Did Willie Soon fail to disclose a conflict of interest with the fossil fuel lobby?

Question

Willie Soon recently co-authored a paper that criticised the big computer models used for many projections of future climate (which in turn have fed the IPCC process that drive consensus climate policy).

The majority of comment in the mainstream media focuses on a claim that Soon is guilty of failing to disclose a major conflict of interest. The Guardian summarises thus:

Greenpeace has suggested Soon also improperly concealed his funding sources for a recent article, in violation of the journal’s conflict of interest guidelines.

The company was paying him to write peer-reviewed science and that relationship was not acknowledged in the peer-reviewed literature,” Davies said. “These proposals and contracts show debatable interventions in science literally on the behalf of Southern Company and the Kochs.”

In letters to the Internal Revenue Service and Congress, Greenpeace said Soon may have misused the grants from the Koch foundation by trying to influence legislation.

Did Willie Soon fail to disclose a conflict of interest with the fossil fuel lobby?

Answer 1

note: This question was originally much longer and quoted section 1 of this response by The Heartland Institute. My comments here are in reference to those claims.

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The Heartland Institute's claims about conflict of interest policies and funding disclosure, at least, are incorrect. The conflict of interest policy for Science Bulletin states:

Authors must disclose all relationships or interests that could influence or bias the work. Examples of potential conflicts of interests that are directly or indirectly related to the research may include but not limited to the following:

• Research grants from funding agencies (please give the research funder and the grant number)
• Honoraria for speaking at symposia
• Financial support for attending symposia [...]
• Support from a project sponsor [...]

In addition, interests that go beyond financial interests and compensation (non-financial interests) that may be important to readers should be disclosed. These may include but are not limited to personal relationships or competing interests directly or indirectly tied to this research, or professional interests or personal beliefs that may influence your research.

Funding is mentioned on the same page:

Acknowledgments: Acknowledgments of grants, funds, people, etc. should be placed in a separate section before the reference list. The names of funding organizations should be written in full.

(In lay writing, an "acknowledgements" section is optional and usually informal, but in scientific writing it's a formal part of the paper with explicit rules.)

The claim that Soon did not receive the grant funding directly is irrelevant. It's rare for academics to receive funding directly. Grants are almost always made in the name of the researcher's institution, and the institution almost always keeps a large portion to cover their costs. Similarly, it's not relevant that the Smithsonian approved the grant, because no one is claiming that there was something wrong with the grant. The claim is that it needed to be disclosed.