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'Climategate' inquiries were 'highly defective', report for sceptic thinktank rules | Environment | guardian.co.ukNone of the three official inquiries into the illegal release of climate emails from the University of East Anglia (UEA) showed a "serious concern for the truth", according to a report commissioned by Lord Lawson's sceptical thinktank.
The report, which has been criticised for "bias", contends that none of the inquiries were objective and comprehensive and that public confidence in climate science would not be restored until a thorough investigation is carried out.
Lord Lawson called the three official inquiries, one by the House of Commons science and technology select committee and two commissioned by the university, "highly defective". But he has consistently refused to reveal the identities of the donors behind the secretive Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF) which paid for the report.
The inquiry's author, Andrew Montford, criticised the previous inquiries for not investigating the most serious allegations and for failing to ask key questions. For example, Prof Phil Jones, the head of UEA's climatic research unit, had been criticised for writing emails about deleting emails that were apparently the subject of a freedom of information act (FoI) request. He has denied deleting any emails to avoid FoI requests, but the main inquiry into the emails conducted by Sir Muir Russell never asked him or any of the other scientists about this.
Montford, who runs the Bishop Hill climate sceptic blog, also criticised the MPs' inquiry and a third review led by Lord Oxburgh, for failing to address an allegation of fraud relating to a paper that Jones published in 1990.
Good Stuff.