Greg Patterson had better have 'blog insurance.

"Espresso Pundit" and former legislator Greg Patterson had better have 'blog insurance, that is, if Malcolm Hughes and the University of Arizona have the good sense to destroy him like the fleabitten dog he is sue him into last century.

An accusation of academic fraud is serious, and if not substantiated, is the sort of false allegation of fact that amounts to libel. Way back when the "Climategate" e-mails were first being exaggerated and twisted into evidence of wrongdoing, Patterson first smeared Hughes as a fraud, and it was apparently let go. Now he's doing it again--evidence that libel from the anti-science set must be snuffed out early on--dazzling his audience by parlaying a conclusion that a figure Hughes contributed to a report was "misleading" to an accusation of academic/scientific fraud.

Fraud in science is presentation of fabricated or altered data, data that are not as described, or of conclusions that do not follow from the data. Contributing a figure that may be misinterpreted by a "casual" reader--the worst that can be inferred from the report cited by Patterson, is not fraud.