On Day Ten of the Mann vs Simberg and Steyn trial in the District of Columbia Superior Court, the Plaintiff finally closed his case - after a fortnight of repetitive testimony about the joys of "peer-review" from witnesses the judge himself said he failed to see the need for.
If you've missed the first three weeks of this trial, Kerry Wakefield in this week's edition of The Spectator Down Under provides an excellent primer. Here's the first sentence:
No single artefact did more to launch the climate change scare than Professor Michael E Mann's famous – or should that be infamous? – 1998 hockey stick graph.
That's true. For the first decade of this century, it was the most famous scientific graph on the planet.
But here's Miss Wakefield's close:
Given the vindictive USD$83 million damages found against Trump in his case against serial rape accuser E. Jean Carroll, one cannot be optimistic about any jury trial in deep blue Washington DC. But Steyn is going down fighting, and one cannot but admire his guts and brio, even if his bank balance has been cleaned out. Sadly Steyn, representing himself, is now in a wheelchair, having recently suffered three heart attacks. If ever there were a case deserving funding, it is his. The trial continues.
Immediately warm-monger Mann rested, the Defendants rose and filed a motion for, per Simberg, "Judgment as a Matter of Law", which Steyn preferred to formulate in the more familiar Commonwealth phrase "No Case to Answer".
Usually, J-MOL (as the lawyers call it) is just a pro forma move to preserve your appeal rights. But, after a short recess, Judge Irving returned and gave the impression, enhanced by the usual tedious flim-flamming from Mann's lead counsel John Williams, that he just might be willing to take the J-MOL seriously. His Lordship then gave the parties what he called their "homework assignment", asking them for briefs, by noon today, on whether Mann's claim of lost grants should be permitted to be put to the jury. The judge professed to be "stunned" by what turned out to be the Plaintiff's knowing introduction of false evidence.
You can read Defendant Steyn's brief here.
After that excitement, the Defence called its first witness - Mann's University of Pennsylvania colleague Abraham Wyner. Sample quote:
Q. Dr. Wyner Dr. Wyner, do you have an opinion as to whether the techniques used in Dr. Mann's Hockey Stick research are manipulative?
A. Yes.
Q. What is your opinion?
A. It's my opinion that the techniques used by Dr. Mann in his earliest work, 98 and 99 and to some degree in his later works are manipulative.
Q. Dr. Wyner, do you have an opinion as to whether Dr. Mann's manipulative statistical techniques caused the Hockey Stick to be misleading?
A. I do.
Q. And what is that opinion?
A. That it is misleading.
In the absence until today (Day Eleven) of The Washington Post, Ann McElhinney and Phelim McAleer were present in court to do the job the American media won't do. Click below for their daily dramatisation of the key events:
The action continues in Courtroom 132.
We thank everyone who signed up for one of our limited-edition trial souvenirs: The SteynOnline Liberty Stick is now sold out - and will ne'er be offered again. On the other hand, you may prefer a copy of Mark's book about Mann - which Judge Irving has declined to admit into evidence.
