Nearly two years ago, Canadian blogger Deep Climate found the first few pages of plagiarism in the Wegman Report.ย Since then, he and others have found many more, whose chronology is graphed in Plagiarism chains involving Edward Wegman and/or students, 10/07/11, going back toย 1996.
After 17+ months beyond the first of many formal complaints, and despite exhortation from a Nature editorial in May 2011 to move faster, George Mason University (GMU) is still reviewing theย situation.
Dan Vergano of USA Today reported on 05/16/11 that
โNeither Dr. Wegman nor Dr. Said has ever engaged in plagiarism,โ says their attorney, Milton Johns, by e-mail. In a March 16 e-mail to the journal, Wegman blamed a student who โhad basically copied and pastedโ from others’ work into the 2006 congressional report, and said the text was lifted without acknowledgment and used in the journal study. โWe would never knowingly publish plagiarized materialโ wrote Wegman, a former CSDA journalย editor.โ
But who is Milton Johns, to be so confident of his firmย statement?
A quick search finds Milton C. Johns, Attorney at Law, whose motto seems toย be:
When Experience, Integrity and Understanding matterย mostโฆ
His About Me notes he has published both fiction and nonfiction, andย shows:
GEORGE MASON UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF LAW, Arlington, VA Juris Doctor with High Honors, Decemberย 1997
GMU J.D. Wesley Russell is the actual filer of Civil Investigative Demands against the University of Virginia. His boss, GMU J.D. Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelliย has been well-funded by coal and utilities.ย He has also received funding from the Koch brothers,ย long-time givers to GMU and its variousย institutes.
Their latest CID relies heavily on the Wegman Report, and like it, is filled with errors.ย As the CID‘s detailed climate material seems unlikely to be covered in law school, it remains to be seen if unacknowledged help was provided by others, perhaps VA residents well-connected with GMU, like Fred Singer or Patย Michaels.
Milt Johns has a page at the Red Dog Express, RPV Network, where Crescendo to Climategate Cacophony, p.115 hadย found Jerry Coffey, who in 2005 contacted Wegman, starting the work that led to the Wegman Report.ย One of John’s โfriendsโ there is Cuccinelli, unsurprising as they were contemporaneous at GMU.
Actually, the relationship was much closer, as inย ~2008, Milt Johns was a partner in a 4-person law firm, Cuccinelli & Day, LLC, soย Johns was Cuccinelli’s lawย partner.
Coincidencesย happen.
UPDATEย 11/06/11
Courtesy of J. Bowers, we find that the lawyer David Schnare, who has been filing the complaint against U VA for the โAmerican Tradition Instituteโ (ATI) got his J.D. from GMU in 1999.ย ย Well, coincidences do happen sometime, especally around a school beloved of the Kochย brothers.
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