Archive for the ‘Fraud’ Category
September 8, 2013
Oh dear.
I have the same sense of disappointment as when I read that yet another top athlete has been found to have been using drugs. I suppose we are all looking for the stories of individuals who exemplify the ever stretching limits of human endurance and achievement. I was thrilled and I had only admiration a few days ago when the publicity machine exploded on 64 year old Diana Nyad having completed a 110 mile swim from Cuba to Florida. It made me feel good to be human. But it may all have been too good to be true.
Yet another “feel-good” bubble may be bursting.
Could the glare of the spotlight be so alluring and so lucrative as to lead to such an elaborate hoax?
CBS News:
Diana Nyad’s 110-mile swim from Cuba to Florida has generated positive publicity and adoration for the 64-year-old endurance athlete — along with skepticism from some members of the small community of marathon swimmers who are questioning whether she accomplished the feat honestly.
… long-distance swimmers have been debating whether Nyad got a boost from the boat that was accompanying her — either by getting in it or holding onto it — during a particularly speedy stretch of her swim. They also question whether she violated the traditions of her sport — many follow strict guidelines known as the English Channel rules — by using a specialized mask and wetsuit to protect herself from jellyfish. ……
It was her fifth try, an endeavor apparently free from the boat troubles, bad weather, illnesses and jellyfish encounters that have bedeviled Nyad and other swimmers in recent years.
Nyad’s progress was tracked online via GPS by her team, and some critics say they think information is missing.
Many wonder about a roughly seven-hour stretch when Nyad apparently didn’t stop to eat or drink, recalling her 2012 attempt when she got onto the boat for hours during rough weather. Nyad eventually got back into the water to try finishing, but her team was criticized for delaying the release of that information to the public.
Malinak said the hours-long spike in Nyad’s speed after 27 hours of swimming is particularly questionable — she went from her normal pace of roughly 1.5 mph to more than 3 mph, then slowed down again as she approached Key West.
Tags:Cuba, Diana Nyad, English channel Rules, Florida, Swimming, Swimming hoax
Posted in Behaviour, Fraud, Sport | Comments Off on Was Diana Nyad’s Cuba to Florida swim a hoax?
June 30, 2013
That Banks and Bankers all over Europe have made a killing over all the “bailouts” is no great secret. Just how they have done it – and very often in collusion with friends within Governments – is slowly coming to light.
This week it has been the turn of the bankers at the Anglo Irish Bank. The Bank was finally nationalised costing Irish taxpayers some €30 billion. That is over €6,000 per head of population! No doubt the bankers made sure of their severance packages before they bowed out.
ABC News: In the age of austerity, senior bankers laughing about public-funded bail-outs is not a good look, but that is exactly what has happened in Ireland. There is outrage after a national newspaper published details of a taped phone conversation between bank executives mocking regulators and boasting they fooled them. The bank ended up collapsing, costing tax payers around 30 billion euros.
David Drumm ” We need the moolah”: CEO Anglo Irish
Irish Independent29th June:
Anglo Tapes: Anatomy of the bank that broke Ireland
Irish Independent 30th June: Fresh revelations in the Anglo-tapes scandal about Brian Cowen’s administration shows his party was willing to save the failing bank at any cost, his political opponents claimed. …….
……….. Fine Gael Dail finance committee member Dara Murphy alleged it was further proof of the cosy relationship that existed between Fianna Fail, developers and Anglo Irish. “While there is no doubt that the entire country has been sickened to its very core at what the Anglo tapes have revealed this week, the reality is that tens of thousands of families are living with a daily reminder of the greed, avarice and utter contempt that was shown to the Irish people in respect of the dealings at Anglo,” he said. (more…)
Tags:Anglo Irish Bank, Anglo Irish Bank hidden loans controversy, Bankers, David Drumm, fraud, Ireland
Posted in Behaviour, Ethics, Europe, Fraud, Ireland | Comments Off on Tapes expose Irish Bankers warts and .. warts!
June 28, 2013
Another Chapter in the Diedrik Stapel saga comes to an end as he reaches a deal with prosecutors but the exposure of his behaviour has revealed much that is not so uncommon in the field of social psychology. Social psychologists now need to be on their best behaviour to dispell the notion that “fraud” and confirmation bias are their stock-in-trade. Social Psychology remains on probation and must avoid any hint of misconduct if it is not to lose further ground as an academic discipline ( but it will be quite some time before this discipline becomes a science).
Associated Press (via The Republic):
THE HAGUE, Netherlands — A disgraced Dutch social psychologist who admitted faking or manipulating data in dozens of publications has agreed to do 120 hours of community service work and forfeit welfare benefits equivalent to 18 months’ salary in exchange for not being prosecuted for fraud.
Prosecutors announced the deal Friday, calling it “a fitting conclusion” to a case of scientific fraud that sent shockwaves through Dutch academia.
