A Penn State University panel of scientists on Thursday exonerated one of the school's researchers of accusations that his work on climate change violated the university's research misconduct policy.
After a four-month investigation, five university professors unanimously cleared professor Michael Mann, a climate scientist and one of several hundred researchers sharing the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize for their work with the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
The Penn State investigators concluded in a report released yesterday that "Mann did not engage in, nor did he participate in, directly or indirectly, any actions that seriously deviated from accepted practices within the academic community for proposing, conducting, or reporting research, or other scholarly activities."
"I am pleased that the last phase of Penn State's investigation has now been concluded, and that it has cleared me of any wrongdoing," Mann wrote in an e-mail. "These latest findings should finally put to rest the baseless allegations against me and my research."
Mann's work was chronicled in the 2006 documentary "An Inconvenient Truth," about former Vice President Al Gore's public campaign on global warming.