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Undercover Activists Buy Off Professors in Climate Sting
- skj 11y agoWill this be enough to fire tenured professors?
- gohrt 11y agoOne of them, Frank Clemente, is emeritus. He retired in 2010, and gets whatever pension or such PSU offers. I wonder what their disciplinary options are. This is clearly a case of an end-of-career cash-out of social/political capital.
- x1798DE 11y agoHm, I feel like this is way less sinister than it sounds. From what I know of his prior reputation, Will Happer has long made his position on climate change clear, so it's not like he changed his mind when people offered him a big pile of money. If you already believe something and someone is going to give you money to promote your views, why on earth would you say no?
- gohrt 11y ago1) Intentionally hiding the source of funding; aka taking a bribe. 2) Intentionally publishing in a sham journal to avoid peer review. These are both tolerable behavior in the free market, but ought to be firable offenses for university professors.
- sseveran 11y agoIf applied universally there would be significantly fewer professors. But I don't really think that would be a bad thing.
- noobermin 11y agoHiding the source of funding doesn't seem like the worst of issues, although it certainly makes some research look suspect for its partiality. The worst part is avoiding a good journal. For some professions, just publishing in a sham journal can be pretty harmful for one's reputation...hence the reluctance many have for publishing in open access journals.
- HiLo 11y agoHow is deliberately lying about your incentives and hiding your source of funding under oath testifying to Congress even remotely ok? How are you rationalizing this? What kind of message does it send if we let people lie under oath about what could potentially be so catastrophic? What if they did the same thing about nukes, what's the difference right?
- x1798DE 11y agoI can't comment on the other parts of it really (and I don't know the whole story so I reserve judgement), I'm just skeptical of the claim that he was "bought off" - which would imply that he changed his views because of the money. If the headline were, "Professors agree to hide source of funding and run a climate change journal with lax peer review standards", then I might hold off, but then again, that probably wouldn't look as sexy in a headline.
- shkkmo 11y ago> which would imply that he changed his views because of the money No, it doesn't imply that at all. to buy somebody off: "to bribe someone to ignore what one is doing wrong." "To bribe someone in order to ensure cooperation" The implications carried are that the payments were a bribe and that the actions taken as a result were improper.
- SCAQTony 11y agoNo question that this matches the definition of manufacturing consent albeit if he guy was all ready on their side or not. I wonder if topics like education, biotech, military engagements, and torture are handled in a likewise fashion? A dime per word so to speak.
- 20after4 11y agoThis sounds like standard operating procedure in politics. The only surprise here (if there's any surprise at all) is that academics aren't at all immune to the same corruption.
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- Albright 11y agoMy thoughts exactly. If someone were to phonily offer Hawking a cartoonish sack of money to write a report about black holes, should we be shocked when he shows interest in the offer?
- crpatino 11y agoNo, no, no, no. You miss the point. If you claim to be a scientist, you leave your personal beliefs at the lab door and abide to the experimental results. If you cannot do that, you pick a different subject of study and let some other unbiased scientist pick on the thorny (for you) subject. How would you feel if Hawkings were a Christian, and he would take money from the Pope and then wrote a report on how he saw Jesus in the black hole?
- Albright 11y agoThere is no such thing as an unbiased scientist. They are human, after all. Whenever you read about scientists reporting on X or discovering Y, you should absolutely consider their motives, especially in contentious subjects such as this one. And your analogy is only comparable if Hawking already had a history of reporting about seeing Jesus in black holes.
- shkkmo 11y ago> you should absolutely consider their motives, especially in contentious subjects such as this one. Which is why deliberately concealing and lying about funding sources in the manner described is SO BAD
- fredkbloggs 11y ago> How would you feel if Hawkings were a Christian, and he would take money from the Pope and then wrote a report on how he saw Jesus in the black hole? The same way I feel about all such claims: if they can't be independently reproduced, they're garbage. The more bizarre the claim, the easier it should be to disprove it. Authors who publish outlandish claims that cannot be substantiated by others will be first disgraced and then, worse, ignored. Hawking and the pope aren't relevant to your example. All that matters is that someone claims he saw Jesus in a black hole. It's not even clear that such a thing is a falsifiable claim, and if it weren't, it wouldn't be accepted for publication anyway. But even if it took the form of one, it would be immediately disproved and that would be the end of it. It's the claim that's important, not who made it or who paid him to do so.
- shkkmo 11y agoThe problem is not that Will Happer's positions, nor is it even that he accepted industry funding for his papers laying out those positions. > In Happer’s case, investigators said they were part of a “Middle East oil and gas company” and asked to ensure that their commissioning of the report could not be traced. Happer reached out to a friendly Exxon lobbyist who suggested channeling it through Donors Trust, the shady donor anonymity organization that has been called the “dark-money ATM” of North American conservatives. The problem is the deliberate process of hiding conflicts of interest and of especially hiding funding from foreign organizations. > Clemente referenced past articles and even testimony in front of state legislatures and said, “In none of these cases is the sponsor identified. All my work is publised as an independent scholar.” At the very least, it should be illegal to not disclose such conflicts on interest when testifying under oath.
