Michael Hiltzik: The climate scientist who just won a $1 million judgment against climate change deniers

One of the major issues confronting scientists today — especially those working in the heavily politicized fields of global warming, vaccines and the origin of COVID-19 — is how to deal with the torrents of misinformation and disinformation, some of it personal, pushing back against their work.

Climate scientist Michael E. Mann just found an answer. Sue the critics — and win.

Last week, a Washington, D.C., jury awarded Mann more than $1 million in punitive damages against two right-wing writers who had accused him of research fraud.

The jurors didn't appear to find this a close question. They ruled that the online posts written by Rand Simberg and Mark Steyn breached the legal standards applied to defamation lawsuits involving a public figure such as Mann — that their writings asserted facts that were "provably false" and that they knew or should have known that their assertions were false.

The jury awarded Mann $1 in compensatory damages from each defendant, plus $1,000 in punitive damages from Simberg and $1 million in punitive