I really detest Dr. Michael E Mann, mostly for what I consider to be an attack on the first amendment -- his defamation lawsuit against Mark Steyn, Rand Simberg, National Review and the Competitive Enterprise Institute. He's an incredible intellectual narcissist and tireless self promoter. He's done some really shoddy science (his most notable work, the hockey stick, has been completely discredited at Climate Audit), yet he's managed to cultivate a public persona as one of the worlds leading experts on climate. He's also very vindictive and likes to publicly trash opponents. He's kind of like the Donald Trump of Science. This doesn't mean everything about him is bad, just like with Donald Trump (whom I voted for and will probably vote for again).
What I would like to suggest for him is that, with his prominence, he could show some support for someone at a low point, who showed some for him, when he was at a low point. Former Penn State president, Graham Spanier is being scheduled for sentencing, and may be facing prison time for a bogus misdemeanor conviction related to crimes that didn't even happen!
Now I want to make it clear, I would not condemn him for not doing this. There is a lot of hysteria surrounding the case and Mann does have his sweet gig as a much quoted, awards bestowed on, documentaries appearing in, editorials writing, expert climate scientist. I know how toxic this topic can be from when I was banned and had some comments deleted from Reason's Hit&Run blog. I blogged about it here. Reason is known for having juvenile, misogynistic commenters who sometimes use handles like "Palin's Butt Plug". Some years back, they caused a stir, by recommending that the judge in the Silk Road case be fed into a wood chipper. Yet, they deleted my comments!
In his book, The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars, Mann has two instances where Graham Spanier gave him some support. On page 174, he says right after receiving the Barton letter, while transitioning to his current job at Penn State, he got a welcoming note from Spanier, assuring him that "he and Penn State were firmly behind" him (I hope that doesn't sound like a double entendre). On page 244, he says he got a "supportive phone call" from Spanier, after some of the Climategate inquiries.
Now, I want to make clear, that in no way, do I mean to criticize him for not supporting Spanier. He may believe the media narrative that Spanier is guilty. If I hadn't run across the Skeptic.com review of Mark Pendergrast's book, I'm sure I would too. He also doesn't appear to be a personal friend of Spanier's. But there are plenty of other reasons for Mann and his supporters to consider supporting Graham Spanier. The case against Spanier is ridiculous. He is himself a purported victim of child abuse, and he's been caught up in a case of mass hysteria. John Ziegler has an amazing podcast that you can read about and listen to here. It starts out with a description of Spanier's trial, with Zieglers's voice reaching a Gilbert Gottfried pitch. While it may only be his view of the trial, the facts he presents are astounding. If anyone can refute any of them or provide more context, please do. He then interviews Federal Investigative Services agent, John Snedden, who did an investigation into whether Spanier should have his top secret security clearance renewed. He found that he should and it was. At about 25 minutes into the podcast, Snedden talks about political maneuvering by Pennsylvania's governor, who was having a fight with Spanier over founding for Penn State. The governor was republican Tom Corbett. Mann and his supporters would certainly be on Spanier's side.
If Mann were to give Spanier some public support from his prominent position, he would definitely get some praise from me. Of course, I would go right back and continue excoriating him for just about everything else he's done.
1) If Michael Mann stands up for a friend, flying in the face of a hysterical moral consensus, geologists will declare the Flying Porcocene officially open.
ReplyDelete2) It's not a First Amendment issue, if I understand the First Amendment.
In a free country you should NOT be allowed to get away with calling a *scientist* "fraudulent" for shits and giggles. A politician, maybe. Not a scientist.
If you do, you should expect to be called on to justify your speech on the field of honor, where there is only one choice of weapon: the truth.
Happily, that is a duel Michael Mann cannot survive.
That sounds sort of like Brandon Shollonberger's position:
Deletehttps://www.hi-izuru.org/wp_blog/2016/12/why-i-side-with-michael-mann-for-a-second-time/
Brandon's post was TL so I DR, but I couldn't locate (anywhere in the first half of it) the point at which he "sided with" Mann.
DeleteAnd I can't think of a single sense in which I would ever "side with" Mann.
If Brandon is merely objecting to what he calls the "pathetic attempt" by the magazine's lawyers to argue that the controversial comments were merely colorfully expressed opinions, then I agree, in so far as that defense is rather disingenuous.
However, my superficial understanding of US litigation is that attorneys are expected (or legally required?) to try every trick in the book to get the case against their client dismissed as early as possible, even if it means making "pathetic" arguments that are hard to take seriously and unlikely to prevail.
Which seems a fundamentally silly and dishonest system, but if that's how it works, then it's not really Steyn or Simberg's fault. And it's certainly not to Mann's credit, so it still gets us no closer to why anyone would "side with" Mann.
After all, when Mann's tobacco lawyer (rightly) challenges such bogus defenses, they're also doing no more or less than they're obliged to do when they take on a client. They're just doing their job, and Mann didn't need to tell them what their job involves.
I think we all wish Steyn and Simberg could wave a magic wand and fast-forward to the bit where they prove in a court of law that MANN IS, IN FACT, A FRAUD.
But we're asking them to make a massive sacrifice of time and money to win a battle they never signed up for. (On the other hand, you could argue that if they didn't want to get in all this trouble, they shouldn't have accused a fraudulent scientist of being fraudulent.)
