Tell me who funded the research ...

Posted 25 February 2015 by Matt Young

... And I will tell you the outcome. I cannot find the origin of that quotation, and I am pretty sure it is not original, but I thought of it when I read this article in Science. In a nutshell, Willie Soon, a part-time employee of the Smithsonian Institution, has published a number of articles linking changes in Arctic air temperature with changes in the sun's output. His conclusion is at variance with the well established theory that anthropogenic carbon dioxide has caused those changes. The science historian Naomi Oreskes told the New York Times that "Willie Soon is playing a role in a certain kind of political theater" designed to give the impression that there is debate about global warming. Dr. Soon (according to the Times) is neither an astrophysicist nor a climatologist. He has nevertheless received funding from a utility company with considerable holdings in coal and is alleged not to have disclosed that funding in a number of scientific publications that require such disclosure. Professor Oreskes opines that any papers that have failed to disclose corporate funding, when required, should be withdrawn (and, incidentally, warns that universities need to look closely at this problem). Dr. Soon has further received funding from a group called Donor's Trust, which according to Science funnels anonymous donations to groups "championed by political conservatives." Further, Greenpeace has asked the IRS to investigate whether Dr. Soon has been supported by a foundation funded by Charles Koch, possibly in violation of rules that prohibit non-profits from trying to influence legislation. The Times reports that Dr. Soon has received a "warm welcome" from such luminaries as Sen. James Inhofe, who believes or pretends to believe that climate change is a widespread hoax. The Smithsonian Institution, for its part, has sicced its Inspector General on Dr. Soon; the IG will investigate whether Dr. Soon has violated the conflict-of-interest policies of the journals in which he published.

27 Comments

SLC · 25 February 2015

I would have to take some issue with the claim:
Tell me who funded the research â¦â¦ And I will tell you the outcome.

Case in point, the Berkeley Climate Study led by Prof. Richard Muller which was partially funded by the Koch brothers. The study concluded that the climate scientists were mostly right.

I think that the lamestream media is not focusing on Soon's real transgression. It's not that energy companies funded the research, it's that Soon failed to disclose the source of the funding when he submitted research papers to peer reviewed journals. That's a no no and is considered totally unethical in the scientific community. If, indeed, that is the case, the Smithsonian Institute should sever all relations with Soon as soon as it is verified.

ksplawn · 25 February 2015

Willie Soon was co-author with Sallie Baliunas on a paper so terrible that its publication ultimate resulted in half of the journals' editorial board resigning when the journal failed to address systematic problems in editorship and review that let it through.*

Even on that paper, which was also torn to shreds post-publication by critics on purely scientific grounds, Soon and Baliunas acknowledged funding from the American Petroleum Institute. It's not a new tactic for him to take money from the various tentacles of the fossil fuels industries and their myriad financial shells. For years it has been widely known among people who deal with this kind of thing.

So when this story broke I found myself asking why he even bothered to start hiding the funding in the first place. Everybody already knew he was doing his "research" with hydrocarbon money anyway.

Maybe it would have been just a bit too conspicuous and too easily turned against him after he became a workhorse of denialist Congresscritters whenever they invited experts to give testimony on climate?

*It turned out to be a pretty blatant case of "pal review" among a small network of denialists who had gotten a man into the editor's seat who would "review" papers submitted by his co-deniers and essentially rubberstamp them for publication.

Kevin · 25 February 2015

Similar to... tell me what issue is in front of the SCOTUS and I will tell you how each member will vote.

Flint · 25 February 2015

Kevin said: Similar to... tell me what issue is in front of the SCOTUS and I will tell you how each member will vote.

For a tougher challenge, assume Scalia and Thomas vote differently, and tell me the issue.

DavidK · 26 February 2015

Different journals and players, but a common thread is the Smithsonian, for in 2004 the notorious Richard Sternberg and Stephen Meyer conspired to publish Meyer's ID/creationist paper in the "Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington." Sternberg was the editor who allowed the paper to get published, then they gave the Smithsonian a huge black eye when Sternberg claimed discrimination and martyred himself for the ID/DI cause. Maybe there is insufficient oversight with these institutions and publications?

