reflects the reorganize the economy around sustainability mindset. While the universities rake in the revenue from the enabling grants funding the modelling research.
Penn State or State Pen?
Lissen up to the early bird @ 1:58 PM. There's the worm.
================
I took my engineering degree from Penn State in 1960. The football program was considered untouchable even then and got moreso over time. I stopped giving to the University after the Climategate investigation because the results were a direct indication of a lapse in ethics. I know others who have taken the same action (or lack thereof). The actions of the University wrt Sandusky did not come as a great surprise to me because they had already proved themselves to be lacking ethically as well as having a great hunger for the contributions that allowed the University to flourish. I wonder how many graduates have stopped contributing since the Sandusky mess started? We'll see.
Some of you might note that Penn State is NOT U Penn - they're two different schools.
Brilliantly crafted post Bish. You've got to the root question. Answer: we shouldn't pay for them. Corollary: we should support any policy direction that reduces funding from the state and encourages thriving private institutions in their place. Time to bite the bullet.
@Eddy
No, Mann's academic shortcomings aren't on the same moral plane as Sandusky's crimes. (Though the economic - and thus, human - consequences of Kyoto-style emissions targets - or indeed, conversely, of a catastrophic man-made global warming - mean that we're not dealing with harmless parlour games in Mann's case either.) But that makes the point even more salient. Do you think that a U. Penn leadership that was willing to cover for Sandusky would nonetheless strain at the gnat of whitewashing Michael Mann's research-quality issues?
I don't know Mann personally, inwardly he makes me shudder, watching him on recordings - he has no gravitas and comes across like a travelling quack, so desperate is his twaddling and a dearth of conviction in his 'language'.
However, I think back to my time as a fresher and think - some of the more renowned lecturers [the ones who were in print] were treated like 'demi-gods' by some students and staff alike and were trusted as though they some sort of special status beings and therefore, somehow and illogically thought as utterly trustworthy.
I am quite sure many jejune doe-eyed students and alumni gaze, muse and think of Mann as some sort of quasi divine being - an awful thought but look at what L Ron Hubbard got away with and then there is Jim Jones.
The unearned kudos that, Mann courted was out of all proportion to his supposed 'scientific works of conjecture', and yet he was showered with praise and money - what a 'gold mine' Mann was for Penn State.
The US and HMG gave him dosh, not their money of course - actually it was our money.
In the end, Mann is a mountebank of a quite different scale and on a par with Hubbard - it really does make one despair as to the innate weakness of mankind - in their willingness to blindly follow pedlars of lies and misdirection.
Penn State, is by the second further diminished, plumbing the depths - the longer they allow Mann to cower behind their aegis.
Eddy says,
"I'm sorry, but putting U Penn's handling of investigations into Mann's scientific activities on a comparable plane with its handling of allegations of child-rape within its athletics operation comes across as low-rent, childish propaganda."
And there lies the rub Eddy; morality isn't the issue and the degree of right and wrong is not the issue--it's either right or wrong! Moral equivalence is not the issue. Institutions should be judged on how they deal with all issues--big or small. Penn state seems to fail by any measure because it wants to protect its financing. When this degree of uncertainty exists, public financing should be withheld under moratorium until institutional leadership can prove itself acting above the interest of finance.
Are Mann's climate shenanigans and the Sandusky perversions on the same plane? Of course they are very different in terms of the nature of the activities underlying the charges. But where they come together is in how Penn State as an institution dealt with them. All the way up to the departed president Spanier, the institution responded so as to protect its own. This is a matter of record.
An important difference lies in the denial of the science perversion. We are bombarded with relentless ad hominem dodges from discussing the actual content of the field and tiresome public indignation and tantrums. It is always about who is a crank, and who is not; who has impure motives, and who does not; who is a good scientist and who is not; who has been paid off and who was not; who is an interloper in the field and who is not. Really? Is that a sensible response to the requests for archival data and programs and to the series of revelations of statistical finagling and cherry picking of sources?
Sorry, U. Penn isn't Penn State of course. I knew that! :/
Who's going to screw with an outfit that can arrange for this to happen:
http://www.nbcphiladelphia.com/news/local/DA-Who-Never-Charged-Sandusky-Has-Been-Missing-Since-2005-133615093.html
The main point is that the people such as ex-Pres. Spanier who were in charge at Penn State were so mentally and morally corrupt that nothing they did can be trusted.
The whitewash of Michael Mann is a disgrace to academic standards and a disgrace to science:
Jul 15, 2012 at 3:00 AM | jorgekafkazar
re: disappearance of District Attorney Gricar in April 2005, it is a shocking event (plausible to suspect he was murdered although evidence does seem to be thin) but I don't think there has been any plausible allegation that it had to do with Penn State or the Sandusky case(s). More likely it had to do with something like a drug or organized crime case, although not much seems to have emerged pointing in any direction. However, Gricar had investigated Sandusky 7 years prior and there was no indication (that I have seen) that anything had come to Gricar's attention about Sandusky since. So barring some new information, I don't think it is plausible to associate Gricar's disappearance in April 2005 with Penn State or Sandusky.
