Category: academic fraud

A Fourth Thing Elizabeth Kolbert Didn’t Know

Seth Roberts10 Comments

Elizabeth Kolbert, the New Yorker staff writer, did not know that Phil Jones, a climate-change scientist, manuevered to keep hidden information that disagreed with his conclusions. Here is what one of the damning emails gathered from the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit said:

From Phil Jones [head of the Climate Research Unit]. To: Michael Mann. Date: May 29, 2008
“Can you delete any emails you may have had with Keith re AR4? Keith will do likewise.”

To keep them from being exposed via a Freedom of Information law. Robin Hanson and Tyler Cowen think this is no big deal. I disagree. Yes, I said before this happened that the consensus was likely to appear stronger than it is and that bloggers were a powerful force toward truth — both of which this episode merely supports rather than reveals. And, yeah, it’s just email; the really damning info is the tree-ring data reanalyzed by Stephen McIntyre.

The reason I think this is important is two-fold. First, this is not a smoking gun. Global warming does not equal the honesty of Phil Jones. But it is a powerful piece of evidence that climate skeptics can use to convince anyone that the consensus isn’t as consensus-y as it appears. Second, it exposes what Kevin Trenberth (a proponent of man-made global warming) really thinks. This is something that few knew until now. Here is what he really thinks:

The fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can’t. The CERES data published in the August BAMS 09 supplement on 2008 shows there should be even more warming: but the data are surely wrong. Our observing system is inadequate.

The data are surely wrong. Trenberth, being human, is going to put the best possible spin on things, the spin most consistent with what he has said many times . . . and this is what he comes up with. Support for the idea of global warming is entirely based on climate models. No one has created a mini-Earth and done experiments. If the data and models don’t agree, there is no reason to believe the models. And if you don’t believe the models you have no reason to believe in global warming. Is Trenberth an ignoramus whose honest assessment of the situation (the models and the data profoundly disagree) should be ignored? Of course not. He doesn’t draw the obvious conclusion (the models are wrong) but nothing prevents the rest of us from doing so.

Just to be clear: I completely agree with Robin’s larger point that this sort of thing supports prediction markets. And I think reduced reliance on fossil fuel would be a very good thing.

Three Things Elizabeth Kolbert Doesn’t Know.

The Return of Charles “Disgraced” Nemeroff

Seth RobertsLeave a comment

So soon! Nemeroff, you may remember, took large sums of money from drug companies and failed to disclose them. What is that line about teaching an old dog new tricks? Here is what the New York Time s said:

The program, conducted online, had been led by Dr. Charles Nemeroff, an Emory University psychiatrist who last year was removed as department chairman and lost federal grant financing for failing to report income from 16 drug companies.

Dr. Carroll said that the program concealed unfavorable data and side effects of drugs made by AstraZeneca, which sponsored it, and played down alternatives to those drugs. In his complaint, Dr. Carroll wrote that the program “appears to make a mockery” of standards against bias.

In an e-mail message Tuesday night, Dr. Nemeroff defended the program. “The program was peer-reviewed and found to have fair balance,” he wrote.

Thanks to Michael Bowerman.

NYU Begins to Look Very Bad

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Nine months ago, the New York Times reported that Lila Nachtigall, a New York University professor of obstetrics and gynecology, put her name on an article ghost-written for her by a drug company. The article, when published, failed to disclose the ghost-writing. In response, New York University officials have done nothing, as far as I can tell.

In response to the same fact about one of their professors, McGill University opened an investigation. The same document that revealed what Nachtigall had done showed that Barbara Sherwin, a professor of psychology, obstetrics and gynecology, had done the same thing. Supporting my idea that medical school professors have different ethical standards than the rest of us, an article about the McGill case by Montreal Gazette reporter Peggy Curran used the word plagiarism. One comment was “plagiarism, pure and simple.” Does NYU president John Sexton find plagiarism completely acceptable? Apparently.

Thanks to Anne Weiss

JAMA Editors Go Nuts

Seth Roberts1 Comment

Emory University professor Charles “Disgraced” Nemeroff was, you should remember, a respected psychiatric researcher. One of the most respected. What this says about academic psychiatry — and perhaps all academic medicine — is scary to think about.

Now comes a second episode along these lines: JAMA editors attack Jonathan Leo, a professor at Lincoln Memorial University, for daring to publish an article pointing out an undisclosed conflict of interest — exactly Nemeroff’s problem. In the most self-righteous editorial I have ever read, Catherine DeAngelis, JAMA‘s Editor in Chief, and Phil Fontanarosa, the Deputy Executive Editor,

  • say that Leo should not have contacted the New York Times
  • “A telephone conversation intended to inform Leo that his actions were inappropriate transformed into an argumentative discussion as Leo continued to refuse to acknowledge any problem with his actions.”
  • tell Leo to never submit anything to JAMA due to “his apparent lack of confidence in and regard for” the publication
  • “We felt an obligation to notify the dean of Leo’s institution . . . We sought the dean’s assistance in resolving the issue . . . “
  • “Our tone in these interactions was strong and emphatic . . . seriously . . . responsibility . . . fair process . . . integrity of science . . . We regret . . . “
  • make it more difficult to report future conflicts of interest

To make sure everyone understood this wasn’t temporary insanity, Catherine DeAngelis made similar comments to the Wall Street Journal:

“This guy is a nobody and a nothing” she said of Leo. “He is trying to make a name for himself. Please call me about something important.” She added that Leo “should be spending time with his students instead of doing this.”

Yes, nothing is less important than an unreported conflict of interest in JAMA.

The JAMA editorial, published a week after the WSJ article, claims that DeAngelis didn’t call Leo “a nobody and a nothing” but since the WSJ has not fixed the supposed error I conclude that the editorial claim of quote fabrication is wrong — not to mention highly implausible.

In their editorial, the JAMA editors write that “a rush to judgment [that is, Leo pointing out the conflict of interest himself rather than deferring to them] . . . rarely sheds light or advances medical discourse.” Au contraire. This “rush to judgment” has shed a hugely unflattering light on the very powerful doctors who run JAMA — and thus an hugely unflattering light on a culture in which such people, like Nemeroff, gain great power.

Plagiarism in Chinese Academia

Seth Roberts1 Comment

I was glad to read this article in the Christian Science Monitor about an attempt to reduce plagiarism among Chinese professors.

The latest fraud to rock Chinese academia centers on He Haibo, an associate professor of pharmacology at the prestigious Zhejiang University. [Not very prestigious, since I haven’t heard of it.] He now admits to copying or making up material he submitted in eight papers to international journals and has been fired, along with the head of his research institute. The affair has drawn particular attention because a world-renowned expert in traditional Chinese medicine, Li Lianda, lent his name as coauthor to one of the fraudulent papers. His tenure will not be renewed when his contract expires soon, the president of Zhejiang University has said.

The Beijing Sport University, one of three sport universities in the world, is near my university. It has a Ph.D. program. To get a Ph.D. you must submit three books! As one of their graduate students told me, no way you can do that without plagiarism. He had noticed that a book by one of his professors was simply a copy of another book.

This paragraph, however, amused me:

Stearns [a Yale professor who taught at Beijing University] says that he and his colleagues at Yale “do not believe letters of recommendation from Chinese professors, for we know that many of them are written by the students themselves,” and merely signed by their teachers.

He thinks letters from Berkeley are different? My system for writing letters of recommendation was more nuanced, after I learned that students had great trouble writing these letters. I met with the student and we wrote it together. This had two great advantages: 1. It showed the student in the best possible (i.e., truthful) light. 2. It was easy. Trying to write a good letter by myself was tough.

Thanks to Sheila Buff.