Now that the main charges of scientific misconduct arising from the hacking of the University of East Anglia email system have been proven false, it’s possible to get a reasonably clear idea of what actually happened here. For once the widely used “X-gate” terminology is appropriate. As with Watergate, the central incident was a “third-rate burglary” conducted as part of a campaign of overt and covert harassment directed against political opponents and rewarded (at least in the short run) with political success.
The core of the campaign is a network of professional lobbyists, rightwing activists and politicians, tame journalists and a handful of scientists (including some at the University of East Anglia itself) who present themselves as independent seekers after truth, but are actually in regular contact to co-ordinate their actions and talking points. The main mechanism of harassment was the misuse of Freedom of Information requests in an effort to disrupt the work of scientists, trap them into failures of compliance, and extract information that could be misrepresented as evidence of scientific misconduct. This is a long-standing tactic in the rightwing War on Science, reflected in such Orwellian pieces of legislation as the US “Data Quality Act”.
The hacking was almost certainly done by someone within the campaign, but in a way that maintained (in Watergate terminology) “plausible deniability” for the principals. Regardless of what they knew (and when they knew it) about the actual theft, the leading figures in the campaign worked together to maximize the impact of the stolen emails, and to co-ordinate the bogus claims of scientific misconduct based on the sinister interpretations placed on such phrases as “trick” and “hide the decline”.
The final group of actors in all this were the mass audience of self-described “sceptics”. With few exceptions (in fact, none of whom I am aware), members of this group have lost their moral bearings sufficiently that they were not worried at all by the crime of dishonesty involved in the hacking attack. Equally importantly, they have lost their intellectual bearings to the point where they did not reflect that the kind of person who would mount such an attack, or seek to benefit from it, would not scruple to deceive a gullible audience as to the content of the material they had stolen. The members of this group swallowed and regurgitated the claims of fraud centred on words like “trick”. By the time the imposture was exposed, they had moved on to the next spurious talking point fed to them by the rightwing spin machine.
To keep all this short and comprehensible, I haven’t given lots of links. Most of the points above are have been on the public record for some time (there’s a timeline here), but a few have only come to light more recently. These Guardian story brings us up to date, and names quite a few of the key players (see also here). For the role of allegedly independent journalists in all this, see Tim Lambert’s Deltoid site (search for “Rosegate” and “Leakegate”).
Update I should have mentioned that much the same team had their first outing in the controversy over the Mann et al “hockey stick” graph. All the same elements were there – supposedly disinterested citizen researchers who were in fact paid rightwing operatives, misuse of accountability procedures, and exceptional gullibility on the part of the “sceptical” mass audience. Details are here (h/t John Mashey). Note in particular the role of Edward Wegman, who had the great appeal of being an apparent cleanskin without the kind of paper trail associated with the majority of delusionist “experts”. Here are my comments on Wegman’s silly and dishonest critique of Mann.. It was obvious at the time that Wegman had agreed in advance to do a hatchet job, a fact confirmed by his later appearance on delusionist petitions. But until now we didn’t have the details of the connection.
John Quiggin 
My god you are biased.
TerjeP: How about changing your designation to Pot?
Terje demands that truth and lies be given equal time. Let us make up our own mind!
i wonder how often there are police investigations into leaks
@TerjeP (say tay-a)
Biased towards facts and evidence perhaps?
the false “leak” that made ralph willis look like a fool near the 1996 elelction (sorry about the date, shaky memory on dates) was never investigated as far as my shaky memory tells me
@jeff
Your “leak” terminology implies an inside job, as opposed to a purely external hacking attack. My best bet, following the Guardian article is that it was a bit of both, but we will probably never know for sure.
I prefer the term “implausible deniability” because, lets faces it, no one really believes the denial. (Except, if anyone takes Terje’s post seriously, Terje.)
@TerjeP (say tay-a)
Who isn’t?
Bias, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder. When M&M decide to critique some of Monckton’s more egregious errors of fact on climate science, when the poor man’s Smarties M&M decide to investigate the forever changing narrative by Carter, Plimer et al about the cooling since 1998, when they do some field work like Lonnie Thompson, Richard Alley, and a zillion other climate scientists, and then go to the bother of making their raw data and preprocessing decisions available for all to criticise, when Hell freezes over, then I might reconsider my view that they are no more value than a bad case of haemorrhoids.
