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The UVA Emails and Confirmation Bias: Seek and Ye Shall Find

Explore the ongoing legal pursuit of Michael Mann's emails and how it echoes the ClimateGate scandal controversy.

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My latest DeSmogBlog post is about the continued legal pursuit of Michael Mann's emails and documents from his time at the University of Virginia. Drawing on my recent reading of Michael Shermer's new book The Believing Brain, I make a prediction: Conservatives will find exactly what they are looking for, whatever documents they get:

Those who went seeking went in with a theory--that wrongdoing has been done. They all believe "ClimateGate," shown by multiple investigations to be a fake scandal, was actually a real one. So that is their premise. They will therefore read whatever emails they receive and find wrongdoing in them. They will find politics. They will find closed-mindedness and bias. And who knows what else they will find--but it will all be made to look bad. Will any of the charges be valid? I don't know, although I seriously doubt it. One thing we can be sure ...

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