If they use the same panel, probably made up of Mann's cronies, then they won't come to a different conclusion. Supposedly the only recognized experts are those that publish in peer-reviewed journals, journals that have been designated as such by the same people being investigated.

At most we're going to hear that "there are honest differences," etc., etc. and that the process was vetted by 'experts in the field' and found to be scientifically defensible.

I mean Chris Columbus's scientists and mathmaticians misjudged the diameter of the Earth so he found the Americas instead of India. Are we going to pursue them for 'fraud'??

Perhaps the Professors approach is not entirely correct but he did his best scientifically to get a correct result.

TRANSLATION: fake but accurate.

[move along, nothing to see here]

"everyone in the room at IPCC was in agreement that this was a problem and a potential distraction/detraction from the reasonably concensus viewpoint we'd like to show ...".

You mean it sends the wrong "message"? As in "An Inconvenient Truth"?

"Otherwise, the skeptics ... can undermine faith ..."

Faith? You mean like in religion?

From these statements, it is very clear to me as a scientist that nothing that Mann or "everyone in the room at IPCC" publishes can be considered science. When acting as a scientist, one is always skeptical; there is no room for faith. This is not some naive idealism. Scientists are free to go crazy on their own time. It is simply how science is defined.

One trouble with peer review on this issue is that enough climate research 'peers' share the vision of a global-Socialism utopia to give the hoax a semi-legitimate look and feel, and those 'peers' who differ can be dismissed as being either mistaken, misled, or shilling for the energy companies.

As long as the MSM treats this as a non-story, though (along with Barry's birth certificate mystery and ACORN's illicit shenanigans), it'll be up to the principled rogues in the new press to carry the weight (and take the shots).  Hang in there, Noel.

This "investigation" means nothing. He will be cleared of any wrongdoing.

"How will media report this?"

They won't.

The Penn State press release states:

The resulting 2006 report of the NAS panel
(http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=11676) concluded that Mann's
results were sound and has been subsequently supported by an array of
evidence that includes additional large-scale surface temperature
reconstructions.

What a complete load of political BS spin. Since Penn State hired Bristlecone Mike 7 years after his hockey stick was created, they obviously are not going to say otherwise.

The bogus hockey stick was first published in Nature in 1998. After Steve McIntyre and Ross McKitrick (known as MM) repeatedly commented to Nature, Mann was forced to publish a corrigendum. This was done on July Ist, 2004. Nature's policies describe a corrigendum as:

"notification of an important error made by the authors [Nature’s bold] that affects the publication record or the scientific integrity of the
paper, or the reputation of the
authors or the journal. " 

Shortly after this in 2005, McIntyre and McKitrick had an official peer reviewed paper in GRL describing the statistical gymnastics at play here.

The Wegman Report before congress in 2006 was a damning indictment of Mann's work. Highlights of this report include:

The debate over Dr. Mann's principal components
methodology has been going on for nearly three years. When we got
involved, there was no evidence that a single issue was resolved or
even nearing resolution. Dr. Mann's RealClimate.org
website said that all of the Mr. McIntyre and Dr. McKitrick claims had
been 'discredited'. UCAR had issued a news release saying that all
their claims were 'unfounded'. Mr. McIntyre replied on the ClimateAudit.org
website. The climate science community seemed unable to either refute
McIntyre's claims or accept them. The situation was ripe for a
third-party review of the types that we and Dr. North's NRC panel have
done.

While the work of Michael Mann and colleagues presents what appears
to be compelling evidence of global temperature change, the criticisms
of McIntyre and McKitrick, as well as those of other authors mentioned
are indeed valid.

"Where we have commonality, I believe our report and the [NAS] panel
essentially agree. We believe that our discussion together with the
discussion from the NRC report should take the 'centering' issue off
the table. [Mann's] decentred methodology is simply incorrect
mathematics …. I am baffled by the claim that the incorrect method
doesn't matter because the answer is correct anyway.
Method Wrong + Answer Correct = Bad Science.

The papers of Mann et al. in themselves are written in a confusing
manner, making it difficult for the reader to discern the actual
methodology and what uncertainty is actually associated with these
reconstructions.

It is not clear that Dr. Mann and his associates even realized that
their methodology was faulty at the time of writing the [Mann] paper.

We found MBH98 and MBH99 to be somewhat obscure and incomplete and the criticisms of MM03/05a/05b to be valid and compelling.

