National Academies’ Climate Author Kept Working ‘Behind The Scenes’ Despite Conflict Concerns

Written by Roger Pielke Jr. on October 10, 2026. Posted in Current News

Here at THB, I often assemble complex and disparate pieces of information to tell a story I believe is grounded in evidence and facts. Such complexity is rarely verified in the short term with a proverbial smoking gun of proof — today, however, is one of those instances. [some emphasis, links added]

Last week, the House Judiciary Committee released an interim staff report on its investigation into the Environmental Law Institute’s (ELI) Climate Judiciary Project (CJP) and the climate chapter of the Reference Manual on Scientific Evidence, which the Federal Judicial Center (FJC) and the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) published on December 31, 2025.

In March at THB, I documented Michael Burger’s ghost authorship of that chapter, a plaintiffs’ lawyer in climate litigation.

The NASEM/FJC chapter copied more than 40% of its text in its sections on extreme event attribution from a 2020 law review article led by Burger, in verbatim and lightly reworded passages.

Burger directs Columbia’s Sabin Center for Climate Change Law and serves as Of Counsel at Sher Edling, the law firm representing most of the cities and counties suing fossil fuel companies. The chapter’s two named authors — Jessica Wentz and Radley Horton — are his Sabin Center colleagues and coauthors on the 2020 law review article.

The contested climate chapter acknowledges in a footnote that it drew on the law review paper led by Burger — so identifying and quantifying the ghost authorship was not exactly rocket science.

In their report released last week, House Judiciary Committee investigators revealed emails among the Sabin Center collaborators and the NASEM and FJC. The emails provide truly remarkable details about drafting the chapter — details that are far worse than what I reported last March.

Specifically, the emails reveal that after NASEM invited Burger to author the chapter, the FJC removed Burger from the chapter over concern about a real or perceived conflict of interest with his litigation work.

The timeline indicates that NASEM approached Burger to be the chapter’s original author and suggested that he base it on his earlier law review paper.

Despite Burger’s agreement to the FJC request that he not co-author the chapter, he kept taking part in the drafting and editing — in his words, contributing “behind the scenes” (Exhibit 24).

The NASEM scandal is just the tip of the iceberg of a large, organized effort to repurpose institutions of expertise that are supposed to be independent and impartial to serve stealth advocacy instead, supporting climate litigation.

Last week, the editorial board of the Wall Street Journal commented:

“None dare call it conspiracy, but it sure looks like an organized, stealthy effort to influence how judges rule on cases.”

Seven New Important Revelations From the Emails

The House Judiciary Committee report provides seven important new revelations about the chapter’s authorship.

• NASEM invited Michael Burger to author the chapter and asked him to base it on his law review article. On December 29, 2022, a senior advisor to the NASEM wrote to Burger:
  “We believe that much of the information for the proposed chapter is included in your 2020 co-authored law review article, The Law and Science of Climate Change Attribution.” The full invitation is reproduced below (Exhibit 22).
• NASEM approached a plaintiffs’ attorney in climate litigation and asked him for his perspective on litigation, as expressed in a previously published article, in the chapter. The [House Judiciary Committee’s released exhibits don’t disclose how NASEM selected Burger].
• Burger agreed to author the chapter and recommended his “co-authors” on the law review chapter — Wentz and Horton — to NASEM to co-author the NASEM/FJC chapter with him. Burger wanted his law-review co-authors to join him on the chapter, which he told NASEM would “enhance the quality and authority of the chapter.” (Exhibit 22).
• The FJC responded to Burger’s disclosure of his role in litigation. On March 6, 2023, the director of the FJC’s Research Division, Beth Wiggins, told the chapter’s authors — Burger, Wentz, and Horton — on behalf of “the committee of judges and scientists overseeing the manual revision” that Burger could not author the chapter because of “his involvement in climate-related litigation” (Exhibit 23). The email further stated:
  

  “During its last meeting, the committee … discussed the outline and the potential conflict Mike raised due to his representation of several state and local governments in lawsuits against fossil fuel companies. . . The committee highly appreciated Mike’s candor about his involvement in climate-related litigation and his recognition that his involvement might affect perceptions of the chapter’s objectivity. … the committee decided that it would be inadvisable for Mike to author it.”

