The Strange Case of Josef Oehmen
This was originally from Genius Now site, but they seem to have exceed their bandwidth, and it is being reposted here until such time as they are back up.
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The Strange Case of Josef Oehmen
In the wake of the nuclear incidents in Japan, a great deal of information and misinformation has been spread – some of it deliberately. It’s understandable that people misunderstand, or mishear. Misrepresenting yourself to claim you’re an expert is something else. We expect that from industry and politicians – we don’t expect it from a PhD employed by a school as well-respected as MIT. But that’s just what’s happened, and is still happening now.
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.
The post originally came from morgsatlarge.wordpress.com. Let’s first note that the name “Jason Morgan” does not appear on the morgsatlarge site. The site has one post (now redirecting to another site, which we’ll get to). Apparently, it was created yesterday. The “about” info is “About morgsatlarge English teacher, F1/ UFC enthusiast. Japan resident, quake survivor, and most importantly a husband to an amazing woman, and father to a beautiful baby girl.”
Jason is on Twitter, though, and thinks his “scientist friend” stuck his neck out for him, and is telling the truth. He’s had a Twitter account longer than last week, and he says Oehmen’s married to his cousin and is an “awesome guy”. Sounds pretty benign, what with his claims the article will be published on mit.edu, and has been vetted by nuke folks at MIT.
Jason had JUST been at the Japanese immigration office when the quake hit. And he sure enough was genuinely worried about the nukes, based on his tweets, in one of which he says he’s “shitting himself”. Nothing real suspicious here.
In the Google cache for the site today, we see this (no longer on the site):
“I do not work for the nuclear industry. I am an English teacher, from Australia, living in Kawasaki, Japan. My friend Dr J. Oehmen is a family member, and by far and away the most intelligent person I know. Feel free to believe/disbelieve whatever we have written. There are no conspiracies, however if you need to, feel free to make some up….
This post is by Dr Josef Oehmen, a research scientist at MIT, in Boston.
He is a PhD Scientist, whose father has extensive experience in Germany’s nuclear industry. I asked him to write this information to my family in Australia, who were being made sick with worry by the media reports coming from Japan. I am republishing it with his permission.”
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.
It adds “Josef is working hard with a team from MIT to provide an appropriate response to the interest the post has generated. The original blog will be migrated to an MIT site, managed by a team of experts from MIT’s Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering. The link will be posted here when it becomes available.”
In the Twitter page set up yesterday, he says ”Josef is a research scientist in mechanical engineering and engineering systems at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology“. His about page says “He is a mechanical engineer by training, working on product development processes.” Interesting, not quite the same thing. He also says “MIT setting up information hub on nuclear situation in Japan incl my original post: mitnse.com” on his Twitter page.
Ok, that’s really interesting. Because mitnse.com was registered yesterday, through wordpress.com. That was a Sunday, right? And while the contact information says it’s for MIT, the admin contact is given for an independent contracter, with the contractor’s phone number. The contractor is a graphic designer who has done prior work for the department. (here’s his site: subbiahdesign.com)
There are only a couple of links from the department site – added well after normal working hours on Monday night.
Before “mitnse” killed the comment and rss functions on this wordpress.com site, you could see that rss feed said the site was “maintained by students” in the NSE department. No such students have identified themselves. And while the originally, highly erroneous post has been redacted, the editors have not seen fit to identify themselves.
So – “students” on the site, “experts” in the announcement of it.
The comments were filled with statements about “intellectual dishonesty” and “academic fraud”, as well as point by point rebuttal of many statements Dr Oehmen had originally made. They were killed 5 minutes after I posted the following:
“So far, although I see a link to this site from NSE, I don’t see any discussion of it. And frankly, Mr/MS mitnse, as far as I can tell you’re actually Ismail Subbiah, graphic designer occasionally on contract to MIT. The links between Siemens AG, Dr Oethman, Barry Brook, and MIT/LAI (which has cleverly been avoided – lets do bring that up, shall we?) suggest that no matter why the article was written in the first place, it’s become a major piece of disinformation masquerading falsely as academic opinion.”
As you can see, Siemens AG comes up again. Not surprising, because it recently became an “industry partner” of MIT/LAI. But there is almost certainly another connection. Dr Oehmen is German. If his father spent much time in the German nuclear industry, there is a very very good chance that he worked – or works – for Siemens.