Joe Felsenstein · 26 February 2015

DavidK said: Different journals and players, but a common thread is the Smithsonian, for in 2004 the notorious Richard Sternberg and Stephen Meyer conspired to publish Meyer's ID/creationist paper in the "Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington." Sternberg was the editor who allowed the paper to get published, then they gave the Smithsonian a huge black eye when Sternberg claimed discrimination and martyred himself for the ID/DI cause. Maybe there is insufficient oversight with these institutions and publications?

The "martyrdom" was made a bit easier by not involving Sternberg's day job, which actually paid a salary. Nor did it lose Sternberg the editorship, since the publication of the paper occurred in the last issue which he was due to edit -- he was finishing his term as editor with that issue. The Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington is a house journal mostly devoted to publishing papers making taxonomic revisions and announcing new species. At its web site it is described as a journal "whose primary interests center on the taxonomy and systematics of eukaryotic organisms". The Meyer paper was outrageously different from the usual fare in this very obscure journal. I gather that the normal Associate Editors of the Proceedings were not told that such a paper was in the works. Whether this was a Smithsonian failure depends on whether they had previous warning that Sternberg would try to carry out such a stunt.

DS · 26 February 2015

The thing that gets me about the Sternberg affair is why he thought it would help his cause in the first place. I get the science envy. I get the overwhelming urge to seek the veneer of respectability. I get the lure of the prestige that goes along with a publication in a peer reviewed journal. But seriously, did he really think it would end well? Getting past the editor is just the first step. The whole idea behind publishing your results is so that the entire scientific community will be able to evaluate them. Once the crap was out there for all to see it became glaringly obvious that there was something rotten going on. DId he really think no one would notice? DId he really think that everyone was just going to sit back and pretend that this was a legitimate publication?

Maybe this is just a case of projection taken to new heights. Maybe he actually thought that fooling editors was all there was to it. Maybe he thought that getting something into a journal automatically earned respectability. Maybe he thought that science is all just one big con game, like creationism. I guess he found out the hard way that he was sadly mistaken. So what did he do when he learned his lesson? DId he admit that he was completely and utterly wrong and apologize? No, he doubled down and played the martyr card. So maybe it wasn't just a case of science envy. Maybe it was exactly what it appeared to be, a deliberate case of intent to defraud which predictably backfired in a spectacular fashion.

The thing is that if you actually had anything of any real scientific merit, anything at all, you wouldn't have to play the con game. This was simply an admission that the creationist have nothing and they know it.

Joe Felsenstein · 26 February 2015

Sternberg's day job was with the National Center for Biotechnology Informatics -- he would be well aware of how scientific publication works.

Joe Felsenstein · 26 February 2015

By the way, here is Sternberg's rebuttal to his critics. He claims to have kept some members of the editorial board of the journal aware of the Meyer paper in advance.

Mike Elzinga · 26 February 2015

DS said: The thing is that if you actually had anything of any real scientific merit, anything at all, you wouldn't have to play the con game. This was simply an admission that the creationist have nothing and they know it.

Whenever someone tries to subvert the vetting processes in scientific peer review, you can bet it is for socio/political reasons. Either there is an ideological movement behind the effort or there is a crackpot trying to game the system to get recognition for crackpot ideas that have been long since debunked. ID/creationists have been playing this game since the 1970s when they started whining about evolution and the "bad old scientific cabal" that was "persecuting" them and blocking their path to "scientific respectability and legitimacy." They take advantage of overloaded and over extended resources in order to slip by any checks that are supposed to weed out crap and dishonesty. They are the kind of people who would poison any vetting process that gets in their way. But crackpot science is crackpot science no matter how you cut it; and the aggressive ignorance of the ID/creationists needs to be exposed to the public for as long as ID/creationists keep trying to game the system. Crackpots such as the ID/creationists will take any kind of publicity they can get; and they have always been willing to start fake controversies in order to get it. What they deserve is harsh ridicule and a glaring exposure of the mind-numbingly stupid misconceptions and misrepresentations of science that underlay all of their pseudoscience. The paid lackeys of political hacks and industries hell-bent on destroying the integrity of the scientific process become quite dangerous to society when it comes to issues of public education, public safety, and public understanding of what we humans are doing to our planet. Their deceptive activities are analogous to throwing sand in the eyes of everyone else in order to win and take all the goodies before others can recover.

