For six years, a federal government employee has gotten away with faking and manipulating research conducted at the USGS Energy Geochemistry Laboratory in Lakewood on test samples involving coal and water.

That’s according to an inspector general report that busted the worker, finally.

The falsified data from a U.S. Geological Survey lab may have affected 24 coal, water and environmental research projects costing a total of $108 million.

Here’s where it gets even fishier. The USGS claims it was all a misunderstanding. The manipulation was just to fix instrument failures, which obviously didn’t work, because the results are still invalid.

On the one hand, they are claiming it was a simple mistake, on the other hand, the employee has been punished.

Is that person still working for the government? They won’t tell us.

Will criminal charges be filed? They won’t tell us.

The inspector general’s report said the bad data from the Colorado lab could erode confidence in the entire USGS.

Ya think?

Interestingly, it was after the problems were first identified and changes were made to correct those issues in 2014, that the agency revised the estimates for the amount of natural gas contained in Colorado — 40 times greater than they previously reported.

Was there any monkey-wrenching on those previous studies that dismissed Colorado’s gas holdings?

They won’t tell us.

Perhaps that’s why they released that fantastic news just a few weeks ago, to soften the IG report blowback in the hopes that we would not question why the government suddenly and so greatly revised their original estimates.

It didn’t work.