LAI’s website says “LAI accelerates lean deployment through identified best practices, shared communication, common goals, and strategic and implementation tools honed from collaborative experience. LAI also promotes cooperation at all levels and facets of an enterprise to eliminate traditional barriers to improving industry and government teamwork.” about-lai.
What that doesn’t say is who the industry partners are. Oddly, they are all major defense contractors. And the only one I’ve found so far with any direct connection to nuclear power plants is Siemens.
I’ll be looking deeper at this story, including the mechanisms used to spread the original, and entirely specious, article across the web. It’s still spreading now, mostly from people who would be horrified at this.
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March 16th, 2011 at 11:48 am
[...] The Strange Case of Josef Oehmen [...]
March 16th, 2011 at 1:34 pm
[...] it turns out, mitnse.com is a total fraud. Go read the whole Ritholtz piece, whose executive summary is “Nemo got had”. I have [...]
March 16th, 2011 at 1:52 pm
I do not understand this post at all.
http://mitnse.com/ _IS_ a legitimate part of MIT’s Nuclear Science and Engineering Dept. There is a link at the top of the page here: http://web.mit.edu/nse/ . The group running mitse.com is quite open about who they are and what they are trying to do (look under About )
As what is with the ” ” around “Students” and “experts” ? Here is a news flash – the MIT graduate students at the NSE _are_ experts compared to 99.999% of the planet, and most everybody you’ve heard comment on this subject Who the hell is Guest Author to disparage them ? What does he know ?
I am a nuclear physicist, and judged the original post by its CONTENT, rather that who wrote it. A novel concept to be sure, but it works – you ought to try it.
The original blog and all subsequent posts are all eminently reasonable and make a whole heck of a lot more sense that the rubbish we’ve been reading in the MSM. I also work in communications here at a large lab and all reporters start with “I hated physics in high school and no nothing nothing about this” yet still end up writing stuff with all sorts of crazy extrapolations from what we told them. If they would just stick to what was told to them, we’d avoid the crazy hysteria and everyone would be better off.
What has transpired so far is consistent with what was written. the spikes in radiation come from short-lived isotopes in the steam that is periodically released. Reports usually only mention the peak of the exposure (1000x normal !!! ahhhh! ) but don’t say it quickly decayed away. The pile CANNOT do a Chernobyl since fission reactions were killed off immediately. heat in the pile is only 5% of what it was a few days ago. That is not to say that something bad won’t happen, but the effects will be local, and in any case will happen due to events transpiring long after Oehman’s blog was written. The mitnse.com posts discuss basic physics of the situation which are entirely accurate.
talk of Chernobyl-like or worse is just simply rubbish.
Guest Author clearly can’t judge articles based on their CONTENT rather than provenance. Oehmen’s post was better than most, if not 100% accurate, and it is Guest Author’s post that is specious. of course, I may be in on the conspiracy …
BTW, just heard on the radio that martians are landing in New York. run for the hills !
March 16th, 2011 at 4:18 pm
@mpavan
…I also work in communications here at a large lab and all reporters start with “I hated physics in high school and no nothing nothing about this”
Emphasis mine.
So you work in communications, but can’t spell the word “know?”
Obviously, it’s possible that you are outside the US or maybe your native language is not English, in which case I apologize.
I found useful information in the articles, mostly in the factual descriptions of how the containment systems work, which was pretty good, though not entirely thorough as it failed to discuss things like the suppression chamber (Torus) outside the main containment area which appear to possibly be the piece that has ruptured.
However, your defending MITNSE.com is just pure crap. If it were endorsed by or condoned by MIT, it would be hosted at MIT.edu, just like the department website you pointed to. In fact, one would legitimately question why MITNSE.com is even necessary, given that there’s a web.mit.edu/nse that would appear to serve the same purpose. The most logical explanation I can come up with at this time is that somebody is trying to cover themselves with the veneer of MIT’s approval, even though MIT has nothing to do with the content of the site.
And FYI, anybody can put a link at the top of any page. I can put a whitehouse.gov link at the top of my personal website. It doesn’t mean I am the president, or even that I’ve ever met him.
As to the quotes around the words “students” and “experts,” personally I would have simply called them “self-described students and experts.” Until they provide their names and qualifications, they’re just another bunch of random anonymous people on the web. Just as you are, Mr. “self-described communications guy in a large lab.”
And for the record, I’m not an expert and don’t claim to be. Just a guy with an undergrad degree, some engineering experience and a very sensitive BS meter.
