The Sunday Times has just retracted its horrible and misleading Amazongate story, five months after being published.
Remember Amazongate? It was a “big” news story that was supposed to show corruption and misrepresentation of data by climate change scientists. Well, if you couldn’t guess it before, the not-so-big news (as in, hardly covered news) now is that the Amazongate story was bogus and a quite deceitful misrepresentation of a leading scientist’s opinion on the matter.
Basically, the writer read the entire article to the scientist heavily quoted in it, Dr. Simon Lewis, and confirmed its accuracy and fair representation of his opinion, but then the story was completely changed before going to print. Lewis commented on this online but his comment was quickly deleted. After months of legal pressure, The Sunday Times has finally retracted the article.
That’s basically the gist of it, but if you want to read more:
The Guardian does an excellent job of covering this sham by “climate skeptics” in depth.
Climate Progress also has a great post that includes email correspondence with the Dr Simon Lewis.
And the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), which was one of the players in the original story, has a story on The Sunday Times’ retraction and apology as well.
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Image Credit: leoffreitas via flickr/CC license