  In the same email, the FJC requested that Wentz and Horton continue to co-author the chapter. It is unclear whether the FJC knew that NASEM had explicitly requested that the chapter be based on the Burger et al. law review paper or that Wentz and Horton had many of the same perceived or real conflicts of interest.

• The FJC conveyed to Wentz and Horton concerns of the NASEM committee of judges and scientists about bias (Exhibit 23): The FJC conveyed concerns from the NASEM committee overseeing the production of the 4th edition scientific manual, warning Wentz and Horton about overstating the fidelity of extreme event attribution:
  

  “The committee had significant discussion about the difficulty of scientifically attributing climate change and its impacts to specific sources and wanted to be sure the chapter reflected this difficulty. …”

  The FJC also cautioned the authors about opining on how courts should consider extreme event attribution:

  “Attribution issues are ones likely to be debated in court. [J]udges read the manual for the science not the law . … It is also the place where bias toward various legal positions might inadvertently surface.”

• Burger stayed on as a ghost author after being asked to recuse himself. On March 7, 2023, the day after the FJC asked Burger to step aside, he assured Wentz and Horton that he would keep “contribut[ing] behind the scenes.” On April 26, 2023, Wentz sent Horton a revised draft with Burger’s edits to the manuscript (Exhibit 26 has the full text of the draft with Burger’s edits and comments — shaded in blue — and Wentz’s responses). Three days later she told both that she had “made a number of changes to the legal section” in response to their comments.
  On March 20, 2026 — two weeks after my THB post revealing the ghost authorship — the Wall Street Journal published a letter from Jessica Wentz responding to the WSJ reference to my post (emphasis added):

  “The editorial cites an assertion by American Enterprise Institute senior fellow Roger Pielke Jr. that parts of the chapter were ghost written by our colleague Michael Burger. None of the text was written by Mr. Burger. As disclosed in the chapter, we did excerpt and adapt some content from a 2020 law review article that we co-authored with Mr. Burger. All of that content came from scientific sections that were written by Mr. Horton and myself.”

  The emails totally contradict Wentz’s claims.

• The FJC had notice that the chapter was based on earlier work that Burger had led and co-authored. On November 3, 2023, Wentz told the FJC’s research director that she and Horton “drew heavily on our past work with him [Burger]” (Exhibit 36). According to committee staff, she “did not disclose” that Burger “had provided feedback on the [NASEM/FJC chapter] draft.”
  In April 2024, Wentz and Horton discussed cutting the acknowledgments to “alleviate concerns” about Burger’s role in the Chapter, and Wentz wrote that she would “confirm with him [Burger] of course.” In the end, Burger remained in the acknowledgments.
• At Wentz’s suggestion, Sabin Center colleague Michael Gerrard reviewed their chapter draft. FJC’s Wiggins approved the selection and hinted at the conflict of interest and expressed concern about ELI (Exhibit 28)¹:
  

  “[I]f we could find that person, for “diversity”, it would be good to have someone of Mike [Gerrard]’s caliber with a similar background that is not associated with the Sabin Center. … I haven’t been able to identify anyone. For various reasons (not to do with their expertise), we’d prefer not to use the attorneys from ELI [Environmental Law Institute, which oversees the CJP].”

  In his review, Gerrard noted: “Many of the [citations] are to fairly old cases, leaving the impression that some of this was mostly taken from an older document.” That was true, as a significant part of the chapter was taken from the 2020 Burger et al. law review.

As I documented last March, reusing substantial material from the Burger et al. law review article in the NASEM/FJC climate chapter provided sufficient grounds — under well-established guidelines for scientific integrity in publishing — for Burger to be considered a ghost author.

The newly released emails add a smoking gun to that conclusion.²

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