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By Defend Science, September 6, 2011
In 2006, Charles
Monnett, one of the country's top Arctic scientists, co-authored a 7-page paper
with Jeffrey Gleason reporting observations of polar bears that had drowned due
to a combination of shrinking sea ice and severe storms. The article was
peer-reviewed and published in the science journal “Polar Biology”. Shortly
after, it went viral playing a role helping galvanize public awareness of the
seriousness of global warming. Al Gore referenced it in his book “An
Inconvenient Truth” and it received large press coverage.
Now Monnett is
being persecuted, was suspended from his job and placed on administrative leave
for weeks, forbidden to speak with co-workers and subjected to a on-going witch
hunt by the federal agency he works for, the Bureau of Ocean Energy
Management, Regulation and Enforcement or BOEMRE. In late August, he was
called back to his job but stripped of his former responsibilities involving
managing research contracts. A cloud of suspicion and innuendo has been
deliberately kept hanging over his head. A spokeswoman for BOEMRE said “The
return of an employee to work does not suggest that future administrative
actions cannot/will not be taken.”
Through this ordeal
Monnett has not been speaking to the press but his wife, Lisa Rotterman, a
fellow scientist who worked with Monnett for years, including at BOEMRE's
predecessor agency, said the case did not come out of the blue.
Rotterman said
Monnett had come under fire in the past within the agency for speaking the
truth about what the science showed. She said the 2006 article wasn't framed in
the context of climate change but was relevant to the topic.
She feared what
happened to Monnett would send a "chilling message" at the agency
just as important oil and gas development decisions in the Arctic will soon be
made.
"I don't
believe the timing is coincidental," she said. (And as this article
was being written, Shell obtained initial federal approval to start drilling in
the arctic regions.)
Rotterman said
Monnett's work included identifying questions that needed to be answered to
inform the environmental analyses the agency must conduct before issuing
drilling permits.
"This is a
time when sowing doubt in the public's mind about whether those findings can be
trusted or not, that makes people think, I don't know what to believe,"
she said.
All this is
reminiscent of the Bush administration's crude attacks on science.
Time-Line of a
Fishing Expedition and Smear campaign
There has been a
months-long ongoing investigation conducted by the Interior Department
Inspector General. Initially, Dr. Monnett was not even informed what he
was accused of beyond vague statements about “integrity issues”. The “focus”
of this investigation was left wide open with room for a broad fishing
expedition looking for any accusation that they could make stick.
The initial stages
of the investigation were also quite brazen with little attempt to disguise the
attempt to smear the scientific integrity of Monnett and the 2006 polar bear
paper.
A reading of the
transcript of the first IG interview with Monnett shows that they are most
definitely going after him due to the Polar bear paper, with criminal
investigators having no scientific training conducting a fishing expedition
into his scientific work and looking for anything they can accuse him with. To
read the transcript of this first interview with the investigators, click here.
On July 29, with
this phony “investigation” facing increasing public exposure and clearly stung
by growing anger and protests in the scientific community, BOEMRE tried to
cover itself, issuing a press statement stating “The agency placed Mr. Monnett
on administrative leave for reasons having nothing to do with scientific
integrity, his 2006 journal article or issues related to permitting,” a
reference to the bureau’s role in permitting offshore drilling. See here.
But on the same day
of this denial, July 29, the Inspector General's office sent Monnett a letter
calling him in for a further round of questioning, stating that the interview
"may include follow-up questions to your previous interview with the OIG
regarding the integrity and representations or your official work." That
letter also ominously said that the Justice Department had evaluated “his case”
and declined to prosecute. (to read this letter click here.
The next interview
in this fishing expedition added more questioning about:
the peer review
process of the 2006 Polar Bear study
how a contract for
joint U.S./Canadian study of polar bears (tracking their movements from 2005 to
2012) was awarded.
This study is an
important one focusing on the polar bears' changing behavior in the face of
changes in the arctic environment caused by global warming – changes such as
their habitat ranges moving south.
What they focused
on ultimately was that Monnett (who served as a technical representative for
the contracting officer who retained the ultimate authority to approve to
project), provided some minor assistance to a Canadian scientist on the project
in working through the complex forms required to be filled out for the project.
