Following are some remarks related to my exposé, “The fraud allegation against some climatic research of Wei-Chyung Wang”.
Wei-Chyung Wang is a professor at the University at Albany, State University of New York. He has been doing research on climate for over 40 years, and he has authored or co-authored more than 100 peer-reviewed scientific articles. He has also received an Appreciation Plaque from the Office of Science in the U.S.A., commending him, “For your insightful counsel and excellent science. …”. The plaque resulted in particular from his research on global warming.
I have formally alleged that Wang committed fraud in important parts of his global-warming research. Below is a relevant timeline.
| 2007-08-03 | My report, “Wei-Chyung Wang fabricated some scientific claims”, is sent to the Vice President for Research at Wang's university. |
| 2007-08-31 | The university notifies me that it is initiating an inquiry into suspected research misconduct by Wang. (The notification includes a copy of the university's Policy and Procedures on Misconduct in Research and Scholarship.) |
| 2007-11-12 | My peer-reviewed exposé on Wang's alleged fraud is published (reference below). |
| 2007-12-07 | Myself and the university's Inquiry Committee have a conference call. |
| 2008-02-20 | The university sends me a redacted copy of the Report of the Inquiry Committee. The Committee unanimously concluded that “there was no data” (thus implicitly concluding Wang must have fabricated data) and that a full investigation should be undertaken. |
| 2008-05-23 | The university sends me a notice: the Investigation Committee has completed its work and found no evidence of fraud. The investigation was conducted without interviewing me, which is a violation of the university's policy. The university asks me to comment on the Committee's report; I am, however, not allowed to see the report. |
| 2008-06-04 | The university informs me that I am not allowed to see the report because they did not interview me when preparing it. |
| 2008-06-06 | I submit comments to the university, listing ways in which I believe the university has acted in breach of U.S. regulations and its own policy. |
| 2008-07-11 | I submit a complaint to the Public Integrity Bureau at the Office of the Attorney General of New York State, alleging criminal fraud. |
| 2008-08-12 | The university sends me the determination for its investigation, saying that there is “no evidence whatsoever [of] … any research misconduct”. |
| 2008-08-30 | A paper of Jones et al. is published. The paper claims to confirm the conclusions of Jones et al. [1990]. The paper, however, relies upon the same data as the 1990 paper: for details, see “Remarks on Jones et al. [JGR, 2008]”. |
| 2008-10-07 | I telephone the Public Integrity Bureau and am told that it might be some months before the Bureau begins to review the complaint. |
| 2009-03-17 | I telephone the Public Integrity Bureau and am told that the complaint is under review by an attorney. |
| 2009-03-18 | I file three requests under the Freedom of Information Law of New York State: for an unredacted copy of the report of the Inquiry Committee; for a copy of the report of the Investigation Committee; and, given that the relevant federal funding agencies are required to be notified when a misconduct investigation is initiated, for copies of all such notifications that were sent by the university and pertain to the investigation of Wang. |
| 2009-03-24 | Given that Wang received funding for the fraudulent research from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and that the DOE has since supplied more funding to Wang, I report the fraud and the university's apparent cover up to the Office of Inspector General at the DOE. |
| 2009-04-14 | The University denies the requests that I made under the NY Freedom of Information Law, claiming that granting the requests, even partially, would violate Wang's personal privacy. |
| 2009-06-25 | My appeal of the University's denial of the requests that I made under the Freedom of Information Law is rejected. I then obtain legal advice, and am informed that it would likely cost $25 000 or more to pursue my requests through the courts (including appeals); I decide to not pursue. |
| 2009-08-24 | The Office of the Inspector General at the DOE concludes that my allegation is not substantiated. No explanation is given. |
| 2009-09-03 | I telephone the Public Integrity Bureau and am told that the complaint is still under review. |
| 2009-11-17 | Some files from the Climatic Research Unit in England are stolen and posted on the internet (this event has since become known as “Climategate”). One of the files is an unredacted copy of the Report of the Inquiry Committee. Another is a submission from Wang to the Investigation Committee, which seems to have constituted Wang's defense. |
| 2009-11-26 | I post some comments about Wang's submission to the Investigation Committee. The comments argue that the submission is obviously and strongly contradicted by the documentary record and that Wang is provably guilty of scientific fraud. |
| 2010-02-02 | The Guardian, which has been a strong supporter of action on global warming, runs a front-page story that reports accurately and positively on my allegation against Wang [lead article; detailed article]. The story then gains world-wide attention. |
| 2010-02-18 | The world's leading scientific journal, Nature, publishes a report about my allegations [online version; print version]. The report concerns one of the world's leading climatologists, Phil Jones, whom my exposé (§2.4) also alleged acted unethically, including in his work for the IPCC. The report on my allegations is seriously inaccurate (details later). |
| 2010-12-01 | I write a letter summarizing the evidence that Jones and Wang committed research fraud. The letter is sent to the UK Science and Technology Committee (House of Commons), which is conducting an investigation into some aspects of global-warming research at Jones' university. |
| 2011-01-25 | The UK Science and Technology Committee publishes its report on its investigation. The report states that paper of Jones et al. [2008-08-30] “verified the original conclusions [of the 1990 paper]” and that the “State University of New York had fully investigated this allegation and that Professor Wang had been entirely exonerated”. |
This web page will be updated with news about the case, as the investigations progress.