Fascinating parallels to mutant "climate science" occur in the medical research field. Gary Taubes, a Stanford and Harvard educated aerospace engineer, is fascinated by the development of wronheaded "consensus science". Interestingly, The New York Times, which defers to "settled science" in the climate field, published Taubes methodical dissection of 60 years of diet orthodoxy, "What if It's All Been a Big Fat Lie?", the most controversial piece they ran in 2002.
Last year, in another fit of deviant irresponsibility, The Times ran another of Taubes concensus challenging pieces, "Is sugar toxic?". Taubes's hypothosis " that the medical community and the federal government of the United States of America have relied upon misinterpreted scientific data on nutrition to build the prevailing paradigm about what constitutes healthful eating".
Sounds eerily familiar?
In contrast to the climate community's reaction, Taubes now lectures to groups of hundreds of doctors interested in discovering the processes that lead to faulty research.
Some other background as to how American universities in particular arrived at this state, is in the autobiographical memoirs of former Dean Of Grad Studies at Princeton, Alvin Kernan. "In Plato's Cave" he narrates in the reviewer's words " a catalog of disappointments, of promising things gone horribly wrong. Kernan climbed almost to the top of the greasy academic pole, and found there not the bright sun of understanding but a greater darkness."
Too much money thrown into a huge, diluted talent pool. A bit like the feeding frenzy at the fish farm.
Betapug
One of the succinctest possible statements of the whole problem.
In George H. W. Bush's time as President, from Jan 1989 to Jan 1993, am I right in thinking that the US government funding for 'climate science' (and I grant the pedantic Bishop Hill reader that nobody seems to be able to give a convincing definition of the boundaries that divide it from numerous other disciplines) went from around $200m a year to around $2bn a year?
I have thought for many years that this massive bulge in the money was enough to explain all the evils we've experienced downstream of 1989. Once one has grasped that clearly (and Richard Lindzen has been both brilliant and candid, for a scientist, in explaining exactly how the deleterious effects work out) there is I think a useful distinction to be made among sceptics:
1. accidentalists: the increase in funding was a giant mistake and that's all there is to it. Messy to clean up the consequences but there we go.
2. conspiracists: the increase in funding delighted those who had foreseen its effects and planned long and hard for them in their pursuit of power. Al Gore, Maurice Strong, James Hansen and English players like Margaret Thatcher and John Houghton are sometime cited, more or less credibly, as those in on the plot. But you don't have to know who to be a conspiracist. Messy to clean up the consequences but there we go. And thus we join our accidentalist brethren.
Later small-scale plotting of the kind revealed in the Climategate emails I consider par for the course once there is so many money at stake (and I've not yet mentioned the profits from so-called 'climate policies', from biofuel subsidies to the trading of carbon credits). The collective boondoggle inevitably causes such effects, when too much money is thrown into a huge, diluted talent pool.
Yes indeed Richard, and though it is slightly off topic - then, after the dodgy science opened the floodgates the thing [MMCO2=CAGW] took on a life of its own did it not.
There are, billions involved now and it poisons our sons and daughters minds in schools, causes wet dreams in councils' civic halls, carbon emissions trading floors, as you said the madness of biofuels and has boosted five star hotel trade in fabulous resort conference venues [UN IPCC, UNEP] around the world - BILLIONS and hundreds of thousands of jobs and still it rolls on and never forget TAX and control.
The monster, needs to be slayed, otherwise it [carbon floor price etc] will shut Britain down - that's how serious it is for us.
I also see a possible attempt by humanities and social sciences to make a new powerful ruling class. They want to replace the classic sciences and technology that are the basis of today's Western society with a new one that is ideology and policy based. Ideology and policy based on the humanities, social sciences? Actually it's not new, but simply a dejavu with ruling class belief based societies we had from the start of sivilization. Not to save the World, but to save the humanities and social sciences?
And to actually get "The Team", IPCC etc to let the climate weather science become policy based must have been a dream come trough for the humanities and social sciences?
They are fighting the classic sciences and the principles of the enlightment and want stop before they have made all sciences policy based.
At that moment everything will be based on a new ruling class mostly elements from the humanities and social sciences?
Strange to call them humanities and social sciences when they are so unscientific?
Anyone who has done analytical chemistry knows the spectroscopic phenomenon of 'self-absorption', absorption of internally-generated EM energy by unexcited molecules. CO2 in air is well into that mode at ~200 ppm.
Illuminate the lower atmosphere with IR energy in the 4 and 14 micron bands and it excites CO2 molecules that would normally absorb thermal radiation from above. That increases DOWN emissivity so more IR in those bands arrives at the Earth's surface. This switches off the states which, when activated by kinetic energy, would emit that radiation.
The same applies to all the other GHGs. Much IR emission from the Earth is shifted to the 'atmospheric window'. Total GHE settles at a constant level. There can be no CO2-AGW. No amount of computer modelling can get over this basic fact.
I think the only link between the two Penn State University investigation is the way the income generated for the university by these people seems to have been a factor in the investigations. But then I would guess that is the 'norm' from most American universities with worth being based on the bucks you can bring as much if not more than the values of the academic work you do .