@jquiggin
thanks john – not to hijack your post or get you off-topic for too long – do you rememebr the incident concerning ralph willis in 1996 or so? i remember his appearing before the TV cameras with letters purported to be the then opposition’s dastardly plans, but were then proved to be fake, and he was roundly criticised for it and some people said it was a major low point in that campaign for labor
I do remember the Willis incident, Jeff, and it came up recently, though I can’t recall the exact context. I believe there were accusations that a Liberal staffer had passed off the fake, but they were never proved and I’ve never seen any convincing evidence against anybody (not that I’ve looked).
Now, back to Climategate
@Donald Oats
“when the poor man’s Smarties M&M decide to … do some field work like Lonnie Thompson, Richard Alley, and a zillion other climate scientists, and then go to the bother of making their raw data and preprocessing decisions available for all to criticise, when Hell freezes over, then I might reconsider my view that they are no more value than a bad case of haemorrhoids.”
Hell froze over in 2007.
http://climateaudit.org/2007/10/12/a-little-secret/
I have sat on disciplinary panels at my university which have expelled students for hacking into university computer systems. It speaks volumes for the denialists’ ethics that they don’t condemn such behaviour in this instance and some even regard it as praiseworthy.
In the case that the emails were ‘leaked’ as opposed to ‘hacked’, does anyone know the exact legality of this in the UK? Specifically, if I work for a university and I stumble upon my colleagues personal emails, what sort of trouble would I be in if I then published the emails on the web?
Paul Norton @ 14
“An effectively functioning society is founded upon educated individuals who would then act to restrain the excesses of government or the reckless actions of a mass of people”.
When ‘the Revenue Lobby*’ are touting a ‘consensus’ based on fraud as scientific evidence, with the view to feathering their own nest (i.e a mass publicly funded ‘conspiracy’ by ‘the Revenue Lobby’); then it is up to “educated individuals” to exposed the fraud by any means possible…. Although, whistle blowing thus far, is all that has happened at the University of East Anglia and it should not be illegal.
*The ‘revenue lobby’ (comprising the ATO, the Treasury and their allies in politics, ACADEMIA, the media and the welfare industry) is alive and well.
Shorter Tony G:
Has gun and has vote. Will shoot if necessary.
I must say, as a fully paid-up* member of the climate change believers club, I have a lot of trouble giving a rat’s arse about the ethics of the hack and releasing the emails. Yes they were private, yes it’s a crime, yes they were open to misinterpretation, but let the sunshine in I reckon. As it happens, it was all a complete beat-up and nothing was found. A real conspiracy would have had some evidence there, surely!
If this was a rational, evidence based debate, then it would have been seen as an own goal by the denialists. Of course, Andrew Bolt and the various charlatans don’t play by those rules…
*shh, don’t tell Tony G.
Ths s bsltly tr.
Th nvstgtn by th Hs Rpblcns hs clrd ll mplctns f wrng dng by th Nxn dmnstrtn frm th tps.
Srsly, ths s hlrs. Th cgntv dssnnc n ths pst s fntstc. t’s lk th rq nfrmtn mnstr syng tht th mrcns r nwhr nr Bghdd.
t’s nt jst ths, th whl rprt f WG2 s bng sht t pcs.
D y lk t th Grdn, th Lft Wng ppr n th K?
Hv y sn th plls n th K?
Frm th BBC:
http://nws.bbc.c.k/2/h/scnc/ntr/8500443.stm
Th mst cmmn vw n th K s nw tht clmt chng s hppnng ( s t LWYS hs ) bt tht t sn’t mstly d t hmn ctvty.
Thr s nw mnng fr ‘dnr’. t’s smn wh hs fld t rcgns tht th jstfctn fr lrg scl c02 mssns rdctns s gn.
disemvowellment to spammers! JQ
Ah, pedro. Deniosaur Central is working hard today I see. Must be those secret herbs and spices.
“My god you are biased.” [TerjeP]
Yep, your god would be biassed, you did make him after your own image, right ?
Sorry Terj, but you do make such a big, slow moving target of yourself.
Pedro X cross posting the exact same post across several blogs I see. Really become shrill and desparate.
Now that the main charges of scientific misconduct arising from the hacking of the University of East Anglia email system have been proven false […]
The provided link refers to a PSU investigation of Michael Mann. Isn’t there also an investigation conducted by UEA into the CRU scientists (IIRC Phil Jones stepped down pending the results) ? If so, has it reported any findings?
