journal replied that they would "look into the matter as appropriate". The story was published by The Boston Globe on 26 January with a statement by Monckton that allegations of failure to disclose a material conflict of interest were untrue, as the authors had not "received any funding whatsoever for our research, which was conducted in our own time". He said that the Heartland Institute had provided funding to make the paper available to the public on the journal's website. On February 21, publications including The Guardian and The New York Times reported that Soon had failed to disclose conflicts of interest in at least 11 papers since 2008, and alleged that Soon had violated ethical guidelines of at least eight of those journals publishing his work. Charles R. Alcock, director of the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian, described the disclosure violations as "inappropriate behavior" that they would "have to handle with Dr. Soon internally". On the same day, Nature reported that the CfA had launched an investigation into whether Soon had properly reported the funding arrangements shown in the documents. Alcock said "We want to get the facts straight. If there is evidence of failure to disclose, yes, we have a problem." He said that the contract with Southern preventing disclosure of their funding "was a mistake", and in a later email reply to questions said "We will not permit similar wording in future grant agreements". The Smithsonian announced that its Inspector General would investigate, and in addition there was to be a full review of the Smithsonian's ethics and disclosure policies about sponsored research, led by former NSF director Rita R. Colwell. On March 2, 2015, The Heartland Institute conservative think tank released a statement by Soon, which said he had "been the target of attacks in the press by various radical environmental and politically motivated groups". He described this as "a shameless attempt to silence my scientific research and writings, and to make an example out of me as a warning to any other researcher who may dare question in the slightest their fervently held orthodoxy of anthropogenic global warming." Some of the journals that had published Soon's work had begun reviewing the papers in relation to their policies requiring disclosure: Soon said he had "always complied with what I understood to be disclosure practices in my field generally". He would be "happy to comply"