Suing Science -Virginia's Ken Cuccinelli's dangerous suit against climate change.

"This old buzzard, having failed to raise the mob against its rulers, now prepares to raise it against its teachers."
H.L. Mencken
Scopes Monkey Trial
July 16, 1925

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As Courtney Stuart first reported last week in Charlottesville's The Hook, Cuccinelli's office quietly filed a civil investigative demand (or CID, which is basically a subpoena) with the University of Virginia on April 23, giving the school 30 days to produce more than 10 years' worth of documents related to the state-funded research of a former faculty member, Michael Mann. Operating under the Virginia Fraud Against Taxpayers Act, the CID seeks from the university, among other things, "any correspondence, messages or emails" to or from Mann and 40 named climate scientists; any documents sent to or from Mann that reference any of those 40 scientists; and any "documents, things or data" submitted in support of any of five different grant applications that amounted, in total, to almost $500,000. The university is also expected to turn over "any and all emails or pieces of correspondence from or to Dr. Michael Mann since he left the University of Virginia."
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In 2006, U.S. Rep. Joe Barton, R-Texas, commissioned an investigation into Mann's research that ended with statistician Edward Wegman of George Mason University concluding that he would have looked at the data differently but "saw no evidence that Mann committed any fraud or deception." A panel assembled by the National Academy of Sciences reached the same conclusion that year: "There are some things that he could have done better, but there's no fatal flaw." A 2006 National Research Council report found that Mann's conclusion "has subsequently been supported by an array of evidence."

But Mann's hacked e-mails were at the center of the East Anglia "Climategate" scandal, so more investigations ensued. A report by the British House of Commons' Science and Technology Select Committee concluded in March that there was no evidence of malpractice in the Climategate fracas. A Penn State panel also investigated Mann for allegations that he had manipulated or destroyed data to shore up his arguments and largely cleared him in February. (The investigation into one final allegation is still pending.) But some climate-change skeptics continue to insist that each of the panels that cleared Mann must be as biased and corrupt as Mann himself. For them, there will be no conclusive investigation until he's found guilty.

This is where Cuccinelli rides in. It's not at all clear from the civil investigative demand what the attorney general is fishing for. Cuccinelli told the Washington Post yesterday, "In light of the Climategate e-mails, there does seem to at least be an argument to be made that a course was undertaken by some of the individuals involved, including potentially Michael Mann, where they were steering a course to reach a conclusion." That sounds like Cuccinelli is casting a dragnet for anything and everything, including proof of fraudulent substantive research. State Sen. Donald McEachin estimates that the Cuccinelli lawsuit will cost Virginia taxpayers between $250,000 and $500,000 if it goes all the way to the Supreme Court. Spending half a million dollars of taxpayer funds to possibly recover some part of half a million dollars of misspent grant money doesn't even begin to make sense.

But it's not just Mann on the hook here. "With a weapon like this in Cuccinelli's hands, any faculty member at a public university in Virginia has got to be thinking twice about doing politically controversial research or communicating with other scholars about it," says Rachel Levinson, senior counsel with the American Association of University Professors. UVA environmental science professor Howard Epstein, a former colleague of Mann's, puts it this way: "Who is going to want to be on our faculty when they realize Virginia is the state where the A.G. investigates climate scientists?" If researchers are really afraid to do cutting-edge research in Virginia, the state's flagship university is in enormous trouble.
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About the Mann investigation, thus far what we have heard from the university is muted. UVA has "a legal obligation to answer this request and it is our intention to respond to the extent required by law," said Carol Wood, a UVA spokeswoman. Well, yes. But it's probably time to point out that harassing the faculty for thousands of 10-year-old e-mails from a respected former colleague cuts to the core of intellectual and academic freedom as well.

There is, of course, a long and inglorious history involving investigations and inquisitions of scientists in an attempt to silence those whose research does not sit comfortably with those in power. Despite those earlier efforts, the Earth still does revolve around the sun. There are 100 vital ways for Ken Cuccinelli to spend his time and the commonwealth's taxpayer dollars. Litigating science isn't one of them.

http://www.slate.com/id/2250591/pagenum/all/#p2

He needs to ride right back out on his horse. This has grave implications well beyond the evolution or climate change debates. This method will stop or tie up research in any number of vital areas if scientists are intimidated enough.

The US is already behind in research at the basic levels on which other research and discoveries are based. You don't build or develop the most sophisticated systems first. They don't spring from the aether.

This is the new front on the war against science. The judicial system isn't made up of people well versed in science to say the least. They will be thrown in to judge areas that will be presented by 'experts' from 2 sides. The quality and validity of the arguments will be judged as both having equal merit in a lot of cases.

This trend needs to be stopped NOW. These fools would have litigated the 'Case of the Piltdown Man'. Scientists finally got their act together and looked carefully at the evidence and found it to be a hoax. I wonder what Scalia and Thomas would have ruled and on what basis?

The war on evolution, the war on stem cells, and the war on climate change, those who claim that HIV doesn't cause AIDS, moon hoaxers, those who tout the effects of homeopathy, chiropractic, "energy therapy" (whatever that is), and acupuncture.

It's all the same thing. People don't trust scientists or the scientific method and so are willing to be led in a direction that confirms their beliefs with the flimsiest of evidence (or no evidence) even though the method of science is the very thing that has given us all of our technological and medicinal advances and have been directly responsible for the fact that human beings live twice as long today as they did 60 years ago.

Why learn about things like double blind placebo controlled tests or read about all the climate change research that is taking place everywhere and points to the inescapable conclusion that we are to cause for global increases in temperature, when it's much easier to come to a preset conclusion and then find "evidence" that proves your case?

Q3JR4.

My bet is that not only has America not seen the last of this- but this is only the beginning.

Yet another symptom of a nation in decline.