I think “climategate” and the single mistake detected in 1600 pages of IPCC report will be featuring a lot more in the denialist buzz. There single biggest claim for a long time has been an absence of warming for a few years, sometimes hyped to claims of cooling.
I’m willing to bet already that 2010 will be the hottest year since instrumentation began*, based on the January data, the general trend and the fact this is an El Nino year. The denialists know they’ve only got a few more months to use the claim temperatures have platued, so they’ll be relying on things like “climategate” which cannot be graphed to refute them.
*Yes I am fully aware that one year’s temperatures do not prove climate change. However, the denialists have run so hard on looking at short term trends having this knocked out from under them will be a problem in terms of selling to the public.
Have you seen the polls?
killing joke right,
and questioning a corrupt and dishonest political class makes a paper left wing does it?
whereas a propaganda tube like murdochs empire is what, right wing?
a sensible and constructive comments policy restrains me from explaining my feelings towards you pedro x and terje
Michael Mann is still under investigation by Penn State University.
http://live.psu.edu/story/44327
“In looking at four possible allegations of research misconduct, the committee determined that further investigation is warranted for one of those allegations. The recommended investigation will focus on determining if Mann “engaged in, directly or indirectly, any actions that seriously deviated from accepted practices within the academic community for proposing, conducting or reporting research or other scholarly activities.”
In the investigatory phase, as in the inquiry phase, the committee will not address the science of global climate change, a matter more appropriately left to the profession. The committee is charged with looking at the ethical behavior of the scientist and determining whether he violated professional standards in the course of his work.”
UEA Climatic Research Unit faces an independent review headed by Sir Muir Russell. The first review point is,
1. Examine the hacked e-mail exchanges, other relevant e-mail exchanges and any other information held at CRU to determine whether there is any evidence of the manipulation or suppression of data which is at odds with acceptable scientific practice and may therefore call into question any of the research outcomes.
http://www.uea.ac.uk/mac/comm/media/press/2009/dec/CRUreview
Some current and former IPCC authors have condemned the IPCC as politicized and tainted by advocacy. Some have called for its abolition.
This is one of the most significant and far-reaching scientific scandals ever.
The question is where does the scandal actually reside?
Inside or outside the University?
An account of the Penn State investigation on makes clear the the Univesity administration had to try and get to clarity that the critics outside had not provided as to the issues at stake and that they wer trying to make sense of a mass of incoherent material that in itself did not add up to a clear charge of anything.
The University is bending over backwards to apply an appropriate process to deal with nobody knows quite what.
@jethro
I don’t think the UEA inquiry has released any findings yet, jethro. There is also still a charge against Mann that is going to be further investigated.
The charges against Mann have not been “proven false”. The Inquiry Committee says that no credible evidence exists, which is not the same thing.
In fact the inquiry report reads like a whitewash. The questions asked of Mann are not posted on the PSU website, neither are Mann’s responses, or the list of emails that are supposedly the ones Phil Jones asked him to delete.
Apparently the only outside people interviewed were North and Kennedy, both prominent warmists.
It seems they asked Mann if the allegations were true, he said “No way!” and they accepted his word.
One could also ask why the committee felt the necessity to address the “hide the decline”/temperature splice to cover up the proxy decline issue, given it happened before Mann was at Penn State.
Somehow DM Hope manages to leave off the part that although they found no evidence Penn State, would let an investigation start on the fourth point since that was something for a group of faculty to look into, rather than the administrators who had conducted the preliminary investigation which found Mann completely blameless.
@Stephen L
Your point that the denialosphere will move on to ‘climategate’ as the new talking point was illistrated perfectly by
@DMHope
Who’s claim that “This is one of the most significant and far-readching scientific scandals ever” comes prior to any finding of the sort being made.
illistrated = illustrated
Who’s = whose
My communist indoctrinated education interfered with my learning.
As I’ve posted before, the global temperature anomaly data from GISS shows that for the instrumental record 1880 — 2009, the year 1998 has been thrashed by 2005, beaten by 2009 and 2007, and tied with 2002. Of the 30 hottest years, all but 3 are from the most recent 30 years. Of the hottest 10 years, all but one (the exception being 1998) are from the most recent 10 years. That makes a mockery of the claim that the climate is cooling (since 1998 according to the misinformation spruikers). Top 30 years listed here (No. Year Anomaly):
That is the temperature anomaly record. Those are the facts. So what do the “sceptics” do? They say oh that organisation, I don’t trust their data so your facts are wrong. And then they claim to use the same data to show “cooling”. What a joke.
