Climate scientist at the heart of emails controversy says he did nothing wrong
A year after he was plunged into the centre of a political and scientific storm over hundreds of leaked climate science emails, the researcher at the centre of the controversy, Dr Phil Jones, has come out fighting and unrepentant.
In an interview with the journal Nature to coincide with the anniversary of the emails’ release, Jones says he did nothing wrong. He said he did not illegally delete emails that had been requested under freedom of information laws. He also retracted a pledge made this year to correct one of his papers.
“I’m a little more guarded about what I say in emails now,” he says. “One thing in particular I’m doing is not responding so quickly. I might have got an email in the past and responded with an instant thought in the next 10 to 15 minutes, whereas now I might leave it a day.”
But he argued that scientists should be able to express themselves in personal messages. “People would be saying much the same things at scientific meetings and discussed [them] over dinner. But in an email, it is recorded. People have probably forgotten what you said after a night out.”…
…Most damagingly, in one email Jones urged colleagues to delete messages in which they discussed the preparation of a report for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
When asked why he did it, he told Nature: “That was probably just bravado at the time,” he says. “We just thought if they’re going to ask for more, we might as well not have them.”
Reflecting on a year of turmoil, in which he received hundreds of abusive emails and even contemplated suicide at one point, Jones said he had received many messages of support from his fellow scientists. “I did wonder why they didn’t go to the media and say the same things they were saying to me.”