The Strange Case of Josef Oehmen (MIT scientist says no problems)

[Pale Blue Dot]

On Sunday, March 13th, I saw an interesting link on Facebook. Since the previous Friday, I’d been posting update information on the Japan disasters, and had been one of the first people to post that there might – and I stressed might – be nuclear problems. So when I saw a link saying “MIT scientist says no problems”, it’s only natural to read it.
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The site I got linked to, though, was a repost from something called The Energy Collective. (link) This ONE instance of the article has been shared over 5000 times on facebook, and over 32k times in total.

The Energy Collective is a Siemens AG lobbying/influence/astroturf organization – it says Powered by Siemens right up front. They present as a “Nukes for the Environment” type. The author of the piece here is Barry Brook, who lists himself as a “Professor of Climate Change” on the site. He is – at the University of Adelaide – and is a strong proponent of nuclear power. In other words, he has credentials on climate change, and is pro-nuke. Then let’s note that this is a repost of something Brooks posted on BraveNewClimate. We’ll get back to the crosspostings later.

In his introduction he says “Below I reproduce a summary on the situation prepared by Dr Josef Oehmen, a research scientist at MIT, in Boston. He is a PhD Scientist (sic), whose father has extensive experience in Germany’s nuclear industry. This was first posted by Jason Morgan earlier this evening, and he has kindly allowed me to reproduce it here. I think it is very important that this information be widely understood.”

So let’s look at that “awesome guy”, Josef Oehmen.

Does he have a PhD? – indeed he does. In supply chain risk management. And yes, he’s a “Research Scientist” – that’s his part of his actual job title, not what he does. (LAI Research Scientist appears to be his title.) He’s not in a traditional department – he works for something called the Lean Advancement Initiative (LAI), which is a military-industrial-academic project. As of today, his information page clarifies that he is not involved with nukes at all.

http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2011/03/the-strange-case-of-josef-oehmen/

Much more at the link. There was an orchestrated PR campaign by the nuclear industry.

[Pale Blue Dot]

1. More info & background:

Back on March 13th, Ron Dodson sent me a Tweet touting an “MIT scientist’s take on Japan.”

I clicked over to read this blog post — titled “Why I am not worried about Japan’s nuclear reactors” — and was immediately suspicious. It was the FIRST and ONLY blog post from this individual. It had 100+ comments in a few hours (so much for taking years to develope a following).

Given it was only a few hours old post, I was surprised to see that Google showed it been reposted over 30,000 times elsewhere on the web.

Many of the sites were of right-leaning (Volokh, Freerepublic) and lots were of the wingnut variety (BraveNewCLimate, ClimateSanity, abovetopsecret, liberty’sflame). Business Insider even posted it bylined by the “BI Nuclear Expert” whoever that might be (Business Insider has a Nuclear expert?)

My curiosity sent me to MIT’s site, to look up their faculty list. The author of the post was Josef Oehmen “LAI Research Scientist.” The first paragraph made clear what his Nuclear Physics bonafides: He had none. “The main research interest of Dr. Josef Oehmen is risk management in the value chain.”

http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2011/03/bad-oehmen-confirmation-bias-sources-astroturfing/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+TheBigPicture+%28The+Big+Picture%29&utm_content=Netvibes

[readmoreoften]

2. Bank of America wanted to put an Ayn Rander in my department.

It's often called an "endowed chair".

[SpiralHawk]

3. RepubliCorp SuckerPuppetry

bought and paid for SuckerPuppets to catapult the propaganda

[gateley]

4. Wow, excellent job, Pale Blue Dot! Thanks!! nt