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Climate Scientist investigated (again!), vindicated (again!)

One of the world’s leading climate scientists, Michael Mann of Penn State, has been vindicated by the National Science Foundation. Almost no one noticed.

Mann is the author of the famous “hockey stick” graph showing rising global temperatures. The graph, based on research conducted in 1999, was included in the 2001 report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate change (here). It is significant because it resulted from the first “multi-proxy” effort to reconstruct Northern Hemisphere temperature over the past thousand years. The “proxies” used included ice cores, tree rings, lake sediment cores, etc.

His results provoked interest and followup by scientists, some of which was fairly exacting. Some claimed that the data was incomplete or the statistical methods were wrong. That’s to be expected; scientists examine one another’s work as a matter of routine.

More significantly, the graph put Mann on a collision course with the emerging climate change denial industry (see also here, here, here and so on). A series of charges and accusations ensued.

Starting in 2006 and continuing to the present, all the investigations have turned up the same results. The climate scientists, including Mann, have been vindicated each time.

The accusations at issue in the current investigation arose from the “Climategate” scandal of late 2009; a trove of emails from climate scientists was put onto the web and attacked as proof that climate science is a fraud. As a result, Mann and numerous other scientists were investigated for scientific misconduct.

The NSF’s recent report followed up an investigation of Mann by Penn State. The university investigated charges against Mann for:

1. Falsifying research data
2. Concealing, deleting or otherwise destroying emails, information or data
3. Misusing privileged information
4. Seriously deviating from accepted practices for proposing, conducting or reporting research and other scholarly activities.

The university concluded there was no basis for the first three allegations. The NSF challenged the university to back up this conclusion by documenting its inquiry process, including how inquiry committee members were selected, what evidence they used, how they verified statements, etc. After investigating all the allegations de novo, the NSF decided the university had not adequately addressed the issue of falsification. In particular, it had not interviewed experts who were critical of Mann’s work. The NSF’s own investigation was not limited to the subject of falsification, but looked at the entire record for signs of research misconduct. It found that Mann had not concealed or falsified data, destroyed emails, misused privileged information or deviated from accepted practices. The NSF report is here.

In other words, Mann got the fine-tooth-comb treatment. And he was cleared, not just partly, but completely. After a series of investigations this exhaustive, on a subject this important, one would expect some news about it.

In fact, there has been only a trickle of interest. The climate-change blogosphere has noted it (DeSmogBlog, ClimateProgress, BadAstronomy). James Fallows noted it at the Atlantic, and Fox News managed a couple of dozen words. The other major media have relegated the issue to blog posts here and there.

More remarkably, there has been a deafening, thunderous silence from the climate-denialist crowd (Globalwarming, which has bragged of reducing the “hockey stick” to “splinters” and “sawdust”, has ignored the report. Likewise Wattsup, Heartland, Air Vent, Climate Audit). I could only find a snarky little post at Climate Depot, which tries to minimize the NSF conclusion. It cites a post by antigreendescribing a “whitewash”. The author grumbles that the investigations by Penn State and by the NSF were “limited”.

It doesn’t conclude there is “nothing wrong” with Mann’s conclusions, all it concludes is there is no basis to conclude he did anything improper (WITH NSF FUNDING).

Would it be too much to ask of these people to say “gee, maybe we were wrong”. They claim to be interested in facts, in science, and some of them even have scientific degrees. They presumably understand what intellectual honesty is. As John Belushi used to say, “but NOOOOOO…” All we get is sour grapes, griping that Mann was only cleared of doing something improper with NSF funding. Well, perhaps that’s because that’s what Mann was charged with. I suppose they should have investigated whether Mann was bank robber or space alien. THEN they would have come up with something…

More seriously, if Mann had been condemned, I imagine there would have been a lot more attention. According to the “heads I win, tails you lose” standards applied to climate science, it is simply not news when an accused scientists is upheld.

Accusations: that’s news. Vindications: *yawn*. This skews the record and gives the deniers most of the headspace. So, in spite of all the facts, we can hear from presidential candidates that scientists have “manipulated” climate change data, and everyone just nods.

Link: Climate Scientist investigated (again!), vindicated (again!) | MyFDL


Another article,……….