Monnett's lawyer
has stated that contact and sharing of information between Dr. Monnett and the
University of Alberta were encouraged by the senior Contracting Officer and the
Chief Scientist of BOEMRE, Dr. James Kendall the rules about
what kind of sharing of information between scientists in this kind of
sole-source contract are far from clear – see this note of protest and support
from one of Monnett's colleagues which makes it obvious how byzantine and not
well understood these rules are.
In their clumsy
zeal to go after and discredit Monnett and any scientific work he was connected
with, BOEMRE management even issued a stop-work order on the ongoing
US/Canadian Polar bear study on July 13 and then, again as outrage and protests
against this mounted, they were forced to rescind the order two weeks later
(Aug. 1).
Monnett, working
with his lawyer, filed a Complaint of Scientific and Scholarly Misconduct
against BOEMRE and its management for the way he has been mis-treated. And on August 8,
the scientific integrity officer of the Department of the Interior announced
they were launching an investigation into these allegations. Footnote 1
Not long after,
Monnett received a letter ending his suspension. But he was informed that
he would no longer have any role in developing or managing contracts. And,
continuing their campaign of smears and unspecified ongoing threats against Monnett,
a spokeswoman for BOEMRE added, “The return of an employee to work does not
suggest that future administrative actions cannot/will not be taken.”
What stands out in
all of this is how forces outside and, in this case, inside government agencies
are moving to drag scientists through the muck of suspicion and innuendo, to
attack science and academic freedom, to intimidate scientists by making demands
for details of all aspects of their work, all their communications, all drafts
of their papers, who they work with, etc, all in the name of “open-ness”. This
affair has many frightening similarities with how Michael Mann and other
climate scientists were attacked during the so-called “climate-gate” affair. (see here)
A recent NY Times editorial called the controversy around Charles Monnett's observations a “minor
side-show in the global warming debate”. This badly misses the point that if we allow
scientists to be mistreated this way it will have a chilling effect on all
whose scientific results are “inconvenient truths”. And this will have a
very bad effect, not only on the crucial need to resolve the global warming
debate based on an understanding of the world as it really is but also on
scientific and critical thinking more generally.
Defend Science
Footnote 1: It is
BOEMRE That Should Be The Target of Investigation
This BOEMRE is really the one that should be the target of investigation
for corruption and attacks on scientists and scientific integrity. This
group – most notably its Alaska office where Monnett works - has a long
documented track record of suppressing environmental scientists, their work and
their findings, particularly any findings that might cause them any
difficulties in giving the green light to more oil drilling. The BOEMRE
is one part of what was formerly the Minerals Management Service (MMS), the
agency whose notoriety became such a public embarrassment during the Gulf Oil
Spill that the Obama administration was forced to re-organize it breaking it up
into 3 groups, one of which is now BOEMRE.
A General Accounting Office (GAO) report on MMS issued in 2010 confirmed
many scientists’ accounts that were channeled through Public Employees for
Environmental Responsibility (PEER) that Interior managers routinely “suppressed”
critical findings on issues ranging from the likelihood of oil spills to
acoustic damage to whales to introduction of invasive species.
The GAO report made several critical findings, including:
Management pressure resulted in scientific
reviews of the environmental impacts of Alaskan offshore oil drilling that were
so incomplete that they have been largely invalidated in court rulings in
lawsuits brought by environmentalists;
Scientists were under pressure to churn out
reviews that omitted important environmental concerns. In reaction, many
scientists left the Alaska OCS Office of the Minerals Management Service, the
Interior Department agency issuing offshore drilling permits. “From 2003
to 2008, 11 to 50 percent of the analysts in that section left each year,”
according to the report; and
Interior officials allowed scientists access to
project data only on a “need to know” basis in order to protect what they
believed to be the proprietary nature of oil industry information.
The culture of arrogance, impunity and deference to the needs of oil
drilling above all running through this organization was such that during the
time when the Interior Department was claiming to “generally agree with the
findings” of this GAO report and vowing improvements (2010), John Goll, the
head of the Alaska region, called an “all hands” meeting at which a cake was
served decorated with the words, “Drill, Baby, Drill”.
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