What Happened with the Climategate inquiry?

It couldn't be much clearer, that elements of the press are mis-reporting the results, those that are quoted here by deniers regularly like James Dopypole.

This is so noticeable, that the inquiry added this to the end of the report.

"Addendum to report, 19 April 2010

For the avoidance of misunderstanding in the light of various press stories, it is

important to be clear that the neither the panel report nor the press briefing intended to

imply that any research group in the field of climate change had been deliberately

misleading in any of their analyses or intentionally exaggerated their findings.

Rather, the aim was to draw attention to the complexity of statistics in this field, and

the need to use the best possible methods."

http://www.uea.ac.uk/mac/comm/media/press/CRUstate...

With this outcome deniers have little choice but to go for the "it's all part of the conspiracy" line, otherwise they really start to look idiotic as they made so much noise about this whole affair.

Multiple investigations have cleared the scientists, but the "skeptics" on here (skeptics in quotes because they are not really skeptics) would not believe any inquiry that cleared the scientists, because it is useful for them to believe that scientists are lying. Virtually none of the skeptics here even have the scientific background to understand the emails, much less make judgments on them. They choose to believe that scientists are wrong, lie, are part of a huge conspiracy, etc., because they don't want to consider the consequences of the scientists are right. Denial is simply a rationalization.

The investigation cleared the scientists - end of story

Peter,

Who would you suggest should be in charge of an inquiry into a scientific matter? Scientists? Politicians? Fox News? Who?

A panel of peers needs to review this, and that is exactly what happened.

There are/were 3 enquiries I know of.

The House of Commons Science and Technology Committee found that "the scientific reputation of Professor Jones and CRU remains intact," but they reported that greater transparency would be better in future.

An independent Science Assessment Panel chaired by Lord Oxburgh had people like an independent statistician to judge the methods used. Report here:

http://www.uea.ac.uk/mac/comm/media/press/CRUstate...

They found "no evidence of any deliberate scientific malpractice in any of the work of the Climatic Research Unit," research was "carried out with integrity" and had used "fair and satisfactory" methods.

There is one more group yet to report, which has been put together by the Royal Society, the UK's national academy of science and is chaired by Sir Muir Russell.

Many 'skeptics' are simply deniers, they will not accept any evidence that disagrees with them. Climate change must be a conspiracy, and anyone who finds differently is in the conspiracy.

The "scientists" were cleared by their friends.

It's kind of like the thieves being cleared by their pawn broker.