Journalists, ask whether a President Romney will resign if Iran gets a nuclear weapon on his watch

In case the video goes away, Romney warns “If we re-elect Barack Obama, Iran will get a nuclear weapon,” he said. “If we elect Mitt Romney, Iran will not.” We need some way to rein in the blatantly untrue claims like this one, and demanding promises for consequences may be one way to do that.

After having run for office myself, I still can't get over how much worse the quality of rhetoric and campaigning is at the state and national level.  On my campaign website I described what I supported but said "I will be just one of seven Board members, so making [my issues] happen will need some help, but public support and public involvement can help push through changes...."  I believe it would've cost me politically if I made promises I couldn't guarantee, like Romney's doing.  Journalists ought to hold him accountable, or at least get a flustered response out of him.
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Just to imitate the journalistic practice of false balance, here's a nice thing to say about a former Republican candidate, Rick Perry:  he was right about instituting Supreme Court term limits (via New Yorker with some helpful elaboration).  I've supported this before, I think a lot of my fellow lawyers would do the same, and I see no reason for Democrats not to do the same. Read more!

Above all, do not quote me!

Scam-o-Rama has birthed a new cottage industy, the make believe conference where you send your registration fee to a mailbox somewhere in Soho. Climate change is a favorite topic, and here at least the denialists are correct, these conferences are a fraud, so Eli was wondering who was doing what with which to whom when someone muttered into his mailbox wouldn't he like to show up at the next EGU where Vincent Courtillot would receive the Arthur Holmes medal.

The Arthur Holmes medal for excellence in Solid Earth Geosciences, is one of the most, if not the most prestigious award of the EGU, honoring, wouldn't you know it, Arthur Holmes, a British geologist who was among the first to use radio dating to figure out the age of the Earth, figure out the mechanism for continental drift and much else. It is an honor

Vincent Courtillot, well not so much. Not that Dr. Courtillot did not make significant contributions to Solid Earth Geosciences. Like some, Courtillot, an expert in paleomagnetism, is a contrarian who favors vulcanism as a cause of mass extinctions and rejects the idea that humans are changing the climate. But, he had a bit of another problem, well, let Eli simply say that many people have a lot of issues with honoring the fellow.

Scientists at the Institute of Geophysics in Paris (IPGP) have been accused of acting as editors for dozens of papers by IPGP colleagues published from 1992 to 2008 in the journal Earth and Planetary Science Letters while they were members of the editorial board. The allegations follow a joint investigation by science journalists at the French newspapers Le Monde and Libération.

Among the authors of the articles involved is Claude Allègre, a former research and education minister in the French government and former IPGP head, whom French President Nicolas Sarkozy has been rumoured to be wooing to take up a ministerial position; and Vincent Courtillot, the institute's current head and a member of the journal's editorial board from 2003 to 2005.

Courtillot has dismissed the allegations, pointing out in Le Monde that all editors of papers submitted to the journal by the IPGP were openly identified. Allègre has described the allegations as "ridiculous". But Friso Veenstra, publisher of the Elsevier journal, maintains that reviewing papers from one's own institution runs against the journal's ethics policy.

The original accusation broke in 2008 in Le Monde (Google translation with some edits see below for original)

For several months a sulphurous document has been circulating in the Earth Science community. And while many are willing to comment in harsh terms, they almost always end by saying: "Above all, do not quote me! » "

The case is poisonous. And the mysterious ravens that triggered it remain in the shadows, hoping that the scandal will break. It accuses some of the greatest French geologists, Claude Allegre and his protectors, as it is rumored that the geochemist is again a candidate for a ministerial post.

What is it? One hundred pages. For the simple guy, this is a compilation of research articles published between 1992 and 2008 in one of the most prestigious journals in earth sciences, Earth and Planetary Science Letters (EPSL), published by the giant Anglo-Dutch scientific publisher Elsevier.

The problem? The selected papers, have in common that they have been written by researchers from one of the jewels of French research, the Institute of Earth Physics of Paris (IPGP). All have been accepted for publication by scientists who were both members of the same IPGP and the editorial board of EPSL. Judges and partly so.

