Inquiry Finds No Evidence of Impropriety among `climategate` Scientists
The climate scientists from the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia, including director Phil Jones, were cleared of scientific misconduct by a second of three independent inquiries.
Jones was at the center of the hacked email controversy, otherwise known as 'climategate' that surfaced at the end of last year.
The review, led by Lord Oxburgh, gave scientific processes at CRU a "clean bill of health", but did raise some issues of concern, according to the Guardian.
The report concluded that the scientists from CRU did not fudge their results, but noted that they were disorganized.
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Here are some of the final conclusions directly from the Independent Inquiry.
1. We saw no evidence of any deliberate scientific malpractice in any of the work of the Climatic Research Unit and had it been there we believe that it is likely that we would have detected it. Rather we found a small group of dedicated if slightly disorganised researchers who were ill-prepared for being the focus of public attention.
2. We cannot help remarking that it is very surprising that research in an area that depends so heavily on statistical methods has not been carried out in close collaboration with professional statisticians. Indeed there would be mutual benefit if there were closer collaboration and interaction between CRU and a much wider scientific group outside the relatively small international circle of temperature specialists.
3. We observed that there were important and unresolved questions that related to the availability of environmental data sets. It was pointed out that since UK government adopted a policy that resulted in charging for access to data sets collected by government agencies, other countries have followed suit impeding the flow of processed and raw data to and between researchers. This is unfortunate and seems inconsistent with policies of open access to data promoted elsewhere in government.
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The Oxburgh review follows a report on the CRU emails last month from the Commons Science and Technology Select Committee, which also cleared the scientists involved of wrongdoing. A third enquiry, led by Sir Muir Russell, is due to report next month, according to the Guardian.
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