Et tu, APS?
I already know that Nature has thrown in its lot with the fraudsters. Fine. Nature isn’t Nature Physics, and given the culture of corruption among climatogists, it’s not too surprising that that culture seeps into the association of scientists.
But APS, the single organization that is supposed to be representing physicists in America and elsewhere? Have you sunk to these levels? This is the email I received today, and if you are a member of APS, you should have or will recieve one soon:
From: APS President <apsp...@aps.org> Reply-to: APS President <apsp...@aps.org> To: byun...@berkeley.edu Subject: Unsolicited Climate Change Email Date: Wed, 9 Dec 2009 20:26:05 -0500 Dear APS Member: Recently, you may have received an unsolicited email from Hal Lewis, Bob Austin, Will Happer, Larry Gould and Roger Cohen regarding the APS and climate change. Please be assured that this was not an official APS message, nor was it sent with APS knowledge or approval. A number of members have complained to APS regarding this unsolicited e-mail. If the e-mail addresses used to send this message were obtained from our membership directory, this was contrary to the stated guidelines for members' use of the directory. We are continuing to investigate how the senders obtained APS member email addresses. As many APS members are already aware, the Council of the Society has tasked the Panel on Public Affairs to examine the 2007 APS statement on climate change for issues of tone and clarity. Duncan Moore, the current chair of POPA, is in the process of convening a subcommittee to carry out the task. The subcommittee, which he is also chairing, will report its recommendations to POPA in early February, and shortly thereafter POPA will post the text for a three-week APS member comment period. We will alert the APS membership by email when the posting occurs. Duncan Moore's subcommittee will use the comments it receives to finalize the wording in time for the April Council meeting. Some members of the APS have asked the Society to craft a statement regarding the issues surrounding the release of climate files stolen from the Climate Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia. The CRU maintains the repository for temperature measurements used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The APS leadership has concerns about both the improper release of private e-mails and any premature rush to judgment regarding scientific integrity at the CRU. Both the CRU and the IPCC are in the process of investigating the affair. Once the full range of information is made available, the APS Panel on Public Affairs will examine the case and recommend how APS should act. We will continue to keep the APS membership informed about climate change issues through postings on the APS home page; articles in APS News; commentaries on the APS blog, Physics Frontline; and direct email alerts to the membership when necessary. Best Regards, Cherry Murray APS President
From private communication (forwarded to me by someone else), I can attest that Prof. Happer did not access APS member directory in the manner APS president claims he did. In fact, I did not receive Prof. Happer’s email (if one was sent), and I know quite a few (including myself) who would have liked to receive that email and not the one from APS.
And she says: “The APS leadership has concerns about both the improper release of private e-mails and any premature rush to judgment regarding scientific integrity at the CRU. Both the CRU and the IPCC are in the process of investigating the affair. Once the full range of information is made available, the APS Panel on Public Affairs will examine the case and recommend how APS should act.” So in the case of serious scientific fraud by people APS has no duty to represent (climatologists are not physicists, at least not as a rule), she would like to wait until all the information is available before making any judgment. But in the case of a respected member of APS, whose crime, in the worst case scenario, would have been one of spamming, she jumps to conclusions without letting him defend or explain his actions. If this is not a double standard and intellectual dishonesty, well, I’ve been using the wrong definition of “dishonesty” my whole life.
Partisan politics, and the attendant politics of personal destruction that APS president is engaging in by defaming (since that’s what accusation sans evidence is) a well-known and respected physicist like Prof. Happer, has no place in a professional organization such as American Physical Society. And someone like a president of APS must remember that she works for us, not the other way around. Represent member interests—and as a corollary, stop attacking members personally without due cause—and not the leftist agenda, especially not against the accepted standards of proper scientific conduct.
I know climatoligists, as a group, have been corrupted by the allure of public funding and now cannot be trusted to conduct good science, not without supervision from adults. I was holding out some hope that physicists, guardians of the oldest modern scientific endeavors, would be somehow immune to the corrupting forces of the state. I guess it’s my fault for having that hope. I guess I should have known that liberals have no principles or concept of Truth, not even Scientific Truth, so such lofty ideals as Scientific Method means nothing to them, when that gets in their way.
But then, where do I go from here? I don’t want to go Galt.
Update: APS, with its action to demonize its own dissenting members, is only adding fuel to this fire. Please. Now isn’t too late to stop. Don’t get on the Titanic.
Update: This post has the full text of Prof. Happer’s email that was sent to a few physicists, but not all the members as they did not have access to the APS members mailing list, nor did they use the APS member directory in contradiction to the anti-spam rules (as for the blog itself, I don’t know who that is; I’m linking only because it has the full text of the email that is very relevant). How can any honest physicist find anything wrong with the content of that email? All that the petitioners are trying to do is get APS to withdraw its statement on a subject that it had no business commenting on anyway (we are physicists, not climatologists; many of us, including myself, have not examined climatologists’ work in detail and we have no business, as a collective, rubber stamping someone else’s work), and given the Climategate scandal, are we so sure of our climatologist “colleagues” that we are willing to go down with them? Climatologists have mixed public policy with science and may have destroyed science in the process. We physicists need to defend it.
Update: ‘Might as well post the full text here, since widest distribution is the intent of the petitioners:
Dear fellow member of the American Physical Society:
This is a matter of great importance to the integrity of the Society. It is being sent to a random fraction of the membership, so we hope you will pass it on.
By now everyone has heard of what has come to be known as ClimateGate, which was and is an international scientific fraud, the worst any of us have seen in our cumulative 223 years of APS membership. For those who have missed the news we recommend the excellent summary article by Richard Lindzen in the November 30 edition of the Wall Street journal, entitled “The Climate Science isn’t Settled,” for a balanced account of the situation. It was written by a scientist of unquestioned authority and integrity. A copy can be found among the items at http://tinyurl.com/lg266u, and a visit to http://www.ClimateDepot.com can fill in the details of the scandal, while adding spice.
What has this to do with APS? In 2007 the APS Council adopted a Statement on global warming (also reproduced at the tinyurl site mentioned above) that was based largely on the scientific work that is now revealed to have been corrupted. (The principals in this escapade have not denied what they did, but have sought to dismiss it by saying that it is normal practice among scientists. You know and we know that that is simply untrue. Physicists are not expected to cheat.)
We have asked the APS management to put the 2007 Statement on ice until the extent to which it is tainted can be determined, but that has not been done. We have also asked that the membership be consulted on this point, but that too has not been done.
None of us would use corrupted science in our own work, nor would we sign off on a thesis by a student who did so. This is not only a matter of science, it is a matter of integrity, and the integrity of the APS is now at stake. That is why we are taking the unusual step of communicating directly with at least a fraction of the membership.
If you believe that the APS should withdraw a Policy Statement that is based on admittedly corrupted science, and should then undertake to clarify the real state of the art in the best tradition of a learned society, please send a note to the incoming President of the APS ccal...@princeton.edu, with the single word YES in the subject line. That will make it easier for him to count.
Bob Austin, Professor of Physics, Princeton
Hal Lewis, emeritus Professor of Physics, University of California, Santa Barbara
Will Happer, Professor of Physics, Princeton
Larry Gould, Professor of Physics, Hartford
Roger Cohen, former Manager, Strategic Planning, ExxonMobil