Diederik Stapel who formerly worked at universities in the cities of Groningen and Tilburg, acknowledged the fraud in 2011 and issued a public apology last November, saying he had “failed as a scientist.”
He once claimed to have shown that the very act of thinking about eating meat makes people behave more selfishly.
Tags:academic misconduct, Diederik Stapel, fraud, psychology, Social psychology
Posted in Academic misconduct, Fraud, psychology, scientific misconduct | Comments Off on Closure for Stapel perhaps but social psychology remains “on probation”
April 30, 2013
I would not have expected the New York Times to be an apologist and a publicist for a fraudster.
The case of Diedrik Stapel and all the data he faked by just making them up to fit his pre-determined results will always bring discredit to the field (not science) of social psychology. But Stapel is now busy creating a new career for himself where his fraud itself is to be the vehicle of his future success. He has written a book about his derailment and the adoring media have not only forgiven him but are now playing an active part in his rehabilitation: in humanising him and publicisng his book. The con continues and the media are (perhaps unwitting) partners to the con.
The New York Times ran a long “analytical” article about Stapel and his fraud a few days ago. A long interview with Stapel and ostensibly a “neutral” piece the article is entirely concerned with humanising the “criminal”. It seems to me that Stapel is very successfully continuing to manipulate the media which earlier used to idolise him for his ridiculous “studies” (eating meat made people selfish!). But if you look at the NYT piece as a piece of marketing material for a book written by a discredited author it all makes sense. In fact the NYT article might just as well have been commissioned by the publishers of the book
NYT: …. Right away Stapel expressed what sounded like heartfelt remorse for what he did to his students. “I have fallen from my throne — I am on the floor,” he said, waving at the ground. “I am in therapy every week. I hate myself.” That afternoon and in later conversations, he referred to himself several times as tall, charming or handsome, less out of arrogance, it seemed, than what I took to be an anxious desire to focus on positive aspects of himself that were demonstrably not false. …..
Stapel did not deny that his deceit was driven by ambition. But it was more complicated than that, he told me. He insisted that he loved social psychology but had been frustrated by the messiness of experimental data, which rarely led to clear conclusions. His lifelong obsession with elegance and order, he said, led him to concoct sexy results that journals found attractive. “It was a quest for aesthetics, for beauty — instead of the truth,” he said. He described his behavior as an addiction that drove him to carry out acts of increasingly daring fraud, like a junkie seeking a bigger and better high. ….
The report’s publication would also allow him to release a book he had written in Dutch titled “Ontsporing” — “derailment” in English — for which he was paid a modest advance. The book is an examination of his life based on a personal diary he started after his fraud was made public. Stapel wanted it to bring both redemption and profit, and he seemed not to have given much thought to whether it would help or hurt him in his narrower quest to seek forgiveness from the students and colleagues he duped.
The New York Times : The mind of a con man Published: April 26, 2013
“The book is an examination of his life based on a personal diary he started after his fraud was made public.” writes our intrepid NYT reporter.
Really? – and how much of this self-serving “diary” was faked or just made up?
Willingly or otherwise, the New York Times (and the reporter Yudhijit Bhattacharjee) are being duped and manipulated by a consummate fraudster.
Tags:Diederik Stapel, fraud, New York Times, Social psychology, Social science
Posted in Academic misconduct, Behaviour, Fraud, Media, Scientific Fraud, scientific misconduct | 3 Comments »
November 27, 2012
A press release was issued on Saturday 24th November. A team of scientists can verify that their 5-year long DNA study, currently under peer-review, confirms the existence of a novel hominin hybrid species, commonly called “Bigfoot” or “Sasquatch,” living in North America.
It feels like a PR campaign to me rather than any scientific study. It has all the makings of a hoax for publicity purposes where the inevitable debunking of the hoax is expected – but where criminal fraud cannot be proved.
The critical weakness lies in the purported samples from Bigfoot which have apparently been undergoing genetic study. The “scientists” are decoupled from the authenticity or the contamination/manipulation of the samples and are protected from charges of fraud. Of course nothing has been peer-reviewed or published yet. No data has been made available either. Where the samples came from and how they were “prepared” also remains to be seen. And the “study” has a rather obvious commercial interest (The scientist leading the study, Dr. Melba Ketchum is the founder of DNA Diagnostics). I have a strong suspicion that the objective of the hoax is simply publicity and the main objectives of the hoax will be to keep the story going for as long as “genetically” possible. The results and data leaked must therefore also be stage-managed to be difficult to debunk or disprove so that the assertions can live as long as possible.
(more…)
Tags:Bigfoot, Bigfoot fraud, Bigfoot publicity, DNA, Ketchum, Sasquatch
Posted in Fraud, Non-Science, Science, Scientific Fraud | 2 Comments »
February 23, 2012
The Global Warming priesthood have long experience in fudging data, cheating and suppressing opposing views. But Peter Gleick, a true acolyte of the religion, has now been reduced not only to lying, cheating and stealing but also to forgery and fakery.
