So why hasn't Dr. Michael Mann been fired from his job?

My previous post talked (at rather hideously extended length) about climate scientists - and especially Dr. Mann - hiding their data.  The Silicon Graybeard left a comment that others are asking:

And another question: why is Michael Mann still a professor at Penn State? Doesn't the fact that he has been found guilty (in at least parallel legal cases) of fraud, why hasn't he been fired?

We've had this answered, in Hal Lewis' spectacular resignation letter to the American Physical Society:

Hal Lewis [was] one of the Senior Statesmen of American Physics.  He's been a member of the American Physical Society for 67 years (!).  His bio lays out his bona fides:

Harold Lewis is Emeritus Professor of Physics, University of California, Santa Barbara, former Chairman; Former member Defense Science Board, chmn of Technology panel; Chairman DSB study on Nuclear Winter; Former member Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards; Former member, President’s Nuclear Safety Oversight Committee; Chairman APS study on Nuclear Reactor Safety Chairman Risk Assessment Review Group; Co-founder and former Chairman of JASON; Former member USAF Scientific Advisory Board; Served in US Navy in WW II; books: Technological Risk (about, surprise, technological risk) and Why Flip a Coin (about decision making) 

Hal Lewis thinks that Global Warming is an anti-scientific, money-grabbing scam by scientists, and says so in a brutal resignation letter sent to the president of the APS:

It is of course, the global warming scam, with the (literally) trillions of dollars driving it, that has corrupted so many scientists, and has carried APS before it like a rogue wave. It is the greatest and most successful pseudoscientific fraud I have seen in my long life as a physicist.

His letter is long, and damning for today's scientific establishment.  And he specifically discusses Dr. Mann, and why Penn State did not (and will not) take any action against him:

Some have held that the physicists of today are not as smart as they used to be, but I don’t think that is an issue. I think it is the money, exactly what Eisenhower warned about a half-century ago. There are indeed trillions of dollars involved, to say nothing of the fame and glory (and frequent trips to exotic islands) that go with being a member of the club. Your own Physics Department (of which you are chairman) would lose millions a year if the global warming bubble burst. When Penn State absolved Mike Mann of wrongdoing, and the University of East Anglia did the same for Phil Jones, they cannot have been unaware of the financial penalty for doing otherwise.

Institutionally, the scientific field as practiced today is rotten to the core.  It consumes huge amounts of money with at best modest output.  The field of climate science in particular is feeding destructive governmental policies, but you have to say that the gravy train is good for those who are on it.

Most particularly for Dr. Mann.

I closed my post about Dr. Lewis with words that, looking back from almost a decade in the future, I would not change:

As background on ClimateGate, you might want to look here:

• The science story of the Century?
• ClimateGate 101
• Why CRU is so important
• How you create a "consensus"
• Filthy lucre
• Thoughts on how the Scientific Establishment wandered into the desert
• Whitewash
• General Global Warming background
• The Climate Science "Napkin Presentation".

For those of you who were, like me, trained as scientists, this scandal is infuriating.  For those of you who, like me, grew up liberal and care about the further impoverishment of the poor, this is infuriating. 

The Iron Law of Bureaucracy touches all establishments, including the scientific establishment.  In all honesty, we could cut scientific research by 80% and not be any worse off.  Heck, we might even be better off.