And the witchhunt continues apace with Fred Pearce's willing participation: Climategate inquiry stumbles on the start line

Dear Readers,

Fred Pearce, a seemingly highly respected environmental science journalist, appears to be going rapidly down the same slippery slope that Andy Revkin slid down (and his colleague, Elisabeth Rosenthal, is giving him a lot of competition these days) -- you know...the one where the "journalist" sensationalizes what should be news until it becomes FoxNews-ized.

I hereby give you Fred Pearce's latest effort to go down that road:

Climategate inquiry stumbles on the start line

by Fred Pearce, NewScientist, February 12, 2010

One day in, and already one of the five reviews into "climategate" has been hit by its own controversy.

Former civil servant Muir Russell will head an independent inquiry into the professional behaviour of climate scientists at University of East Anglia (UEA) in Norwich, U.K., relating to the emails which were leaked into the public domain last November.

Russell, whose career was devoted to the government of Scotland, announced his panel of six independent experts yesterday. Hours later, one of them – Philip Campbell, editor of Nature – was forced to step down over claims that he is not impartial: last year, Campbell told a Chinese radio station that there was nothing to suggest that the UEA scientists had misbehaved.

"I made the remarks in good faith, on the basis of media reports of the leaks. As I have made clear subsequently, I support the need for a full review of the facts behind the leaked emails," Campbell said yesterday.

Investigation remit

Russell's review will investigate whether the UEA emails – which were leaked on the web last November (2009) – demonstrated that the UEA scientists were guilty [couldn't he have written "engaged in" instead of "were guilty" ?] of "manipulation or suppression of data."

It will also investigate whether the scientists thwarted freedom of information legislation and whether the UEA Climatic Research Unit's policies for "acquiring, assembling, subjecting to peer review and disseminating data and research findings" met best scientific practice. The research unit is at the centre of the email scandal.

Russell said the panel would not investigate the validity of the unit's scientific findings. Its preliminary findings should be published "by the spring."

At the announcement of the panel yesterday, Russell insisted that, though its work would be funded by UEA, it was independent. Journalists asked Campbell whether he had a conflict of interests, given that his journal has published papers by UEA scientists such as director Phil Jones and used UEA scientists to review submitted papers; Campbell denied it.

Drowning in inquiries

Four other inquiries into the controversy surrounding the hacked emails are under way.

● The UEA has asked the UK Royal Society to help it choose a second independent panel to conduct a "reappraisal of the science in the Climatic Research Unit's key publications."

● The UK House of Commons science and technology committee has asked for submissions to its own inquiry into the affair. One of the questions the committee wants to answer is whether the "terms of reference and scope of the [Russell] review are adequate." The committee will hold oral hearings next month.

● British police are investigating possible criminal behaviour, both in the original apparent theft of the emails and in what the emails reveal about how scientists have handled freedom of information requests.

● Penn State University in University Park, Pennsylvania, is entering the second stage of its investigation into possible research misconduct by meteorologist Michael Mann, a frequent collaborator with the CRU scientists, whose pithy observations are prominent in the emails. A preliminary inquiry, concluded last week, found that Mann had no case to answer on charges of falsifying or suppressing data, deleting emails and misusing confidential information. But the university has set up a formal investigation into whether the emails revealed Mann had [Pearce used the word "guilty," again, here, but I edited it out] "seriously deviated from accepted practice within the academic community."

Link:  http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn18517-climategate-inquiry-stumbles-on-the-start-line.html