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Australian "death threats" have been debunked

Climate scientists' claims of email death threats go up in smoke, per the FOIA Privacy Commissioner (link to decision), at The Australian (login required). Looks like we need to modify, or drop, this claim. --Pete Tillman (talk) 16:14, 3 May 2012 (UTC)

  • As an amusing sidebar to this business, ANU released the "threatening" emails today [1]. One of the emails released criticized ANU for grandstanding instead of notifying the police of the threats! Heh --Pete Tillman (talk) 20:01, 10 May 2012 (UTC)
Erh? You may want to read the text in the article, as well as the reference given. (Hint: Nothing about death threats to Australians) Since it is (afaict) entirely disconnected from the opinion article that you link us to.
So what passage in our article do you think is impacted by this Op-Ed? --Kim D. Petersen (talk) 18:39, 3 May 2012 (UTC)
See below. Why do you think the Australian article is an op-ed? Have you read it? --Pete Tillman (talk) 19:22, 3 May 2012 (UTC)
Yes, Tillman, i have read it. It is available from the Australian at another link. Where opinion is in the right corner. --Kim D. Petersen (talk) 19:44, 3 May 2012 (UTC)
The word "OPINION" on that page does not pertain to the article. While it may well be considered an "Op-Ed" (along with everything else in The Australian), the newspaper does not identify or categorize it as such. -- 70.109.45.74 (talk) 20:42, 8 May 2012 (UTC)
(e/c) I have no idea what that newspaper article is about, but I'm trying to make sense of the official document. It seems that someone made an FOIA request to the Australian National University (ANU) in June 2011 the day after it was reported by an Australian newspaper that death threats had been received by climate researchers there, asking for copies of the threats. The University decided that the threatening e-mails were exempt from the FOIA because of the "physical safety of any person" clause in the Act. The latest finding here is that the newspaper was wrong about death threats, ten of the emails received by the university only contained "abuse in the sense that they contain insulting and offensive language", and one contained intimidation, "perhaps alluding to a threat". The commissioner decided that "release of the documents could lead to further insulting or offensive communication", so they may be released, but only with all names and identities removed.
What on earth has this got to do with the CRU or the November 2009 hack there? First, this is a different university, the other side of the world, two years later; second, it is about e-mails received by the university from anti-science nutcases outside the research faculty, not internal e-mails between the scientists; third, the finding is that the anti-science fanatics sent eleven e-mails of abuse, insults, offensive language, intimidation, and threats, to the climate scientists, but didn't actually threaten to kill any of them. Well, that's a great success for climate change denial. I don't see why you would want to publicise it here, and I don't see what it has to do with this article. --Nigelj (talk) 18:52, 3 May 2012 (UTC)
  • From our lede Responses section :
Climate scientists in Australia have reported receiving threatening emails including references to where they live and warnings to "be careful" about how some people might react to their scientific findings.[54] --Pete Tillman (talk) 19:22, 3 May 2012 (UTC)
And is that referring to "death-threats"? No it isn't. Is it even about the mails that you are talking about? Not as far as i can tell, since the mails in question in your article is from roughly 2011, and the mails our reference is talking about are from 2009 or earlier.
And unless something has changed, that doesn't seem to be in our lede, it seems to be the last paragraph in the Responses section. (and it hasn't been there since at least end of February (which is as far back as i checked), if ever.
So quite frankly how many errors can you commit to here? --Kim D. Petersen (talk) 19:38, 3 May 2012 (UTC)
As Kim correctly notes, Pete's sources are offtopic: they refer to just a few of a number of threats made to scientists in 2011 and reported here. As reputable journalists have blogged, "people like Anthony Watts, Jo Nova and their minions have exploited the Privacy Commissioner's report and used it only as another opportunity to distort and deny the dangerous situation,"[2] in a "global dissemination of a gross misrepresentation of facts."[3] However, these facts are irrelevant to this article, which notes intimidation in Australia directly related to this CRU controversy and reported on December 9, 2009.[54] . . dave souza, talk 08:47, 6 May 2012 (UTC)

Updating the section, stale and/or irrelevant material?

  • Consolidated reply: As other editors have noted, the specific incident mentioned at The Australian isn't presently in our article -- this was a related incident, among many that were reported in the early days after the Climategate news broke. Most of these turned out to be overblown "scandalcruft".