Overall, our committee believes that Mann's assessments that the
decade of the 1990s was the hottest decade of the millennium and that
1998 was the hottest year of the millennium cannot be supported by his
analysis.

[The] fact that their paper fit some policy agendas has greatly
enhanced their paper's visibility… The 'hockey stick' reconstruction of
temperature graphic dramatically illustrated the global warming issue
and was adopted by the IPCC and many governments as the poster graphic.
The graphics' prominence together with the fact that it is based on
incorrect use of [principal components analysis] puts Dr. Mann and his
co-authors in a difficult face-saving position.

We have been to Michael Mann's University of Virginia website and
downloaded the materials there. Unfortunately, we did not find adequate
material to reproduce the MBH98 materials. We have been able to
reproduce the results of McIntyre and McKitrick

Generally speaking, the paleoclimatology community has not
recognized the validity of the [McIntyre and McKitrick] papers and has
tended dismiss their results as being developed by biased amateurs. The
paleoclimatology community seems to be tightly coupled as indicated by
our social network analysis, has rallied around the [Mann] position,
and has issued an extensive series of alternative assessments most of
which appear to support the conclusions of MBH98/99… Our findings from
this analysis suggest that authors in the area of paleoclimate studies
are closely connected and thus 'independent studies' may not be as
independent as they might appear on the surface.

It is important to note the isolation of the paleoclimate community;
even though they rely heavily on statistical methods they do not seem
to be interacting with the statistical community. Additionally, we
judge that the sharing of research materials, data and results was
haphazardly and grudgingly done. In this case we judge that there was
too much reliance on peer review, which was not necessarily independent.

Based on the literature we have reviewed, there is no overarching
consensus on [Mann's work]. As analyzed in our social network, there is
a tightly knit group of individuals who passionately believe in their
thesis. However, our perception is that this group has a
self-reinforcing feedback mechanism and, moreover, the work has been
sufficiently politicized that they can hardly reassess their public
positions without losing credibility.

It is clear that many of the proxies are re-used in most of the
papers. It is not surprising that the papers would obtain similar
results and so cannot really claim to be independent verifications."

Especially when massive amounts of public monies and human lives are
at stake, academic work should have a more intense level of scrutiny
and review. It is especially the case that authors of policy-related
documents like the IPCC report, Climate Change 2001: The Scientific
Basis, should not be the same people as those that constructed the
academic papers."

The National Academy of Sciences also issued a report headed by Gerald North. Under Oath, North's testimony was: 

CHAIRMAN BARTON. I understand that. It looks like my time is expired,
so I want to ask one more question. Dr. North, do you dispute the
conclusions or the methodology of Dr. Wegman's report?

DR. NORTH. No, we don't. We don't disagree with their criticism. In fact, pretty much the same thing is said in our report. But again, just because the claims are made, doesn't mean they are false.

CHAIRMAN BARTON. I understand that you can have the right conclusion and that it not be–

DR. NORTH. It happens all the time in science.

Then NAS statistician expert Peter Bloomfield took the stand and said:

MR. BLOOMFIELD. Thank you. Yes, Peter Bloomfield. Our committee
reviewed the methodology used by Dr. Mann and his coworkers and we felt
that some of the choices they made were inappropriate. We had much the same misgivings about his work that was documented at much greater length by Dr. Wegman.

Mann's hockey stick has never been replicated. Wahl and Ammann claimed they did (both Mann buddies) and this turned out to be every bit the fraud as the original hockey stick (see Caspar and the Jesus paper). McIntyre's and Wegman's results were also confirmed by independent climate statisticians Hans von Storch and Edwuardo Zorita and by the American Statistical Association.

I think I found the theme music for AGW.  Tell me what you think.

"The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws" Tacitus

The data has NEVER been analyzed, just distorted.

So how much money is it going to cost to actually tear-down the data, and who's going to do it. (Certainly not these clowns)

YEARS of analysis down the tubes, wasted taxpayer money, SOMEONE needs to go to jail. This is FRAUD and THEFT.

And btw, where the hell is the data? This whole project needs adult supervision, right now. 

Mann looks like a weasel.  Professors are second only to politicians in being worthless and self-absorbed.  They are the snakes and skunks of the human race.  I wonder if the guy has to pay to get laid.