Also for the record, I think those talking Chernobyl are unlikely to be proven correct. The primary cause of the problem there was an intense fire in the graphite core that sent a huge amount of radioactive material hight in to the sky. Here there’s no graphite core, and thus nothing to burn but hydrogen gas generated when the water superheats and interacts with zircalloy fuel rod casings. Those fires are — by their very nature — likely to be limited in scope. On the flip side, those who are still claiming this will be no worse than TMI seem to have already been clearly overwhelmed by the facts.
March 16th, 2011 at 5:24 pm
Michael Gat. You are an idiot. The link to MITNSE.com is on the MIT.edu site not vice-versa. The link is in the top right corner of the site labelled ‘Visit NSE’s blog: mitnse.com’ The site is legitimately operated by staff at the MIT Nuclear Sciences faculty. Furthermore the original post seen on Morgsatlarge is indeed reposted on the MITNSE site as was originally promised apparently with the full blessings of the NSE faculty.
The fact that it isn’t hosted on the .edu domain is explained in the about section:
“It is hosted outside of MIT’s domain name because of the established infrastructure at WordPress.com and due to the incredibly large traffic we were expecting and have seen so far. Please consult our official website http://web.mit.edu/nse/ and see the link under Headlines if you are concerned about the credibility.”
Indeed an article on the official MIT site confirms the credibility of the blog (last link, labelled ‘visit the MIT NSE Nuclear Information Hub’).
So, either it’s a hoax so pernicious that it included hacking the MIT content management system just to score internet points or you are full of crap.
March 16th, 2011 at 6:02 pm
MIT’s NSE faculty have their say here:
http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2011/nuclear-panel-japan-0136.html
note in particular the last line:
“Lester noted that the Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering has set up a new blog, run by NSE graduate students with the support of faculty, to provide updated, detailed information about the ongoing situation at the Japanese reactors. It can be read at mitnse.com.”
do with the info as you please.
March 17th, 2011 at 10:03 am
I’m not interested in identifying the actual students who are maintaining the mitnse.com blog, as their anonymity can protect them in the case of threats. But I can say that I know them personally — I was in the building with them yesterday, in fact — and they’ve put everything down in order to be on hand to disseminate accurate information about the Fukushima Daiichi incident.
Dr. Oehmen’s original article was in fact erroneous in some aspects. First he called the cooling rods “moderator rods”, which if you know anything about how nuclear reactors work, is ridiculous. Moderators, such as water, slow neutrons and can increase the likelihood of a collision between neutrons and other atoms. Water can sometimes act as a poison, too, where adding more of it will actually decrease reactivity, but that isn’t the case in this reactor. Cooling rods are made from neutron absorbers, in this case boron, which take on neutrons to prevent fission from continuing.
Errors like that, plus inaccuracy in reporting from news sources, which largely took their information from anti-nuclear groups, early in the incident is what prompted the department to create the new site. The site was put together by a designer who has had a long association with the department, and was put on WordPress for ease of use and to handle the large expected load.
I understand that a comment on a blog does not communicate reliability, but I felt that I should share the information that I know.
This is re-posted from http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2011/03/bad-oehmen-confirmation-bias-sources-astroturfing/, where I erroneously posted it.
March 17th, 2011 at 2:15 pm
I appreciate the previous posts but I do think the point Barry is making is more important. Whether the original piece contained something worthwhile or not, the point is that one should be suspicious enough to check further and not simply accept a web piece as fact especially on anything controversial. The web is too easily manipulated to simply accept at face value. This is a warning less about Japan but about the use of the internet/
March 21st, 2011 at 10:52 pm
[...] inaccuracies and is found now in an edited form. A critique was written at Genius Now, and is now hosted by Barry Ritholtz, which is how I found it. Barry is supposed to be a smart guy, so I was surprised how poor the [...]
March 27th, 2011 at 10:18 pm
Dr. Oehmen? Here’s what:
NUCLEAR APOCALYPSE IN JAPAN
LIFTING THE VEIL OF NUCLEAR CATASTROPHE AND COVER-UP
A Doomsday Scenario Unfolds With Characteristic Foolishness
http://www.consciousbeingalliance.com/2011/03/japans-catastrophic-nuclear-power-cover-up/
keith harmon snow
March 27th, 2011 at 10:18 pm
Oehmen is a sad example of a human being.