Not surprisingly, last week's ruling by the Danish Committees on Scientific Dishonesty (DCSD) that Bjørn Lomborg, in his controversial book The Skeptical Environmentalist, selected data in a “severely biased” manner and exhibited poor scientific practice (see page 201) received widespread international media coverage. But whether the DCSD emerged with credit also deserves reflection.

Lomborg's hypothesis that warnings issued by environmentalists and scientists are unwarranted, presented in the book rather than in the peer-reviewed literature, has been widely criticized by researchers. But what is the DCSD's authority to tackle what many consider a polemical rather than scientific book?

The DCSD was the first European body to be set up — by the Danish Research Agency — to examine issues of scientific misconduct, and it is still unusual in being mandated to consider any complaint about any scientist, or any scientific work, emerging from both the private and public sectors. A look at its guiding principles (see http://www.forsk.dk/eng/index.htm) and its judgement (see http://www.forsk.dk/uvvu/nyt/udtaldebat/bl_decision.htm) confirms that the DCSD has the freedom to assess the case because, arguably, Lomborg presented himself as an academic and his book as a scientific argument. Appropriately enough, the DCSD emphasizes that it is assessing Lomborg's scientific standards, not his conclusions.

The national context of this independent assessment is relevant here. Lomborg was made director of the politically influential Danish Environmental Assessment Institute, founded by the new right-wing government after the 2001 elections, solely on the strength of it. According to its own statutes, the institute must be headed by a scientist of appropriate research experience, whereas Lomborg has little additional experience.

Lomborg's claims in his book are certainly significant and potentially influential. The Danish public, at least, has the right to know whether he is arguing on scientifically rigorous grounds, not least given the influence of his position.

Unfortunately, the DCSD has left itself in a weak position. It did not conduct an independent analysis of the book but relied on published criticisms, especially a controversial selection published by Scientific American. Even to call this judgement's basis a 'meta-analysis' would be too generous: there is, for example, no justification given for the particular selection of published critiques. Furthermore, through a tangled combination of translation and legalese, the committee's judgement characterizes Lomborg as “objectively dishonest” while at the same time stating that they have no evidence for what most people would call dishonesty: deliberate misrepresentation. That subtle, not to say tortuous, distinction has been lost in the media coverage.

There remains a need for rigorous scrutiny of Lomborg's methods, given his prominence, his claims to serious analysis, and the polarized debate surrounding his book. But this episode leaves everyone little wiser, and the waters surrounding Lomborg even muddier.