Cuccinelli sniffs for fraud in UVA climate research

Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli’s fight against the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) turned personal in late April, when Cuccinelli demanded UVA turn over documents, computer code and correspondence related to the research and grants of Michael Mann, a prominent climate scientist at UVA from 1999 to 2005. 

“We have had Freedom of Information Act requests before that touch on these kinds of things, so we know the extent of stuff,” said Patricia Wiberg, chair of UVA’s Department of Environmental Sciences. “But it seems somehow different coming from the Attorney General.” 

She added, “We’re still hoping the administration will make some formal response—I think that would make a lot of people feel better.” While the UVA Office of Public Affairs did not reply to requests for comment, President John Casteen announced last Friday that UVA hired law firm Hogan Lovells to guide the school’s response to Cuccinelli’s request.

Mann was among the first scientists to show clearly an increase in global temperatures starting around 1900; the EPA has relied on such research to regulate greenhouse gases. Many observers decry the investigation as witch-hunting that squanders tax dollars and stifles research.

Mann is a frequent target of climate change skeptics, so much so that Congress requested the National Academy of Sciences review his work in 2006. Minor criticisms aside, that review upheld Mann’s methods and conclusions. Mann attracted attention again in November 2009, after hackers stole e-mails from a British university that seemed to imply Mann and fellow scientists conspired to exaggerate climate change. 

That so-called Climate-gate triggered more inquiries. British investigations concluded the climate scientists may have been tactless in their correspondence and hesitant to share data, but they had not tampered with science. Penn State University, Mann’s current employer, has its own investigation. 

“Let me be clear,” spokeswoman Annemarie Mountz emphasized May 13, “we’re not looking into the science, we’re looking into the conduct of the scientist.” 

Then came Cuccinelli. While the attorney general seeks fraud in the research process, he remains agnostic about the scientific accuracy of the results. When asked by C-VILLE to clarify the Commonwealth’s reasoning for pursuing Mann, the Attorney General’s spokesman Brian Gottstein repeated a prior statement. “The revelations of Climate-gate indicate that some climate data may have been deliberately manipulated to arrive at pre-set conclusions,” said Gottstein. “The use of manipulated data to apply for taxpayer-funded research grants in Virginia is potentially fraud.” Gottstein added that the Attorney General had granted UVA’s requests to reduce the extent of material sought and to extend the deadline to July 26. 

Nonetheless, the investigation upsets UVA’s Department of Environmental Sciences. Professor Howard Epstein believes people now must think twice about their research. Wiberg doubts that fraudulent data could have survived the peer review needed to win significant grants, of which Mann won five while at UVA. “To have a proposal get through that process suggests the quality of the science is high and meets expectations for the significance of the results,” said Wiberg. 

The UVA Faculty Senate, Union of Concerned Scientists, American Civil Liberties Union and other groups have condemned the investigation as threatening academic freedom. Even one of Mann’s staunchest critics, Steve McIntyre, condemned on his blog Cuccinelli’s “repugnant piece of overzealousness.” James Moran, U.S. Representative from northern Virginia, likewise chastised Cuccinelli for trying “to silence those with whom you disagree.”

The pattern of pestering climate researchers worries Michael MacCracken, the first executive director of the federal U.S. Global Change Research Program and a past president of the International Association of Meteorology and Atmospheric Sciences. In an e-mail to C-VILLE, he wrote, “The lawsuits and FOIA requests have become a significant distraction to the work of quite a number of key people. This could get to be a very serious drain on time, and what is to stop requests to non-scientists or any of a wide number of people receiving federal dollars, like me getting Social Security or Medicare payments?”

Ironically, replying to Cuccinelli’s demands won’t be hard, says Wiberg. Mann took most of his material with him, and his e-mails, centrally stored, can be sifted easily. 

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