DS · 26 February 2015

Joe Felsenstein said: By the way, here is Sternberg's rebuttal to his critics. He claims to have kept some members of the editorial board of the journal aware of the Meyer paper in advance.

It doesn't matter. Even if he observed every detail of the process, it would still be an embarrassment for him and the journal. The conclusions of the theoretical paper were contradicted by a vast mount of evidence. The paper would have had to have been retracted no matter what. At the very least he would be guilty of extremely poor judgement, even if no outright fraud could be demonstrated. Since he was familiar with the way that science actually works, you would have thought that he would realize that there was no way he could accomplish anything at all with such blatant disregard for reality. Apparently he didn't care because he had already quit.

harold · 26 February 2015

Maybe this is just a case of projection taken to new heights. Maybe he actually thought that fooling editors was all there was to it. Maybe he thought that getting something into a journal automatically earned respectability. Maybe he thought that science is all just one big con game, like creationism.

Yes, of course that's what he thinks. That's essentially what all creationists think, with possible rare exceptions. They think like authoritarians. Except that he probably doesn't consciously realize that creationism is a con game. Rather, asking the authoritarian mind to grasp the concept of unbiased acceptance of objective reality is like asking a dog to do calculus. They don't have the neurological structure to make it possible. In his mind it's all about choosing a side and attacking the other side. Getting your paper in a journal is like taking some territory from the other army. I often say that their only consistency is doing anything to "attack evolution". Actually there's another consistency - rejection of the concept of persuasion. That's basically the trait of an authoritarian. You can't persuade them. And they don't want to persuade you. They want to use force, physical, financial, or otherwise. The whole concept of what journal articles are really for - to persuade a rationally skeptical audience through evidence and logic - is as alien to his conscious mind as jazz appreciation is to a sea slug. He "knows" he's right, he can't let it go, and he has a strong emotional impulse to be part of a group that dominates, humiliates, and punishes those who think differently than he does. I may sound as if I'm exaggerating, and no, I can't read minds, but one thing I have learned since my introduction to organized political creationism in 1999 is that the model that predicts their behavior is the authoritarian model. Think of Calvin, Chairman Mao, etc. Persuade Calvin through reasoned arguments that his interpretation of the Bible is incorrect. That's the kind of mind you're dealing with. If it wasn't, they wouldn't still be creationists.

I guess he found out the hard way that he was sadly mistaken.

This is literally the most unjustifiably optimistic thing I have read in years. Somebody saving up money in the hopes he can buy a faster-than-light starship and travel to alien worlds millions of light years away, where all the inhabitants mysteriously happen to look exactly like attractive love-starved human females, is slightly less unjustifiably optimistic than this. There is absolutely no chance that his brain can consciously process the idea that he might be mistaken. He would have stopped being a creationist years before any of this if there were. In his mind he stuck it to the evolutionists by sneaking into one of "their" journals and their subsequent complaints are just proof that their his enemies and he needs to keep attacking them.

harold · 26 February 2015

This is literally the most unjustifiably optimistic thing I have read in years.

This statement intended as a humorous exaggeration, and not intended to insult the person I am replying to, of course.

callahanpb · 26 February 2015

harold said:
This is literally the most unjustifiably optimistic thing I have read in years.
This statement intended as a humorous exaggeration, and not intended to insult the person I am replying to, of course.

I took your entire post as literally true, but I think you were a little unfair to sea slugs.

DavidK · 26 February 2015

I think we're all wondering [hoping?], that Soon faces some consequences and repercussions for his so-called deliverables.

DS · 26 February 2015

harold said:
This is literally the most unjustifiably optimistic thing I have read in years.
This statement intended as a humorous exaggeration, and not intended to insult the person I am replying to, of course.

No worries mate.

harold · 27 February 2015

DavidK said: I think we're all wondering [hoping?], that Soon faces some consequences and repercussions for his so-called deliverables.

