Penn State climate scientist files defamation suit

By Renee Schoof | McClatchy Newspapers

WASHINGTON — Penn State University scientist Michael Mann, whose work showed that Earth’s temperatures have risen along with increased fossil fuel use, announced Tuesday he had filed a lawsuit against the conservative National Review and the Competitive Enterprise Institute for defamation, complaining that they falsely accused him of academic fraud and compared him to convicted child molester Jerry Sandusky.

Organizations that deny climate change is a serious problem have condemned Mann for years.

Mann was one of the scientists whose emails were hacked from a climate research center at Britain’s University of East Anglia in 2009. Climate skeptics quoted portions of the emails in an attempt to discredit the scientists in what the critics dubbed "Climategate." But government and university investigations found no misconduct.

The lawsuit, filed Monday in the Superior Court of the District of Columbia, argued that the two conservative outlets and two writers named in the suit, Rand Simberg and Mark Steyn, “maliciously accused (Mann) of academic fraud, the most fundamental defamation that can be levied against a scientist and a professor.”

Simberg, in a Competitive Enterprise Institute blog post in July, wrote that “Mann could be said to be the Jerry Sandusky of climate science, except for instead of molesting children, he molested and tortured data.”

Competitive Enterprise Institute general counsel Sam Kazman said the institute withdrew the offending sentence within days because it was "rhetorically overblown." But it didn't make other changes or apologize when Mann's attorney complained, he added.

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