Honorary authorship is a device, often seen in the scientific literature and frowned upon greatly. It comes in several flavors, amongst them are the money guy gambit (grant PI but did none of the work, OTOH we gotta add his name to keep the funding), the I'm your boss guy (and you are going to add my name to the paper, even though I did not do any of the work), the please your boss guy (if this bunny adds that bunny's name to the paper maybe that bunny will vote for this bunny's tenure) and the how are we going to get anyone to believe this nonsense guy (let's add the name of some Nobel Prize winner to the author's list).Eli has recently come into possession of an interesting missive from one S. Fred Singer, sent to some sixty worthies in 2009, many of whose names the readers of Rabett Run would recognize, offering what appears to be Honorary Authorships by the five dozen
From: "S. Fred Singer"
Subject: NIPCC -- 2nd Edition
Date: January 25, 2009 8:19:22 PM CST
To: info@sepp.org
Cc: (Let Eli not go there for now)
Attachments: 2 Attachments, 135.4 KB
Dear Friends
We are readying a 2nd updated and slightly expanded edition of the NIPCC Summary, to be published in March/April 2008
Pls read the attached Preface and consider adding yr name as a contributor/reviewer (We are blurring the disitnction on purpose to provide deniability to some who are concerned about repercussions)
I hope you will accept this invitation and send me BY JANUARY 31 a 2-3-line bio-sketch, along the model shown on page 29 of the NIPCC report Nature Not Human Activity Rules the Climate http://www.sepp.org/publications/NIPCC_final.pdf
Thank you -- and best wishes for 2009!
Fred
NIPCC participants are invited to a dinner on March 9 in NY City during the Heartland Conference and to a dinner on April 23 (or 24) during the EGU General Assembly in Vienna. I am to present an invited paper in Session GD10 (see attached abstract)
To their credit, all except one on the list did not bite. The only Email on the list which corresponds to someone all the Rabetts know and admire who is also listed as an author on the 2009 is one Nicholas Scafetta. Now, of course, this is not ironclad proof, in the sense, that maybe NS called Fred up and asked to add something or, in the ambiguous words of the Email "blurring the disitnction on purpose to provide deniability" (sic) reviewed the thing, and indeed that someone accepted is not such a huge deal given the general reputation of the NIPCC, but that the honor :) was offered, ah tells you something about Heartland and Fred. Indeed this is not the first time that S. Fred has played the author/reviewer game.************************************************************
S. Fred Singer, PhD, President
Science & Environmental Policy Project . .
http :// www.sepp.org
**************
And, of course, Fred did not only offer Honorary Authorship, in a bid to spice up the Heartland Institute's NIPCC Report, but even better than a single free lunch, two free dinners. And Eli might speculate that the Heartland bought some mighty fine dinners
So the answer to the question above is that Heartland provides dinner, oh yes, and hard cash. For the NIPCC report SEPP (or in other words S. Fred) got 143K$ for that in case anybunny wonders what the wages of obfustication are. And he and Craig Idso appear to have remained on the payroll into 2012.
Eli awaits anxiously the soon to appear 2013 edition. He expects an offer in the moment, with a wonderful gift of carrot cake and cookies.
That has to be one of the funniest things I've seen in ages. I'd like to see the recipient list, though. Please, pretty please?
ReplyDeleteSince Heartland leak clever bunnies should know there's more to gain than two carrots. BTW did Eli try the Gleick trick?
ReplyDeleteAndreas
It would be useful to get some kind of evidence for the authenticity of the mail.
ReplyDeleteThis is just GREAT!
ReplyDeleteMany thanks to His Royal Rabettness!
In my lab, there is also the prima donna authorship--the author you include just so they don't melt down upon finding they weren't included. There is also the "critical skills" author, whose skills may be needed for the next publication, though not the current one.
ReplyDeleteAs to the Heartland dinners, I doubt I'd enjoy anything prepared by Heartland--too oily.
"Pls read the attached Preface and consider adding yr name as a contributor/reviewer "
ReplyDeleteWhile this MO expains many a signature seen on past prefaces to volumes collated by Singer, it is no guarantee that they read the things.
This is especially true in the case of his deader board members.
