The sad recent news concerning Dr. Peter Gleick highlights the evolving interplay of science, politics, and media. Writing on The Huffington Post, Dr. Gleick has admitted to presenting himself under false pretenses to obtain internal documents from the Heartland Institute. Fallout has been significant for Dr. Gleick, and for his cause of sharing the meaning and implications of climate science. Meanwhile, his adversaries, those who sow distrust of mainstream climate science, will get to merrily parade this very personal error on a pike.
The narrative arc has familiar dramatic and cliché elements of the hero becoming what he most despises. As a scientist, I find his recent actions indefensible, but I'm interested in the causes.
To be transparent, I've met the man; I helped arrange his 2009 visit to our campus, where he gave a stunning, authoritative, and compelling talk. He was humorous and down-to-earth (pun intended), and he shared his time before and after his lecture with researchers, non-scientists, and students alike.
Dr. Gleick's credentials are stellar. He's a MacArthur "Genius" Fellow and a member of the National Academy of Sciences. Compared with most scientists, he's worked with unusual agility in the arenas of politics and media, writing and speaking on informed policy with great effect and toward great respect. What I've found refreshing about his message is the offer of good news to accompany the bad. Far from a doomsday screamer, he regularly points out where we're improving as citizens of the planet.
Dr. Gleick stands in a long history of scientists struggling with policy concerns. It's always a bumpy road, to be sure, but how does an imminently logical and successful person like Gleick get to a place where he decides to try special ops, plotting a fraudulent caper to expose his enemies?
Modern media, of course, suffer from the malady of false equivalence: "Do house cats cause dropped cell phone calls? Let's hear from both sides." The technique sells ad time, but this is an incredibly difficult hairball for most scientists to swallow.
According to Dr. Gleick's statement, this frustration drove him to a "serious lapse" of ethics. His work, and the work of other experts, was held up as an equal debating partner to entities playing by different rules. As he has pointed out, some of these people and organizations are not entirely data-driven, to put it nicely, and in some cases they appear to have supporters with conflicts of interest as deep as their pockets.
To understand his frustration, imagine a news show where NBA star Kevin Durant is held up as an equal basketball player to a pudgy, 5'9" guy who once played for his high school team. Mr. Durant is only allowed the opportunity to prove himself in a 40-second seated appearance, where he can discuss his career and playing ability. The weekend warrior gets equal time, and he regales the audience with stories of scoring 200 points in his driveway, all while pointing out that Mr. Durant is rather skinny, as athletes go. The moderator says, "Well, that's all we have time for today. Clearly a hotly debated issue. Next up, Angelina Jolie's leg!"
Would anyone blame Mr. Durant for trying to leak home movies of the guy bricking shots in his driveway? Or trying to drag the fellow to a real NBA arena to unveil the truth? The analogy is silly, but it underlines the frustration that a person such as Dr. Gleick must have felt, for many years, finding himself pitched against largely non-scientific adversaries in non-scientific arenas. And unlike a basketball career, the perceived stakes are much larger than someone's reputation.
Beyond false equivalence and the mismatch of rules between debates of science and those of policy, I submit that there is a familiar and even more fundamental problem of time scales (see, for instance, an eloquent 2007 piece by Oxford's Maxwell Boykoff). Take just two processes: scientific discussion and the churning of news media. They work toward vastly different update rates, with the gap getting worse every day.
The German physicist Max Planck famously said that new scientific ideas do not advance through compelling argument, no matter how clear and correct. They advance only when the older scientists die. Dark humor (or dark truth) aside, this nicely paints the picture of slow renovations within the house of science. Even a scientific "revolution" takes a generation or more of scientists, start to finish.
A generation? That's the time equivalent of 84,750 status updates from a single political wonk. It's no secret that news media must work quickly on a topic before moving to the next. They are understandably ready to pounce on the "hot tape," to encourage colorful exaggeration, and to provoke ad hoc extrapolation, within the minimum possible number of words and seconds.
So we have a growing chasm of mismatched timescales. Scientific stories in general need time, caution, and skepticism. They require honest exploration of caveats and technical details. Moreover, large-scale complex problems require exponentially more time, especially if the results impact societies. Climate conversation probably deserves a long symphony of refined probabilities, while the audience members (and the tweeting music critics to boot) prefer a short and catchy chorus: "I couldn't really tap my foot to that, Professor. Sorry."
It appears that one good scientist, perhaps fearing declining attendance in the public auditorium, considered extreme and unethical measures -- clearly not for his own image or legacy, which he has now put at risk, but, I imagine, for what he views as the crucial music of valid science.
