"The case raises difficult issues about free speech in an era of online misinformation and disinformation."
"When Penn State climate scientist Michael Mann first threatened to sue two conservative bloggers and their publishers for defamation in 2012, they seemed to welcome the opportunity for a face-off in court.
The Competitive Enterprise Institute, an anti-regulation think tank, and National Review magazine defended their online commentaries in which they attacked Mann’s science and compared him to Jerry Sandusky, the disgraced Penn State assistant football coach convicted of child sexual abuse. “All’s fair in love, war and political campaigns,” Rand Simberg, the CEI blogger, wrote about Mann’s threat, on his personal website. In an editorial, National Review editor Rich Lowry mused about gaining access to Mann’s files if he sued and hiring a “dedicated reporter to comb through” the material and expose Mann’s “methods and maneuverings to the world.”
That investigative project has never materialized, even though Mann’s side has produced more than 1 million documents in the defamation suit he filed, now entering its ninth year. The material includes emails, correspondence, notes, drafts and discussions with co-authors—including all the background material for his seminal 1998 and 1999 papers charting this century’s dramatic temperature rise, the so-called “Hockey Stick” graph."
Marianne Lavelle reports for Inside Climate News February 7, 2021.
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