To understand, you should know that EPSL works around a self perpetuating committee of seven prominent researchers, all with the rank of chief editor. Each volunteer spends part of his time to receive and evaluate manuscripts and decides whether or not to publish without having to consult the others.

However, in case of potential conflict of interest (same institution, recent collaboration, etc.). with authors who submit their work for evaluation, the editor must withdraw in favor of another member of the editorial board of the journal . These precautions are cardinal rules because research units and researchers are evaluated by their peers and supervisors by the number of articles published and prestige of the journals that accept them.

Despite these, the three researchers at IPGP who have successively served on the editorial board of EPSL - Paul Tapponnier (1992-1996), Vincent Courtillot (2003-2005) and Claude Jaupart (2006-2008) - have all accepted, approved and agreed to publish work from their institute.

His forays into climate issues stirred the pot, with over 400 climate scientists having written to the French Minister of Research calling on her to disown Courtillot and his pal Claude Allegre's attacks on them.

Eli hears that Courtillot had been repeatedly nominated for the Holmes Medal starting in 2008, but opposition to him based on the scandal revealed by Le Monde (the response was no harm, but Elsevier had done a bit of citation research showing that there was some harm as well as the obvious ethical issues, follow the links). However, Vincent Courtillot has champions on the various EGU medal committees, and they kept his name in play.

This year, again Eli hears, they played hide the cheese, the Holmes Medal Award committee not providing the required notice to the before sending their report to the EGU council and the council not remembering or googling the problem. As a matter of fact, when the issue was raised, the good Sgt. Schultz showed up

Chinaware is crashing, teeth are being bared, with high ranking EGU members resigning and threatening a lively plenary meeting where the current members of the council ask approval of their stewardship of the organization.

Oh yes, Eli also hears that there is cognitive dissonance** in the list of all of the 2012 EGU awardees, but that would be telling.

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Award Committee has a sense of humor: The 2008 winner was Anthony Watts. Nonono, not our Tony


Collection of links to original material and commentary from David Smythe

Original from Le Monde

Depuis plusieurs mois, un document sulfureux circule dans la communauté des sciences de la Terre. Et si beaucoup acceptent de le commenter en termes acerbes, c'est presque toujours pour finir par préciser : « Surtout, vous ne me citez pas ! »

L'affaire est empoisonnée. Le ou les mystérieux corbeaux qui l'ont déclenchée restent dans l'ombre, espérant que le scandale éclate. Il vise certains des plus grands géologues français. Dont Claude Allègre et sa garde rapprochée, au moment où il se murmure que le géochimiste est à nouveau candidat à un poste ministériel.

De quoi s'agit-il ? D'un document d'une centaine de pages. Pour le béotien, ce n'est qu'une compilation d'articles de recherche, publiés entre 1992 et 2008 dans l'une des plus prestigieuses revues de sciences de la Terre, Earth and Planetary Science Letters (EPSL), éditée par le géant anglo-néerlandais de l'édition scientifique Elsevier.

Les articles sélectionnés ont pour point commun d'avoir été rédigés par des chercheurs de l'un des fleurons de la recherche française, l'Institut de physique du globe de Paris (IPGP). Le malaise ? Tous ont été acceptés pour publication par des scientifiques qui étaient à la fois membres du même IPGP et du comité éditorial d' EPSL. Juges et partie, donc.

Pour comprendre, il faut savoir que EPSL fonctionne autour d'un comité de sept chercheurs éminents, choisis par cooptation et ayant tous rang d'éditeur en chef. Chacun consacre bénévolement une partie de son temps à recevoir et évaluer des travaux qu'il décide, ou non, de publier. Et ce, sans avoir de comptes à rendre aux autres.

Toutefois, en cas de conflit d'intérêts potentiel (même institution, récente collaboration, etc.) avec les auteurs qui lui soumettent leur travail pour évaluation, l'éditeur doit se désister au profit d'un autre membre du comité éditorial de la revue. Ces précautions sont cardinales : unités de recherche et chercheurs sont évalués par leurs tutelles en fonction du nombre d'articles publiés et du prestige des revues qui les acceptent.

En dépit de ces usages, les trois chercheurs de l'IPGP ayant successivement siégé au comité éditorial d' EPSL - Paul Tapponnier (1992-1996), Vincent Courtillot (2003-2005) et Claude Jaupart (2006-2008) - ont tous pris en charge et accepté de publier des travaux émanant de leur institut. Institut dirigé à plusieurs reprises par deux des trois intéressés.