"Pls read the attached Preface and consider adding yr name as a contributor/reviewer "
ReplyDeleteWhile this MO expains many a signature seen on past prefaces to Singer volumes it is no guarantee they read the things.
Judging by his deader board members, he appears to view consensual silence and the silence of the grave as a continuum.
Please ask Ethon to carry of the first draft
ReplyDeleteBTW Should that not be 'Nicola' and 'Scafetta' or have I missed something.
ReplyDeleteJim Lakely from The Heartland Institute here. Glad to see you’re all anxiously awaiting the release of Climate Change Reconsidered II. As devastating as Climate Change Reconsidered I and the 2011 Interm Report were, I’m told II is even better. But will your knives be long enough?
ReplyDeleteDr. Singer’s email was “leaked” and widely discussed around the time it was written, some four years ago, so this is hardly a bold new discovery. All (or almost all) of the people Dr. Singer emailed had previously been sent some or all of the manuscript for review, so it was appropriate for him to send them this invitation to be identified in the final product. Nobody Dr. Singer contacted would have agreed to be listed without reading the portions of manuscript that fell into their area of scientific specialty, and none did.
By the way, the IPCC's method of listing contributors and reviewers is far worse since NONE of the people they list read (much less approved) the final version of the manuscript bearing their names. As you well know, IPCC reports are political documents, not science. They are revised to fit political agendas after the scientists finish their work. The IPCC just sent out a news release once again acknowledging that this is the case with its latest report. This is just one of the many procedural problems that render IPCC reports so unreliable.
Michael Mann -- who helpfully alerted Heartland to this blog post on Twitter -- should be careful about promoting a commentary criticizing others over how one attracts co-authors and reviewers to scientific work. The Wegman report, commissioned by Congress, places Mann in a rather conspicuous glass house.
John Mashey,
ReplyDeleteEver since Deep published that excellent exposé of McIntyre's fraudulent statistics behind the Wegman report, I always wonder why none of the ACC deniers will ever acknowledge that it has a serious credibility problem.
But then... if they can't observe and at least personally acknowledge the obvious changes that are happening in the world all around them, I suppose that is a powerful demonstration of just how potent that whole 'blinded by their ideology' gig can be.
Jim, given Fred's habit of submitting his works to moribund nonagenarians for the favor of review , we are deeply shocked by his failure to add more senior figures to the masthead.
ReplyDeleteTo raise the editorial tone of Fred's DIY peer review , you might drop a line to Edgar Cayce, ring up Mary Baker Eddy. or have Jay Lehr channel his oldnemesis, J. Edgar Hoover.
Now some, not Eli to be sure, think that Jim Lakely has reached the Geoffrey Howe level of savagery. Eli is tickled.
ReplyDeleteI love Jim Lakely's response: "All (or almost all) of the people Dr. Singer emailed had previously been sent some or all of the manuscript for review"
ReplyDeleteThe "almost all" is lawyer-speak that none of the people had seen it ... Fred was fishing for co-authors.
Jim: for having to defend people like Fred and the other d-bags at the HI, you win the "worst job in the world" award.
Mr Lakely,
ReplyDeleteThere's a nice discussion (in which John Mashey and I participated) that highlights in plain English what is wrong with one of the main "hockey-stick" claims pushed by McIntyre/Wegman -- you can find it at this link: http://wottsupwiththatblog.wordpress.com/2013/07/10/debunking-the-hockey-stick/#comments
There's the 100:1 cherry-pick as described by Mr. Mashey, the "hockey stick" contamination of what was supposed to be "random noise", the bit about failing to compare magnitudes of McIntyre's "random noise" eigenvalues vs. Mann's tree-ring-data eigenvalues.... the basic stuff that good students learn to sort out in Time-Series Analysis/Statistics 101.
You know, you guys really ought to leave the climate-science to folks who don't completely f*&! up everything they touch.
--caerbannog
Mr Lakely,
ReplyDeleteHere's a quick summary of some issues with the McIntyre/Wegman work (namely the "hockey sticks from random noise" bit).
1) McIntyre relied on a 100:1 cherry-pick to get his “random noise” hockey sticks, per John Mashey above. (And yes, I confirmed this by looking that the R-code myself).
2) His random noise was badly contaminated with “hockey-stick” signal statistics (i.e. he didn’t filter the hockey-stick out of the tree-ring data before he used it as a template for his random noise) -- also confirmed by looking at McIntyre's R-code.
