Science Friday - Climate Scientist Michael Mann Wins Defamation Case

Episode Date: February 19, 2024

Climate scientist Dr. Michael Mann won a defamation lawsuit against two conservative writers last week.The verdict was 12 years in the making. In 2012 writers Rand Simberg and Mark Steyn accused Mann of manipulating his data related to his famous 1998 “hockey stick” graph, which depicts rising global temperatures after the industrial revolution. Simberg compared him to former Penn State football coach and convicted child sex abuser Jerry Sandusky in a blog post for a libertarian think tank. Steyn later referenced Simberg’s article in a National Review piece, calling Mann’s work “fraudulent.”Reviews by Penn State (Mann’s home institution at the time) and the National Science Foundation, found no scientific wrongdoing. And in fact the iconic graph has since been supported by numerous studies.What does this ruling signal about the public’s understanding of climate change research? And the limitations of free speech?Ira talks with Dr. Michael Mann, professor of Earth & environmental science at the University of Pennsylvania and author of Our Fragile Moment: How Lessons from Earth’s Past Can Help Us Survive the Climate Crisis.Transcripts for each segment will be available after the show airs on sciencefriday.com. Subscribe to this podcast. Plus, to stay updated on all things science, sign up for Science Friday's newsletters.

Climateologist Michael Mann wins a defamation lawsuit. Is it a victory for science too? It isn't just about me in defending my science from scurrilous attacks and defamatory claims. It's really about the defense of science. It's Monday, February 19th, but not to worry, still Science Friday. I'm SciFri producer Shoshana Bucksbaum. Climate scientist Michael Mann recently won a defamation lawsuit against two conservative writers. In 2012, bloggers Ran Simberg and Mark Stein accused man of manipulating his data, comparing

his research methods to Penn State football coach Jerry Sandusky, convicted child molester. In fact, man's iconic 1998 hockey stick paper, the one that showed rising global temperatures after the Industrial Revolution, has since been supported by numerous studies. So what does this really signal about the public's understanding of climate change research, and a scientist's right to speak the truth without fear of attack. Ira Flito takes it from here. Joining me to talk about those questions is Dr. Michael Mann, Professor of Earth and Environmental Science at the University of Pennsylvania,

and author of the new book, Our Fragile Moment. He is based in Philadelphia. Dr. Mann, always good to have you back on Science Friday. Thanks, Ira. Always great to be with you. Nice to have you. Michael, some history first, please. What was the nature of the blogs and what did they say? and take it from there. Yeah, I think you summarized it pretty well there.

This was back in July 2012. It was after the report on the Sandusky affair had just been published, and they decided to exploit that by taking a swipe at me, literally comparing me to Jerry Sandusky, of the convicted child predator, accusing me of molesting and torturing data and making accusations of scientific fraud. And, you know, it's one thing to criticize scientists, criticism, skepticism, done in good faith. Those are constructive and important things in science. But making false accusations against scientists as part of an ideological agenda to discredit them and their research, that crosses a line. And that's what we decided. We couldn't

let that stand. And why did you decide it? Not immediately, right? No, within, I believe it was a couple weeks. Actually, a good friend of mine, who is a great science communicator, Phil Plight, of the bad astronomy blog, sent me an email that alerted me to these defamatory articles. And he actually suggested, you know, you might want to contact a lawyer. And that's what I did. And we asked for a retraction and an apology. They refused to do that. And so that's what led us to where we are now, 12 years later. And 12 years. Were you discouraged? It took 12 years as you're waiting. Well, you know what they say about justice delayed? So, you know, it was a long time to have to wait to have our day in court. But again, there were important principles at work here. We couldn't

let it, you know, slide, even though, you know, they appealed multiple times all the way to the Supreme Court. We stuck with it because it was too important to let it go. We felt we needed to send a message, really to the scientific community that, you know, it's okay to speak out about the implications of your science. And it's not okay when people tried to defame you simply for speaking, you know, about your science and its implications. And what was the award that you got? Well, we got a compensatory damages of a dollar per defendant. I've already spent that at Starbucks. A small, obviously a small award, it was really a nominal award. And in the end, I guess the jury decided that I'd gone on, you know, I had been pretty successful. So it wasn't obvious that

I had been damaged in any fundamental way. You know, I would argue that there was an emotional toll that it took for me and my family, those sorts of comparisons and the way it made us feel in our community. But more importantly, they felt that a message did need to be sent. And that's what the punitive damages are, to make a statement that this is not acceptable and there should be a huge penalty. And they awarded us over a million dollars in punitive damages. That is really interesting because I know these cases are really hard to win because you have to find enough evidence that there's malicious intent, right? Yeah, that's right. I mean, because I'm considered a public figure, it's not enough to show that

the statements were false. You have to be able to show that there was actual malice, which means that the defendants either knew that the statements were false or they acted with reckless disregard for the truth. That's the critical phrase that comes out of the New York Times versus Solomon case many years ago. And so the jury found that they did indeed act with reckless disregard for the truth, given that there were multiple reports, including the National Science Foundation's Inspector General, that had vindicated us of any misconduct and wrongdoing. And they obviously ignored them, chose to ignore them. That's what led us to where we are today and towards a unanimous jury decision in our favor.