Including two that remain:

1. Death threats against two scientists also are under investigation by the US Federal Bureau of Investigation.[50]

SFAICT, there has been no followup on this reported FBI investigation, which was mentioned in The Guardian and elsewhere. Unless someone can find a followup source, I propose dropping this sentence as outdated. Almost certainly, the FBI found nothing worth following up. Comments?

2. Climate scientists in Australia have reported receiving threatening emails including references to where they live and warnings to "be careful" about how some people might react to their scientific findings.[54] -- as reported at OzBC's The Drum, an op-ed.

The quotes and specific "threats" we mention were reported by Andy Pitman, a non-notable NSW Uni professor who has no connection (sfaict) to UEA-CRU. None of the scientists mentioned at the ABC opinion piece are CRU faculty, so this should also be struck, imo. Thanks, Pete Tillman (talk) 19:35, 6 May 2012 (UTC)

What is the benefit of trying to conceal the tactics used by these anti-science extremists at the time? The ABC article has extracts some of the hate-mail received and the Guardian is a good source. Where is the evidence of either publication withdrawing the stories, or any of those reporting the hate mail being accused of wasting police time or falsifying evidence? Where I live, people are still being tracked down and successfully prosecuted for crimes they committed 20 or 30 years ago. A few years passed does not diminish verifiable facts. --Nigelj (talk) 22:41, 6 May 2012 (UTC)
It doesn't belong here because -- as you noted re the Australian report upthread -- the ABC Drum op-ed stuff on email nasties has (sfaict) nothing to do with CRU. Maybe move it to the Australian universities they mention?? Best, Pete Tillman (talk) 04:21, 7 May 2012 (UTC)
The article you cited is completely and utterly irrelevant, and its title is a flat-out lie -- there are no scientists' claims about emails that have been refuted. -- 70.109.45.74 (talk) 20:35, 8 May 2012 (UTC)
No, it is not irrelevant, since the Journalist is making the connection with the CRU debacle explicitly in the text. Read the reference given. --Kim D. Petersen (talk) 21:02, 10 May 2012 (UTC)
Which reference is that, Kim? Would you please quote the passage you are referring to? And what is your objection (if any) to dropping the stale FBI investigation bit? Thanks, Pete Tillman (talk) 21:18, 10 May 2012 (UTC)

Clarify discussion above

It seems that the discussion above has left some confusion, as it was used in this edit as a justification for deleting material from the article. It began with a link to The Australian 3 May 2012 where an article was headed 'Climate scientists' claims of email death threats go up in smoke'. It turned out that the Australian article was to do with an FOIA request to the Australian National University in June 2011 about threatening emails received by staff at that university during 2011. We agreed here that that had nothing to do with the CRU hack in 2009. Tillman (talk · contribs) quoted the article text, "Climate scientists in Australia have reported receiving threatening emails including references to where they live and warnings to "be careful" about how some people might react to their scientific findings.[54]" Reference 54 in the article, then as now, points to this article in ABC The Drum 9 Dec 2009. This is a different article from a different Australian publisher, which appeared with a couple of weeks of the hacking. This second article is called 'The ugly side of climate politics' and includes the following statements:

  1. "climate scientists' [...] once quiet research careers seem to be giving way to an ugly maelstrom of break-ins, threats and hate mail."
  2. "The FBI is investigating death threats to two scientists named in thousands of hacked private emails stolen from East Anglia University's internationally respected Climate Research Unit."
  3. "At NSW University's Climate Change Research Centre, professor Andy Pitman has received threatening emails, including references to where he lives and warnings that he should "be careful" about how some people might react to his scientific findings"
  4. "Prominent climate change sceptic and Herald-Sun columnist Andrew Bolt says he too has received offensive emails including one with threats "to punch me"."

From this, it is clear that the reference in the article clearly refers to two climate scientists, who were named in the CRU hacked emails, receiving threats, including the words "be careful", and these threats being investigated by the FBI. In other words, there is no evidence anywhere in the discussion above that we have anything untoward or uncited in the article. Therefore I have reverted the deletion of material. --Nigelj (talk) 21:03, 22 May 2012 (UTC)

Nigel: thanks for the polite, and detailed, reply. Here are the items I think are outdated or irrelevant:
  • 1.)"The FBI is investigating death threats to two scientists... " This was reported in early December 2009, as the Climategate events were still unfolding. So far as I can determine, there have been no followup reports of the results of the FBI investigation. As 21/2 years have since elapsed, it seems safe to presume the FBI investigation is over -- unless you (or anyone) can present evidence to the contrary. So there doesn't seem to be any reason to retain this early report -- see WP:Weight.
  • 2.) Australian "professor Andy Pitman has received threatening emails..." The first problem with including this is: Pittman, a relatively-obscure Australian scientist, has (sfaict) no connection to UEA/CRU. So why should we include his specific story here? Second, the source is a rather strident op-ed piece, which we normally try to avoid for sourcing controversial material.

