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From signonsandiego.com (http://weblog.signonsandiego.com/weblogs/afb/archives/030052.html) Enstrom is controversial, but a thorough scientist. He was accused of scientific misconduct by the American Cancer Society, and cleared of those charges by a UC internal investigation. That controversy arose over Enstrom took tobacco industry funding and published findings that secondhand tobacco smoke didn't significantly raise lung cancer risk among spouses of smokers.
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December 18, 2008
Breaking news: Air board investigating whether lead scientist on diesel regs lied about his Ph.D.

Hien T. Tran, the California Air Resources Board scientist who was the lead author and project coordinator of the study justifying the air board's sweeping new efforts to limit diesel emissions, is being investigated by air board officials over allegations he lied about having a Ph.D. in statistics from the University of California at Davis.

"We're going to take the appropriate actions if this is true," Leo Kay, ARB's director of communications, told me.

James E. Enstrom, an epidemiologist with the UCLA Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center, raised the questions about Tran's qualifications in a Dec. 10 letter to the air board. Here is the key part:

California EPA Secretary Linda S. Adams wrote a November 4, 2008 letter to Dr. Young. The Adams letter makes the following statement "Regarding the professional background of the authors, the lead author and project coordinator, Hien Tran, holds a doctorate degree in statistics from the University of California at Davis . . . ."

However, I have determined from the UC Davis Office of the University Registrar and the UC Davis Department of Statistics that Hien Tran holds NO Ph.D. in statistics from UC Davis. Also, I searched ProQuest Dissertation Express and found NO evidence of a dissertation on any subject from any university awarded to the Hien T. Tran employed by CARB. ProQuest UMI Dissertation Publishing has been publishing dissertations and theses since 1938 and has published over 2 million graduate works from graduate schools around the world.

Enstrom forwarded me this letter when he was ignored. He believes that Tran's alleged lack of the credentials he claimed "has direct relevance to the honesty of Tran and to the scientific integrity of the draft and final reports on which he is the lead author."

ARB spokesman Kay said, "I'm not trying to downplay anything," but that the diesel regulations were subject to a "rigorous internal review" and were vetted in a "peer review" by nationally recognized experts.

Because of personnel privacy laws, Kay said, he wasn't sure whether he would be able to reveal the results of the investigation into Tran.

Terry Francke of Californians Aware, one of the leading experts on state government privacy law, said that was "baloney," at least if Tran was found to have done something "seriously wrong even though it may not be criminal."

Francke said there was "a long line of cases" in which it was established that the ARB would have to release its investigative findings and reveal what disciplinary action it took, if any, if Tran had lied about his educational background.

The air board approved the action plan based on Tran's study last Friday.

NOTE, 1:50 P.M.: Fixed a typo in the lead.
Posted by Chris Reed at December 18, 2008 12:07 PM

It's not just diesel they don't like the plug-in conversion shops either..

http://www.hybridcars.com/incentives-laws/california-regulators-could-kill-plug-hybrid-conversions-25432.html

I seem to recall that there was a paper published in a toxicology journal about 5 years ago suggesting that mine workers exposed to diesel particulate matter at levels several orders of magnitude higher than ambient levels typical in California had no higher incidences of lung cancer than the general population.

CARB remain intransigent with respect to state-of-the-art science. The weekend ozone effect is probably the most egregious. Reducing ambient NOx levels resulting in higher ambient ozone ("smog") in metropolitan areas seems to be controversial only to CARB. :rolleyes:

I can't believe that CARB could mismanage the hiring of qualified scientists (or putting out consistent regulation).

Hi SentraSE-R:

___I am looking forward to where this will lead. Not so much with the credentials issue but the peer reviewed study. Will the study eventually have to be recompiled and submitted for yet another peer review?

___Good Luck

___Wayne

I can't believe that CARB could mismanage the hiring of qualified scientists (or putting out consistent regulation).

Seriously? I find this incredibly easy to believe....

Hopefully, it will shine more light on CARB and lead to better regulatory management.

CARB is misguided and mired in personal vendettas, politics, and probably some money. As a CA native, CARB is one of the main reasons I started getting into classic cars.

I don't imagine many of you read Land Line, the OOIDA bi-monthly magazine for truckers. They've been following the Mary Nichols/ Mr Trans escapade pretty closely. Seems the (Phd) Tran isn't and the entire study and ensuing diesel truck regulations from CARB are in question. How long before "The Arnold" fires them both???
I am all for clean air but let us encourage manufactures to sell more new trucks through their producing cleaner, cheaper more efficient trucks, rather than using their (CARB)s position to mandate old trucks out of business.

The Carb scandals do get into the press, but it seems they protect their own.
"But, he did this study, BEFORE we found out he wasn't qualified".. :eyebrow:

Here's one story http://www.capitolweekly.net/article.php?_c=ygikqrjd8nh8t5&xid=yggk2qcwp5xx25&done=.ygikqrjd8o08t5

It's a crazy world we live in..

I'm no expert on the CARB process, but when powerful interests prefer to attack an author over challenging his results I suspect that the scientific data is not on their side.

A fake phd? Sounds like a case of fraud to me. Stealing money from the taxpayers.
A pretty common scam, pulled by a lot of state and city workers around here.

Funny thing is, no one ever seems to go to jail or even has to pay back the money
they swindled..

The California Air Resources Borad has been the leading group worldwide for many years. They have become, through their dilligence and science, a model for other states and countries - and even the federal EPA. They have been and are the single most effective regulatory agency for reaching pro-human compromises between corporate profit and excessive pollution, and they stand at the forefront of defense against the asthma epidemic in our children.

I have been a hotrodder for 43 years but unlike many of my friends, I have embraced the clean air regulations of CARB and SCAQMD. If you take a look at the power output of many of today's CARB-certified engines, you will realize that the regulations are not really an impediment to horsepower.

They do stand as an impediment to intellectual lazieness and admitedly are more expensive than old-time hotrodding. But I love my kids and the quality of the environment to make that small sacrifice.

In my opinion, statistician Hien Tran's false claim of a doctorate from UC Davis when he really only had a degree from an online university is a significant internal issue but it is seperate from the science which was peer-reviewed and, again in my opinion, appears impeccable. Unlike most participants in this forum, I have been for years reading the medical research partly sponsored by CARB on the relationship between diesel particulates and asthma in children. This issue is serious enough for us to make some compromises in our wrenching.

The trucking industry does not want these changes - even though they know the costs of meeting the regulation will be passed directly to the consumer. As a former truck driver, I understand why the trucking industry and other independent truck drivers do not want to deal with these changes. But they need to do this.

I am not real impressed with the rationale that Tran's transgression invalidates the science of diesel particulate pollution. This same argument is being used by global warming critics to say that some emails invalidate climate change science. The science is pretty obvious. I encourage people to examine it with keyword searches that don't result in opinions from Fox News.

Wow, I just got 1 million hits on "The Science is Settled".

Well, "The Science is Settled" and it can't be discussed or questioned anymore,
so I'm not going to break the rules and talk about it.

I'll just say that I'm old enough to recall when climate change was called The Coming Ice Age..

All the studies are in agreement on this issue of diesel particle effects on children.

http://www.arb.ca.gov/research/apr/past/98-320.pdf
http://www.aqmd.gov/forstudents/health_effects_on_children.pdf
http://www.cher.ubc.ca/PDFs/diesel02.pdf
http://www.ehhi.org/reports/diesel/dieselintro.pdf
http://www.particleandfibretoxicology.com/content/pdf/1743-8977-5-4.pdf
http://www.catf.us/publications/reports/Diesel_Health_in_America.pdf