Read more!

Scam-o-Rama

The lads from lagos have raised scamming to new levels, perhaps not reached since 1998 when Fred (Seitz) or someones associated with him spent a packet (Eli figures about 200K$ with about 52K$ extra to Sallie Baliunas and a bit less to Willie Soon) flacking for something called the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine Petition .

New York Times did a story on that

The National Academy of Sciences has taken the extraordinary step of disassociating itself from a statement and petition circulated by one of its former presidents that attack the scientific conclusions underlying international efforts to control emissions of industrial waste gases believed to cause global warming.

Many atmospheric scientists and ecologists who believe global warming to be a serious threat had expressed anger and alarm over the article because it was printed in a format and type face similar to that of the academy's own journal, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. [emphasis mine] In his letter, Dr. Seitz, a longtime skeptic on the question of global warming, also identified himself as a past academy president.

Simon Donner reports a bad second act. Somebunny had mailed him an

. . . envelope full of photocopied articles, from the Wall St. Journal and other sources, and various scribblings all attacking the scientific evidence that humans are primarily responsible for recent climate change.

. . . .I'll guess that [we] were not the only people studying climate change to receive copies of this particular material (let me know in the comments).

This package was unique, however, in one important way. The return address - no name was given - was "One Physics Ellipse" in College Park, Maryland.

A retirement community for physicists, you ask? Well, sort of.

One Physics Ellipse is the Corporate Headquarters for the American Institute of Physics. The AIP, like most scientific bodies on the planet, has as policy endorsed the scientific evidence that humans are contributing to climate change.

While it is true that not all of its members agree on that statement, scientists and certainly physicists are not exactly pros at speaking in one voice, I do find it odd to receive a package of "skeptic" material, much of which was downright silly (CO2 emissions don't "rise"), from the actual headquarters.

Eli has acquired (us Rabetts have our ways) a copy of the envelope. It appears to come from a Post Office Substation in zipcode 20690, which is Tall Timbers, MD in Saint Mary's county. Any of Eli's friends live there? Perhaps AIP might be interested or even the Postal Inspectors?

Tis often not better to receive.
Read more!

Occupy Elsevier

Henry Farrell @ Crooked Timber brings word of a new front in the library wars. Wars you ask, well anyone who has been on a library committee knows the constant need to truncate subscriptions because of shrinking budgets, but much more because of the rising costs of key journals. Many of the most expensive are published by Elsevier, a Dutch publishing house which has assiduously bought up title after title.

Tim Gowers, a mathematician doesn't want his friends to publish in Elsevier journals.

It might seem inexplicable that this situation has been allowed to continue. After all, mathematicians (and other scientists) have been complaining about it for a long time. Why can’t we just tell Elsevier that we no longer wish to publish with them?

Well, part of the answer is that we can. A famous (and not unique) example where we did so was the resignation of the entire editorial board of Topology and the founding of The Journal of Topology — the story is told briefly here. But as the list above shows, such examples are very much the exception rather than the rule, so the basic question remains: why do we allow ourselves to be messed about to this extraordinary extent, when one would have thought that nothing would be easier than to do without them?

In short, this is needed because

They charge exorbitantly high prices for their journals.

They sell journals in huge "bundles," so libraries must buy a large set with many unwanted journals, or none at all. Elsevier thus makes huge profits by exploiting their essential titles, at the expense of other journals.

They support measures such as SOPA, PIPA and the Research Works Act, that aim to restrict the free exchange of information.

Academic bunnies and their avatars can sign up here.

This is easier for some than others. For example, Tetrahedron Letters is a bedrock for synthetic chemists while the two important journals in Eli's area, Chemical Physics, and Chemical Physics Letters are optional (and declining in quality IEHO). Tet Let ($16,364) and Tetrahedron ($20,269) cost a large fortune for a library subscription.
Read more!

"Israel Firster" versus "climate denialists" versus Lindzen

An interesting article by Spencer Ackerman sounds off against the term "Israel Firster" as used by the American progressives as a label for Americans that support every Israeli policy and interest, especially the most aggressive and anti-Muslim policies.