For 3rd parties, here is my proposed cleanup and update of the "Threats" section (last para of "Responses" section):

Some climate scientists at the CRU and elsewhere received threatening and abusive emails in the wake of the initial incidents.[50][51] Norfolk Police interviewed Phil Jones about death threats made against him following the release of the emails;[52] Jones later said that the police told him these "didn’t fulfill the criteria for death threats."[53] Climate scientists in Australia also reported receiving threatening emails.[54]

Thanks, Pete Tillman (talk) 18:28, 23 May 2012 (UTC)

Reverted misleading text about Norfolk constab....

I removed this:

However, as of late March 2012, no money or man-hours have been charged to the investigation since February 2011

This text is first of all based on a non-WP:RS, but for the moment i'll accept the source as valid, since the NC say that they keep the text on their website as well. The text is either not supported by the FOI noticed provided by NC, or it is significantly misleading. The NC says that they:

Our Major Investigations Team have advised that whilst we have previously been able to provide details of expenditure which includes non-basic salary costs for example overtime costs, we do not record the time spent by officers and police staff on a specific investigation.
Officers and staff engaged on the investigation will have been involved in a number of other inquiries at the same time. Police officers may record details of specific activities relating to investigations within their pocket note book or their enquiry officers rough book. However, officers would not record all time spent on a particular enquiry therefore Norfolk Constabulary does not hold total hours worked by officers and staff on this investigation.

The text states that NC hasn't used man-hours on the case, but that is not what the NC says - they say that they do not record such hours. Thus the text implies that the case, while open, is not being worked on - which is not supportable by the FOI response by the NC. --Kim D. Petersen (talk) 20:29, 10 May 2012 (UTC)

Kim: I'll grant you that the Norfolk police statement is lawyerly in the extreme, but I think Montford's interpretation is reasonable:
"Norfolk Constabulary have previously released details of their spend on the UEA emails investigation - Operation Cabin. This showed that no money had been spent on the investigation since February 2011, something that strongly suggested that the investigation was in fact closed...."
If you (and others) like, we can go with just the no money spent statement (I'll dig up the FOI papers for that), and drop the manpower bit. It's pretty obvious that this is a cold case. Comments? --Pete Tillman (talk) 20:45, 10 May 2012 (UTC)
Well, it wouldn't be true. In this later response to Montford it shows that some police officer or officers ranked constable or sergeant claimed 8 hours of overtime on the case during Nov 2011 to Jan 2012. We don't know what normal shift hours were spent, or what time other ranks put in, but the fact that someone was doing overtime hours on it must imply that some hard work was being put in. --Nigelj (talk) 20:55, 10 May 2012 (UTC)
(edit conflict)We are not here to determine what is the "reasonable interpretation". We have to go with what reliable sources say, and Montford is not a reliable source. Btw. the FOI letter from NC addresses what Montford states - in that they tally up overtime but not regular hours on cases... In other words what Montford found is that they do not clock overtime any more. Anything else is pure speculation (and POV speculation at that) - and doesn't belong on Wikipedia. --Kim D. Petersen (talk) 20:57, 10 May 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for the comments. Andrew Montford filed the FOI requests in question, thus his opinions on the results of his requests are certainly a RS. However -- the police responses are so hedged and lawyerly that I don't see any way we can really use them. Anyway, any reader with a lick of sense can figure out for themselves that this is a cold case. --Pete Tillman (talk) 19:26, 11 May 2012 (UTC)

