What a coral reef misconduct claim says about climate science

On Monday, I wrote here about how the Great Barrier Reef is defying predictions of its own demise, bouncing back from a mass bleaching event last year to show the greatest vegetation cover in 37 years of observations. Now comes news that a prominent scientist involved in some of the doom-mongering work over coral reefs has been found guilty by her own university of misconduct in her research.

According to the draft report of an investigative committee convened by the University of Delaware – and seen by Science, the journal of the American Association for the Advancement of Science – Danielle Dixson fabricated and falsified data relating to fish behaviour and the health of coral reefs. The report states: ‘The Committee was repeatedly struck by a serial pattern of sloppiness, poor recordkeeping, copying and pasting within spreadsheets, errors within many papers under investigation, and deviation from established animal ethics protocols.’