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PLEASE RETHINK THIS. YOU ARE RUNNING THE TRUCKING INDUSTRY OUT OF
CALIFORNIA,AND WITH IT GOES MANY RELATED JOBS..HAVE YOU ALL GONE
MAD? THIS IS LUNACY!NOT TO MENTION THE DEBACLE DESCRIBED IN THIS
ARTICLE...

A year ago, high officials of the California Air Resources Board
learned that the author of a statistical study on diesel soot
effects had falsified his academic credentials.

The researcher, Hien Tran, acknowledged the deception and agreed
to be demoted, but after his data were given another peer review,
they remained the basis of highly controversial regulations that
will cost owners of trucks, buses and other diesel-powered
machinery millions of dollars to upgrade their engines. The Tran
study concluded that diesel "particulate matter" was responsible
for about 1,000 additional deaths each year.

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Only recently, with the rules on the verge of final promulgation,
did board officials formally acknowledge Tran's falsification,
largely because one board member, cardiologist John Telles, did his
own investigation and complained about an apparent cover-up.

Telles, in sharp letters to board officials and during last
month's CARB meeting, said the chain of events casts a pall over
the legitimacy of the vote to proceed with the new rules.

"Failure to reveal this information to the board prior to the vote
not only casts doubt on the legitimacy of the truck rule, but also
upon the legitimacy of CARB itself," Telles said, adding, however,
that he doesn't question the validity of the science.

Industry critics have jumped on the revelation that Tran falsely
claimed he received a doctorate from the University of California,
Davis, but the board's staff rejects the complaints.

"What Tran did was bad," James Goldstene, CARB's executive
officer, said Tuesday, "but the science was sound."

"Nobody was kept in the dark," Goldstene said in response to
Telles. "I don't think his point is valid."

However, Mary Nichols, CARB's chairwoman, told Telles in a Nov. 10
e-mail that the "staff response was a matter of poor judgment, but
not deceptive or irresponsible," and she added her personal
apologies "for failing to convey information you were entitled to
have."

In July 2008, Dr. S. Stanley Young, an official of the National
Institute of Statistical Sciences, wrote to Gov. Arnold
Schwarzenegger, complaining that, "none of the authors (of the
report) are professional statisticians." Four months later,
California Environmental Protection Agency Secretary Linda Adams
told Young – in a letter drafted by Tran – that the study team was
qualified, citing Tran's UC Davis doctorate.

Shortly thereafter, just one day before CARB was to act on the
truck rules, board officials learned of the false doctorate after a
University of California professor who's critical of the rules told
them that Tran lacked the degree, but only a few board members were
informed. Although reports of Tran's deception circulated for
months, including a couple of brief media mentions, it wasn't until
recently that CARB officials publicly acknowledged it.

As Telles says, the apparent cover-up casts a pall over the
legitimacy of a very important, and very costly, state policy.