3) In spite of (1) and (2) above, McIntyre’s random-noise hockey sticks were *much* smaller than Mann’s genuine tree-ring hockey-stick. No competent analyst would confuse a McIntyre random-noise hockey stick with a genuine Mann tree-ring hockey stick.
Mr Lakely, you "think" tank types (the scare-quotes are there for a reason) really ought to leave the climate-science to folks who don't f*&! up everything they touch.
--caerbannog
> As devastating as Climate Change Reconsidered I and the 2011 Interm Report were, I’m told II is even better
ReplyDeleteI'm all shaking in my boots
I'm confused that Lakely after complaining that the IPCC report is too political chooses to refer us to the "The Wegman report, commissioned by Congress", as if the political nature in that case is a merit, rather than the apolitical NRC report.
ReplyDeleteIn light of the HI's habit of recycling, I expect my rebuttal to the 2009 NIPCC version to still be relevant:
ReplyDeletehttp://ourchangingclimate.wordpress.com/2009/06/13/the-nipcc-report/
Bart
Lakely adds another lie to the story. The Wegman report was not commissioned by congress, but by the Committee on Energy and Commerce, a committee of the House of Representatives, which even this non-American bunny knows not to be the same as Congress (twice over: the House of Representatives is just part of Congress, and the Committee is just a little part of the House of Representatives). Or will Lakely say that the NRC report was *also* commissioned by Congress and showed Mann in a much better light?
ReplyDeleteMarco
The Wegman Report, commissioned by Congress ... "
ReplyDeleteBwahahahahaha ...
.... was a tendentious piece of plagiarism.
Toby
Let's all hop over to the Heartland Blog where the bunnies can point this out to Jim. Of course, he may not post your comments, but then we can twitter about his not wanting to talk about this.....
ReplyDeletehttp://blog.heartland.org/2013/08/silly-rabett/
" Anonymous said...
ReplyDeleteI love Jim Lakely's response: "All (or almost all) of the people Dr. Singer emailed had previously been sent some or all of the manuscript for review"
The "almost all" is lawyer-speak that none of the people had seen it ..."
A vile canard- far from failing to show it to some of his reviewers, S.Fred merely waited until they went legally blind.
Reading Mr. Lakely's teaser for the upcoming power-packed scien-mo-tifical hoax-buster, I am reminded of one of the crank publications discussed by Martin Gardner in his book "Fads and Fallacies". The title page of said publication assured the reader that the text was "free of hi-de-hi mathematics" and "bristling with new axioms".
ReplyDelete"Dr. Singer’s email was “leaked” and widely discussed around the time it was written, some four years ago, so this is hardly a bold new discovery."
ReplyDeleteAnybunny remember that???
Thomas asks:
ReplyDelete"It would be useful to get some kind of evidence for the authenticity of the mail."
Jim Lakely provides"
"Dr. Singer’s email was “leaked” and widely discussed around the time it was written, some four years ago, so this is hardly a bold new discovery. "
Eli is a full service blog, we even get the people from Heartland to shoot themselves in the heart.
Why is it that when I read anything by Jim Lakely I automatically think of this?
ReplyDeleteBernard J.
Let's all hop over to the Heartland Blog where the bunnies can point this out to Jim. Of course, he may not post your comments, but then we can twitter about his not wanting to talk about this.....
ReplyDeletehttp://blog.heartland.org/2013/08/silly-rabett/
You may twitter when you are ready, Eli:
The lilly-livered Lakely has somewhat unreasonably refused to post my remarks on S.Fred's zombified peer review.
I personally love the paragraph where Mr Lakely catalogs the IPCC report as "political". He conveniently forgets to mention which country has screamed the most for "revisions" during the last IPCC report.
ReplyDeleteSaudi Arabia.
I really wonder why.
Bratisla
Here's the commeent censored by Lakely :
ReplyDeleteLakely writes :
" Nobody Dr. Singer contacted would have agreed to be listed without reading the portions of manuscript that fell into their area of scientific specialty, and none did."
Though at least one erstwhile reviewer of the first edition was legally blind when "shown" the manuscript on his deathbed, there's no doubting that it made a profound impression.
He died the next day.