Why should we not mention that it appears that the Norfolk Police were still actively pursuing these perpetrators, their enablers and/or accomplices until at least January of this year? --Nigelj (talk) 22:39, 11 May 2012 (UTC)
No, Pete. The FOI info might be interesting (it doesn't seem so - since it doesn't tell anything), but Montford doesn't get more or less reliable or notable from this... (interesting take btw. getting non reliable info in via the backdoor ... so to say). --Kim D. Petersen (talk) 20:37, 12 May 2012 (UTC)
Erh? And how can we tell that it is a cold case? More POV from you methinks. We can tell that it isn't a priority case anymore (priority cases get overtime), but that it is cold? No. --Kim D. Petersen (talk) 20:40, 12 May 2012 (UTC)
Um -- see WP:SELFPUB for Montford's opinions as RS. As for the cold case: from Montford's FOI docs, it seems clear that the NP aren't spending much time and effort on this case. But I'm *agreeing* that this isn't (at present) encyclopedic material, so ??? --Pete Tillman (talk) 21:36, 12 May 2012 (UTC)
Montford is not an expert, does talk about 3rd persons (NP), etc etc. - and thus doesn't come under WP:SELFPUB. Ok, here are two scenarios that the NP could be doing - dismiss either of these with the FOI information that you've gotten. If you can't - then you can't say that the case is cold:
  1. 3 officers work half of their work-week constantly on the case. Summing up 4 hours each per day - giving: 60 hours per week.
  2. the case has been forgotten - there has been no work done on the case in the last 5 weeks.
None of the above cases generate overtime - so both cases are within what the FOI told us. But do tell how you can dismiss case 1? --Kim D. Petersen (talk) 21:46, 12 May 2012 (UTC)

Burson-Marsteller public relations firm

I recently added the ID to this firm, in a statement by a non-notable PR employee:

Bill Royce, head of the European practice on energy, environment and climate change at the Burson-Marsteller public relations firm....

I think this is useful information for our readers, as most will not be familaiar with Royce or his employer -- and most people take statements by PR men with considerable salt. Another editor reverted, commenting "No need". Other opinions? --Pete Tillman (talk) 03:14, 11 May 2012 (UTC)

Looks like you are trying to add unnecessary redundancy and padding for the wrong purposes. It is helpful to do so when the context calls for it, but he's already labeled as an employee of the company, so the only reason you are trying to do this is to spin it down. BTW, why is Royce "no-notable"? He was quoted by swissinfo.ch as an expert. Viriditas (talk) 21:29, 11 May 2012 (UTC)
Perhaps we should reopen the discussion of why this item is here at all. IMS, you were the one who added it, and it doesn't really seem significant enough to retain. What do others think? Thanks, Pete Tillman (talk) 23:38, 11 May 2012 (UTC)
Why is it not significant? It's clearly important and relevant, and supports the contention by historians of science that this was a manufactured controversy in a long line of manufactured controversies intended to discredit climate science, and in fact, the lead should say just that. Viriditas (talk) 01:29, 13 May 2012 (UTC)
  • Perfectly appropriate to mention Royce's PR firm affiliations. On the other topic, the lead should "say just that" only to the extent that reliable sources unanimously say that--and might not this sentiment be also alongside a range of other views that confer varying degrees of legitimacy to this "scandal" (and the degree of its manufacturedness or not, to put it awkwardly). The Sound and the Fury (talk) 23:38, 15 May 2012 (UTC)
If you look thru our article, I think you will find a good deal of opinion confidently presented as fact. So there's a ways to go to get this article to NPOV. Thanks for taking a look at this -- Pete Tillman (talk) 23:46, 15 May 2012 (UTC)

Does this article comply with WP:NPOV?

Sooner or later, you guys are either going to have to come up with reliable sources that say that (a) climate scientists behave scandalously or (b) global warming is an opinion not fact, or stop making vague and meaningless statements to those ends on Talk pages such as this. --Nigelj (talk) 06:40, 16 May 2012 (UTC)
  • Nigel: I would invite you, and anyone else interested, to read (or reread) Clive Crook's commentary on CG and the "independent investigations": [4] -- and "compare and contrast" to PR man Royce's contribution. Our article formerly quoted and cited Crook, and other thoughtful critics. Virtually all of the critical material in this article was expunged. Do you really care to claim that our article meets the requirements of WP:Neutral Point of View -- one of The Five Pillars of the Project? --Pete Tillman (talk) 18:31, 18 May 2012 (UTC)
The article clearly says, "The intense media coverage of the documents stolen from climate researchers at the University of East Anglia created public confusion about the scientific consensus on climate change". It identifies that, "the accusations originated in right wing media and blogs" and that all of these accusations were found by numerous enquiries to be groundless. There really is no need to include coverage from just one more publication that, at the time, was also "aimed at undermining the credibility of the science" with such chuntering about a "Big Green Lie". When I said "reliable sources", I meant something peer reviewed or published in a history of science textbook that is now taught in mainstream universities, or something of that stature, to stand against the findings of parliamentary committees, of the US National Science Foundation, etc etc --Nigelj (talk) 21:31, 22 May 2012 (UTC)

