AAAS honors hyper-partisan, name-calling bully Michael Mann

Organizations give awards to recognize those individuals who best display the values that organization seeks to represent and uphold. The American Association for the Advancement of Science is the leading scientific organization in the United States.

From a vast pool of excellent scientists who engage with the public, the AAAS has decided in 2018 to give its prestigious award for Public Engagement with Science to climate scientist, Michael E. Mann.

I find this remarkable. Who is Dr. Mann?

  • He Tweets all day about Donald Trump, typically calling him names and mocking him. Mann writes dozens and dozens of Tweets about Trump every day. Here is one from today.

  • He has suggested, on more than one occasion, that the death penalty is appropriate for a Republican member of Congress. Here is one example:

  • He has worked hard to have people he disagrees with fired from their jobs and suffer career repercussions, including by directly contacting employers and leading public campaigns. He has had some success. Here is a just a short list of individuals he has recently targeted:

• Me (Roger Pielke, Jr)
• Bret Stephens (see tweet below)

• Rebecca Mercer
• Megan McArdle
• Judith Curry

  • He routinely engages in name-calling, outright misrepresentation of others’ views and leads social media bullying against fellow academics.

That is just a short list.

Mann is fully entitled to his views and the use of whatever techniques he thinks appropriate to advance his extreme politics. He is certainly not alone in playing political hardball in 2018.

My issue here is not with Mann. It is with the decision by AAAS to single out Mann as someone who embodies our highest values of the scientific community: a role model to emulate who engages in behaviors to celebrate.

With this award, what message is AAAS sending to the scientific community and to the public?

The AAAS is telling us that engaging in hyper-partisan, gutter politics, targeted against Republicans and colleagues you disagree with, using unethical tactics, will be rewarded by leaders in the scientific community.

AAAS could work to help to defuse the pathological politicization of science. Instead, it has thrown some gasoline on the fire.

Read more at The Honest Broker

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Comments (5)

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    sandman

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    He kind of resembles Harvey Weinstein, besides everything else.

    Reply

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    Alan Stewart

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    I would love to see the rest of the list of those who’s character Mann has impunged. Michael Mann, sole proprietor of Lawsuits Inc. I would gladly donate to a class action lawsuit against Mann from all those that he has performed character assination on. In essence, for Ball/Steyn, Mann’s history is a form of prima facie evidence of the spurious and consistent nature of Mann’s misuse of the legal system. Equally culpable is the far left judiciary that allows these cases to proceed.

    Reply

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    Joseph Olson

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    “Hockey Stickery Doc” at CanadaFreePress, Feb 2010

    “Penn Panel Limbos Under the Hockey Stick” at CFP, July 2010

    Satire is protected Free Speech, take that Mikey Mouse Mann

    Reply

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    Alan Stewart

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    Dear Amad,
    AAAS is a reputal scientific organization but like most, at heart, they are an “Old Boys” network. I view Mann as one not to receive fame but rather infamy. By either design or lack of ability his claim to fame is the (McIntyre/McKittrick) DISCREDITED, ‘Hokey Stick.’ The idea of an award does not listen well in my mind.
    Cheers

    Reply

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