After a lengthy (and expensive) legal battle, the University of Virginia has released the first batch of former UVA professor Michael Mann’s emails to the American Tradition Institute. The release comes at roughly the same another investigation in Mann’s work — this one by the National Science Foundation — exonerated Mann of any wrong-doing.
For some, the NSF’s findings are reason enough to say that those who challenged Mann should fold their tents and go home. others, like the Richmond-Times Dispatch, go a step further, though, and demands that Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli “…drop his own inquiry, apologize to Mann and then apologize to the taxpayers.”
Cuccinelli is, in the paper’s opinion, guilty of playing to the Republican faithful who, it seems, are rather hostile to science and free inquiry. Leaving these rather tatty strawmen aside, let’s recall a couple of things:
* It was the American Tradition Institute, using the state’s FOIA law, that caused UVA to disgorge Mann’s emails — emails, by the way, the University long-contended did not exist and could not be produced. Mr. Cuccinelli’s investigation is still ongoing or in litigation.
* Dr. Mann may not be guilty of anything at all. Nor is he exactly innocent. His behavior toward his peers seeking to check his work raises plenty of red flags but as the RTD seems to be a bit color blind, here is a handy, black and white timeline of Mann’s handling of data and FOIA requests. It isn’t pretty.
Honest people can, have and will disagree over the causes of climate change. But it does exist — which is a very good thing, as without it, central Virginia would look more like the present-day Yukon and the Chesapeake Bay wouldn’t exist.
The questions surrounding Mann’s have devolved into politics and activism. On all sides. That is deeply regrettable. But at the heart of all this is a rather simple principle: show your work. And in Mann’s case, a public employee at a public institution using publicly-provided materials should expect that his work would be shown without fuss. Instead, we have charges, counter-charges, lawsuits, investigations, recriminations and nonsense.
The American Tradition Institute is getting the information it wanted — in pieces. They will pour over the documents and, quite possibly, may find nothing more damning than that Mann had a penchant for using emoticons in his correspondence. I suspect there is no smoking gun, or even mildly warm kitchen utensil, in the lot.
But we shall see.
