This letter regards the Nov. 30 article "PSU investigates 'Climategate.' " As the proud parent of a recent Penn State graduate and a holder of a B.S. degree in geology myself, I laud Penn State for their investigation of Professor Michael Mann's involvement with "Climategate." Though the source of the letters is uncertain (hacker? whistle-blower?), surely the facts revealed are more important than the source of the facts -- remember the Pentagon Papers' revealing of the illegal bombing campaign in Cambodia during the Vietnam War.
The ethics of science are too important to bypass merely because one believes strongly in a particular hypothesis. Where would science be if Wegener and Bretz had been subject to a campaign of exclusion and important data had been hidden or destroyed by one side of those arguments or another?
We are all proud of Penn State's long-standing eminence in the fields of meteorology and climate science, but let's be sure that unpleasant facts don't get swept under the rug because one of our own may be at fault.
James A. Schrumpf
Monrovia, Md.