Might we see more cases of scientists who have been afraid to speak out now come forward? do you think? I hope so because I think one of the reasons that are detractors, and I've been, you know, a target of climate deniers of sort of polluters and conservative interest groups for decades because of the hockey stick curve that we published decades ago that became sort of this iconic symbol in the climate debate. And so, you know, my worry has always been that the attacks on me were meant to send a message, especially the younger scientists who might think about speaking truth to power, speaking out about, you know, the policy or societal implications of their research. My fear has always been that the attacks against me were an effort to chill the discourse,

to basically scare other scientists who might think of leaving the laboratory and speaking out about the implications of their science. And that's why I felt it was, this case was always bigger than me. It wasn't just about my reputation. It was really about the ability of scientists to speak truthfully and openly to the public and to policy makers without fears of these sorts of reprisals. You know, it's been 12 years, and in those 12 years, a lot has changed. We don't have just blogging now. We have TikTok, Twitter, YouTube videos.

Have attacks on scientists change with the times, too, albeit in different formats? Yeah, I mean, that's right. You know, it's remarkable how much things have changed in the, you know, the 12 years since we filed this suit. You know, social media has become just a toxic environment in many respects. Twitter. A lot of my fellow scientists have chosen to leave Twitter because of the toxic atmosphere under Elon Musk's ownership of the medium. And, you know, scientists are regularly subject to attacks. and it's not just climate scientists now, it's public health scientists, like Anthony Fauci or my good friend, Peter Hotez, who are also attacked for ideological reasons because there are science about vaccines, about COVID-19 is inconvenient to, you know,

vaccine deniers. And so there's this sort of cesspool of science denialism, of anti-science that exists, that is very widespread on social media. And that's, of course, course, you know, when you're dealing with anonymous trolls, it's very difficult. You know, there's really no way, there's no way of sort of penalizing their, you know, their bad acts. But what I do hope that this successful lawsuit will send a message to, you know,

prominent media outlets who have promoted attacks, defamatory attacks against scientists, against climate scientists, against public health scientists, I hope that this does send a message to them. It does draw a line in the sand that, you know, if you engage in defamatory attacks against scientists and an ideologically driven, you know, attempt to discredit their science, there will be repercussions, there will be legal repercussions.

You know, despite all of this, speaking of climate science, I've been observing that recent polls, so the public has reversed its opinion on climate change. Polls that used to show skepticism are now showing belief. Do you have a reason for that? Yeah, you know, I think the simplest reason is, you know, look out your window, you know, read your newspaper headlines, watch, you know, television news.

The impacts of climate change are now literally playing out in real time. We can see it with our own two eyes. We know people, if not ourselves, family members, friends who have been subjected to unprecedented flooding events, wildfires, homes destroyed. It's gotten real for people. And what that means is that, you know, the public largely gets it. Climate change is real. It's human cause.

We wouldn't be seeing these unprecedented impacts, if not for our continued burning of fossil fuels. And so the polluters have sort of changed their tactics. In fact, my previous book, The New Climate War, was about this shift in tactics away from denial to other ways of undermining climate action, deflection and division, and even doom-mongering. Like, if they convince us it's too late to do anything about the problem, it potentially leads us down that same path of inaction. And so we have to look out for sort of these new tactics that are being used to prevent the needed transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy. It's less denial now, and it's much more about these other sort of more subtle, but nonetheless, very effective tactics. You know, that's interesting. You talk about denial or deflection. I have noticed in the past 12 years, it used to be that journalists have never ever connected anything to climate change. You know, any of these tragic events, any of the weather, they never ever say, you know, it might be climate change.

The rising sea level, Florida is going under one. They don't ever talk about it, but now it seems like they may be doing a better job at covering climate science. Would you agree? I do agree. I think there's been an effort. Actually, it's sort of been, I would say, a partnership really between the scientific community and the journalistic community, because we are natural allies. We're both interested in truth, either in determining truth, that's what science is about, or communicating truth to the public. And so I've always felt that that was a natural alliance between journalism and science. And I think we have, seen efforts for these two communities to work together to improve the quality of climate

communication. And there's been a lot of work in sort of finding ways to communicate the impacts of climate change in a way that sort of rings true to people that sort of, you know, that reaches people where they are to make it clear that this isn't just about disappearing ice in the Arctic and polar bears. It's about the unprecedented extreme weather events that we're seeing here in Philadelphia, where I live, we had the worst air quality in the world for several days this summer because of the Canadian wildfire smoke that was making its way down here. I think that there has been a real effort to find narratives, to find ways to communicate the fact that not only is climate change real, we're feeling it in a visceral way now.

