Report: Journal retracts climate study amid plagiarism allegations

Published May 17, 2011 4:00am ET



A professional journal has retracted a study headed by a George Mason University professor amid allegations of plagiarism and a flawed peer review process, USA Today reports.

The study, which appeared in 2008 in the journal Computational Statistics and Data Analysis, was headed by statistician Edward Wegman of George Mason University in Fairfax, Va. Its analysis was an outgrowth of a controversial congressional report that Wegman headed in 2006. The “Wegman Report” suggested climate scientists colluded in their studies and questioned whether global warming was real. The report has since become a touchstone among climate change naysayers.

But a review by three plagiarism experts for USA Today said that portions of the report contained text from Wikipedia and other textbooks. Wegman and his lawyer, meanwhile, maintain that neither he nor a student co-author engaged in plagiarism.

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