To the dismay of its sole scientific member, the House of Commons Select Committee on Science has come to the aid of the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit - the department at the centre of the Climategate scandal - giving the boffins and the institution a gentle ticking off.

The Committee briskly dealt with the serious issue of peer review, by choosng to ignore the heated passages in the email archive where scientists discussed applying pressure on journal editors. One journal editor targeted later resigned, as the climate scientists had hoped. While the MPs received written evidence from the editor of the sceptical journal Energy and Environment, they concluded:

"The evidence that we have seen does not suggest that Professor Jones was trying to subvert the peer review process. Academics should not be criticised for making informal comments on academic papers."