The university research unit accused of manipulating climate data in the "emailgate" row has been cleared of any impropriety by an independent review into its science.
The University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit (CRU) has been under attack since hacked emails were leaked online last year, which sceptics claim showed scientists manipulating data to support a theory of man-made global warming.
But a detailed review of 11 scientific papers published over 20 years gave the CRU's research a clean bill of health, judging the scientists had arrived at their conclusions "honestly and sensibly".
The probe, conducted in the last month, found "no evidence of any deliberate scientific malpractice" at the centre.
Lord Oxburgh, a former non-executive chairman of oil giant Shell who headed up the panel conducting the review, said they had uncovered "absolutely no evidence of any impropriety whatsoever".
He said the reviewers found the scientists could have used better statistical methods in analysing some of their data, but that it was unlikely to have made much difference to their results.
Responding to the findings, the University of East Anglia said the inquiry showed that months of attacks on its scientific integrity were "totally unjustified".
And Bob Ward, of the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at LSE, who has been critical of the stance taken by sceptics in the row, called on them to apologise for misleading the public over the significance of the emails.
Much of the criticism over the emails hacked from UEA focused on comments by the CRU's head Professor Phil Jones, including mention he made of a "trick" to "hide the decline".