What is the point in dealing with your stream of ideas here on the Talk page, if after people disagree with you, you change the subject a couple of times, add a subheading, then go ahead and repeatedly insert the same text anyway. See WP:CONSENSUS. --Nigelj (talk) 22:30, 25 May 2012 (UTC)

Nigel: By my count, of editors who have expressed opinions, 2 favor & 2 oppose. One was an uninvolved editor, traditionally given greater weight in resolving conflicts here. The arguments "against" are, well, not strong.
I suppose I'll have to go to formal conflict resolution. Absurd, but that's what "your" side requires to make even small changes on this article (sigh). Oh, weel, I have a half-drafted complaint for the NPOV police. You aren't adding luster to the project here.... Sadly. Pete Tillman (talk) 22:43, 25 May 2012 (UTC)
You're attempting to cast doubt on the source by framing it as "PR". Which is, as you well know, inconsistent with NPOV. Guettarda (talk) 23:25, 25 May 2012 (UTC)
Not at all, sir -- please reread the start of the section. But we agree, this article has a long way to go to be NPOV-compliant. Best, Pete Tillman (talk) 02:22, 27 May 2012 (UTC)
OK, here's it nice and simple: you aren't supposed to use "guilt by association" to discredit sources you don't like, unless the connection is made by notable sources (in which case you discuss it first). Just like you aren't supposed to use blog comments as reliable sources. If you took the time to read and understand policy, you might waste less of your fellow editors time. It's about time you learned something about policy and sourcing. Guettarda (talk) 05:37, 27 May 2012 (UTC)
By the way, I also altered the language slightly which had previously had in Wikipedia's voice the idea that it was all contrived. The Sound and the Fury (talk) 19:00, 27 May 2012 (UTC)

Yamal controversy

Does anyone think the Yamal controversy should be mentioned?
The Guardian explains the controversy and provides a link to Briffa's rebuttal. Points for our article:

  • Jones initially thought the whole hacking was over the Yamal data because it had already produced controversy.
  • The word "Yamal" was key for the hackers.
  • Briffa explained his stance.

Yopienso (talk) 18:49, 28 May 2012 (UTC)

It really predated the CRU email controversy, and so is a rather complex background issue, as is Freedom of Information requests to the Climatic Research Unit. Pearce considerably revised the info in his book, which explains some aspects that are left incomplete in the above article. However, as we found out in discussions over the Soon and Baliunas controversy, Pearce has sometimes been a bit careless. In that instance he was pressed by de Freitas on a statement about reviewers, and retracted it on unreliable blogs but did not respond when another editor and myself wrote to him asking him to make a suitable public statement. When I wrote to The Guardian, their reader's editor checked it out and issued a retraction, resolving the argument. However, we can't always know about such errors and so really need corroboration of what Pearce writes. . . dave souza, talk 19:07, 28 May 2012 (UTC)
I'm sure Pearce makes mistakes. Still, this article hasn't been corrected or retracted, and both he and the Guardian are regarded as RSs. The controversy was sufficient to prompt a serious response from Briffa himself.
Note that the issue here isn't whether the Yamal dates are valid, but if the word was searched for in the hack. If so, it is germane to the article. Yopienso (talk) 22:18, 28 May 2012 (UTC)
It's unclear how the Yamal question relates to this hacking. Because the hackers were looking for information about the matter? If there is a reliable source for that, and a Wikipedia page on the Yamal controversy, then I would think it a good idea to provide a sentence linking out and explaining that's what they were searching for. If there was no Wikipedia page on it then I wouldn't mention it. The Sound and the Fury (talk) 13:23, 29 May 2012 (UTC)
The word [Yamal] turns up in 100 separate ['climategate'] emails, more than ‘hockey stick’ or any other totem of the climate wars. The emails began with [Yamal] back in 1996 and they ended with it.

-- which would seem to qualify Yamal for mention here. No mention whatever at present. Curious.... --Pete Tillman (talk) 20:10, 4 June 2012 (UTC)

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