California Dump Truck Owners Association

Mountain Democrat columnist, Larry Weitzman May 21st, 2009

On April 9 Hien Thanh Tran accepted a voluntary demotion from his position as Air Resources Supervisor 1 and manager of the Health and Ecosystems Assessment Section, a position that paid over $100,000 annually to an Air Pollution Specialist at a salary of approximately $30,000 less. In addition Tran was suspended by the California Air Resources Board for a period of 60 days, a significant punishment, but for what?

Tran knowingly committed academic fraud in his position in his application for the ARS1 some two years ago when he claimed in his application that he received a PhD in Statistics from UC Davis. While Tran did receive a Master's degree in statistics from Davis and in 1997 was a candidate for a PhD, he never finished the work, including his dissertation.

Tran, at the time of this academic fraud discovery, was the project coordinator and lead author of a report entitled “Methodology for Estimating Premature Deaths Associated with Long-term Exposure to Fine Airborne Particulate Matter in California.” This report was the main support document of a draconian regulation proposed by the CARB that would cost California diesel users billions of dollars, a cost that eventually the consumer would pay for in higher food, construction and transportation costs. These costs would be incurred in the retrofitting of almost all diesel engines for on- or off-road, even relatively new ones, with new pollution controls for the sole purpose of limiting particulate matter as small as 2.5 microns (PM2.5). Although there have been some epidemiological studies in the past that claim there is a health risk, those studies were highly speculative and done with poor data. In fact, there is a significant study that says that PM2.5 is not a health risk in California.

Tran's problems started with the completion of the first draft report when Dr. S. Stanley Young, the assistant director of Bioinformatics at the National Institute of Statistical Sciences, came to his attention. Dr. Young fired off a letter to Gov. Schwarzenegger, writing in part, “I note that none of the authors are professional statisticians. Some are trained in epidemiology. It is useful to know that the track record of epidemiologists in the use of statistics to make claims that are reproducible is very poor. Their claims fail to replicate 80-90 percent of the time (Ioannidis, JAMA, 2005). Their recommendations, most likely wrong, are projected to be very costly.

“I suggest that you consider having the report vetted by professional statisticians for data quality, completeness of cited literature, and appropriate use of statistical methods. California is blessed with outstanding statisticians. The analysis of observational environmental data is very complex. Given the importance of the recommendations, it would seem essential that skilled, professional statisticians using the best methods be employed for the analysis and interpretation of this body of data,” Young wrote.

In e-mail interviews with Dr. Young, he said he couldn't believe how amateurish and poorly done the report was.

“Frankly, I was shocked,” he said “I asked if they had looked at the raw data from key papers and done their own analysis. They did not have the data and the answer was no.”

Three months later, Young received a reply to his letter from Linda Adams, secretary for Environmental Protection, saying in part, Tran holds a doctorate degree in statistics from UC Davis and he has 14 years of experience of advanced analysis of complex air quality data sets and methods for quantifying health impacts associated with exposure to air pollution.

Adams further claimed that the CARB report, of which Tran was the chief author and project coordinator, was reviewed by three scientific advisors (some who have long-term contracts with CARB) and six peer reviewers allegedly independently picked by UC Berkeley. However, none of the peer reviewers ever saw any of the 148 pages of public comments, most of which ripped the Tran report to shreds.

The second draft report of the CARB, which included these comments, was never peer reviewed, something that is supposedly required by law.

As a result, the Tran report was rubber-stamped by CARB (at a hearing on Dec. 12, 2008) as pushed by its ring leader, Mary Nichols, and new diesel regulations that will cost Californians tens of billions of dollars and perhaps more went into effect. Nichols and the rest of the CARB board knew of the academic fraud that was committed by Tran who wrote the report that was the basis for passing this heinous regulation. CARB claimed that because of the peer review process the report was valid. Of course, this brings into the question the peer review process in its entirety, since none of the peer reviewers ever saw any of the public comments, including several by leading statisticians and epidemiologists who demonstrated that the report was fraught with errors and its conclusions wrong.

Tran in his attempt to cover up his academic fraud bought a PhD from a diploma mill known as Thornhill University on or about June 28, 2007, or about two weeks before his application to the position as ARS1. Perhaps he could with a straight face say that he did have a doctorate in applied statistics? It just wasn't from UC Davis. But what's in a name?

When Tran was asked to confirm that he had a PhD from Davis he attempted to cover it up by saying that the university data base was not up to date and that it would be straightened out in a couple of days and he (Tran) would make some calls. During the period from his appointment to ARS1 to his admission that he lied and attempted to coverup his lies, Tran freely used his newly bought title on reports and correspondence.

When President Nixon tried to cover up a fraud and lies, he was forced to resign from the office of the President of the United States. Tran kept his job albeit at a lower level.

But Tran is a reflection of symptom of an even bigger, more dangerous problem. CARB is not the scientific organization it alleges to be. It is a body created to produce any “data” the board requests to accomplish the desired goals, regulations and laws that the board wants to impose on the people of California. It doesn't matter if the data are correct or not; its purpose is to support the imposition of laws by bureaucrats who think they are smarter than anyone else. The Tran report was approved by CARB because it said what it wanted it to say even though there was a mountain of comments and data saying that the report was wrong in its conclusion. That is not science. It's fascism. More to come.