Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Perhaps you mistook them for somebody who gives a damn.

White supremacy is terrorism.

I don’t recall signing up for living in a dystopian sci-fi novel.

“But what about the lurkers?”

Why is it so hard for them to condemn hate?

Do we throw up our hands or do we roll up our sleeves? (hint, door #2)

I like political parties that aren’t owned by foreign adversaries.

Jesus, Mary, & Joseph how is that election even close?

Prediction: the gop will rethink its strategy of boycotting future committees.

This chaos was totally avoidable.

They want us to be overwhelmed and exhausted. Focus. Resist. Oppose.

We still have time to mess this up!

Yeah, with this crowd one never knows.

The party of Reagan has become the party of Putin.

Republicans seem to think life begins at the candlelight dinner the night before.

We know you aren’t a Democrat but since you seem confused let me help you.

After dobbs, women are no longer free.

Good lord, these people are nuts.

The only way through is to slog through the muck one step at at time.

Just because you believe it, that does not make it true.

Dumb motherfuckers cannot understand a consequence that most 4 year olds have fully sorted out.

I am pretty sure these ‘journalists’ were not always such a bootlicking sycophants.

“Loving your country does not mean lying about its history.”

Is it irresponsible to speculate? It is irresponsible not to.

You are here: Home / Politics / Republican Stupidity / Apparently, It Is Too Hard To Make Up Their Own Lies

Apparently, It Is Too Hard To Make Up Their Own Lies

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So they just copy them:

A congressional report used by Rep. Joe Barton (R-TX) to question the validity of the science behind global warming in a 2006 hearing was highly plagiarized, according to experts who reviewed it.

“The report was integral to congressional hearings about climate scientists,” Aaron Huertas of the Union of Concerned Scientists explained. “And it preceded a lot of conspiratorial thinking polluting the public debate today about climate scientists.”

The report was requested by Barton in 2005, when he was the head of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, a position he is currently trying to reclaim. In 2006, he said that global warming science is “pretty weak stuff.”

Plagiarism experts told USA Today that the report, which was authored by George Mason University statistician Edward Wegman, copied material from textbooks, Wikipedia, and other sources.

John Mashey, a retired computer scientist, conducted a year-long analysis of the Wegman report and found that 35 of the report’s 91 pages “are mostly plagiarized text, but often injected with errors, bias and changes of meaning.”

After yesterday’s cheating post, I’ll be interested to see how many people rush to justify this.

Reader Interactions

40Comments

  2. 2.

    Bullsmith

    I’m guessing any kind of sanction of Wegman for producing not only plagiarized but also further falsified work would be an infringement of his First Amendment rights. Or perhaps he is protected by the sanctity of contracts?

  3. 3.

    Michael

    Meh. George Mason U, aka Wingnut Central. Par for the course for them – their diplomae are worth about a 3 ply roll of toilet paper, AFAIC.

    As a moral relativist cheater excuser, I’m not upset about the plagiarism. I am, however, predictably annoyed about the spin and misrepresentation.

    PS – Wegman is a lazy fat fuck.

  6. 6.

    Paris

    Some post modernist liberal professor from ‘academia’ authors a report and doesn’t get the right answer so other ‘scientists’ from liberal universities go ape shit. This just proves that higher learning is a ponzi scheme and can’t be trusted. Why didn’t they hire real Americans to cut and paste?

  9. 9.

    srv

    George Mason was forced by liberals to accept more students of lower moral character (something passed in the Carter era), and this is a natural progression of those policies.

    Rep. Barton’s study looks very truthy to me.

  10. 10.

    Villago Delenda Est

    Let me guess. One of the prominent “scientists” quoted in the sparse non-plagiarized text was Dr. Art Robinson, professional loon.

  11. 11.

    BombIranForChrist

    This is a big win for libertarianism. People have the right to make shit up as they see fit to create their own reality. Facts are the evil handmaidens of the gub’mint trying to keep me down! There are no facts! Only me. Sweet, beautiful me.

  13. 13.

    MattR

    After yesterday’s cheating post, I’ll be interested to see how many people rush to justify this.

    Seeing as how there is actual evidence of plagiarism, I don’t see how the two issues are remotely related.

    I posted a comment late last night in another thread about the USA Today version of this story. They made sure to point out early on that the plagiarism did not invalidate the report’s criticism of Mann and Bradley’s work. Only much later did they note that the criticisms in the report were accurate but irrelevant in the grand scheme of things.

  14. 14.

    El Cid

    But the Climategate e-mails proved that there is no global warming because it sounded like the hacked e-mails prove that all scientists were lying about the whole thing!

    There is no global warming, and if it is, it’s caused by changes in the Sun, and none of the scientists have ever thunk of studying the Sun. Also it’s a natural process because throughout the Earth’s history it’s been warmer and colder, and if it gets a lot warmer, we’ll adapt to that too, especially if it brings more oxygen and giant land arthropods.

  16. 16.

    Dave

    Obviously, the fault lies with us for not creating a system that would prevent Wegman from plagiarizing. After all, he is a big-brained chimp who is wired to pursue the easiest path. And to expect ethical behavior from him would just be foolish.

    /snark

  17. 17.

    Comrade Javamanphil

    I think I know some George Mason professor who now has the edge for any open Liberty University Dean positions.

  19. 19.

    Dennis SGMM

    It’s cold here today so global warming doesn’t exist.
    And no sidewinding, hornswoggling cracker-croaker is going to ruin my bishincutter!

  20. 20.

    Earl Butz

    After yesterday’s cheating post, I’ll be interested to see how many people rush to justify this.