Yeah. Getting back to your court case for a moment and some of the possible implications, you touched on this before saying that scientists are known. to be critical of their colleagues' work. They rebut or question their findings, but we shouldn't be concerned that scientists might be worried about criticizing other scientists' work because of a possible defamation territory itself. Yeah, I'm glad you asked that, Ira, because it's such an important distinction, right? I mean, good faith criticism is one of the driving forces in science. It's, you know, the great Carl Sagan described the self-correcting machinery of science and peer-review. the formal criticism that is in place in, you know, the peer review system, you know, when you

present your work at meetings, that give and take, that is part of the self-correcting machinery of science. And it's essential, and it has to be preserved. And the key thing there is that it's in good faith. That's good faith criticism. It's criticism that's based on logical reasoning, you know, arguments about deficiencies or flaws in, you know, a modeling approach or in the data set that's used. all, you know, fair game. That's legitimate scientific discourse, that sort of criticism. But there is a

distinction, very important distinction between that good faith criticism in the bad faith attacks that are intended not to sort of elucidate truth or identify legitimate flaws or limitations of scientific findings, but are intended to discredit the scientist that are intended to discredit science in the eyes of the public. And I think that the jury saw through the smoke and mirrors of the other side in this trial and recognized that critical distinction that, you know, I don't care if you don't like somebody's research. It doesn't give you license to accuse them of fraud and compare them to a child molester, which is what these two defendants did. This is Science Friday from WNYC Studios. In case you're just joining us, I'm talking with climate scientist Dr. Michael

man about his victory in a recent defamation case. What's your message to other scientists? They're watching what you've been going through. They might want to opt out of a controversy or being in the public spotlight. What do you make of that argument that scientists should just keep their heads down and focus on the science? Well, thanks again for that question, Ira, because that's why I've fought on for 12 years, and I've been fighting my whole career. I would have been perfectly happy if they had left me alone in the computer lab, doing what I love doing, which is constructing models and analyzing

data sets. That's why I went into science in the first place. That's why I double majored and applied math and physics, went off to study theoretical physics and graduate school, because I love doing science. But when the findings of my science, again, when I became a target because of our findings, I realized that there was another role that I had an opportunity to play, and it was incumbent upon me to play, which was to defend not just my science, but really I felt like I was defending science itself against bad faith attacks. And I also felt that I had to prevail in this battle because if I didn't, it would send the wrong message to young scientists. It would say, hey, if you stick your head up, you know, if you speak out, speak truth to power, then they're

going to come after you and they're going to destroy you. I couldn't allow them to be successful in that venture. And so I hope that this very important finding, the million dollar damages that were awarded does send a message to my fellow scientists that, hey, look, you know, the system does have our back. You have recourse if you are subject to bad faith attacks that are intended to discredit you in the way that, you know, our attackers, you know, came after me, that you have recourse in the form of the law and you have your fellow scientists who will stand by you. And the most important thing to me in all of this has been the support that I've gotten from my fellow scientists through the whole process.

Can't let you go without talking a bit about science and your most recent book, Our Fragile Moment. Briefly, in the minute we have left, what is our fragile moment? You know, in a minute and a half, I'll try to summarize four billion plus years. That's what I do. I look at the collective lessons that we can learn from all of Earth history going back to Earth's beginnings more than four billion years ago. And in the end, to summarize it very simply, what the evidence points to is that there is great urgency now. We are at a fragile moment when it comes to human-caused warming, human-caused climate change. There is urgency, but there is agency.

It's not too late for us to take the actions that are necessary to avert disaster. Yeah, we had you on when you talked about the book, and you were hopeful. I'm glad hear you're still helpful. Thank you for your work, Dr. Mann. Oh, thank you, Ira. Always a pleasure. Dr. Michael Mann, Professor of Earth and Environmental Science at the University of Pennsylvania, and author of Our Frauderal Moment. That's it for today. Lots of folks help make the show, including Ariel Zitch, Jordan Smudjick, Diana Plasker, and many more. Tomorrow, what feathers can teach us about dinosaur evolution and how a lack of microbial diversity may be putting some of our beloved cheeses at risk of extinction.

Catch you next time. I'm SciFri producer Shoshana Bucksbaum.