DMHope , Paul Williams
Except possibly for you two, most people who visit this blog-site can read all by themselves. Your interpretation of the findings on Dr Mann, which have been published on this blog-site some days ago, is therefore totally superfluous.
DMHope, must try harder.
I mean really, just how thick do you think we really are?
@Paul Williams
You write:
“The charges against Mann have not been “proven false”. The Inquiry Committee says that no credible evidence exists, which is not the same thing.”
First of all, it is Dr Mann and not “Mann”.
Second, there were to “charges”. There were allegations. Not the same thing.
Third, what are you accusing Dr Michael Mann of?
No weasel words, please. Either you have a clearly formulated accusation or not. So come clean.
@wilful
I agree there’s nothing in the emails,and the public is welcome to them,but what is unacceptable is that some ethically retarded individuals have seen fit to publish and/or promote for sale their paranoid and slanderous estimations of what the correspondence means. Their behavior has breached ethical standards on consultation in the preparation,intellectual copyright,and is clearly defamatory. This should be followed up with legal action by the email authors.
Background on the alegations about Dr Mann
At the time of initiation of the inquiry, and in the ensuing days during the inquiry, no formal allegations accusing Dr. Mann of research misconduct were submitted to any University official. As a result, the emails and other communications were reviewed by Dr. Pell and from these she synthesized the following four formal allegations. To be clear, these were not allegations that Dr. Pell put forth, or leveled against Dr. Mann, but rather were her best effort to reduce to allegation form the many different accusations that were received from parties outside of the University.
http://rabett.blogspot.com/2010/02/michael-mann-exonerated.html
What you are implying, Paul Williams, is that if I accuse you of, say, murder, without any credible evidence whatsoever, unless you can prove you did not commit the murder I can still regard you as guilty.
Extraordinary.
We are still playing the game of the denialist propagandists.
In that we are responding to their false claims and arguing the validity and credibility of such as if they have some sort of either.
Thus we are playing on their oval, with their ball, according to their rules.
Lets play a different game.
There are a couple of others available.
One of them is the science and reality game.
Does the science etc show that the globe is warming and that AGW is at the root of that and we need to do something yesterday about the impact?
That game is essentially over.
The score is in.
AGW won in a landslide.
Another game is to look at the credibility, validity and integrity of the denialists.
Its the same game we have been playing up till now but in reverse, we can put the magifying glass on the other team.
How do:
Monckton, Plimer, Watts, Bellamy, Fielding’s coterie, Heartland ….. et al
stack up when it comes to:
sources, funding, quoting in context, credibility, accuracy, integrity, facts, research …. etc?
Hmmm?
I suggest that game is over as well.
At least in real terms but, unfortunately, not in propaganda terms.
So anytime the denialists come up with a confected claim as they have in the past and doubtless will manage to continue to do so in the future, lets put them under the spotlight of criticism.
If they cite Monckton ask:
do they support Monckton’s claim that the Arctic was iceless in the early 15th century and we know such because a Chinese fleet visited the Arctic in 1421 and saw no ice?
Facts and research please and comment on such and the resultant issue of Monckton’s integrity.
The ‘put up or shut up’ approach [as illustrated by Ernestine and others above].
Repeat same for all those denialist champions who make wild claims.
Put up or shut up.
Donald @ 32 (this is off top but it demonstrates AGW fraud)
In reality Don those temperature readings do not mean much.
Only a micro fraction of the atmosphere is measured for temperature and a fictitious extrapolation is then obtained to ‘guess’ the temperature for the rest.
If we use the Karmen line as our boundary (the boundary is actually a lot further) we get a figure of about 51,000,000,000,000,000,000 cubic meters.
Can you tell me Donald, how many cubic metres of the atmosphere do we have a thermometer in and how many cubic metres do we extrapolate (guess) the temperature?
I think we can extrapolate (guess) the answer to being, thermometers are in a very very small fraction of the atmosphere.
Tony G
On that line of argument we could not rely on rainfall measurements because the gauges only cover a small fration of the land mass.
and your substantive point is?
Come on Dougie they can’t measure atmospheric temperature to the tolerance that Don is on about; they don’t measure 99.999999999999999999999% of the atmosphere so they have to guess.
