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Fact brief - Were scientists caught falsifying data in the hacked emails incident dubbed 'climategate'?
Posted on 13 July 2024 by John Mason, BaerbelW, Ken Rice
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Were scientists caught falsifying data in the hacked emails incident dubbed 'climategate'?
Nine separate investigations found that climate scientists involved in the “climategate” controversy did not falsify data.
In 2009, the Climatic Research Unit’s servers were hacked. One scientist was reported as saying that he “completed Mike’s nature trick” to “hide the decline” in an email. The “trick” in question simply refers to combining instrumental temperature data and tree ring data.
“Hide the decline” referred not to a temperature decline, but a decline in the reliability of some tree rings as a temperature proxy. This had become an issue in data starting from the year 1960. Also known as the "divergence problem," it had been discussed in the scientific literature since the mid 1990s — 15 years before "climategate."
Steve Mosher, who fueled the conspiracy theory, has since issued a public apology, acknowledging that the scientists’ work was accurate.
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Sources
Skeptical Science List of 'climategate' investigations
Guardian The five key leaked emails from UEA's Climatic Research Unit
NASA Vital Signs - limate Change: Vital Signs of the Planet
BBC COP26: Former sceptic apologises for role in Climategate
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Fact briefs are short, credibly sourced summaries that offer “yes/no” answers in response to claims found online. They rely on publicly available, often primary source data and documents. Fact briefs are created by contributors to Gigafact — a nonprofit project looking to expand participation in fact-checking and protect the democratic process. See all of our published fact briefs here.
Since the article discusses the climate gate investigations, its worth pointing out one of the major misconceptions of the investigations which was the investigation of M Mann by the NSF. Its investigation was limited to misconduct as defined in the NSF Research Misconduct Policy, which concerns only “fabrication, falsification and plagiarism … in research funded by NSF.” It stated that Mann “did not directly receive NSF research funding as a Principal Investigator until late 2001 or 2002.” Because the MBH98 & MBH99 falsification allegations pre-dated 2001, the NSF had no jurisdiction over these allegations. In summary, Mann's HS was not investigated by the NSF. Unfortunately, many advocates falsely have been led to believe that Mann & MBH98 & MBH99 were investigated by the NSF.