The blogosphere has been full of the Fakegate or the Peter Gleick affair for the last week. First he used impersonation and lying to extract confidential documents from Heartland. He clearly has broken some laws. But he found nothing very damaging regarding climate sceptics so he forged a “summary” document so as to be able to add some spice to the affair. He then disseminated the documents widely and these were immediately publicised by a gullible and hypocritical orthodoxy.
Peter Gleick - Faker
Of course Gleick is a climate alarmist and activist and for him and his friends Heartland remains the “villain” and his ends of “exposing” the alleged bad guys apparently justifies his dishonest and criminal means. His authorship of the forged document was recognised by Steven Mosher and Climate Audit just from his writing style and bad punctuation. Needless to say Gleick is considered by the global warming priesthood as an expert exponent of integrity in science research. In this sordid case some are delusional enough to see him as a hero.
Gleick’s own work is unimportant and lacking any real scientific content. His lack of ethics (apart from his poor writing and general incompetence) is of no great significance. But his behaviour exposes and is in the tradition established by the Hockey Stick crowd (Mann, Jones, Hansen, Trenberth et al) of fudging and cheating and suppression of opposing views.
BREAKING: Gleick Confesses
Peter Gleick Confesses
Gleick’s AGU Resignation
Megan McArdle gives Mosher and the blogosphere props for pointing to Gleick
Peter Gleick Confesses to Obtaining Heartland Documents Under False Pretenses
FakeGate: Just Another Day at Team Green
Fakegate Illustrates Global Warming Alarmists’ Deceit and Desperation
Tags:Climate Audit, climate change, Fakegate, Forgery, global warming, Heartland Institute, Megan McArdle, Peter Gleick, Scientific misconduct
Posted in Alarmism, Climate, Corruption, Ethics, Fraud | 1 Comment »
November 23, 2011
I am not quite sure who put this together but its appearance within about 24 hours of the original data dump on a Russian server is pretty impressive.
Climategate 2 | FOIA 2011 Searchable Database
ReadMe:
This website is provided as a research resource for mining the recently leaked climate communications. Every effort has been made to redact personal contact information such as email addresses and telephone numbers. The redaction algorithms are currently tuned to be quite stringent, and they will inadvertantly obfuscate other details as well. We will continue to tune the software to improve the quality of the results.
This database was assembled in a very short space of time, and at present only provides the most rudimentary tools for exploring this vast trove of material. We will be improving the quality of the search tools and adding further metadata to the database over the course of the next few weeks.
The investigative capabilities of the on-line community when engaged is quite formidable (as I have remarked on earlier).
Tags:Climategate, Climategate 2.0 emails, Climatic Research Unit email controversy, FOIA, global warming, IPCC
Posted in Climate, Fraud, Media | Comments Off on Searchable data base for Climategate 2 emails already online
November 23, 2011
The Carbon Trading scams around the world are coming undone (though Australia in it’s wisdom and its noble efforts to single-handedly save the world has just introduced a carbon tax). The Swiss Bank, UBS has produced a report for its investors with a devastating indictment about carbon trading “waste” in Europe and its bleak future.
The Australian:
SWISS banking giant UBS says the European Union’s emissions trading scheme has cost the continent’s consumers $287 billion for “almost zero impact” on cutting carbon emissions, and has warned that the EU’s carbon pricing market is on the verge of a crash next year.
(more…)
Tags:carbon trading scams, carbon trading waste, Emissions trading, European Union, UBS, UBS Investment Research
Posted in Alarmism, Business, Climate, European Union, Fraud | Comments Off on Europe has “wasted” €210 billion on carbon trading for almost zero impact
November 17, 2011
Perhaps there has to be a process for retracting sainthoods in cases of religious misconduct?
A new book by Italian historian Professor Sergio Luzzatto suggests that Padre Pio’s stigmata were a fraud and the result of using carbolic acid.
Padre Pio's stigmata are being called into question (Photo: AP)
The Telegraph:
Did Padre Pio fake his stigmata with carbolic acid? That’s the claim made by Italian historian Professor Sergio Luzzatto, who says he has discovered documents including a letter from a pharmacist who supplied carbolic acid for Pio, canonised by Pope John Paul in 2002. The professor has made this claim before, drawing the following reply from the Catholic Anti-Defamation League: “We would like to remind Mr Luzzatto that according to Catholic doctrine, canonisation carries with it papal infallibility. We would like to suggest to Mr Luzzatto that he dedicates his energies to studying religion properly.“
The doctrine of papal infallibility indeed.
The Catholic church and its own priests have done more to defame Catholicism than anybody else in recent times.
Tags:carbolic acid, faked stigmata, Padre Pio, Pio of Pietrelcina, Sergio Luzzatto
Posted in Fraud, Religious misconduct | 1 Comment »
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