Physicists: climate data manipulation at East Anglia University has "worrying implications"

Scientists at the heart of the Climategate row were yesterday accused by a leading academic body of undermining science's credibility.

The Institute of Physics said 'worrying implications' had been raised after it was revealed the University of East Anglia had manipulated data on global warming.

The rebuke - the strongest yet from the scientific community - came as Professor Phil Jones, the researcher at the heart of the scandal, told MPs he had written 'some pretty awful emails' - but denied trying to suppress data.

The Climategate row, which was first revealed by the Daily Mail in November, was triggered when a hacker stole hundreds of emails sent from East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit.

They revealed scientists plotting how to avoid responding to Freedom of Information requests from climate change sceptics.

Some even appeared to show the researchers discussing how to manipulate raw data from tree rings about historical temperatures.

In one, Professor Jones talks about using a 'trick' to massage figures and 'hide the decline'.

This is a good trick only if you get away with it

Dr. Phil Jones, late of the East Anglia CRU, has a bone to pick with bloggers, as the New Scientist blog Short Sharp Science reports today. Does he defend himself by pointing out factual errors from bloggers, who are certain to have made a few, in reporting on the “climategate” scandal and the cascading series of exposed errors from the IPCC report on the “settled science” of anthropogenic global warming (AGW)? Not exactly. Jones rolls out yet another innovative approach to science in which he transfers the burden of proof to skeptics:

Phil Jones, who has temporarily stood aside as the unit’s director, admitted to the journal Nature that his much-criticised failure to keep records about the location of Chinese weather stations used in a major paper was “not acceptable”.

In effect, Jones conceded that British climate sceptic Doug Keenan had been right in some of his criticisms of a 20-year-old paper that had used the Chinese data in an analysis that ruled out local urban influences as a significant factor in global warming.