Scientists Cleared in 'Climategate' Scandal

Was “Climategate” much ado about nothing? The British government recently finished conducting a probe into the climate-change data supplied by the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit and has concluded that the data is valid. A slew of catty emails between researchers were released just before the U.N. climate summit last year, leading to charges that the Unit and its director had tampered with data and the peer-review process to overstate global warming. The British government's committee report said that "the scientific reputation" of the unit and its director, Professor Phil Jones, "remains intact," adding that nothing in the 1,000 leaked emails threatened the conclusion that "global warming is happening and that it is induced by human activity." The Climate Research Unit still faces two other inquiries, one headed by a former civil servant who is also looking into the charges that the Unit rigged data and the peer-review process, while scientists at MIT are going over all the data to ascertain whether the research is scientifically valid.