Deep Climate exposes more cheating by team Wegman
Plagiarism and poor scholarship rife in statistician’s tight circle
The blogger Deep Climate has released another devastating analysis of the shoddy scholarship and obvious cheating that characterized the work of the statistician Edward Wegman and his team, authors of a report to Congress that Deep Climate calls “nothing more than a politically motivated attack on climate science and scientists from the start.”
DeepC, surely on of the most careful, thorough and tireless researchers currently working the climate blogosphere, has been here before, collecting evidence that demonstrated massive plagiarism by Wegman and his proteges when they were preparing their Republican-commissioned attack on Michael Mann’s oft-vindicated, but still controversial hockey stick graph.
As on the last occasion, DeepC has prepared a side-by-side analysis showing the work of Wegman and his principal assistant Yasmin Said juxtaposed with the documents from which they mined a shocking amount of their material. It’s shocking because they didn’t attribute any of it and, on many occasions, the few efforts they made to change the text merely obscured or rendered insensisble the original meaning. It’s not just that they were cheating, they were doing it in a way that invites applications of the term “incompetent.”DeepC calls at the end of his excellent post for an investigation by George Mason University, whence this substandard work originated. It seems relevant, though, to also call for Congressional attention. Some of this material was prepared using government funding and even if the specific intent was NOT to mislead Congress, there is certainly a compelling argument to be made that Congress was, indeed, misled.
That, in lots of different ways, is a crime.
Deep Climate, the anonymous
Deep Climate, the anonymous blogger with unknown and questionable qualifications (if any), casts aspersions on an esteemed scientist.
This is news?
Spreading innuendo anonymously on the the internet is the real story.
Plagiarism etc.
DeepClimate's qualifications are irrelevant, it is transparently obvious that the Wegman Report, signed-off by Wegman contained what appears to be extensive examples of what looks indistinguishable from plagiarism of Bradley, compounded by changes that reversed the meaning of the original text.
So that is what looks like plagiarism and dishonesty.
It seems that some members of team Wegman, when confronted with a field [paleoclimate] of which they had little or no understanding apparently resorted to what looks indistinguishable from plagiarism of a well known work, plus some light editing to hide the fact. Now that doesn't mean that Wegman himself was guilty of plagiarism, but it is a sign of extreme sloppiness.
Add to that some rather bizarre references, such as this one:
Valentine, Tom (1987) “Magnetics may hold key to ozone layer problems,” Magnets, 2 (1) 18-26.
Then it seems that some of the Wegman team employed what looks indistinguishable from plagiarism in their PhD theses. Now that, if proven, I presume is the end of their PhD and their academic careers.
When the American public gets it..
Waiting for the day when this is what Americans are angry about.
Teabaggers will be remembered as rebels without a cause by comparison.
DeepClimate is on
ought to be
DeepClimate is one