Of Mann and strawmen
By Norman Leahy | Friday, August 26th, 2011 | Policy, VirginiaAfter a lengthy (and expensive) legal battle, the University of Virginia has released the first batch of former UVA professor Michael Mann’s emails to the American Tradition Institute. The release comes at roughly the same another investigation in Mann’s work — this one by the National Science Foundation — exonerated Mann of any wrong-doing.
For some, the NSF’s findings are reason enough to say that those who challenged Mann should fold their tents and go home. others, like the Richmond-Times Dispatch, go a step further, though, and demands that Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli “…drop his own inquiry, apologize to Mann and then apologize to the taxpayers.”
Cuccinelli is, in the paper’s opinion, guilty of playing to the Republican faithful who, it seems, are rather hostile to science and free inquiry. Leaving these rather tatty strawmen aside, let’s recall a couple of things:
* It was the American Tradition Institute, using the state’s FOIA law, that caused UVA to disgorge Mann’s emails — emails, by the way, the University long-contended did not exist and could not be produced. Mr. Cuccinelli’s investigation is still ongoing or in litigation.
* Dr. Mann may not be guilty of anything at all. Nor is he exactly innocent. His behavior toward his peers seeking to check his work raises plenty of red flags but as the RTD seems to be a bit color blind, here is a handy, black and white timeline of Mann’s handling of data and FOIA requests. It isn’t pretty.
Honest people can, have and will disagree over the causes of climate change. But it does exist — which is a very good thing, as without it, central Virginia would look more like the present-day Yukon and the Chesapeake Bay wouldn’t exist.
The questions surrounding Mann’s have devolved into politics and activism. On all sides. That is deeply regrettable. But at the heart of all this is a rather simple principle: show your work. And in Mann’s case, a public employee at a public institution using publicly-provided materials should expect that his work would be shown without fuss. Instead, we have charges, counter-charges, lawsuits, investigations, recriminations and nonsense.
The American Tradition Institute is getting the information it wanted — in pieces. They will pour over the documents and, quite possibly, may find nothing more damning than that Mann had a penchant for using emoticons in his correspondence. I suspect there is no smoking gun, or even mildly warm kitchen utensil, in the lot.
But we shall see.
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About the author
Norm Leahy has written about Virginia and national politics online since 2002, beginning with One Man's Trash (OMT), and continuing through Bacon's Rebellion (both the blog and the e-zine), Sic Semper Tyrannis, NBC12's Decision Virginia, Richmond.com and Tertium Quids. He is the chief blogger at "The Score" and a producer of "The Score" radio show as well as being a Washington Post contributor.
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2 Responses to "Of Mann and strawmen"
Putting aside all of the climate change stuff for a moment, it is surprising that a publicly funded University would put up such a fight to stop the state’s request. Whether UVA thinks it is a witch hunt or not, they do understand that when they accept public money they are accountable for it, right ? All the money that flows into UVA isn’t just free money to fund researchers private playgrounds, tax payers do expect that the money is being used for the public good and UVA and other public institutions need to know that tax payers are going to hold them accountable. Tax payers have the right to ask for any record at the University that they want to know about, they are paying for the lights to be on, and they pay for almost everything else that happens there too. If the University doesn’t agree, maybe its time they stop accepting public money.
UVA isn’t any different than the VDOT, Dept of Rehab, Safety, or any other state agency. Do a search on “Virginia State Agencies” and you’ll see “University of Virginia” right there with the rest of them, and it is just as accountable as the rest of them for public money that it spends. UVA isn’t “special”, it doesn’t get a pass even if its staff might think it does.
What’s even more amazing, however, is that after the courts have affirmed exactly that, that UVA CONTINUES to fight against the state’s request ??? How is that even possible ?
Hey UVA, if you don’t like it, stop cashing the checks tax payers send to you and organize a bake sale.
This is an addition to my last post. I learned something, my post above is not correct in spirit because I did not know that UVA is almost entirely funded by other sources, it only gets about 6% of its money from tax payers (according to the source I read).
If that is the case then I think UVA can do whatever it wants for the most part, it is accountable to whoever really is paying to keep the lights on, its student’s parents I would assume.
My bad UVA! I stand corrected //grin//
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