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- sitkack 11y ago> it should be illegal to not disclose such conflicts on interest when testifying under oath Would this qualify ? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contempt_of_Congress https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contempt_of_Congress or https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1001 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1001
- zzalpha 11y agoWill Happer has long made his position on climate change clear, so it's not like he changed his mind when people offered him a big pile of money. You're missing the point. It's not that this guy was paid off and therefore changed his views. It's that he published research that he claimed was independent that was not, and in the process neglected to disclose his sources of revenue and conflicts of interest. Those very conflicts of interest would, under normal circumstances, force folks to question the nature of the research and the quality of the results. IMO that's getting awfully close to academic misconduct. It's certainly extremely unethical. Edit: BTW, "Merchants of Doubt" has covered this territory extensively, so to be honest, I'm not sure Greenpeace has added much to the dialog, here, aside from flat out catching folks in the act.
- chetanahuja 11y ago"BTW, "Merchants of Doubt" has covered this territory extensively, so to be honest, I'm not sure Greenpeace has added much to the dialog, here, aside from flat out catching folks in the act." Yeah flat out catching highly placed, non-anonymous culprits is very significant. I'll bet a lot more people would be paying attention to this article compared to those who read or watch Merchants of Doubt.
- fredkbloggs 11y agoWhile I agree that this conduct is improper and should lead to the loss of their chairs (and retractions, if any paid "research" ended up in scholarly journals), you're also missing something important about science when you say: > Those very conflicts of interest would, under normal circumstances, force folks to question the nature of the research and the quality of the results. The fact that someone has a conflict of interest should be stated, certainly. But we should always question the nature of research and the quality of results. In one of these cases, it doesn't even seem that a research paper was being purchased but simply an essay, which presumably would not be cited by anyone or even considered a presentation of facts by other scholars. But in any case, we shouldn't assume someone's research is honest and valuable just because he doesn't seem to have an economic conflict of interest. There's a lot of bad science done with deliberate intent to deceive that involved no such conflict of interest at all. The bottom line is that science is not being nearly tough enough on itself, and the results are what you'd expect: a lot of bad papers that are either useless and irrelevant or full of lies, errors, and fabrications. Reporting conflicts of interest might help a little, but it shouldn't be used as a cover for gullibility.
- cafebeen 11y agoIt's hard to say what he believes, but there seems to be evidence of what is normally considered misconduct, specifically, in using a sham peer review process and misrepresenting the funding sources. I don't think he has to say "no" to the funding, but representing it as "peer reviewed research" that "received no financial compensation" would seem intentionally deceptive. This press release seems to have more detail: https://energydesk.greenpeace.org/2015/12/08/exposed-academics-for-hire/ https://energydesk.greenpeace.org/2015/12/08/exposed-academi...
- crpatino 11y agoNothing wrong, as long as you change all your business cards from "Chief Scientist" to "Market Guru".
- kijin 11y ago> Will Happer has long made his position on climate change clear We cannot know what his original view on climate change might have been. Even if he was on the conservative side to begin with, there's a large spectrum from "Earth might be getting warmer, but I don't think it's anthropogenic" to "CO2 is actually good for us!" Perhaps some of his previous papers were paid for by others with similar interests as well. Judging from the way he tried expertly to hide the source of funding and avoid proper peer review, it certainly doesn't sound like this is the first time he's done it. Moreover, humans are remarkably good at changing their beliefs in the face of cognitive dissonance. Someone who is repeatedly paid to advocate a certain point of view might honestly come to believe that the bullshit he's been spewing is true, and gradually move to a part of the spectrum that is much more radical than where he started out.
- fredkbloggs 11y ago> We cannot know what his original view on climate change might have been. Does it matter? You don't have the right to demand that everyone agree with you, even if you're right. We don't burn people at the stake or try to silence them for disagreement. Please stop trying to create unanimity; it's not healthy. What we should punish people for: lying to Congress, taking or offering bribes, doing dishonest work while in the public employ. All of those apply, and any should be sufficient, at a bare minimum, to justify firing these professors. However, thinking that climate change doesn't exist or isn't anthropogenic is not a crime. Saying so is not a crime, either. And I'm damned glad of it!
- kijin 11y agoI don't think you disagree with me. Of course people have every right to deny climate change or whatever else they want to deny. His original view, if there ever was such a thing, still matters because many of us would like to know whether he changed his views after accepting the bribe. It doesn't matter if he changed his views from right to wrong or the other way around, what matters is that a scientist might have changed his public views based on something other than evidence.
