Climategate:British panel clears climate scientists

A British panel issued a sweeping exoneration on Wednesday of scientists caught up in the controversy known as Climategate...

A British panel issued a sweeping exoneration on Wednesday of scientists caught up in the controversy known as Climategate,saying it found no evidence that they had manipulated their research to support preconceived ideas about global warming.

The researcher at the centre of the controversy,a leading climatologist named Phil Jones,was immediately reinstated to a job resembling his old one at the Climatic Research Unit of the University of East Anglia. That unit,often referred to by its initials,has played a leading role in efforts to understand the earths past climate.

Embarrassing e-mail messages sent by Jones and other scientists were stolen in November and posted to the Internet,leading to a deluge of accusations from climate change sceptics as well as admissions from some of the scientists that they had been guilty of poor behaviour. But were they,as the sceptics charged,guilty of scientific misconduct?

On the specific allegations made against the behavior of CRU scientists,we find that their rigour and honesty as scientists are not in doubt, said the new review,led by Muir Russell,a leading British civil servant and educator.

The Russell panel also found little reason to question the advice the scientists had given to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change,the UN body that produces a major review of the science of global warming every few years. The new report said that we did not find any evidence of behavior that might undermine the conclusions of the IPCC assessments.

The review was the fifth to come to essentially the same conclusion about the e-mail messages sent by Jones and other scientists,though it was the most comprehensive and eagerly awaited of the investigations. Last week the second of two reviews at Pennsylvania State University exonerated Michael Mann,a scientist there who had also been a focus of the controversy.

The latest report was not a complete vindication for scientists or for the University of East Anglia,which commissioned it. The reviewers criticised a consistent pattern of failing to display the proper degree of openness in responding to demands for backup data and other information under Britains law governing public records.