Second-Guessing Polar Bear Research
by FELICITY BARRINGER, The New York Times, August 2, 2011
An environmental advocacy group [PEER] representing Charles Monnett, a federal wildlife biologist who has been suspended from his job, says that he will undergo a second interview next Tuesday with the Interior Department’s inspector general’s office, this time about his role in promoting and designing a five-year research project on polar bear populations.
Dr. Monnett was placed on administrative leave two weeks ago by the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement [BOEMRE] and was informed that his integrity was in question. [The only integrity in question is that of BOEMRE and its extremely cozy relationship with Shell Oil, and its own lack of following procedures for investigations.]
A missive that he received from the Interior Department says that he may still face questions about a peer-reviewed paper he published in 2006 after a sighting of four dead polar bears in open waters of the Beaufort Sea. Agents now want to pose questions about the the design of a long-term contract to study the bears’ movements and behaviors and how it was awarded. [Give me a break. There was a single bidder. How many institutions have the ability to study polar bears? Maybe the Yukon Community College in Whitehorse should have made a bid. Maybe the rest of us would like an investigation of Cheney's Halliburton no-bid contracts awarded in Iraq.]
Dr. Monnett (pronounced Moe-NEIGH) played an important role in setting priorities for $50 million worth of research studies at the Alaska regional office of the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement. Shortly before his suspension on July 18, he was told he could have nothing more to do with this continuing study on polar bears because of doubts about his impartiality. [Readers, you are not going to believe this, but they are going after him because he used the words "global warming" in an e-mail to another researcher. Yup! Monnett must have had an "agenda" -- it could not have had anything to do with the fact that the Arctic is heating up at an incredible rate and that Arctic Sea ice is disappearing about 40 years before anyone thought that it would. The only agenda belongs to BOEMRE, who wants to suppress anything that might show American voters and taxpayers that it might not be such a great idea to drill for oil in the Arctic. Just who is paying their real salaries?]
In 2006, the journal Polar Biology published a peer-reviewed article by Dr. Monnett and another federal biologist, Jeffrey Gleason, in which they reported having sighted dead polar bears during a survey of bowhead whale populations in 2004. The article and associated discussions at scientific conferences helped to make the polar bear a charismatic symbol of climate change and its impact.
In 2006, the journal Polar Biology published a peer-reviewed article by Dr. Monnett and another federal biologist, Jeffrey Gleason, in which they reported having sighted dead polar bears during a survey of bowhead whale populations in 2004. The article and associated discussions at scientific conferences helped to make the polar bear a charismatic symbol of climate change and its impact.
When Dr. Monnett was suspended, the bureau halted the study. Asked about that study on Monday, Melissa Schwartz, a bureau spokeswoman, confirmed that the decision to halt it had been reversed and “the study is continuing to move forward.”
The study is led by Dr. Andrew Derocher of the University of Alberta, an institution that has led much of the Canadian research on polar bear populations. The stop-work order could have left the impression that the integrity of Dr. Derocher’s team was also in doubt [nicely done, let's smear Dr. Derocher while we're at it]; its withdrawal suggests that Dr. Monnett remains the focus of the case.
Dr. Monnett’s original paper, published in the journal Polar Biology, was what scientists call a “note,” or brief discussion of observations with limited analysis, all couched in the language of possibility. It suggested that the retreat of polar ice required the bears to swim longer distances. It hypothesized that the energy expended in these swims left the bears ill-prepared for a storm that brought high winds and waves.
It was not long before skeptics on the subject of human-caused climate change began to question Dr. Monnett’s findings, asking why no floating dead bears had been seen since [actually, they wanted to know why the fact that no floating dead bears being seen since had not been publicized -- idjits -- Gleason told them about 10 different ways that the article was published on the dead bears because it was so unusual].
A portion of an interview with Dr. Gleason by the inspector general’s agents in February goes into minute detail over whether the impact of a storm was given enough prominence and the retreating ice too much prominence. Dr. Gleason repeatedly responded in the fashion of other scientists whose findings have gone viral: I am responsible for the observations, not the spin.
The partial transcript was released by the group defending him, the Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility.
The investigators also told Dr. Gleason that Dr. Monnett had made a “big mistake” in calculations that put the bear mortality rate after the storm at 75% [the investigators even got that number wrong]. When Dr. Gleason asked what the investigation was about, he was told that it concerned “the validity of the paper.” In a later interview with Dr. Monnett, investigators said they were looking into “scientific misconduct.”
(One of the more lively moments in this transcript is the back-and-forth between the investigators and an increasingly exasperated Dr. Monnett over how to structure the mathematical calculations representing polar-bear mortality. He indicated, with consistent acidic references to “fifth grade” equations on percentages, that the investigators or their informants needed remedial work on their mathematics.)
Dr. Monnett confirmed for the investigators that after he observed the dead bears, he contacted Dr. Derocher and others about what to do about his observations, since they were polar bear experts and he was not. They encouraged him to publish them, he said.
Going forward, will such communications with these scientists be brought forth as evidence of bias? And what will Dr. Monnett be asked about the particulars of the awarding of the contract for or the design of the polar-bear study? Should his communications with other scientists be at issue, it will be interesting to compare how this issue is parsed in this case by comparison with other deconstructions of scientists’ communications.
I am referring, of course, to investigations of climate-change researchers at the University of East Anglia after their e-mails were stolen and climate change skeptics charged that the communications were evidence of ethical missteps. (The scientists were cleared of wrongdoing.) Or the ongoing investigation [i.e., harrassment, using Virginia taxpayers' money instead of that of the Koch brothers] of the climate researcher Michael Mann by Virginia’s attorney general, Kenneth T. Cuccinelli II, should he win his court battle appeal to subpoena Dr. Mann’s research papers and his e-mail correspondence with scientists.
A transcript of the next interview with Dr. Monnett may answer some of these questions. Or raise new ones.
[And, in the meantime, it would be great if the "Keystone Kops" investigators learned how to read, do math, and other basic tasks.]
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