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- plaguuuuuu 11y agoDoesn't matter what the guy personally believes. Science is a method, not a political platform.
- mcguire 11y ago"The emails and recordings also outline how Happer ran a sham peer-review process through the Global Warming Policy Foundation, a prominent U.K.-based climate skepticist think thank. Happer admits that his papers would not likely be published through typical the academic peer review process. “I would be glad to ask for a similar review for the first drafts of anything I write for your client. Unless we decide to submit the piece to a regular journal, with all the complications of delay, possibly quixotic editors and reviewers that is the best we can do, and I think it would be fine to call it a peer review.""
- kaitai 11y agoI feel like I'm missing out on a lot of cash. Anyone want to let me know who will buy off a math professor?
- gohrt 11y agoThe cigarrette companies hire statisticians to publish bogus research about the health effects of smoking.
- civilian 11y agoReally any drug company (or an anti-drug organization like the DEA) would be looking for someone who can do dark magic with statistics.
- fweespeech 11y agoCan you use statistics to make the Koch's latest tax plan work?
- gruez 11y agoHiring a math professor to claim that squaring a circle is possible. 10M OBO.
- DArcMattr 11y agoYou mean using a taxicab metric to construct a circle? Been done.
- mirimir 11y agoOver half of the articles about Zoloft published in 1998-2000 were ghostwritten and funded by Pfizer ;) Comfortably Numb: How Psychiatry Is Medicating a Nation by Charles Barber
- tnecniv 11y agoYou could always take my finals for me...
- n0us 11y agoI have some questions about this "sting" that were unanswered in the article. It would be one thing if the academic were paid to have a certain opinion, its is another thing entirely to pay an academic to falsify research supporting a viewpoint they already hold. It reads as if the academics were paid to support a thesis with evidence. Once you are at a high enough academic level you should be able to write a paper arguing for and supporting a thesis whether or not you believe in that thesis on a personal level. It's important to sustain debate on all sides of an issue regardless of whether or not all of those sides are politically popular. The great thing about publishing is that it gives other educated people a chance to rebut and question the argument. I also believe funding sources should be kept secret in some cases so that the paper or research can be judged on its own merit rather than judged based on the motivations of the entity funded it.
- kijin 11y agoGiven how cleverly the authors tried to evade peer review, the evidence might have been quite flimsy to begin with. Peer review is the primary mechanism by which modern science verifies evidence, especially in fields like climate change where it's often very difficult to replicate another scientist's data. Evasion of peer review is like including an obfuscated blob in a critical part of some security software. It is highly suspicious by definition, and the community has every right to assume that it is malicious unless the author can demonstrate otherwise.
- n0us 11y agoThats why you don't use that blob. I'm not saying that I trust the study, only that I don't see anything wrong with the author accepting money in exchange for writing it. Continuing the analogy, I don't see anything wrong with using or producing an obfuscated blob (in certain situations) but it wouldn't necessarily be wise to blindly trust it.
- carc 11y agoI don't either... assuming the author discloses the sources of funding. How can you rationalize away that part?
- nostromo 11y agoThis seems a bit like the Planned Parenthood tapes: approach someone with false pretenses, and then report the things they say in the worst possible way. I would find it much more damning if they found a professor that would change their position for money, rather than finding people that will accept money to forward a position they think is correct.
- Pils 11y agoI agree that the trend of using false pretenses to "catch" someone is a bad form of journalism, but I feel like your alternative is even worse. What information is gained by showing that a random professor is unscrupulous? In this case, the professors actively helped the journalists obfuscate where the funding was coming from, and ran a think tank where he knew his work would be accepted.
- epistasis 11y agoEh, not really, take this for example: >The emails and recordings also outline how Happer ran a sham peer-review process through the Global Warming Policy Foundation, a prominent U.K.-based climate skepticist think thank. Happer admits that his papers would not likely be published through typical the academic peer review process. “I would be glad to ask for a similar review for the first drafts of anything I write for your client. Unless we decide to submit the piece to a regular journal, with all the complications of delay, possibly quixotic editors and reviewers that is the best we can do, and I think it would be fine to call it a peer review.” The headlines are actually somewhat mundane compared to the substance. This is the reverse of the Planned Parenthood tapes.
- crazy1van 11y ago> Happer ran a sham peer-review process through the Global Warming Policy Foundation, a prominent U.K.-based climate skepticist think thank. I really don't think submitting papers to similarly minded groups in the name of "peer review" is an uncommon occurrence on any side of the climate change debate -- or any other debate for that matter.
- aleh 11y agoWonder if anyone is going to do the opposite - try to buy off pro-global-warming professor to produce exaggerated doomsday prediction - and what the outcome is going to be.
- marcosdumay 11y agoWho could gain by doing something like that?
