Climate scientist found to be accepting undisclosed payment

[Pythagorean]

It will be interesting to see how this turns out.

He has accepted more than $1.2 million in money from the fossil-fuel industry over the last decade while failing to disclose that conflict of interest in most of his scientific papers. At least 11 papers he has published since 2008 omitted such a disclosure, and in at least eight of those cases, he appears to have violated ethical guidelines of the journals that published his work.
[...]
Dr. Soon also received at least $230,000 from the Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation. (Mr. Koch’s fortune derives partly from oilrefining.) However, other companies and industry groups that once supported Dr. Soon, including Exxon Mobil and the American Petroleum Institute, appear to have eliminated their grants to him in recent years.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/22/u...-climate-change-researcher-Wei-Hock-Soon.html

 

[Greg Bernhardt]

Shameful, but not surprising. The fossil-fuel industry is little better than the tobacco industry.

 

[Evo]

And his opponents are accused of fraud. Example http://www.forbes.com/sites/larrybe...gate-star-michael-mann-courts-legal-disaster/

It's shameful on both sides, although the article states

Though Dr. Soon did not respond to questions about the documents, he has long stated that his corporate funding has not influenced his scientific findings.

It will be interesting to see if the only wrong he's done is not fully disclose where his money came from, or if he too doctored data.

But this is getting into the politics, which we don't want to get into.

 

[Pythagorean]

It's shameful on both sides, although the article states

It will be hard for him to make that case since:

The documents show that Dr. Soon, in correspondence with his corporate funders, described many of his scientific papers as “deliverables” that he completed in exchange for their money.

 

[Evo]

It will be hard for him to make that case since:

Calling them "deliverables" doesn't make them wrong, does it? So far, the only thing being frowned upon is not fully disclosing all income.

 

[Pythagorean]

It's the context:

"The documents show that Dr. Soon, in correspondence with his corporate funders, described many of his scientific papers as “deliverables” that he completed in exchange for their money."

But deliverable is a synonym for product, which isn't how I think of scientific literature, personally.

 

[Evo]

It's the context:

"The documents show that Dr. Soon, in correspondence with his corporate funders, described many of his scientific papers as “deliverables” that he completed in exchange for their money."

But deliverable is a synonym for product, which isn't how I think of scientific literature, personally.

Still doesn't make them factually wrong, although I don't believe that man is not effecting the environment, just to be clear. But I don't see in the article anything that shows what the works were specifically about. Let's wait and see what the works were and how accurate they are, before we start insinuating anything. Right now, he's only under scrutiny for not disclosing income.

 

[Cyntia]

I read that some oil companies fund alternative energy startup companies. Example: Chevron Energy Solutions
If I was an oil company I'd want multiple views on the topic, and I'd try to position myself financially to take advantage.
There might be other reasons for funding other than getting biased literature into the science publications.

 

[Pythagorean]

Still doesn't make them factually wrong.

That's a completely separate issue and has already been addressed in the scientific literature by consensus, but we can't talk about that. We're just talking about the bad ethical choices of Dr. Soon.

 

[Evo]

That's a completely separate issue and has already been addressed in the scientific literature by consensus, but we can't talk about that. We're just talking about the bad ethical choices of Dr. Soon.

He's accused of not disclosing income as opposed to committing fraud by falsifying data like his opponents have been accused of. He will be dealt with if he has broken rules on financial disclosure.

Our rules are to only discuss the science and not the politics, so this thread is closed since it's not about the science, but is being twisted to insinuate things.