First report from the CRU investigations.

While I think that most (all?) of the issues raised when someone stole e-mail from the CRU have been answered, there is still some cleaning up to do. Part of that cleanup was carried out today with the release of a report investigating Dr. Michael Mann.

Penn State, where Dr. Mann is employed, received a number of complaints based on the stolen e-mails from CRU. It struck a committee to investigate and while there were no formal allegations of wrong doing the committee distilled four allegations of inappropriate behaviour on Dr. Mann's part from the complaints.

• Allegation 1: Did you engage in, or participate in, directly or indirectly, any actions with the intent to suppress or falsify data?
• Allegation 2: Did you engage in, or participate in, directly or indirectly, any actions with the intent to delete, conceal or otherwise destroy emails, information and/or data, related to AR4, as suggested by Phil Jones?
• Allegation 3: Did you engage in, or participate in, directly or indirectly, any misuse of privileged or confidential information available to you in your capacity as an academic scholar?
• Allegation 4. Did you 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?

The first three allegations deal with fact, the fourth essentially deals with opinion. I think it is fairly obvious to anyone who followed the issue that there is nothing of substance to the first three and this is reflected in the decision of the committee. The report uses identical phrasing for them saying:

As there is no substance to this allegation, there is no basis for further examination of this allegation in the context of an investigation in the second phase of RA-10.

In regards to allegation 4, the committee took the politically correct route and said that they are administrators and are not qualified to judge what is accepted scientific discourse. Another committee of faculty scientists has been struck to examine this issue.

While I am pleased that Dr. Mann has been completely vindicated I find it disturbing that the University launched an investigation based on groundless public comments. Dr. Mann had to undoubtedly spend a significant time dealing with an issue that should have never been raised. It seems that it was instigated by people who have a political agenda as opposed to being able to raise any legitimate scientific points. If this is the future of science then we are indeed in trouble.