Michael Mann (courtesy Penn State U.)
Pennsylvania State University (PSU) is continuing its investigation of Michael E. Mann, by reviewing all his correspondence with Phil Jones and his colleagues at the East Anglia Climatic Research Unit (CRU). Meanwhile, at least one PSU student has carried out a silent protest against Mann and the other scientists implicated in the CRU Archive.
Laura Nichols of The Daily Collegian, the campus newspaper, reported yesterday that a panel had already been formed to review every e-mail between Mann and the CRU group. Stephen McIntyre of The Climate Audit took note of the report.
University policy RA-10, under which the inquiry is proceeding, reads in part:
Public trust in the integrity and ethical behavior of scholars is essential if research and other scholarly activities are to play their proper role in the University and in society. The maintenance of high ethical standards is a central and critical responsibility of faculty and administrators of academic institutions. Policy AD47 sets forth statements of general standards of professional ethics within the academic community.
Policy AD47, in turn, sets forth standards of scholarly conduct. Among other things, professors are required to:
- Be intellectually honest and avoid conflicts of interest between free inquiry and the service of other goals.
- Gather data in a transparent and honest manner, and avoid such obvious sins as plagiarism, and less obvious sins such as censorship of ideas with which they disagree.
These are the points that the CRU Archive suggests that Mann has violated. Under RA-10 he presumably stands accused of research misconduct according to this partial definition:
fabrication, falsification, plagiarism or other practices that seriously deviate from accepted practices within the academic community for proposing, conducting, or reporting research or other scholarly activities.
Policy RA-10 has a fourteen-part procedure for handling of allegations of research misconduct. Point 1 of that procedure, the receipt of the allegations, has already taken place. Point 2, the initial review, is where the inquiry into Mann now stands.
At least one PSU student left a chalk graffito on the wall of a science building, expressing his displeasure with all of the scientists mentioned in the CRU Archive, presumably including Mann:
Climategate: Don't hide the decline.
Another person, identifying himself as a PSU student, commented to this Examiner four days ago that he expects the inquiry to come to nothing. He expressed cynical mirth at the spectacle of the vast research grants provided to PSU ($760 million annually, according to Annemarie Mountz, spokeswoman for PSU) by grantors, including the federal government, who know or ought to know that, in the student's words, all research departments are riddled with scientific fraud and abuse.
Previous articles on this controversy include:
Details emerge on PSU investigation of Mann
Penn State to investigate Michael Mann--or whitewash him
The Hockey Stick was never accurate--and CRU knew it
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