A Pennsylvania State University committee yesterday cleared climate researcher Michael Mann of professional-misconduct charges but said it would further investigate whether the scientist "deviated from accepted practices."
The inquiry was prompted by events in November, when hackers exposed more than 1,000 e-mail messages exchanged among climate scientists, many of which were sent to and from Mann.
No formal allegations were made against Mann, but the university decided to launch the inquiry after a flood of public complaints and accusations against the climatologist.
Mann is best known for using tree rings and other indirect measures to reconstruct Earth's climate over centuries past. Those reconstructions showed temperatures shooting upward in the 20th century in a graph that became known as the "hockey stick."
Yesterday's report, though welcomed by Mann, did not satisfy his critics, who immediately called the university's investigation a "whitewash."
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