Climate Secret: NSF Quietly Closes Out Inspector General Investigation with Complete Vindication of Michael Mann


Two things we know with extremely high confidence:

1. Recent warming is unprecedented in magnitude and speed and cause (so the temperature history looks like a Hockey Stick).

2. Michael Mann, the lead author on the original Hockey Stick paper, is one of the nation’s top climatologists and a source of first-rate analysis.

We know these things because both the Hockey Stick and Mann have been independently investigated and vindicated more times than any other facet of climate science or any other climate scientist (see links below).

Readers also know that “the first rule of vindicating climate science is you do not talk about vindicating climate science.” While the anti-science extremists who rule the Tea Party and the right-wing bunkosphere keep shouting lies about the Hockey Stick and Mann — and urging their followers to “shout down” science-based commenters on independent websites — the vindications of the science and the man are reported as quietly as if they came from the Whos of Whoville.

And so after countless investigations — 3 in the U.K., 2 by Penn State, the EPA, the NOAA IG — that have all unanimously found the allegations against climate scientists and their research conclusions based on the hacked “ClimateGate” emails to be wholly unsubstantiated, a top GOP presidential candidate backed by the fossil fuel industry still gives voice to the Texas-sized lie (see “Denier Rick Perry Takes $11 Million from Big Oil, Then Claims Climate Scientists ‘Manipulated Data’ For Money“).

And so while Mann and the Hockey Stick were getting yet another full vindication (from Penn State) earlier this year, Fox News was trumpeting one final investigation:

But the final say will be in the hands of a skeptical inspector general at the National Science Foundation, the primary funder of the research into global warming. According to published documents obtained by FoxNews.com, the IG must determine whether Penn State’s investigation was adequate.

The Office of Inspector General confirmed that it will review the misconduct charges. A spokeswoman told FoxNews.com that “in accordance with our research misconduct regulation, (45 C.F.R. part 689), when the OIG is provided with an institution’s investigation report, we review it for fairness, accuracy and completeness” — issues the investigation has already been faulted for.

Yes, well, the Penn State investigation was faulted only by anti-science deniers. And NSF’s IG is “skeptical” only in the sense that global warming “skeptics” are not — which is to say it analyzes the facts objectively and come to defensible and reproducible conclusions.

The IG analyzed all of the charges “de novo” and concluded:

“Finding no research misconduct or other matter raised by the various regulations and laws discussed above, this case is closed.”

I have uploaded the full report here, but you can also go the NSF IG website here and insert “A09120086.”

Let me end with some key findings of the Penn State investigation:

“An Investigatory Committee of faculty members with impeccable credentials” has unanimously “determined that Dr. Michael E. Mann did not engage in, nor did he participate in, directly or indirectly, any actions that seriously deviated from accepted practices within the academic community for proposing, conducting, or reporting research, or other scholarly activities.”

His work “clearly places Dr. Mann among the most respected scientists in his field…. Dr. Mann’s work, from the beginning of his career, has been recognized as outstanding.“

So Mann isn’t merely a competent researcher. He is one of the leading climate scientists in this country, which of course is precisely why the anti-science crowd has gone after him, much as they have with other leading climate scientists, including Hansen and Santer.

And that’s one more reason why the major media outlets who smeared and defamed him owe him an apology and a retraction — loud ones!

Recent Studies Vindicating the Hockey Stick:

1. Temperatures of North Atlantic “are unprecedented over the past 2000 years and are presumably linked to the Arctic amplification of global warming” — Science (2011)

2. GRL (2010): “We conclude that the 20th century warming of the incoming intermediate North Atlantic water has had no equivalent during the last thousand years.“


3. JGR (2010): “The last decades of the past millennium are characterized again by warm temperatures that seem to be unprecedented in the context of the last 1600 years.”

4. Human-caused Arctic warming overtakes 2,000 years of natural cooling, “seminal” study finds (2009)


5. Unprecedented warming in Lake Tanganyika and its impact on humanity (2010)

Link: Climate Secret: NSF Quietly Closes Out Inspector General Investigation with Complete Vindication of Michael Mann | ThinkProgress