“Nielsen-Gammon interviews North and others on Wegman – plagiarism may be related to a cultural misunderstanding by foreign exchange student“ (May 19, 2011). Anthony Watts decides it still might be worth trying to claim that the plagiarism scandal embroiling Dr. Wegman and his co-authors are all just a misunderstanding. After all, his associate Dr. John Nielsen-Gammon is trying to talk himself into believing it.

Says Anthony, sagely;

I’m surprised too, at the reaction of North and others. They may have a point.

Here’s the problem, Anthony: The clear plagiarism shows that the authors were operating outside of their expertise. This undermines everything they wrote. They couldn’t even correctly summarize the relevant bodies of knowledge in their paper! Their statistical criticisms were fundamentally irrelevant to the result they were trying to undermine (Dr. Mann’s 1998 historical temperature reconstructions often called “the Hockey Stick“) and their loopy cronyism accusations were unsupported.

Perhaps this has an uncomfortable echo for you, Anthony.