Which rises one question , what actual academic work has Mann done in his time at Penn State, lots of self ego stroking, lots of spouting about conspiracies and continuation of hiding data , but what actual work?
KnR
It's more than that. Spanier was the President of Penn State during all of these fiascos. He in particular, and any/all around him who knew of both cases, preferred cover-up and dishonesty to serious investigation and consequences for miscreants.
There are many President Spaniers in US academe, alas. People who will sell their souls rather than do the right thing.
Yes - I can see a sinister nexus developing between post-modern science and the humanities.
Forget evidence based science, scientific truth is about what we all believe - and if we don't or can't believe - they've got psychologists & sociologists on the team to "help us believe".
Scary
What's worse, because these people deliberately indoctrinate students with fake, politically-correct pseudo-science, they destroy the careers of their students.
That is unforgivable which is why I have set out to establish the facts despite the response of the Hansenkoists.
OT
"Free access to British scientific research to be available within two years
Radical shakeup of academic publishing will allow papers to be put online and be accessed by universities, firms and individuals"
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2012/jul/15/free-access-british-scientific-research
Over the years, I browse through the websites of universities and their Earth Science departments and academic institutes - I think they are quite revealing. It's a shame that all the brown -nosing is there for all to see, now we have the internet, rather than back in the day, when it all happened 'in camera' in the smoke-filled rector's study over glasses of crusted port with the department profs. I just downloaded, for example, (sorry Leeds) the 'Strategic Plan' for Leeds University from here
http://www.leeds.ac.uk/comms/strategy/downloads/
What an epic of embarassingly politically correct sustainable buzz verbiage it is.
But thoroughly typical.
Sorry to change the subject
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/energy/fuel/9401934/Was-the-petrol-price-rigged-too.html
Lembit Oprick was on LBC last night with Ian Collins
Lembit was sticking up for Bob Diamond and Barclays Bank
Basically he said great that Barclays were rigging the LIBBOR
Because no one got hurt and Barclays didnt need a Bail out .
Great for Lembit he aint got the Cheeky Girl to keep any more and proberly aint got a Morgage and Debts either but millions of ordinary people have.
Cartell means the customers no point shopping around for the best company with the best Interest rate
Because there isnt one . They ,re all preset the same.
So if theres a Cartel with Oil and Gas traders more fuel poverty and higher transport prices.
Keep the Enviromentalists happy
Lembit Oprick - Marvellous!
Oprick is probably right- its all a bit of a dog bites man story to my mind- 'bankers control bank loan rates'- scandal!!
"no one got hurt" WOW
My wife and I were discussing this very issue today...why is it that universities seem compelled to hire people to administrate it with zero actually administrative training?
It doesn't mean that something like the Sandusky affair would have come out better, but hiring academics to administrate other academics doesn't seem to work out that well, especially when those administrating them haven't even been exposed to any ethics training related to their administrative role.
At last, somebody with cred doing the math that I have been asking people to do since The Shower Horrors came to light.
One last unanswered question or two.
How many centuries-old trees died for Mann to make his wheels out of? Was the Jeffrey Pine on top of Half Dome killed? Who killed it?
Wasn't Chairman Mao's regime one that required science be ideologically correct? It seems to me that the man with the mustache frequently associated science he didn't like with the ethnicity of its developers.
Is that what we are considering here? It might be good to ask one of the proponents of socially driven science (if I've grasped the concept accurately) to explain how this scheme is different.
I don't think there's any value in trying to construct moral equivalency scales for different examples of organisational corruption, especially in this case. But, it is relevant to consider the relative consequences of being found out, if for no other reason than as a measure of how far an organisation is prepared to go to cover up wrongdoing.
From what I gather, the football program was the single biggest money-earner and status symbol at the university, so they were prepared to do just about anything to protect it from scandal. I suspect that the lengths they will go to to protect Mann are somewhat less, although more than if a lowly graduate student or lab assistant was caught out misbehaving.
How it deals with unwelcome facts goes to the culture of the organisation.
One is, in an essentially corrupt organisation, they always say it is an isolated incident (as News did when the first phone hacking reports emerged). Unfortunately, like termites, for every one we see there are 50 we don't, at first. When we get suspicious and call in the pest controller, the consequences can be catastrophic. News lost an entire paper and its credibility was shredded, plus taking a massive financial hit via compensation claims. PSU's football program is in the toilet, its reputation is mud and they will be paying millions in compensation for years to come.
In an organisation with integrity embedded in its culture (they do exist!), rogue outliers usually do not last long. They are quickly sniffed out, or if they manage to stay hidden for any length of time, when they do come to notice they are dealt with like termites. The pest controllers are called in, and every nook and cranny is investigated and treated, asap. This involves cost and inconvenience, but so be it. What is more, the episode is also used as a 'learning opportunity' to remind everyone of the need to be vigilant about termites, and of the consequences of being one.
Organisations which admit to mistakes or wrongdoing and publicly address their shortcomings are not only more trustworthy than the cover-up merchants, their chances of major structural damage or even collapse are much less. They also tend to be better workplaces, IMO. Besides, who would want PSU or News of the World on their CV these days?