Once again, Pennsylvania State University has cleared Michael Mann of scientific misconduct for his work on the famous “hockey stick” graph depicting temperatures over the past millennium.
Mann was a prominent figure in the more than 1,000 emails that were leaked out of the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit last November, and the university launched an investigation days after the emails became public. Penn State cleared Mann of the most serious accusations about scientific fraud and data manipulation back in February but left open a single question:
Did Dr. Michael Mann engage in, or 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?
In a 4 June report that was released on Thursday, a separate committee made up of Penn State faculty unanimously concluded that there is “no substance” to the accusations of research misconduct against Mann. In a 19-page document goes into little detail about Mann’s practices, the committee breaks that question into its component parts, looking at his behavior in proposing, conducting and reporting research.
On the first question, the committee cites Mann’s success in applying for grant money and leading research, saying such success “would not have been possible had he not met or exceeded the highest standards” for proposing research.
On the question of research conduct, the committee found that Mann has identified the source of all data and wherever possible made the data publicly available; similarly, the committee found that although Mann was initially reluctant to release computer code and initial calculations, Mann switched to a simpler programming language in 2000 and has since been releasing all codes and “intermediate data.” If anything, the committee found that his behavior in this arena has exceeded evolving scientific standards. More broadly, the committee noted that Mann’s work has been independently verified by other scientists using publicly available data and has earned him honors within the field.
On the issue of reporting data, the committee looked at Mann’s record of publishing in peer-reviewed journals and his work with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and determined that such a record “would have been impossible” had he not met scientific standards for reporting data.
The committee did take issue with the fact that Mann at times shared unpublished scientific manuscripts with the belief that he had the implied consent of the authors to do so. Although Mann acted “in good faith,” the committee said “the best practice in this regard is to obtain express consent from the author before sharing an unpublished manuscript with third parties.”
Meanwhile, back at the hall of justice, a separate legal case continues to play out in Virginia. First published in Nature in 1998 (pdf), Mann’s iconic graph has been a popular target among such global warming skeptics as Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli, who recently launched an investigation into Mann’s work while he was at the University of Virginia. UVA elected to fight Cuccinelli rather than turn over the documents, and that case has been rumbling along as well.
On Thursday, the Union for Concerned Scientists dug out a copy of Cuccinelli’s latest filing from June 11. Meanwhile, UVA filed documents with the Albemarle County Circuit Court on Tuesday calling Cuccinelli’s investigation an “unlawful” intrusion on academic freedom and free speech, reports the Charlottesville Daily Progress.