Instead of wasting his time, and our money, “investigating” a real scientist doing real science, why doesn’t Virginia Attorney Ken Cuccinelli investigate a real scandal like this?!?
Dan Vergano of USAToday reports that the journal Computational Statistics and Data Analysis has retracted a study authored by Edward Wegman, professor of statistics at George Mason University and premiere GOP climate-denial witness. The study in question was an extension of the infamous Wegman Report, which was commissioned by Texas Rep. “Smokey” Joe Barton for the useful purpose of smearing climate science and climate scientists. After blogger Deep Climate first detailed serious problems with the scholarship in the Wegman Report, USAToday asked three plagiarism experts to review the report and found that it relied heavily on plagiarised material lifted from textbooks and Wikipedia.
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George Mason University has been dragging its feet, refusing to deal with Wegman’s plagiarism and other ethical issues in a timely manner. They will find it more difficult to continue doing so now that a journal has retracted his paper. And the GOP will have to find another professor willing to risk his career, and his soul, to lie for them.
Of course, we all know that Cuccinelli won’t be investigating Edward Wegman, or George Mason University, anytime soon. Why not? Simple: because the entire purpose of “the Cucc”‘s crusade against Michael Mann and UVA was always about “his ongoing campaign to wish away human-induced climate change” (for the facts from the National Academy of Sciences on that subject, click here) — demonstrating in the process “a dangerous disregard for scientific method and academic freedom” — end of story. Not that it’s surprising, or anything. Recall that “the Cucc” also hasn’t done his job in a number of other areas, such as investigating a criminal coal company (Massey) based in Virginia or a fraudulent “Navy Veterans’ Association” (that also happened to give Cuccinelli large sums of money). All part of the “stench” of Ken Cuccinelli, sad to say.
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