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Climate Research Chief Stands Down Pending Inquiry into Leaked Emails

from the Guardian (U.K.)

The head of the climate research unit that had its emails hacked and posted online will step down from his post while an inquiry into the affair is carried out.

Messages between scientists at the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit (CRU) were posted on the web last week, and climate-change deniers seized on them as alleged evidence that scientists have been hiding and manipulating data to support the idea that the world is warming up.

Professor Phil Jones, the director of the CRU, said he stood by the science produced by his researchers and suggestions of a conspiracy to alter evidence to support a theory of man-made global warming were "complete rubbish". But he said today that he would stand aside as director of the unit until an independent review into the hacked emails had been completed.