“UEA – the new crimestoppers“. This is another case of Dunning–Kruger Effect from the denialosphere. Anthony reports the “gobsmacking” news that the UK Information Commissioners Office (ICO) has referred to the complaints about University of East Anglia’s response to freedom of information requests as “cogent prima facie evidence“. This, in Anthony’s mind, is just as good as a conviction. Probably actually better for his purposes.

Prima facie means “at first sight”. It doesn’t mean that something has been proven, just that a claim has been made that if true would support the legal charge. The ICO is merely says that the claim should be investigated and not dismissed out-of-hand.

Also the endlessly repeated denialist allegation of the Climate Research Unit’s deletion of information is baseless despite the off-hand remarks quote-mined from the stolen CRU e-mails. Nothing was deleted. Except, of course, by the thieves. They only released a subset of the stolen e-mails, presumably to prevent them from being understood in proper context.