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By Gary Wamsley
Colonel, USAF, Retired
When I read the original articles on the release of confidential documents from the Heartland Institute board meeting, (see They’re Coming for Your Kids) I was infuriated.
I reacted by sending a strongly worded email to the president and all the board members of the Heartland Institute.
Surprisingly, one board member and institute president Joseph Bast responded to my email.
Bast’s response is one that I would consider threatening. He said he was turning the email over to their legal department, the forensic staff and the FBI. He also warned me not to delete any emails.
Apparently, I was supposed to be frightened by the specter of this multimillion dollar non-profit (?) spending resources on an old veteran. The whole idea seems ludicrous and they know it. Still, I am not afraid of the battle if it comes. This is a tactic that big money often used to suppress free speech...
During my career I have been in position for many sensitive positions and have had top secret clearances, I have been investigated by the Civil Service Commission, the FBI and the Air Force Office of Special Investigations. I feel secure that the government knows who I am.
I decided to publish these emails so that you can judge the exchange for yourself.
http://www.berthoudrecorder.com/2012/02/19/heartland-institute-threatens-71-year-old-veteran/
f&f with gusto!
I am truly baffled by this.
We live in a world of corruption, and while yes I am very interested in seeing it change to something trustworthy, it isn't that way in reality.
I don't blame him for going about this in the way he did, I mean at some point someone has to do something, and obviously it isn't us the people doing anything about it.
We sit back and complain about how we just know we are being lied too by so many business's and agencies, but when someone finally does something about exposing them we jump up and down and blame him for being a bad man stooping to their level.
Sad
But to your point, you wonder why people are outraged that Peter Gleick obtained documents under false pretense, then, not finding the smoking gun he expected, crafted a hybrid memo stating all those deeply help beliefs he had expected to find, and tehn passed the whole package off as original date from Heartland...
Yea, why would anyone be upset with the that...the only way truth will win in the debate is to lie...
Gleick's action have hurt climate science...now the true deniers will use this to their advantage and science will remain in the backseat as politicians drive the wagon...
That is speculation on your part.
Do you work at Heartland?
But I do believe the Dr has been a very dedicated and honest scientist.
He fessed up to what he did, and how he did it...he did lie to Heartland in order to obtain the documents...this is what he did that was "wrong".
Yet every day investigators from the government, and private sector change their identity, create fictional back stories, or even impersonate others to get crucial information in order to convict criminals.
The only real difference here is he does not belong to an agency that specializes in this sort of thing, and that people approve of.
Which, I suppose, you think is bunk, because of your deep and broad understanding of thermodynamics, radiation transfer, fluid mechanics, ice dynamics, and the like.
In view of those uncertainties, don't think we need to begin trillions upon trillions of dollars reengineering the world economy and all of human society along with it in order to "stop" the climate from changing.
Think Solyndra, but on a global economic scale.
The Heartland people...Â
You mean the same Heartland people whose website claims that their "expert" Bob Carter receives "no research funding from special interest organisations" but a leaked Heartland document that they don't contest says otherwise?
Why yes, you do.Â
Hawkeye2010: "Get back to me when you have proof he didnt."
Where I come from -- the United States of America -- people are innocent until proven guilty.
While I am dismayed at Gleick's deception, I fail to see why you're defending an organization that exists for one primary reason: to lie about science.
BTW, what are the odds that Huffington will update the story now that the actual analysis by a certified expert has been completed?
hardship away from an ethical lapse. And until after the challenge
anybody's opinion of how upstanding they are, means Jack.
Science is very political, because its funding is politicized. You can
bet that a scientist who's in the public eye is a politician, those who
don't play the big room get to sit in the basement and wait for the
grant to run out.
People who forge data or reports deserve to get humiliated and fired.
If you want to be a liar, go into politics full time.
Let me guess: you're not a scientist, are you.
don't play the big room get to sit in the basement and wait for the
grant to run out. "
The "big room" in this case might be, say, the hotel ballroom at the American Geophysical Union meeting, where they might give an invited talk to, say, 1000 of their peers.
You really don't know how this works.
There are no obstacles to his science, which has been accepted for years by everyone in the know. The obstacles are in getting the public to pay attention to the very troubling implications of his science.
And THOSE obstacles are put there by Heartland and scores of other so-called "think tanks", that are in business entirely to manipulate public opinion by obscuring the state of the science. For anyone who cares about the future, this is extremely distressing.