- ConroyBumpus 11y agoAnyone who stands to gain from carbon legislation - be they traders, taxing entities, or "remediation" consultants
- hackuser 11y agoI wonder if Greenpeace is doing more to undermine confidence in all academic research, undermining confidence in climate change science much more than the denial of it.
- sanderjd 11y agoThis was my first thought. The only difference between me and the climate change skeptics I know is that they have no faith in the integrity of scientists, and I do. "See, the oil and gas industry has been buying off scientists!" won't help my argument, they'll just think that it's a countervailing force to all the scientists on the other side of the question who are being bought off by …whoever they think it is. Edit to add: Furthermore, I don't think this is unreasonable of them! Figuring out which experts to trust is a really hard problem in a society as complex as ours has become, and this makes it harder to argue for "you should trust scientists".
- fredkbloggs 11y agoI assume this happens already. It's unlikely that with so much money at stake, only one party is doing the dirty. Same applies to any issue where a lot of money is at stake.
- chetanahuja 11y agoI see people arguing that there's nothing bad in this report. The shady, underhanded and dishonest context is so clear, I'm shocked to see so many such objections. The basic problem here is that two top academics are clearly selling the use of their credentials for clear commercial gain of a private company and using sophisticated means to hide the fact of such sale. That part is bad enough, even worse is the eager sales pitch and readiness to suggest financial shenanigans to hide the source of the funding that these professors are engaging in. It's very clear that these are not first-timers or unwilling participants. This is their normal MO for writing and speaking on the topic.
- javajosh 11y agoWhat confuses me is that we all seem to have more-or-less the same moral compass when it comes to fiction. "The bad guy" is often going to extremes to prevent something from going public - dumping toxic waste in a river, taking bribes, selling a vote, torturing people in secret etc. Somehow it seems like these days, if someone gets caught doing these things in real life, nothing happens. Dumping toxic waste is pro-business. Bribery is freedom of speech. Torture? Heck, it's not torture, and they're really bad people anyway. Sometimes I want to grab these people and ask them, seriously, if this isn't evil, then what IS?
- eli_gottlieb 11y agoUnfortunately, what people seem to pick up as "evil" from the fictions isn't the immoral actions, but instead the color-coding of villains as wearing ominous clothes (often dressed for a funeral) and accompanied by certain musical stings. I mean, for God's sakes, the Nazis wore skulls and didn't notice they were the baddies!
- Joof 11y agohttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hn1VxaMEjRU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hn1VxaMEjRU
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- adolgert 11y agoWhen you get a grant, the university has academic freedom stipulations in the contract or memorandum of understanding. You cite sources for every paper. There's a yearly statement of conflict of interest on file. There is absolutely no way these researchers aren't aware of the difficulty of what they've done, even if they are saying what they believe.
- Rumford 11y agoThe truth will out, complicated character-assassination plots notwithstanding.
- cm2187 11y agoI don't know if Greenpeace's claim is true but in any way they are shooting themselves in the foot. If the promise of a shaddy payment could push academics to say anything, then what about a massive political, media and peer pressure? What if the only way for research to get funding is to attempt to prove the catastrophic effects of global warming. Demonstrating that scientists bow to pressure isn't exactly helping the global warming cause.
- Terr_ 11y agoOh please, there's not even a remote equivalence there. The fossil-fuel sector has a enormously greater incentive to bribe people to affect the system, and a metric fuckton more money to do it with. It doesn't make sense to imply some kind of parity of wrongdoing.
- OniBait 11y agoI'm a bit curious what people's opinions are after reading this http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/12/08/breaking-greenpeace-co-founder-reports-greenpeace-to-the-fbi-under-rico-and-wire-fraud-statutes/ http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/12/08/breaking-greenpeace-co... Seems like there is some info being left out. Both sources seem to be hiding things, why not publish the entire e-mail exchanges?
- OniBait 11y agoAh, I see the entire exchange was published here http://www.documentcloud.org/documents/2642410-Email-Chain-Happer-O-Keefe-and-Donors-Trust.html http://www.documentcloud.org/documents/2642410-Email-Chain-H... Seems quite different than how it was being portrayed. From what I'm seeing, they asked for a white paper, not a research paper and Happer said they could send money to his 501c3 charity which only pays part of his travel expense and would only write what he believed in. Even correcting them on peer review in an academic sense vs a white paper reviewed by his peers... Am I missing something nefarious here? Because this seems much more like a 'hit piece' on a guy who is testifying before congress.
- carc 11y agoTo all the people that are somehow saying that this isn't all that bad, you seem to be missing the point. The problem isn't that these professors are taking money to support something they already support. It's that they are taking money and then going to lengths to avoid disclosing the funding OR to make it look like their papers went through a real peer review process... I'm utterly shocked and disappointed by how many people on here are saying things along the lines of "what's the big deal?"