‘All Honest Scientists Should Be Outraged’

The Heartland Institute today called on Oxford University to cancel the April 24 “Oxford Amnesty Lectures” event featuring disgraced climate scientist Dr. Peter H. Gleick, president of the Pacific Institute, who committed theft, fraud, and defamation in the “Fakegate” scandal – all potential crimes and an affront to scientists everywhere.

Gleick is slated to deliver a lecture on “The Human Right to Water” at the prestigious university just weeks after he admitted to stealing the identity of a board member of The Heartland Institute to obtain confidential documents – including personal information of Heartland employees and board members – which he subsequently sent to environmental activists and sympathetic journalists.

On February 20, 2012, Gleick admitted to using deception to obtain the documents and acknowledged that his intent was to expose Heartland’s funding sources and damage the institute’s reputation.

Gleick also distributed a “climate strategy memo” he and other environmental activists claim describes Heartland’s “secret strategy” to mislead the public about the true nature of climate change. The document is a fake created by Gleick or a co-conspirator, but Gleick has yet to confess to writing it and has not asked his allies in the environmental movement to take it down from their Web sites.

“All honest scientists should be outraged that Oxford University should honor Gleick with a guest lecture,” said Heartland Institute President Joseph Bast. “The actions Gleick has admitted to having taken – lying repeatedly and committing fraud, and then denying responsibility and refusing to take corrective action – all make him unqualified to speak to students or as a scientist.

“The oldest university in the English-speaking world should be ashamed to associate itself with a bungling thief and scientific fraud,” Bast said. “John Locke, Linus Pauling, and Edwin Hubble must be spinning in their graves.”

In Gleick’s February 20, 2012 public confession, he admitted his actions amounted to “a serious lapse of my own professional judgment and ethics.” Gleick took a “temporary short-term leave of absence” as president of the Pacific Institute, but he is still listed at the Pacific Institute Web site as “president.” The Pacific Institute relies heavily on government grants and support from the CISCO Foundation, Kaiser Foundation, Natural Resources Defense Council, Rockefeller Foundation, Walton Family Foundation, Oxford Press and dozens of others.

Oxford Amnesty Lectures is a charity organization independent of Oxford University. The lectures are organized by Oxford faculty and held at the university’s Faculty of Law building.

For more information about the Fakegate scandal surrounding Peter Gleick, visit Fakegate.org, or contact Jim Lakely, director of communications at The Heartland Institute, at jlakely@heartland.org or 312/377-4000.

The Heartland Institute is a 28-year-old national nonprofit organization with offices in Chicago, Illinois and Washington, DC. Its mission is to discover, develop, and promote free-market solutions to social and economic problems. For more information, visit our Web site or call 312/377-4000.

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