I said above, in reply to another comment - "This is literally the most unjustifiably optimistic thing I have read in years. Somebody saving up money in the hopes he can buy a faster-than-light starship and travel to alien worlds millions of light years away, where all the inhabitants mysteriously happen to look exactly like attractive love-starved human females, is slightly less unjustifiably optimistic than this." Well, that record didn't stand very long. Now this is the most unjustifiably optimistic thing I have read in years. Dr. Soon has hit the jackpot. His current employers won't do anything, out of a very justified fear that if they "offend conservatives" by doing something, they will be targeted, or should I say even more targeted, for years to come, with funding cuts and trumped up "investigations". Meanwhile, because he has been "attacked in the media", and has the requisite requirements (PhD and willingness to lie for the right wing cause), Dr. Soon now has the option of a near-sinecure right wing think tank position. Should he choose this, he can spend his days playing video games or surfing porn or whatever they do all day from a cushy office, emerging occasionally to go on television and utter the same two or three talking points. Naturally his television appearances will be paid. A third likely choice will be that some universities, including some taxpayer funded public universities, would offer him a sweeter than normal faculty job as a "token conservative maverick faculty member". The question has been raised, appropriately, when I point this out, why more scientists don't do it. There are two related reasons. 1) You have to be an actual PhD or scholarly lawyer. They don't hire self-appointed "Joe the Plumber" types for the think tank or "token conservative maverick faculty member who either proves we are 'tolerant' and/or reflects high administrators' preferences" jobs. It isn't the same as writing a World Net Daily column (which pays almost nothing - Chuck Norris doesn't need money). 2) Grinding through a PhD or being a scholarly lawyer is hard work, and most people who do it, even most right wing people who do it, have some actual desire to do the real work. The combination of "having actual reasonable qualifications in a field" and "being willing to lie about the field and completely stop contributing to, indeed start hampering, any mainstream progress in the field, for the sake of right wing propaganda" is somewhat rare. But if you are lucky enough to have that combination, the rewards are great. You will get a lot more money for a lot less work than a typical PhD. Lucky Dr. Woo is set for life.

harold · 27 February 2015

Lucky Dr. Woo is set for life.

That's Dr. Soon in this case. I was thinking about Professor John Yoo of Berkeley as another prominent example; hence the typo. I was probably reminded of Dr. Yoo because he's also Asian-American and has a similar sounding, I can't say. The population of people who behave as I describe is ethnically diverse but predominantly white and male (however, the overwhelming majority of white male PhD holders and scholarly lawyers don't behave this way). That predominance probably reflects that current demographics of people who hold PhD's. The PhD population is rapidly diversifying but has historically been male and white.

callahanpb · 27 February 2015

harold said:
DavidK said: I think we're all wondering [hoping?], that Soon faces some consequences and repercussions for his so-called deliverables.
I said above, in reply to another comment - "This is literally the most unjustifiably optimistic thing I have read in years."

Barring the hyperbole, I remember coming to a similar conclusion in a different, more political, context (about 12 years ago at a surprisingly late age). It hit me that "Truth", "The Facts", or whatever you want to call it does not come rushing in like the cavalry. The reason people continue in dishonesty is not because their lies are cleverly hidden. It's because their lies are obvious but people have not been persuaded to care about that. In many cases, they actually prefer the lies. And this is endlessly frustrating for people who do tend to think that issues only remain unclear because of legitimate disagreement, and are easily resolved once the information is on the table (the Gottfried Leibniz "Let us calculate" school of wishful thinking). More pragmatic people understand the need for political action, legal action, and other forms of advocacy. The Truth is a wonderful thing, but it won't be your pitbull.

The combination of "having actual reasonable qualifications in a field" and "being willing to lie about the field and completely stop contributing to, indeed start hampering, any mainstream progress in the field, for the sake of right wing propaganda" is somewhat rare. But if you are lucky enough to have that combination, the rewards are great. You will get a lot more money for a lot less work than a typical PhD.

Alternatively, someone could start out with the best of intentions and just never make a go of it in academia. Most such people move into the private sector in some capacity or other. It can't be hard to find a few who will function as partisan think tank material.

harold · 27 February 2015

Alternatively, someone could start out with the best of intentions and just never make a go of it in academia. Most such people move into the private sector in some capacity or other. It canât be hard to find a few who will function as partisan think tank material.