I would choose to fight this lawsuit to the death (Mann's death) in a heartbeat, but I'm not sure I have the right to demand that Mark Steyn do the same, nor do I think I can really blame him for instructing his counsel to do everything possible to shut down the lawsuit before it ever gets to that.
We all want this to be the 21st century's Scopes trial. (Only this time, we're SURE science will triumph over religion.)
But Scopes made a choice.
Steyn and Simberg have the right to make a different choice, I think, even if it disappoints those of us who know how much hangs in the balance.
Don't forget that Steyn has launched an anti-slap counter suit, that ought to still be good, if Mann's suit gets thrown out. It might not be as fun to watch as Mann trying to defend his Science TM, but it's what I'd rather see happen. We have enough mine fields, without worrying about guessing someones motives. That would end Twitter.
Delete> Don't forget that Steyn has launched an anti-slap counter suit, that ought to still be good
ReplyDeleteYou've lost me already, my ultra-oceanic friend. It SOUNDS good—if a little kinky. (Maybe Pachauri's molestees should have launched counter-slap anti-suits!)
> if Mann's suit gets thrown out.
Now I'm picturing Pachauri using "my suit got thrown out" as an excuse for turning up to TERI dressed as a full-naked fakir. He truly was the mother of all fakirs, the emperor of No-Clothes Fridays.
> It might not be as fun to watch as Mann trying to defend his Science TM, but it's what I'd rather see happen. We have enough mine fields, without worrying about guessing someones motives. That would end Twitter.
You seem to be arguing (as many people have, on both sides of the Steyn/Mann DMZ) as if this case had some kind of power to set a precedent. I'm not really sure why.
Surely Twitter is no more or less likely to "end" as a result of what one judge decides about one case among the innumerable defamation suits winding their way through the intestines of American justice at any given time?
The role played by guessing people's motives in legal theory will surely neither increase nor decrease as a result of this. And it does have SOME role in the courts, as it has for thousands of years, because mens rea has always been a necessary but not sufficient component in the definition of 'crime,' right?
Well, the ACLU and a lot of news organizations seem to think it was important enough to write amicus briefs for Steyn (hence his Lonesomest Mann in town column). I'm overembellishing or hyperbolizing or something about Twitter. This is about editorial blog posts for an opinion magazine and a think tank. It looks like another source of anxiety for someone writing an opinion. Will it set a precedent? It may have helped encourage an unprecedent -- Mann's buddy, Mark Jacobson suing over an alledged fucking scientific paper!
DeleteI forgot the ACLU brief. But I'm not sure I agree with them. But I'm not sure my unsureness about agreeing with them means that much coming from a non-resident American who's lived Down Under far too long to claim expertise in US definitions of opinion vs fact.
DeleteIt just seems weird to me. "Fraudulent hockey stick" sounds much like "fraudulent MMR-autism paper." Perhaps I'm biased by the knowledge that those descriptions are both *accurate.* Still, I think a reasonable reader could easily conclude that Steyn was referring to a paper that had been shown to be pseudoscientific, not just one he didn't agree with.
And since it HAS been and CAN be shown to be pseudoscientific—I even managed to set out a proof in the space of a single comment at Bishop Hill's one time—I'd obviously enjoy watching THAT being tested formally in a court of law.
These were not investigative pieces. Both writers were giving generalized opinions.The hockey stick is clearly bad science, but what if a much more capable scientist (from the planet Vulcan) went over Mann's and McIntyre's work, and found subtle flaws In Steve's work and vindicated Mann. Should somebody be sued for having a wrong opinion?
DeleteAre Deep Climate, Caerbannog and Tamino really super intellegent space aliens, sent here to walk among us incognito, to save us from global warming? Whose behind Grant's Foster Grants?
This is an excellent hypothetical question but I do have an answer for it, you'll be happy to know:
Delete"but what if a much more capable scientist (from the planet Vulcan) went over Mann's and McIntyre's work, and found subtle flaws In Steve's work and vindicated Mann. Should somebody be sued for having a wrong opinion?"
Nope, and they can't be. (Well, they could be, but the case would not succeed.)
Defamation is only meant to be actionable if it's done "with malice," which means not only did the author criticize someone wrongly, he did so insincerely—either knowing his criticisms were wrong (which is called lying) or not caring whether they were wrong or right (which is reckless indifference to the truth).
Incidentally, that's why Mann wouldn't win even if (by calling an expert witness from the planet Vulcan or whatever) he managed to prove that his work was NOT, in fact, fraudulent.
He would ALSO need to prove that the defendants either knew this at the time, or (at least) that they didn't care one way or the other.
The idea that Steyn and Simberg secretly "believe in" Mann's paper is laughable. The idea that they put zero effort into forming a reasoned opinion about it before calling it fraudulent is at least *plausible,* but it can be disproved simply by reading their back-catalogue of writings about climate science. Both men, quite obviously to anyone who's familiar with them, had what they felt was justification for their views—so even if by some miracle they were wrong, they still won't owe Mann a cent.
We disagree as to whether this case should have been tossed out on free speech, protected-opinion grounds.
But that didn't happen. What SHOULD have happened is that the judge spent a couple of days familiarizing himself with the climate debate (starting with the fact that there really IS a debate). That should have been enough to kill the lawsuit in utero.