Followup: Climate Scientist Michael Mann Wins Defamation Case

Mark Steyn (pictured here) and Rand Simberg
lost a lawsuit brought by climatologist
Michael Mann, who contended the pair
defamed him in inflammatory blog posts. 

A followup for you from a post I made last month about climatologist Michael Mann's defamation lawsuit against climate deniers he said defamed him.   

Last week, a jury agreed. 

Reports the Washington Post: 

"A jury in a civil trial in Washington on Thursday found that the two writers, Rand Simberg and Mark Steyn, defamed and injured the researcher in a pair of blog posts published in 2012, and awarded him more than $1 million. 

'I hope this verdict sends a message that falsely attacking climate scientists is not protected speech,; Mann said in a statement.

The jury awarded Mann $1,000 from Simberg and $1 million from Steyn in punitive damages, meant to punish wrongdoing. And it granted Mann $1 for compensatory damaged from each writer for Mann's actual losses."

The verdict comes as scientists are increasingly under attack from the far right ring and a variety of fringe, conspiracy-oriented whack jobs who are attacking not only climate science but a wide variety of subjects. 

These include vaccines, and a wide variety of other scientific facts, including - unbelievably - whether the world is flat.  

Although I think the verdict was justified  - I, and many others apparently judging from the Washington Post article -  worry about how the case might stifle free speech and open debate  

WaPo:

"Inflammatory does not equal defamatory,' Victoria Weatherford, an attorney for Simberg repeatedly told the jury during the trial.

True, but it's telling that the jury decided Simberg was for liable for comparing Mann to convicted child molester Jerry Sandusky but not for other statements he made criticizing Mann's scientific work

It sounds like the jury wisely tried to avoid stepping on potential First Amendment rights, no matter who noxious that "free speech" from Simberg might have been. I'm slightly more comfortable with inaccurate criticism of a scientist's work than I am with baselessly tying the scientist to a heinous crime. 

Mann's fellow climate activists and lawyers seemed to say the same thing.   

Michael Mann, among the world's most prominent
climatologists, was defamed in an inflammatory blog
posts and was awarded a bit more than $1 million
in a jury trial last week. 

 As Nature reports:

"It's perfectly legitimate to criticize scientific findings, but this verdict is a strong signal that individual scientists shouldn't be accused of serious misconduct without strong evidence,' says Michael Gerrard, a legal scholar at Columbia University's Sabin Center for Climate change Law in New York City."

Lyrissa Lidsky, a defamation expert at the University of Florida similarly chimed in for the Washington Post: "We normally let scientists fight it out amongst themselves to discover what the truth is....In these science cases, theres's a lot of leeway for opinion. It doesn't mean there's carte blanche to lie about another scientist"

The lying Lidsky refers to was one of the central subjects of the lawsuit. The defendants accused Mann of illicitly manipulating data to support his conclusions. Close to 10 organizations, including the federal Environmental Protection Agency and the National Science Foundation investigating Mann after the allegations.    

As I wrote last month: 

"All the organizations that investigated Mann found that his science was solid, all of his research was properly conducted, and the facts he presented in his work were indeed facts. The hockey stick was proven to be a real thing."

Despite that widely accepted legal precedents, you still gotta give Steyn credit for being, um, headstrong.  

WaPo again:

"During closing arguments, Steyn, a radio and TV personality who spoke for himself during much of the trial, said he still 'stand(s) on the truth of every word I wrote about Michael Mann, his fraudulent hockey stick and the corrupt investigation process at Penn State.'"

Mann told Nature that he hopes the win "signals the beginning of the end of the open season on scientists by ideologically motivated bad actors. And maybe, just maybe, the facts and reason still matter even in today's fraught political economy."

Given the hyperbolic state of everything from politics to social media these days, Mann ought not hold his breath. 

This whole lawsuit thing got started in 2012 and only now got to a verdict. And it's not over yet. 

Mann said he plans to appeal a 2021 D.C. Superior Court decision that held National Review and Competitive Enterprise Institute not liable for defamation even though they published the attacks by Simberg and Steyn.

 In addition, it looks Steyn will appeal the $1 million in punitive damage.

The libertarian publication Reason opined that the punitive damages are the most vulnerable part of the jury's decision.  There is Supreme Court precedence that excess punitive damages violate Due Process.  Is the $1 million in punitive damages excessive?

I have no fricken' idea. 

But it's clear the legal battle will go on.  I do think people should be held accountable for wild ad hominen  attacks that pass for "discourse" these days. 

After A Decade, A Climate Scientist's Defamation Suit Goes To Trial.

After 12 years, a defamation  lawsuit against provocateurs by
noted climatologist Michael Mann has finally gone
to trial.  Mann's detractors saying he's attacking free
speech, but bloggers being sued compared Mann to
 criminals and even child molesters.  

 Talk about a slow court proceeding!

Michael Mann, one of the world's most prominent climate scientist, is finally getting his day in court. This more than a decade after he filed suit against climate deniers he says defamed him. 

