What have we learned from the current Penn State sex scandal involving Jerry Sandusky, Joe Paterno, top-level executives and the trustees?

Where BIG MONEY AND REPUTATIONS are involved … the school protected itself before honoring its legal and ethical responsibilities.

So what are we to make of the Penn State internal investigation and the so-called “Climategate” scandal involving global warming activist Michael Mann whose research also involved big money and school prestige? Is there any difference between the athletic department protecting its turf and the school’s reputation and the academic departments protecting one of their own and the school’s reputation? Did they pull a time-honored “trick” used in climate science and limit the scope of the investigation so that they could honestly say that no problems were found?

Investigation of climate scientist at Penn State complete -- Posted on Jul 01, 2010

University Park, Pa. — A panel of leading scholars has cleared a well-known Penn State climate scientist of research misconduct, following a four-month internal investigation by the University.

Penn State Professor Michael Mann has been cleared of any wrongdoing, according to a report of the investigation that was released today (July 1). Mann was under investigation for allegations of research impropriety that surfaced last year after thousands of stolen e-mails were published online. The e-mails were obtained from computer servers at the Climatic Research Unit of the University of East Anglia in England, one of the main report released on Thursday by Louis Freeh repositories of information about climate change.

The panel of leading scholars from various research fields, all tenured professors at Penn State, began its work on March 4 to look at whether Mann had "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." Mann is one of the leading researchers studying climate change.

A full report on the findings of the committee can be viewed at: RA-10 Final Investigation Report and Decision, RE: Professor Michael E. Mann; Letter from Henry C. Foley, Vice President for Research, Penn State to Graham B. Spanier, President, Penn State

Spanier, the University President was implicated in the sex scandal cover-up now unfolding at Penn State …

Freeh report places blame on four Penn State leaders: Paterno, Spanier, Curley and Schultz

Often internal investigations into university scandals or tragedies result in long reports that present timelines, documents and facts, but stop short of placing blame on individual leaders. Not so at Penn State University. <Source>

While we are not alleging that University President Spanier was part of the climategate issue, we are saying that this is a pattern of practice and custom at the school that now demands a full and complete investigation. In this matter, a re-investigation by a well-respected investigator such as Louis Freeh is well warranted.

UPDATE: (07-26-2012) I have learned that I was wrong about Louis Freeh being the man to investigate the issue. “… former FBI Director Louis Freeh. At Holder’s Senate confirmation hearing Freeh served as a character witness for Holder and revealed that Holder had previously worked for Freeh. ‘As general counsel,’ Freeh said, ‘I could have engaged any lawyer in America to represent our bank. I chose Eric.’” <Source> Too close to the administration and political party pushing global warming and stunningly bad judgement with respect to crony Eric Holder. – steve

Making my case that a re-investigation is warranted. 

Picking and wording the allegations …

At the time of initiation of the inquiry, no formal allegations accusing Dr. Mann of research misconduct had been submitted to any University official. Therefore, 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 but rather her best effort to reduce to reviewable allegations the many different accusations that were received from pm1ies outside of the University. The four synthesized allegations were as follows:

1. Did you engage in, or participate in, directly or indirectly, any actions with the intent to suppress or falsify data?

2. Did you engage in, or participate in, directly or indirectly, any actions with the intent to delete, conceal or otherwise destroy emails, information and/or data, related to AR4,as
suggested by Phil Jones?

3. Did you engage in, or participate in, directly or indirectly, any misuse of privileged or confidential information available to you in your capacity as an academic scholar?

4. Did you engage in, or participate 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? <Source>

How nice it is to be able to craft (synthesize) the allegations so that they can be innocuously answered  with a pre-ordained “not guilty.” Regarding questions one and two:”with the intent” is the key issue. Nobody knows what is in another person's mind, so these questions are meaningless. Remove the “with intent” clause and you come closer to finding the truth.

Questions three involves university procedure and question four is amorphous as there are no codified “accepted practices” that would be acceptable for measurement purposes. If a large measure of your community has fudged the data, it might be construed as “accepted practices.”

Picking and choosing evidence …

From November 30 to December 14,2009, staff in the Office for Research Protections culled through the 1073 files that contained emails or email strings that were purloined from a server at the University of East Anglia. A subset of the files containing emails or email strings was reviewed. This subset of files included emails that were sent by Dr. Mann, were sent to Dr. Mann, were copied to Dr. Mann, or discussed Dr. Mann (but were neither addressed nor copied to him). In summary, the following were found:

206 files that contained emails or email strings that contained message text from Dr. Mann somewhere in the chain;
91 files that contained emails or emails strings that were received by Dr. Mann, but in which he did not participate; and
79 files that contained emails or email strings that dealt with Dr. Mann, his work or publications but that he neither authored nor was listed as copied.

From among these 376 files, the Inquiry Committee focused on 47 files that contained emails or email strings that were deemed relevant.

