Investigation into climate scientist prompts feds to question taxpayer funding

Following on allegations of misconduct by Dr. Michael Mann,
a congressman and a senator are demanding the National
Science Foundation investigate whether taxpayer dollars
were inappropriately used to fund his work.

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Yesterday, it was announced that Penn State University’s investigation into Dr. Michael Mann would delve further into questions of his behavior and integrity. Immediately afterwards, a congressman and a senator called on the National Science Foundation to look into whether taxpayers should continue to fund the scientist’s research. Mann figured prominently in Climategate email scandal that saw thousands of emails from the world's top climate scientists released on the Internet.

While Mann was absolved of three allegations, the university will continue to look into a fourth. Specifically, they will determine if Mann, “engaged 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."

Representative Darrell Issa, R-California, praised the university for its investigation saying, “Penn State University deserves credit for advancing a very serious investigation into corrupted science by someone who put a political agenda ahead of science and fact in an effort to manipulate discussion and suppress dissenting views on climate change.”

Issa said however that funding from the stimulus package that was provided to the National Science Foundation and granted to Mann should be stopped until the next phase of the investigation is complete. “The National Science Foundation should immediately freeze all grants and funding, including the $541,184 stimulus grant to Professor Mann. Taxpayers should not be paying for propaganda masquerading as science,” Issa said.

On the Senate side, Senator James Inhofe, R-Oklahoma, called on the National Science Foundation to conduct its own investigation to, “examine possible violations of federal laws and policies governing taxpayer-funded research.”

Inhofe called attention to the recent rash of errors that were discovered in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climage Change’s AR4 climate report. “We need to reassure the American people that their tax dollars are supporting objective scientific research rather than political agendas," he said.

The IPCC's work has formed the backbone of the argument warning of the dangers of manmade climate change and Mann was a contributing author to the work. Revelations that many of the conclusions in the work are based on faulty data have begun to have ramifications in Congress.  Yesterday, two congressman called on the Envrionmental Protection Agency to justify its use of AR4 in its finding that carbon dioxide was a harmful gas.

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