Mainly total agreement, of course, but I must defend honest scientists working in the private sector here. There's a vast difference between applying your knowledge to help a company find oil deposits, versus using your credentials to publicly spread direct lies or at best biased innuendo about scientific, or economic, reality. Also, scientists in private industry work hard, and the companies they work for produce something that enough people actually want that it generates profit (regardless of social cost that tends to be true) and actual positive returns for investors. The Casey Luskin type is different from either an honest academic OR an honest guy applying a masters in Geology or whatever it's supposed to be that he has in the mining industry. Neither of the latter two use their credentials as a justification for bullshit. Taking a job in industry, but a job which applies scientific knowledge rather than denying science, is different. It's fascinating how few trained people end up doing the "lie about it for money" thing. Overall we completely agree, of course. I should note that we almost completely agree. Science is in some ways a subculture, one that includes many more people than merely the scientifically educated. The fundamental value of this subculture is that we try to understand reality, and we resolve disputes and ambiguities by a type of persuasion - resort to evidence and logic. This way of behaving is far from universal.

harold · 27 February 2015

Overall we completely agree, of course. I should note that we almost completely agree.

And for good measure, I should stress that overall, we agree.

harold · 27 February 2015

harold said:
Alternatively, someone could start out with the best of intentions and just never make a go of it in academia. Most such people move into the private sector in some capacity or other. It canât be hard to find a few who will function as partisan think tank material.
Mainly total agreement, of course, but I must defend honest scientists working in the private sector here. There's a vast difference between applying your knowledge to help a company find oil deposits, versus using your credentials to publicly spread direct lies or at best biased innuendo about scientific, or economic, reality. Also, scientists in private industry work hard, and the companies they work for produce something that enough people actually want that it generates profit (regardless of social cost that tends to be true) and actual positive returns for investors. The Casey Luskin type is different from either an honest academic OR an honest guy applying a masters in Geology or whatever it's supposed to be that he has in the mining industry. Neither of the latter two use their credentials as a justification for bullshit. Taking a job in industry, but a job which applies scientific knowledge rather than denying science, is different. It's fascinating how few trained people end up doing the "lie about it for money" thing. Overall we completely agree, of course. I should note that we almost completely agree. Science is in some ways a subculture, one that includes many more people than merely the scientifically educated. The fundamental value of this subculture is that we try to understand reality, and we resolve disputes and ambiguities by a type of persuasion - resort to evidence and logic. This way of behaving is far from universal.

I should also note that things like the DI and various right wing "think tanks" are a perverse version of academia. In fact, they conform to all the worst unfair stereotypes that anyone would ever apply to academia. They're institutions that cost a lot of money to maintain and produce nothing useful, the "faculty" do virtually no work, a rigid code of political correctness (right wing political correctness, that is) is enforced, and unlike in real academia, you can be certain that any work that doesn't conform to the appropriate standards of propaganda will be censored and suppressed. (All of this is perfectly legal as they are private entities, of course.) You sure as heck won't find any "token liberal maverick faculty" at right wing think tanks. And you won't find any secretly liberal administrators pushing for recruitment of strong science defenders against the wishes of faculty (as you may find right wing university presidents and other high administrators pushing for the hire of creationists, as, for example, at Ball State). The imaginary "stifling of dissent" that wingnuts ascribe to mainstream academia, the place on Earth where dissent is least stifled, is very real at their own institutions.

ksplawn · 28 February 2015

Yes, their pseudo-academia is exactly what they project onto actual academia. It seems to be that they only know what intellectual life is like within their own circle, and can't step outside of that image long enough to understand what goes on for people who aren't them. Rather like Creationists often think the other side is just as dishonest or ignorant as they are, and don't seem to be able to move beyond themselves for that impression to change.

For all its faults and weaknesses, real academia does eventually get shit done, producing ideas and inventions that gradually improve our quality of life and promote social good. That seems to be the opposite tack taken by the right-wing think-tanks and their ilk. Instead of getting things done, they sit around trying to think up ways to obstruct actual progress and keep things the same.

