Did the Smithsonian Institution disown their employee, Dr. Willie Soon?

Dr. Willie Soon is a scientist who has been actively researching the causes of climate change since the 1990s, with more than 100 peer-reviewed scientific articles on the subject. However, his findings have often contradicted the dogmatic claims made by many media outlets, politicians and scientific organizations. Specifically, his research suggests that recent climate change seems to be mostly natural, rather than strictly human-caused. This has made him a very inconvenient scientist for some people.

One group that his work has been very inconvenient for is Greenpeace.
Therefore, in 2015, a former Greenpeace activist, Kert Davies, carried out a smear campaign against Dr. Soon. Davies’ hatchet job was picked up uncritically by many high-profile media outlets, including the New York Times, Washington Post and the Boston Globe.

Dr. Soon worked at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics from 1991 until 2022. The Harvard-Smithsonian is a very influential research institute and as soon as Davies’ claims were published, without any investigation, the Smithsonian immediately issued a knee-jerk response seemingly distancing themselves from both Dr. Soon and his research.

Following their rushed initial statement, the Smithsonian began a long and careful investigation to see if Dr. Soon did anything wrong or improper, or if there was any problems with his scientific findings.

Five years later, after finding nothing wrong with Dr. Soon and his research, the Smithsonian finished their investigation and quietly removed their initial rushed statement. It seems they discovered the old adage, “act in haste, repent at leisure”, has some truth.

Clip taken from Dr. Soon’s April 11, 2022 talk in Washington D.C., “The Weaponization of Science: Politics, Vilification, and the Climate Debate”. The slides for the talk can be downloaded from https://tinyurl.com/49sbxhru

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