My most left-wing views concern Israel, its shameful treatment of Palestinians, and the accurate description by Israeli politicians of that policy as "apartheid".  Still, I think I agree with Ackerman, not entirely but enough to say that the Israel Firster term should be dropped.  The key to me is that the term originates in anti-Semitism (this is my first and probably last positive reference to anything written by David Bernstein).  While the African-American community has shown how to reappropriate words with disgusting historical origins, that's not something to be done lightly.  Let this term go.

Juan Cole does a better job with the term Likud-supporter, describing the American politicians who reject as anti-Israel the positions favored by a significant strand of progressive Israeli politics.  I'm not sure that captures the thought of politicians who can't see any divergence between American and Israeli interests, but it's good enough for now.

By contrast, I've never bought the claim that "climate denialism" must not be uttered because of its similarity to "Holocaust denial".  I used climate denialism years long before it was claimed by opponents to be derived from Holocaust denial terminology.  Even if it was for some, the connection isn't nearly as seamless as the term "Israeli Firster" is with anti-Semitism.  These people truly are climate denialists and it has a connection to being anti-science, not to anti-Semitism.

And since we're on a related subject, there's the issue of Richard Lindzen claiming to be offended by the term climate denier because he claims to be a Holocaust survivor.  His claim is based on the fact that his Jewish parents emigrated from Germany in 1938, and he was born in 1940.  Even the broadest-accepted definition of Holocaust survivor would only include his parents, not him (and many would not include his parents, although they undoubtedly faced severe persecution).  Actual Holocaust survivors would have good reason to be offended by Lindzen. Read more!

Another denialist victory - 2008 isn't the warmest La Nina year on record

I think that's the way they'll spin it.  At the end of 2008 I wrote that year would be the warmest La Nina year in the historical record, but new data forces me to retract that erroneous statement.


PS. That's what I get for sitting on a blog post that I've been meaning to write - those jerks at Capitol Weather Gang beat me to it.  I await the denialist explanation on how we can have years this warm when a natural cycle is temporarily cooling a significant percentage of the earth's surface. Read more!

Thoreau's Lemma

Remember how calculators came and took the bite out of slide rulers. In a world far, far away, e.g. Eli's bunnyhood, engineering students took classes in how to use the things and adding machines were treasures. In small groceries people used brown paper bags, in large ones, very clunky cash registers.

At that point, still lamented in teachers and faculty lounges world over (and, as Brian would point out, in the US Republican Party), actually knowing how to do arithmetic became less of a necessity and more of a party trick, what was needed was the ability to set up the problem and punch the numbers into the $1 calculator, $10 if you have to do logs or trig functions.

Thoreau, who Eli spars with in a friendly manner, brings news of the next frontier. Students everywhere rejoice, calculus class is no longer needed.

I usually use Mathematica as my calculator, especially when explaining homework in office hours. I can refer back to variables and quickly make graphs or manipulate symbols. So while going over homework with students in my biophysics class, I pull up Mathematica and one of them says “Is that just like Matlab?” My eyes bugged out. A biology major who knows Matlab? This is the subject of my interdisciplinary hopes and dreams. So I asked what she uses Matlab for. “My boyfriend is a mechanical engineer and I have to do his homework for him.” My reply was “Your boyfriend should do his own homework, and if you’re a biology major with Matlab skills you should be working in my research group.” . . . . . . . . (Yes Chip, Eli left out a paragraph, go to the link and see if it changed the meaning of the piece)

Contrast this with my discovery yesterday in biophysics: I gave them an activity in which one step required that they calculate the derivative of a*x^2-b*x. I know that calculus isn’t a prerequisite for the course, but they’re all juniors and seniors and the biology department requires them to take a quarter of calculus. Alas, most of them could not remember it.

Sort of like most students can't remember long division, why should they, all they need is to be taught MatLab (the affordable version) or Maple or Mathematica (the high cost ones) and to find a function. The same thing happened with statistics, all you need is R or SAS or Statistica. To the joy of mathematicians and statisticians they now only have to teach the lemmas.

Symbolic algebra/calculus programs are the calculus versions of calculators. A light has dawned. Death to ten blackboard long proofs. Read more!