Watt now? McIntyre will have a cow

The Penn State Faculty Committee of Inquiry on Michael Mann's conduct of research has issued its final investigative report about whether

"Dr. Michael Mann engage in, or participate 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?"

Bottom line first

The Investigatory Committee, after careful review of all available evidence, determined that there is no substance to the allegation against Dr. Michael E. Mann, Professor, Department of Meteorology, The Pennsylvania State University.

More specifically, the Investigatory Committee determined that Dr. Michael E. Mann did not engage in, nor did he participate 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.

The decision of the Investigatory Committee was unanimous.

They first considered whether Mann had deviated from accepted practices in his proposals (oh yes Ken C you are gonna have a problem with that one). They concluded that Mann's record in light of stringent reviews meant that

This level of success in proposing research, and obtaining funding to conduct it, clearly places Dr. Mann among the most respected scientists in his field. Such success would not have been possible had he not met or exceeded the highest standards of his profession for proposing research.

They next considered whether Mann deviated from accepted practices in the conduct of research

The Investigatory Committee established that Dr. Mann, in all of his published studies, precisely identified the source(s) of his raw data and, whenever possible, made the data and or links to the data available to other researchers.

thus

Dr. Mann's actual practices with regard to making source codes and intermediate data readily available reflect, in all respects, evolving practices within his field

The Committee of Inquiry noted that Mann was held in high regard as shown by the many awards he has received, and finally they considered whether he had deviated from accepted practices in his reporting of research results.

The report includes a straightforward answer to Nigel Persaud

The next question for Dr. Mann was posed as follows: "What is your reply to the email statements of Dr. McIntyre (a) that he had been referred to an incorrect version of your data at your FTP site (b) that this incorrect version was posted prior to his request and was not formulated expressly for him and (c) that to date, no source code or other evidence has been provided to fully demonstrate that the that to date, no source code or other evidence has been provided to fully demonstrate that the incorrect version, now deleted, did not infect some of Mann's and Rutherford's other work?"

Dr. Mann responded by stating that neither he, nor many of his colleagues, put much reliability in the various accusations that Dr. McIntyre has made, and that, moreover, there is "no merit whatsoever to Mr. McIntyre's claims here." Specifically, Dr. Mann repeated that all data, as well as the source codes requested by Dr. McIntyre, were in fact made available to him. All data were listed on Dr. Mann's FTP site in 2000, and the source codes were made available to Dr. McIntyre about a year after his request was made, in spite of the fact that the National Science Foundation had ruled that scientists were not required to do so. The issue of an "incorrect version" of the data came about because Dr. McIntyre had requested the data (which were already available on the FTP site) in spreadsheet format, and Dr. Rutherford, early on, had unintentionally sent an incorrectly formatted spreadsheet.

Does any of that sound familiar? Eli finds some interesting points in there that Steve should discuss.

The Committee slapped Mann on the wrists for sharing without permission unpublished stuff with third parties as careless and inappropriate.

Richard Lindzen, who was also interviewed, as many have guessed, is not exactly a friend of Michael

When told that the first three allegations against Dr. Mann were dismissed at the inquiry stage of the RA-lO process, Dr. Lindzen's response was: "It's thoroughly amazing. I mean these are issues that he explicitly stated in the emails. I'm wondering what's going on?"

but Lindzen also told the Committee

The next question inquired whether, in Dr. Lindzen's view, climatologists normally make their codes (used in the analysis of data) available for other people to download. Dr. Lindzen responded by stating that "it depends."

RTFL. Comments?