According to Scripps News Service:

"A renowned climate scientist filed a lawsuit against a right-wing blogger and an analyst for defamation, and after more than a decade, the trial begin on Thursday. 

Michael Mann, an earth and environmental scientist from the University of Pennsylvania, filed the 2012 court case, claiming that online attacks on his work constituted defamation."

The long running case is important because it could set parameters as to how far people and activists can go in attempting to take down a perceived enemy.  I'm very nearly a First Amendment absolutist, but I still think there needs to be limits on how badly one can lie about and attack someone.

Mann is suing Rand Simberg, an analyst at the Competitive Enterprise Institute mainly because he published a blog post comparing Man to a convicted child molester. Mann is also suing Mark Steyn, who fawningly quoted Simberg and said Mann's research was, quote, "fraudulent."

It's interesting that if you look up that blog post now, there's a disclaimer at the bottom saying "Two inappropriate sentences that originally appeared in this post have been removed by the editor."

Hmmm. 

I worry if Mann loses, the type of baseless attacks you see on social media all the time will get even worse. There's already death threats galore out there, mostly by hard right winters who wilt when somebody says something, um, factual. 

Mann's suit might have a chilling effect on those that stalk, harass, threaten and all that. But unlike critics of his legal moves, I seriously doubt it will chill real journalism in the process. 

I regard Mann as Mr. Hockey Stick for his clear, relatable explanation of world temperature trends and how climate change influenced those trends.

Way back in 1998, Mann famously plotted in a graph that showed that global temperatures remained essentially flat for the past millennium before spiking upward dramatically after 1900. His graph looks like a hockey stick with its blade upturned. 

This easy to understand graph was featured prominently in widely read and watched publications, and thus he greatly helped galvanize the public's understanding of climate change. 

Right wing climate deniers were having none of this.They screeched and yelled that global warming is a hoax and they accused Mann of illicitly manipulating data to support his conclusions.  In short, they said Mann's hockey stick was one great big fake. 

Those allegations prompted an investigation of Mann and his science by the federal Environmental Protection Agency, the National Science Foundation and seven other organizations.

When you have that many powerful groups investigating you, that could leave the public wondering if you're on the up and up. 

All the organizations that investigated Mann found that his science was solid, all of his research was properly conducted, and the facts he presented in his work were indeed facts. The hockey stick was proven to be a real thing. 

While all this was going on, groups widely believed to be backed by billionaire Charles Koch repeatedly bombarded Mann with freedom on information demands, probably in an effort to interfere with his work and/or discourage him from publishing more papers. 

The deniers were also probably pretty mad that in 2007, Mann, and with Al Gore and people with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, won the Nobel Peace Prize for establishing a consensus on the link between what us humans do and global warming. 

With the braying climate deniers still besmirching his reputation, it was Mann's turn to get pissed. As Scripps describes it:

"After his investigation included, Mann filed a lawsuit against the two organizations and two authors for defamation and intentional infliction of emotional distress."

The Competitive Enterprise Institute and the National Review publishes the right wing bloggers' attacks. But in 2021 courts ruled the CEI and National Review would be dropped from Mann's lawsuit because the bloggers were not employees of the two organizations.  

Still the people over at the National Review are still really peeved at Mann, apparently. 

The National Review had a pretty, um, rich take on the whole mess earlier this month. They're calling it "Michael Mann vs. Journalism" as if the people constantly harassing the scientists and repeatedly making false accusations were intrepid journalists from the New York Times or something. 

This quote from the National Review piece criticizing Mann's lawsuit really got my blood boiling:

"Are Americans able to disagree about hotly contested political topics without being harassed, dragged into court on the most specious of pretexts and subjected to ruinous legal fees?"

Why, yes! Yes they are! Or at leas they should be. I hardly think thousands of frivolous Freedom of Information Requests, demonstrably false accusations .... are Americans high-mindedly "disagreeing about hotly contested political topics."

After all, with all the peer reviews and such, the people Mann is suing knew, or should have known, that Mann did not falsify his research. So there's one of Mann's plausible arguments that he was defamed. Not to mention that comparison to a serial child molester. 

Funny how the extreme right wing, whenever they encounter someone politically they don't like, get the vapors and start accusing people of sexual assault and deviance.  

Sure, I'd be annoyed with Mann to say the least if he sued journalists or others for merely asking challenging questions about his work.  That comes with the territory. 

The National Review is correct in stating that First Amendment case law allows people to make vehement and caustic statements and arguments without fear of a successful lawsuit against them. But does the First Amendment allow making knowingly false statements about somebody, especially if those false statements are designed to wreck a person's reputation?

I'm not sure why it's taken so long for Mann's suit to go to trial. I mean, 12 years is a long time, even by the standards of an often slow justice system we have these days. 

I do hope Mann wins. Sure, we have the right to criticize whoever we want. Simberg could have made his case against Mann vehemently and aggressively even though he was wrong. But he took the schoolyard bully approach by resorting to false accusation of heinous crimes.   .

That's definitely a bridge too far.