Penn State Professor Sues Publishers for Defamation

Meteorology Professor and climatologist Michael Mann is suing conservative publication The National Review and the Competitive Enterprise Institute in the wake of journalists from each publication accusing him of climate fraud and comparing him to Jerry Sandusky. 

In a court document filed in Washington, D.C. on Tuesday, Mann says the statements made by Rand Simberg and Mark Steyn are ‘utterly false and defamatory.’ Mann is a part of the first group of researches to document the ‘steady rise in surface temperatures during the twentieth century,’ which ultimately resulted in he and his colleagues being awarded the Nobel Prize. 

Still, Mann says, according to the court document, he says the defendants continue to discount global warming as a real issue and have accused him of manipulating scientific data. Mann, along with other researchers, had his email account hacked in 2009 – the beginning of ‘Climategate’ – and many opponents of the theory of global warming rallied, alleging that the scientists were staging a conspiracy by embellishing their data.

The emails were stolen from the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia in the United Kingdom.

According to court documents, Mann was cleared of any accusations after investigations conducted by academic institutions and government entities such as the Environmental Protection Agency and the National Science Foundation.

‘Every such investigation – and every replication of Dr. Mann’s work – has concluded that Dr. Mann’s research and conclusions were properly conducted and fairly presented.’ 

Mann is suing because he said the defendants’ intent was to impose ‘vicious injury,’ and that accusing him of academic fraud is ‘the most fundamental defamation that can be levied against a scientist and a professor.’ Court documents also state that Mann’s reputation was attacked on a personal level, ‘with the knowingly false comparison to a child molester.’

Simberg published an article through the Competitive Enterprise Institute in July, titled, ‘The Other Scandal In Unhappy Valley,’ in which he said about Mann:

‘Mann could be said to be the Jerry Sandusky of climate science, except for instead of molesting children, he has molested and tortured data in the service of politicized science.’ 

The sentence has since been removed from the article. 

Sandusky, 68, was sentenced to 30-60 years in prison on Oct. 9 for his sex crimes.

Mann posted a portion of the lawsuit on his Facebook page.

Mann is known for the ‘hockey stick’ theory in climatology. The theory concluded that the twentieth century was the warmest in more than 1,000 years, with the most dramatic incline starting in the 1920s and continuing through.