The big question is whether universities have too much at stake, both ideologically and financially, to impartially investigate what has happened with Climate-gate
By John Lott
FOXNews.com
December 01, 2009
President Obama’s climate czar, Carol M. Browner, and White House spokesman Robert Gibbs might think that Climate-gate is a nonevent, but on Monday Pennsylvania State University announced that it was launching an investigation into the academic conduct of Michael Mann, the school’s Director of the Earth System Science Center. And Tuesday, Phil Jones, the director of the Climatic Research Unit at Britain’s University of East Anglia, announced that he would stand aside as director while his university conducted an investigation.
Dozens of researchers at other institutions could soon face similar investigations. While Dr. Jones has been the center of much of the discussion because the e-mails were obtained from the server at his university, Mann is named in about 270 of the over 1,000 e-mails, many of which detail disturbing and improper academic behavior.
Last week, Mann told USA Today that the controversy over the leaked e-mails was simply a “smear campaign to distract the public from the reality of the problem and the need to confront it head-on in Copenhagen” next week at the climate summit.
Take one of Mann’s e-mail exchanges with Jones. In an e-mail entitled “IPCC & FOI” (referring to the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and Freedom of Information Act) Jones, head of the Climatic Research Unit of the University of East Anglia, wrote Dr. Mann: “Mike: Can you delete any e-mails you may have had with Keith [Briffa] re [the IPCC’s Fourth Assessment Report]? Keith will do likewise. . . . Can you also e-mail Gene and get him to do the same? I don’t have his new e-mail address. We will be getting Caspar to do likewise.”
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