Scott F · 1 March 2015

harold said: I often say that their only consistency is doing anything to "attack evolution". Actually there's another consistency - rejection of the concept of persuasion. That's basically the trait of an authoritarian. You can't persuade them. And they don't want to persuade you. They want to use force, physical, financial, or otherwise. The whole concept of what journal articles are really for - to persuade a rationally skeptical audience through evidence and logic - is as alien to his conscious mind as jazz appreciation is to a sea slug. He "knows" he's right, he can't let it go, and he has a strong emotional impulse to be part of a group that dominates, humiliates, and punishes those who think differently than he does.

I was reminded of this when I read one of today's articles in Salon. The money quote:

For two generations, Movement Conservatives have subverted American politics, with increasing success, by explicitly rejecting the principle of open debate based in reasoned argument. They have refused to engage with facts and instead simply demonized anyone who disagrees with their ideology. This is an astonishing position. It is an attack on the Enlightenment principles that gave rise to Western civilization. Make no mistake: the attack is deliberate.

Scary stuff for our future, when an entire political party, half the electorate, rejects objective reality, reason, and the entire concept of The Enlightenment.

Yardbird · 1 March 2015

Scott F said: Scary stuff for our future, when an entire political party, half the electorate, rejects objective reality, reason, and the entire concept of The Enlightenment.

I once heard Tony Blankley claim on the McLaughlin Group that the Enlightenment would soon be commonly seen as a mistake. Seems worse these days, as many of those people you reference either ignore it, don't remember it, or haven't even heard of it. Terrible people, just awful.

harold · 2 March 2015

Scary stuff for our future, when an entire political party, half the electorate, rejects objective reality, reason, and the entire concept of The Enlightenment.

In fairness, the enlightenment is an ongoing process, which has never impacted vast sections of the globe. During the actual enlightenment period strictly defined, in the very societies where it was taking place, the slave trade was at a peak, people were hanged for petty crimes, people were imprisoned for debt in prisons where you had to pay for your own food and were left to starve if you couldn't, in which infectious disease was so rampant that a light sentence for a minor crime bore a high risk of death, etc. Certainly the creationist authoritarians are part of a larger right wing authoritarian backlash against the social progress of the post-WWII era, which has congealed into a post-rational, reality-rejecting, constantly purity-testing ideology. About ten years ago I was over-optimistic that this ideology had peaked and would decline, but that hasn't happened. However, it does seem to have peaked and reached a steady state. This is on topic because as the comment I quote correctly implies, organized political science denial is coming from one direction.

TomS · 2 March 2015

harold said:
Scary stuff for our future, when an entire political party, half the electorate, rejects objective reality, reason, and the entire concept of The Enlightenment.
In fairness, the enlightenment is an ongoing process, which has never impacted vast sections of the globe. During the actual enlightenment period strictly defined, in the very societies where it was taking place, the slave trade was at a peak, people were hanged for petty crimes, people were imprisoned for debt in prisons where you had to pay for your own food and were left to starve if you couldn't, in which infectious disease was so rampant that a light sentence for a minor crime bore a high risk of death, etc. Certainly the creationist authoritarians are part of a larger right wing authoritarian backlash against the social progress of the post-WWII era, which has congealed into a post-rational, reality-rejecting, constantly purity-testing ideology. About ten years ago I was over-optimistic that this ideology had peaked and would decline, but that hasn't happened. However, it does seem to have peaked and reached a steady state. This is on topic because as the comment I quote correctly implies, organized political science denial is coming from one direction.

All Things Bright and Beautiful

The hymn was first published in 1848 in Mrs. Cecil Alexander's Hymns for Little Children. It consists of a series of stanzas that elaborate upon verses of the Apostles' Creed. The hymn may have been inspired by a verse from Samuel Taylor Coleridge's The Rime of the Ancient Mariner: "He prayeth best, who loveth best; All things great and small; For the dear God who loveth us; He made and loveth all." Alternatively, inspiration may have come from William Paley's Natural Theology, published in 1802, that argues for God as the designer of the natural world.

The rich man in his castle,â¨ The poor man at his gate,â¨ God made them high and lowly, â¨And ordered their estate.