The fallacy facing this investigation is that the “exposed” e-mails that were published to the web was a collection of e-mails which apparently had already been selected and vetted by persons unknown in  preparation for a FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) request. It is not known how many other e-mails exist and the extent to which deletions of e-mails had previously occurred. And there was no forensic examination of computer servers or a broader review of data from the University of East Anglia.

Why do we suspect the deletion of e-mails with an "intent to deceive" …

From: Phil Jones 
To: "Michael E. Mann"
Subject: IPCC & FOI
Date: Thu May 29 11:04:11 2008

Mike,

Can you delete any emails you may have had with Keith re AR4? Keith will do likewise. He's not in at the moment - minor family crisis. Can you also email Gene and get him to do the same? I don't have his new email address. We will be getting Caspar to do likewise.

I see that CA claim they discovered the 1945 problem in the Nature paper!!

Cheers

Phil

And we know that Michael Mann did receive the e-mail and replied to the sender …

date: Thu, 29 May 2008 08:12:02 -0400
from: Michael Mann <REDACTED>
subject: Re: IPCC & FOI
to: Phil Jones <REDACTED>

Hi Phil,

laughable that CA would claim to have discovered the problem. They would have run off to the Wall Street Journal for an exclusive were that to have been true.
I'll contact Gene about this ASAP. His new email is: REDACTED

talk to you later,

mike

 And apparently Gene [Wahl] did as requested: Here is an excerpt from the Inspector General of the Department of Commerce (which oversees NOAA) …

<Source>

And it appears that the poohbahs at Penn State never interviewed Keith Wahl or pursued an in-depth investigation.

And by the way, A STUNNING EXAMPLE OF HYPOCRISY ...

MICHAEL MANN INTERVIEWED BY ABC NEWS …

Climate Denialists Worse Than Tobacco CEOs Lying Under Oath, Says Mann

Crime against the planet, humanity …

But I’ve always been reminded of the fact that, you know, this is about something bigger. It’s about potentially the most important challenge we’ve ever faced as a civilization — confronting this problem of how to deal with human caused climate change, what to do about it.

I mean, I think it might be something even larger and greater than that. I think it’s a crime against the planet. But it’s certainly a crime against humanity in the sense that, you know, we talk about the tobacco industry, and how the CEOs knowingly lied under oath to Congress about whether or not they were aware of the fact that their product was killing people.

And they knew that decades ago, and the documents that were released because of a settlement of the lawsuits actually shows that.

The irony of citing documents …

It turns out that there’s similar documents that have been released over the past five years or so that show that the fossil fuel industry’s own scientists fully understood that increasing greenhouse gas concentrations from fossil fuel burning was warming the planet and changing the climate.

About a “good faith debate” ….

There is no room anymore to have a good faith discussion about whether the problem is real. But there is a worthy discussion to be had about what to do about that problem, and wouldn’t it be great if we could get beyond this false debate about whether the problem even exists, and on to the legitimate debate that is to be had about what to do about it? <Source” ABC News>

How can any honest and ethical scientist squelch the scientific process – a continuing inquiry and debate rooted in skepticism?  And Mann conveniently overlooks the fact that the Earth has been demonstrably hotter and colder, with more atmospheric carbon dioxide and with less carbon dioxide – in times before the industrial revolution. Just as he attempted to sell us on the “fact” that a relatively few trees in Russia could be a proxy for the global climate record and be reliably used to dictate public policy reforms featuring Marxist-like governmental controls, wealth re-distribution, loss of national sovereignty and personal freedom.

Bottom line …

Without much trouble, I have presented a prima facie case that Dr. Michael Mann, knowingly and with specific intent, encouraged another scientist to destroy communications relating to alleged “intent” and “manipulation of scientific information – information which would now be considered evidence in a legitimate investigation.

I have also made a prima facie case that the Penn State investigation was cursory and incomplete … and possibly self-protecting of Penn State’s reputation and funding.

And the present day rantings of Michael Mann mark him as a climate activist who may very well believe in “the end justifies the means” – which presupposes that the means, fair or foul, are an acceptable method for achieving the means.

Is Louis Freeh available to re-investigate the climate researchers at Penn State? Because the outcome would have global implications involving billions of dollars in special interest deals, the unwarranted expansion of governmental powers, severe rises in the cost of living, reduction in the quality of life and the loss of significant personal freedoms.

It is time to suspect that there is a problem that has been another problem covered up by Penn State. And tragic as child molesting may be, the effects of that local scandal are far outweighed by the social, financial, legal and global considerations of climategate.

Even if the investigation costs ran into a hundred million dollars, the cost would be far less than the trillion dollars spent on political policies based on nothing more than scientific speculation.

And, at least in this case, Penn State may be complicit in the molesting of scientific integrity and academic freedom.

-- steve