THIS IS WHAT I WAS REFERRING TO>
Confidential Memo: 2012 Heartland Climate Strategy
This "document" was FORGED. This is not a lapse in judgement...its a lack of integrity. Gleick should have any credentials stripped and every legal action taken against him.
Anyone whitewashing the incident should have their character thoroughly looked at as well.
How do you know it wasn't written by someone at Heartland? Because they claim as much?
****snerk****
Unfortunately for him professional analysis:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/03/14/professional-forensic-stylometric-analysis-of-the-fake-heartland-climate-strategy-memo-concludes-peter-gleick-is-the-likely-forger/
shows that Gleick is the forger.
Of course, I doubt anyone at the Huffington Post will blog about that. I guess that makes you guys the "deniers."
Do you always jump to conclusions?
Today only mary mapes and dan Rather believe the killian memos are authentic. There is absolutely no credible information that even remotely suggest the climate strategy memo is authentic. One item that emerges from the Gleick episode is the willingness to continue to defend an obviously bogus memo as authentic with no evidence to support the authenticity of the document.
Your ability to defend the climate science would be enhanced if you did not demonstrate a lack of intellectual capacity by defending a bogus memo. Think about it - you want the climate skeptics to believe you about the science when you demonstrate how easily you are fooled by a bogus memo.
Methinks the lady doth protest too much.
Unlike you, I'm not jumping to conclusions and instead acknowledge the obvious: we don't have enough information to know who authored the document in question, be it Heartland President Joe Bast, Gleick, or someone else.
Get back to us when you have proof that the document in question was forged.Â
Your handwringing over Dr. Gleik's 'ethics' shows why 'scientists' are losing the PR battle on climate change. You don't play by the Marquis of Queensbury rules in a gunfight. Your handwringing over Dr. Gleik's actions shows why the leading academic climate change activists are being protrayed, accurately by the Koch Brothers and their allies as overeducated effete intellectual snobs who love drinking their latte's and driving around in their over priced Prius vehicles. Either fight the Koch Brothers on their terms or wave the white flag of surrender.
I take your meaning, but as a scientist, I also care about what happens to the world my children inherit. That's why this horrible irrationality on the right is so distressing -- if it were just evolution, or something, it wouldn't matter that much, but with climate change the real-world consequences may be very dire.
The question becomes - how do you expose a lie? Sure, the truth of the actual science will out, but in the meantime we continue to destroy the earth with policies that ignore the truth of climate change. The media can be easily manipulated, and Dr. Brown does a great job of explaining how deep pocketed opponents provide the media with a steady drip of misinformation, and how the scientific community struggles to combat the problem.
There was a time when lying about dumping poison into the air in order to make a profit would have been illegal. Now it's just called "free enterprise". Free for the polluters, very costly for the country.
Extreme libertarians cannot grasp such a concept, because in their view the invisible hand of the marketplace will always -- magically! -- push back, even when there is no mechanism for this to happen.
I like to call libertarianism "The New Irresponsibility".
Unfortunately for Dr. Gleick the information he bought so dearly with his subterfuge turned out to be the opposite of what I assume he expected. No "supporters with conflicts of interest as deep as their pockets", a miniscule, almost shoestring, budget and interests in many issues beyond Dr. Gleick's narrow concerns.
No matter how you look at it this is clearly an "own goal" for activists like Dr. Gleick.
Cheers,
All of these scientists understood and understand that in public forum debates -- that is, debates in front of lay audiences and with time limits -- science deniers can spew a Gish Gallop* of science denial that cannot possibly be adequately addressed within said fixed time limit.
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* Gish Gallop: "A debating technique that involves drowning the opponent in such a torrent of half-truths, lies, and straw-man arguments that the opponent cannot possibly answer every falsehood that has been raised... It is named after creationism activist and professional debater Duane Gish."
http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Gish_Gallop
"If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough." Albert Einstein.
I am sure Mr. Einstein would have added, "Except for the orthodox view of climate science."
Cheers,
The person the Heartland Institute invited Gleick to "debate" with wasn't even a scientist, to say nothing of being a climate scientist.Â
Heartland's guy, a Mr. James Taylor, is instead a lawyer - a lawyer who has a long record of spewing climate science Gish Gallops.
Cheers.
He told one lie to a bunch of professional liars to get to the facts, which isn't even related to lying about global warming.
So, the only thing proven here is your inability to make a valid comment.
And those 'facts' turned out clear and unequivocal (to use favorite AGW talking point) What did we discover? ... The Green PR machine is funded by levels orders of magnitude more than grassroots skepticism. Hundreds of millions vs 6.5 million for Heartland (and only a fraction of that spent to counter AGW).