Art Robinson’s implosion last night on The Rachel Maddow Show has set the research world on fire and some interesting things are turning up about the self proclaimed ‘scientist’. (Was the interview filmed from Lord Bennett’s in Bandon?)

By all accounts, Arthur Robinson was a talented biochemist prior to founding the OISM. His early promise as a student won him a job as an assistant chemistry professor at the University of California-San Diego, where he struck up a partnership with his mentor, Linus Pauling, the only individual ever to receive two separate Nobel awards (for chemistry in 1954 and peace in 1962). Pauling and Robinson shared an initial enthusiasm for Pauling’s controversial theory (which has since been rejected by most researchers) that high doses of vitamin C could ward off colds, mental illness, cancer and a host of other diseases. Robinson and Pauling formed the Linus Pauling Institute of Science and Medicine to explore Pauling’s theory, but the partnership ended badly in 1978, when Robinson’s research led him to conclude that high doses of vitamin C might actually be harmful instead of beneficial. Pauling’s leftist leanings also clashed with Robinson’s conservative political views, and other trustees at the Pauling Institute accused Robinson of poor management. Pauling forced Robinson to resign from the Institute and terminated his research, labeling it “amateurish” and inadequate. Robinson responded by suing the Institute for $64 million. After a bitter, four-year legal battle, Robinson received an out-of-court settlement of $575,000.

There is more. Robinson founded the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine which, by 2005 was bringing in $1M in revenue mostly from reconstituted public domain material assembled into a $200 home schooling program, but doesn’t appear to do much else.

The OISM website’s homepage [1] says:

The Institute currently has six faculty members, several regular volunteers, and a larger number of other volunteers who work on occasional projects.

The Home Page’s current navigation bar lists 8 individuals under the “Faculty” heading. Two of those listed are deceased, and two are sons of OISM’s head, Arthur B. Robinson. Yet even though the OISM credentials 8 persons as “Faculty”, it has no classrooms, or student body.

The institute may have no faculty or student body but Robinson churns out a lot of paper.

The Oregon Petition, sponsored by the OISM, was circulated in April 1998 in a bulk mailing to tens of thousands of U.S. scientists. In addition to the petition, the mailing included what appeared to be a reprint of a scientific paper. Authored by OISM’s Arthur B. Robinson, Sallie L. Baliunas, Willie Soon, and Zachary W. Robinson, the paper was titled “Environmental Effects of Increased Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide” and was printed in the same typeface and format as the official Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Also included was a reprint of a December 1997, Wall Street Journal editorial, “Science Has Spoken: Global Warming Is a Myth”, by Arthur and Zachary Robinson. A cover note signed “Frederick Seitz/Past President, National Academy of Sciences, U.S.A./President Emeritus, Rockefeller University”, may have given some persons the impression that Robinson’s paper was an official publication of the academy’s peer-reviewed journal. The blatant editorializing in the pseudopaper, however, was uncharacteristic of scientific papers.

One of Maddow’s big questions for Robinson was who is funding the Concerned Taxpayers of America, a group buying attack ads against DeFazio. Robinson claimed not to know or care.

After Robinson’s crazy behavior last night finding out is even more pressing. Who stands to benefit from putting a goofball climate change denier into Congress enough to donate $150,000 to an Oregon race? Why would they want to remain anonymous?