By strange coincidence, the story of an another attack on the Sunday Times' Jonathan Leake. An organisation called the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology (ESHRE) has emailed a number of journliasts claiming that Leake breached an embargo.
Science journalist Natasha Loder points out a small glitch with ESHRE's case.
ESHRE’s email sounds damning. But the problem is that Mr Leake did not actually break the embargo because, as the same email explained, he is “already barred” from ESHRE’s media database so didn’t receive a press release in the first place.
Get that? He hadn't actually agreed to the embargo anyway. He was able to get the story because ESHRE had accidentally published it on their website.
At this point, the story is taken up by a familiar face in the shape of Fiona Fox of the Science Media Centre fame. Fox wrote an email to a group of journalists arguing that Leake was guilty anyway and wrote a blog post to the same effect. Fox rather hilariously seems to believe that journalists should respect embargos on information that is already in the public domain and that the journalists in question haven't even signed up for.
What is still more intriguing is that Leake had already written a story based on the same website without a squeak. So why is it a problem now? And why the fuss on such a flimsy pretext?
I find the involvement of Fiona Fox fascinating. The Science Media Centre has, of course, been closely involved in matters climatological in recent weeks, providing PR support to the Oxburgh and Russell panels. The involvement of our old friend Bob Ward in the centre's work is also well documented.
Leake of course has been rather off-message since the start of the year, writing several pieces on the IPCC that have drawn the ire of greens everywhere, and prompting a campaign of vilification and the famous Amazongate PCC complaint of Dr Lewis. Is this just another shot across Leake's bows to encourage him to toe the line more closely in future?
Or perhaps it's just a coincidence.