Report Finds No Misconduct in "Climategate"

The Guardian reports that a review of the methods of the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia found no professional misconduct:

The climate scientists at the centre of a media storm over emails released on the internet were disorganised but did not fudge their results, an independent inquiry into the affair reported today.

Here's the key finding from the seven professors who reviewed the CRU's methods:

We saw no evidence of any deliberate scientific malpractice in any of the work of the Climatic Research Unit and had it been there we believe that it is likely that we would have detected it. Rather we found a small group of dedicated if slightly disorganised researchers who were ill-prepared for being the focus of public attention. As with many small research groups their internal procedures were rather informal.

Given the initial furor over the research group's e-mails, one might think that this finding might gain significant media attention. Sadly, no. The New York Times devoted a single paragraph on page A15 to the report. So much for Climategate.