Sightings (partial)
Books
| • | Christopher C. Horner, Red Hot Lies: How Global Warming Alarmists Use Threats, Fraud, and Deception to Keep You Misinformed (Washington DC: Regnery Publishing), 2008. [Pages 287–291.] |
| • | Christopher Booker, The Real Global Warming Disaster: Is The Obsession With ‘Climate Change’ Turning Out To Be The Most Costly Scientific Blunder In History? (London: Continuum International), 2009. [Pages 346–347.] |
| • | Fred Pearce, The Climate Files (London: Guardian Books), 2010. [Chapter 6.] |
Media discussions
Media mentions
| • | Michael Duffy, “Cold, hard facts take the heat out of some hot claims”, Sydney Morning Herald, 18 August 2007. |
| • | Jack Kelly, “Global baloney”, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 19 August 2007. |
| • | Seth Borenstein, Raphael Satter, Malcolm Ritter, “Science not faked, but not pretty”, Associated Press, 12 December 2009. |
| • | Susan Watts, (report and interview), BBC Newsnight, 2 February 2010. |
| • | James Taranto, “Best of the Web Today”, Wall Street Journal (online edition), 2 February 2010. |
| • | Mark Phillips, “Fuel for climate change skeptics”, CBS News, 4 February 2010. |
| • | Javier Sampedro, “Salvemos la libertad científica”, El País, 4 February 2010. |
| • | Karel Knip, “IPCC takes heat in climate controversy”, NRC Handelsblad, 10 February 2010. |
| • | Fred Guterl, “Iceberg ahead”, Newsweek, 1 March 2010. |
Selected blogs
| • | Ace of Spades HQ |
| • | Climate Audit—on Jones et al. |
| • | DailyTech: Michael Asher |
| • | Freeborn John |
| • | Herald Sun: Andrew Bolt [1], [2] |
| • | History News Network: Liberty & Power |
| • | Hot Air |
| • | JREF Forum |
| • | Newsbusters |
| • | Pajamas Media |
| • | Scientific Misconduct Blog |
| • | Small Dead Animals |
| • | Telegraph: James Delingpole |
| • | The Reference Frame |
| • | Watts Up With That? [1], [2], [3], [4], [5] |
U.S. Senate
| • | Senator James M. Inhofe, “2007: Global warming alarmism reaches a tipping point”, Senate Floor Speech, 26 October 2007. |
| • | Senate Environment and Public Works Committee (Minority), “Over 400 prominent scientists disputed man-made global warming claims in 2007”, Senate Report, 20 December 2007. |
See also
| • | Allegations of research misconduct |
| • | Remarks on Keenan [Theor. Appl. Climatol., 2007] |
IPCC (2007), Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis (editors—Solomon S., Qin D., Manning M., Chen Z., Marquis M., Averyt K.B., Tignor M., Miller H.L.), Cambridge University Press. [This is the assessment report. Jones is one of the two Coordinating Lead Authors of Chapter 3, on surface climate.]
Jones P.D., Groisman P.Y., Coughlan M., Plummer N., Wang W.-C., Karl T.R. (1990), “Assessment of urbanization effects in time series of surface air temperature over land”, Nature, 347: 169–172. [This is one of the two research papers that relies on the fabricated data (the other is by Wang et al.); it is cited by IPCC (2007: chap.3).]
Jones P.D., Lister D.H., Li Q. (2008), “Urbanization effects in large-scale temperature records, with an emphasis on China”, Journal of Geophysical Research, 113, D16122. doi: 10.1029/2008JD009916.
Keenan D.J. (2007), “The fraud allegation against some climatic research of Wei-Chyung Wang”, Energy & Environment, 18: 985–995. doi: 10.1260/095830507782616913.
Ren G.Y., Chu Z.Y., Chen Z.H., Ren Y.Y. (2007), “Implications of temporal change in urban heat island intensity observed at Beijing and Wuhan stations”, Geophysical Research Letters, 34. doi: 10.1029/2006GL027927. [This argues that a large part of the observed warming in China is due to urbanization effects on measurement.]
Tao Shiyan, Fu Congbin, Zeng Zhaomei, Zhang Qingyun (1991), Two Long-Term Instrumental Climatic Data Bases of the People’s Republic of China, ORNL/CDIAC-47, NDP-039 (Oak Ridge TN: Oak Ridge National Laboratory). [This report resulted from a joint research project by the U.S. Department of Energy and the Chinese Academy of Sciences. It contains conclusive evidence that Wang's claims were fabricated. A second version of the report was published in 1997; its Table 1, which contains station histories, is identical to Appendix B in this version.]
Wang W.-C., Zeng Z., Karl T.R. (1990), “Urban heat islands in China”, Geophysical Research Letters, 17: 2377–2380. [This is one of the two research papers that relies on the fabricated data (the other is by Jones et al.).]
Yan Zhongwei, Yang Chi, Jones P. (2001), “Influence of inhomogeneity on the estimation of mean and extreme temperature trends in Beijing and Shanghai”, Advances in Atmospheric Sciences, 18: 309–321. [This demonstrates that, by 2001, Jones knew that some of Wang's claims were untrue. (The meteorological stations studied are #54511 and #58367.)]