    B-school students cheating isn’t academic fraud, it’s on the job training. I’d care if they were studying something useful, like science.

    But economics is a secular religious system buoyed solely by beliefs, not provable, repeatable facts. So who cares?

  22. 22.

    Brachiator

    Jesus H Climate Change Christ! This reminds me of the goofballs who tried to claim that they wanted to publish a “scientific” textbook for kids that promoted intelligent design, but which was proved to be a poorly disguised creationist screed.

  23. 23.

    Keith G

    @TheMightyTrowel: I will trade you. Here in Houston, I am fixin (as we say) to walk to the market in sandals, shorts and a T. Our temp will be 82 by the afternoon, 12 above the historical ave.

    While that is just weather, it is cementing in the notion that should I live long enough I will not be living here enjoying the new climate that develops around us.

    edit – fywp

  25. 25.

    Mike G

    Barton, exhibiting the magical-thinking crowd’s usual rigorousness with regards to data and evidence.

    I think that Congress should apologize to Barton for his lying, like he apologized to BP for turning the Gulf into a fetid greasetrap.

  27. 27.

    p.a.

    Of course it’s too hard; making up credible lies about scientific issues requires at least some base knowledge on the subject (see American Tobacco Institute/P. Morris/Atria). Congressional Republicans attempted in the scientific arena what they have successfully done in the political arena: spread mass delusion. And who’s to say they weren’t successful? It took 5 years to out them. (Although it is wonderful timing given their stated intent to run a witchhunt investigations on climate scientists.

  28. 28.

    Roger Moore

    @Mike G:

    I think that Congress should apologize to Barton for his lying

    Obviously, Barton is just too good for Congress, and should be sent home to protect him from its corrupting influence.

  29. 29.

    Kyle

    @El Cid:

    But the Climategate e-mails proved that there is no global warming because it sounded like the hacked e-mails prove that all scientists were lying about the whole thing!

    Shorter climate denialists:
    The Zapruder film was blurry, therefore JFK was never killed.

  30. 30.

    lou

    Wonder if Va attorney general Ken Cuccinelli will spend as much time investigating this Wegman dude as he spent on Michael Mann.

  33. 33.

    ricky

    After yesterday’s cheating post, I’ll be interested to see how many people rush to justify this.

    Justify what, your post?

  34. 34.

    ricky

    @Earl Butz:

    B-school students cheating isn’t academic fraud, it’s on the job training.

    B-school…isn’t academic(.) It’s…training.

    Editorial plagiarism.

  35. 35.

    El Cid

    @Kyle:
    The Onion is on the job!

    New Theories Suggest Kennedy Wasn’t Shot
    __
    DALLAS—A controversial new book about the assassination of President John F. Kennedy has raised questions not about the role of a lone gunman or a conspiracy of shooters, but about whether the late president was even even shot at all…
    __
    …After 11 years of painstaking research, Musashi uncovered testimony from anonymous eyewitnesses who claimed that unopened packets of duck sauce and soy sauce were hastily removed from Air Force One after the assassination.
    __
    According to the book’s findings, the extremely high levels of monosodium glutamate combined with the stress of mediating an intense international ballistic-missile crisis caused Kennedy’s systolic pressure to mount to the point where the right rear quarter of his cranium “shot clean off.”

  36. 36.

    Phil

    Whilst plagiarism is iffy (although the examples I read were to do with the description of what a tree ring was – not exactly a refutation of the statistical errors in the paleoclimate reconstructions) isn’ t there a tiny double standard here? The investigation was done by a retired computer scientist, and reported in USA Today. And yet one of the usual responses to amateur skepticism is precisely that the skeptics (a) are not climate science experts and (b) the work is not peer reviewed, or published in a “high impact” journal.

    None of that has any relevance to the validity of AGW but it’s not particularly flattering to the integrity of some of its adherents. IMHO.

  37. 37.

    El Cid

    The United States has nothing whatsoever to do with global warming. It’s all Russia’s fault.

    Gas locked inside Siberia’s frozen soil and under its lakes has been seeping out since the end of the last ice age 10,000 years ago. But in the past few decades, as the Earth has warmed, the icy ground has begun thawing more rapidly, accelerating the release of methane — a greenhouse gas 23 times more powerful than carbon dioxide — at a perilous rate.
    __
    Some scientists believe the thawing of permafrost could become the epicenter of climate change. They say 1.5 trillion tons of carbon, locked inside icebound earth since the age of mammoths, is a climate time bomb waiting to explode if released into the atmosphere.
    __
    “Here, total carbon storage is like all the rain forests of our planet put together,” says the scientist, Sergey Zimov — “here” being the endless sweep of snow and ice stretching toward Siberia’s gray horizon, as seen from Zimov’s research facility nearly 350 kilometers (220 miles) above the Arctic Circle.

    It’s also a natural process, and who wouldn’t feel a bit better about warmer winters so as to save on heating bills?

    That said, bear in mind that global warming is a myth made up by two scientists corresponding via e-mail.

  38. 38.

    MattF

    You don’t get it. This is the greatest report ever written by the most expert experts ever assembled that reaches the strongest conclusions ever reached that proves exactly what everyone with any common sense knew was true all the time. And if you disagree with any of it, in any way whatsoever, your countertops are made of granite.

  39. 39.

    El Cid

    @MattF: The danger, though, is that however well-intentioned and accurate Barton’s report was, it still involved words and reading and stuff, and that’s pretty elitist stuff, because reading & writing are signs of college professor traitor snobbery.

    A true patriot’s report would have been entirely in drawings, illustrations, pictures, and popup figures.

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