People send me stuff. Readers will surely recall ‘I’m Michael E. Mann, Distinguished Professor of Meteorology at Penn State, Ask Me Almost Anything!’. A reader who does not wish to be named writes about the questions he posed. Readers probably won’t be surprised at the outcome. – Anthony

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I gave it quite a lot of thought, and asked three questions of Michael Mann during his Ask Me Anything on Reddit:

Given the Oxburgh Panel’s criticism on your use of statistical methods and McShane and Wyner 2010 finding significant statistical lapses in Mann et al 2008, do you foresee consulting with statisticians before publishing future papers? Do you regret the splicing of instrumental data with proxy data in your Nature study, something that Phil Jones referred to as “Mike’s Nature trick?” Darrell Kaufman issued a correction after he discovered that your orientation of the Tiljander data set was upside down in Mann et al 2008. Do you regret reversing this orientation, and why have you not issued a similar correction?

Unfortunately, Michael Mann saw none of these questions.

And it’s not that that the questions showed up but were down-voted into oblivion by the users (seems to be a safe zone for alarmists). I half-expected that! What transpired instead was that the moderator blocked my comments from appearing entirely. Which was weird, because the only reason they should not have shown up is if I was posting spam.

The questions: (click to enlarge)

I contacted the moderator to inquire and his response was that my questions were “inappropriate” for Michael Mann.

The moderator action: (click to enlarge)

So when the moderator specified that “hard questions are allowed” for Dr. Mann, I guess what he really meant was that “hard questions are definitely not allowed”. And as to “inappropriate”, I can hardly imagine more appropriate questions!

What Michael Mann took part in was more along the lines of a puff piece or a public relations show than anything like an “Ask Me Anything.” I’m disappointed, but not surprised. And if Dr. Mann ever reads this, I imagine there are a lot of us who would love the answers to those 3 questions. And about a hundred others after that.

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