The new documents reveal that Dr. Soon called his research and congressional testimony “deliverables” to these corporate funders, and may have violated several scientific journals’ ethical guidelines by failing to disclose these conflicts of interest.
The documents were first reported by the New York Times this weekend, Deeper Ties to Corporate Cash for Doubtful Climate Researcher.
Information in the documents also raise concerns that grants provided by the Charles Koch Foundation to the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics for research by Dr. Soon may have violated Internal Revenue Service (IRS) rules by being used to influence legislation. Greenpeace published the documents after providing them last week to the IRS along with a letter detailing those concerns.
Greenpeace USA Executive Director Annie Leonard said, “Climate change is real and human activity is making it worse: there’s no debate about that. It’s a disgrace that special interests – like the Koch brothers, Southern Company and Exxon – would rather invest in false science than real solutions. They’ve already polluted our climate, lets not allow them to pollute science too.”
The documents also show that ExxonMobil may have provided a US Congressional committee with false or misleading information by claiming that its grant to the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics “neither requests nor directs scientific studies from the Center.” The documents show that shortly after this claim, ExxonMobil negotiated with Dr. Willie Soon and the Harvard-Smithsonian Center, in part, for publication of scientific studies. Greenpeace provided these documents last week to the Chairman and Ranking Member of the United States House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, along with a separate letter.
The House Committee on Science Chairman and Ranking Member were also notified that, “it appears that the CfA [Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics] has been producing scientific studies for companies that fund their efforts, failing to disclose that funding to the public, and specifically failing to disclose the corporate funding of these studies in a conflict of interest statement when the studies are published in peer-reviewed literature.”
Notes:
Contacts: Jesse Coleman, Greenpeace Research, [email protected]
Kert Davies, Climate Investigations Center, [email protected]
Joe Smyth, Greenpeace Communications, 831-566-5647, [email protected]
FOIA documents: https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/1531939-foia-response-willie-soon-2012.html
Greenpeace letter to IRS Commissioner John Koskin: https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/1671886-koskin-irs-koch.html
Greenpeace letter to House Committee on Science Chairman and Ranking Member concerning Exxonmobil’s statements: https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/1671883-johnson-exxon.html
Greenpeace letter to House Committee on Science Chairman and Ranking Member concerning Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics potential conflicts of interest: https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/1671884-johnson-house-science.html
