1. Key facts about the
controversy
This page presents background
information and facts about the controversy
as well as links to some of the attacks on
Dr. Soon as well as articles defending him.
Dr. Soon's biography and a partial list of
articles he has written for peer-reviewed
journals is at the bottom of this page.
In late February, 2015, Dr.
Willie W.-H. Soon was accused by a
Greenpeace activist of failing to disclose
conflicts of interest to an academic
journal. The accusation was false, but it
was repeated by liberal reporters for major
media outlets in the U.S. and U.K. and then
became the basis for a coordinated campaign
against global warming “skeptics” by liberal
advocacy groups, Democratic U.S. senators
and a congressman, and their allies in the
mainstream media.
* Neither the editors of Science
Bulletin nor the Smithsonian
Institution, Dr. Soon’s employer, have said
Dr. Soon violated their disclosure or
conflict of interest rules.
* Kert Davies, the source of
the accusations, has been making similar
attacks against Dr. Soon and other climate
scientists since as
long ago as 1997. He is not a
credible source.
* Grants supporting Dr.
Soon’s work were vetted and submitted by the
Smithsonian, not by Dr. Soon. Grant dollars
went to the Smithsonian, which kept around
40 percent of the money for oversight and
overhead.
* The amount of industry
support Dr. Soon received, variously
reported as $1 million or $1.2 million,
includes the Smithsonian Institution’s 40
percent share and was received over the
course of ten years.
* By agreement between donors
and the Smithsonian, Dr. Soon wasn’t even
aware of who some of the donors were, making
a conflict of interest impossible.
* Disclosure of funding
sources is not
a common requirement of academic
journals in the physical sciences field.
Most climate scientists – alarmist as well
as skeptical – do not disclose their funding
sources.
* The Smithsonian’s
investigation into its grant-making process
is being led by John Kress, Interim Under
Secretary for Science, kressj@si.edu,
and Charles Alcock, director of the Center
for Astrophysics, calcock@cfa.harvard.edu.
READ MORE: https://www.heartland.org/about-us/who-we-are/willie-soon