A Student's Conversation With Michael Mann on Climate Science and Climate Wars - NYTimes.com
All of our research is out in the public domain, all of our data. Unfortunately, those looking to smear us have made false accusations of us not making the data available, which was just a lie… There are legitimate issues over whether a computer program you have written to implement an algorithm; if you’re talking about a Microsoft or Apple computer, they would defend to the end their right to keep that. You can’t get access to Microsoft’s computer code because they consider it their intellectual property. Scientists for a long time have argued that a code that you write to implement algorithms is your intellectual property, and the National Science Foundation has stood firmly behind that.
When our critics asked us to turn over our computer code, we understood what they were doing: if it was the computer code, they didn’t care, because then it would be something else. It would be our personal emails, and in fact they ended up stealing our personal emails [So Mann knows who "stole" his emails?]. They weren’t interested in seeing our computer code or trying to independently implement it. They were looking for something to try to discredit us, to be able to say ‘oh look how sloppy their computer code is, they’re not good computer programmers, you shouldn’t trust anything they do.’
We were aware of that and so we didn’t want to go down that slippery slope of saying yes, we’ll turn that over and then pretty soon you’re turning over personal emails, you’re turning over your private diaries. We didn’t want to set a precedent that would allow those looking to smear scientists, to go down this endless road of subjecting scientists to vexatious demands that would basically tie us up — we wouldn’t have any time to even do research any more. Unfortunately that’s what we’ve seen ever since. We’ve seen politicians try to subject us to subpoena all of our private emails. Its part of this cynical effort to discredit scientists, confuse the public, to intimidate scientists.
…But in the end, we even put our computer program out there in the public domain, recognizing that maybe it was going down a slippery slope, because what were they going to demand next? We knew there was nothing wrong with it at all, we put it out there, and what we predicted was exactly what we saw. We didn’t see any discussion, nobody ever even downloaded, as far as I can tell [Is Mann actually suggesting that no outsider has ever checked his computer code for errors?], the code or try to run it, because they didn’t care about the code, they were just looking for something that they could say, ‘oh look, scientists won’t provide this’, and then once you provide it—’oh well they won’t provide this’, and then once you provide that, ‘oh well they won’t provide that.’ And pretty soon what do they want? Do they want you to provide them literally with the dirty laundry from your house?
...Many climate scientists have received hundreds, and probably now even thousands of threatening emails
Posts
