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Parliament was misled and needs to re-examine the Climategate affair thoroughly after the failure of the Russell report, a leading backbench MP told us today.

"It's not a whitewash, but it is inadequate," is Labour MP Graham Stringer's summary of the Russell inquiry report. Stringer is the only member of the House of Commons Select Committee on Science and Technology with scientific qualifications - he holds a PhD in Chemistry.

After the Select Committee heard oral evidence on March 1, MPs believed that Anglia had entrusted an examination of the science to a separate inquiry. Vice Chancellor of the University of East Anglia Edward Acton had told the committee that "I am hoping, later this week, to announce the chair of a panel to reassess the science and make sure there is nothing wrong."[Hansard - Q129]]

Ron Oxburgh's inquiry eventually produced a short report clearing the participants. He did not reassess the science, and now says it was never in his remit. "The science was not the subject of our study," he confirmed in an email to Steve McIntyre of Climate Audit.

Earlier this week the former chair of the Science and Technology Committee, Phil Willis, now Lord Willis, said MPs had been amazed at the "sleight of hand".

"Oxburgh didn't go as far as I expected. The Oxburgh Report looks much more like a whitewash," Graham Stringer told us.

Stringer says Anglia appointee Muir Russell (a civil servant and former Vice Chancellor of Glasgow University), failed in three significant areas.

"Why did they delete emails? The key question was what reason they had for doing this, but this was never addressed; not getting to the central motivation was a major failing both of our report and Muir Russell."

Graham Stringer

Stringer also says that it was unacceptable for Russell (who is not a scientist) to conclude that CRU's work was reproducible, when the data needed was not available. He goes further:

"The fact that you can make up your own experiments and get similar results doesn't mean that you're doing what's scientifically expected of you. You need to follow the same methodology of the process."

"I was surprised at Phil Jones' answers to the questions I asked him [in Parliament]. The work was never replicable," says Stringer.

In 2004 Jones had declined to give out data that would have permitted independent scrutiny of their work, explaining that "We have 25 or so years invested in the work. Why should I make the data available to you, when your aim is to try and find something wrong with it."

This policy is confirmed several times in the emails, with Jones also advising colleagues to destroy evidence helpful to people wishing to reproduce the team's results.

"I think that's quite shocking," says Stringer.

Thirdly, the University of East Anglia failed to follow the Commons Select Committee's recommendations in handling the inquiry and producing the report.

Stringer said, "We asked them to be independent, and not allow the University to have first sight of the report. The way it's come out is as an UEA inquiry, not an independent inquiry."

Stringer also says they reminded the inquiry to be open - Russell had promised as much - but witness testimony took place behind closed doors, and not all the depositions have been published.

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Next page: How independent was the panel?