Next you will be saying an Australian ETS is going to stop carbon increasing in the atmosphere at the rate 1.5ppm per year..ha ha lol. AGW and its cure is all BS.
In which John Quiggin makes an interesting and totally irrelevant point with regard to the ‘Climategate’ scandal.
The unfortuante reality is that the politics of climate change is being lost. IPCC, rightly or wrongly, is no longer credible. The science – in the eyes of the public – is uncertain (which imho is the whole point, but that is a longer discussion). The politicians’ resolve is unconvincing. The strategy emphasising international agreement over national solutions failed at Copenhagen.
In the middle of all that, we are invited by JQ to consider the morality of hacking, alleged right-wing bias and the degree of its organisational capabilities. Well, what’s bias to some is conviction to others. Something the climate change argument sorely lacks at the moment.
{internet meme}
Did Paul Williams rape and murder a girl in 1990?
Why won’t he prove that he didn’t?
{/internet meme}
Ilya @43
You may be right about the politics – you are certainly right about the politicians and their unravelling resolve. You may even be right about the public’s view of the science (although I find it hard to give much credibility to generalised claims to know how “the public” sees things).
Doesn’t mean the evidence is wrong. Doesn’t mean we can walk away from it. Doesn’t mean your hands are clean of the future.
You are a scientist aren’t you, Tony G?
Well, a statistician, then?
No?
Lucky.
@Ernestine Gross
“Second, there were to “charges”. There were allegations. Not the same thing.”
Our host called them “charges”. That’s good enough for me. If you have a problem with that, take it up with him. Didn’t you say you could read? Why not try it?
Re Tim Macknay and gerard”s comments;
Is this the level of debate you encourage John?
@Paul Williams
Well I agree with you that that is at least a start, so I’ll retract at least the haemorrhoids comment for now. In all seriousness, do you know where they’ve put the results of the core data they gathered? I’d like to have a look.
@Paul Williams
My question was: What are you accusing Dr Michael Mann of?
I rephrase it:
Are you alleging Dr Michael Mann has committed scientific misconduct?
Yes or No?
I went to the see the doctor the other day. Regular check up, plus a few things worrying me, not as I expected them to be. The doctor ordered some tests – quite a few actually. He sent me to people who were experts in measuring the things he wanted to get some data on. The test results came back – this one was normal, this one was right at the top of the ‘normal’ range, and this one was well outside what he said he would expect for a healthy person of my age.
Did I believe him? Had he looked at every cell in my body? No. Had he studied every limb and every system in my body? No. Did he have a completely accurate understanding of every possibly relevant symptom, every pain, every idiosyncrasy of my waking and sleeping hours? No. I was sceptical.
He said he needed to do more tests to get more information that would help to either confirm his tentative diagnosis or suggest another line of possibilities. He told me he could only go on whatever evidence he could gather and his professional knowledge about what it might mean.
Even after the second, and third round of tests, it was obvious to me that we were still making educated guesses. While the doctor says “I’m pretty sure you are suffering from the very serious illness xxx”, it could just be a combination of swallowing too much air with my food, the way I sit, and the tightness of my collar. Or it could be serious illness yyy. Or a mutated form of an incredibly rare disease he’s never seen before. I guess I’ll get a definitive diagnosis when they do an autopsy.
Can I see someone else, get a second opinion? Should I do this? Sure, he says – that’s what I would recommend.
Same sort of diagnosis – a few different interpretations, but same story.
What am I going to do? I could wait until it gets a whole lot worse – although the doc says it’s too late to do anything about fixing or delaying it once it gets much worse. Maybe I could stick with my scepticism and just see if he’s wrong – I guess if he is, I’ll be pretty chuffed, and if he isn’t, I’ll just have to accept that I was wrong. He says it’s not a nice way to die.
And maybe I could ask my kids and grandkids if they want to sign a pact to die with me, if he does turn out to be right. Some of them are telling me not to worry, doctors often get it wrong. I’m glad they are being so brave.
Update: I decided to go with the treatment recommended by the doctor. He has shares in the hospital where I will have the operation, so maybe he’s just lying to increase his own wealth – but like just about every other person I know, I think I have to go with what he’s telling me, based on the evidence he’s got.
I guess we make these sorts of decisions all the time – weigh up the information we’ve got, and decide what’s the sensible thing to do. Could be wrong, but on the weight of probability …