Would even cosmology or evolutionary biology, say, prove "faultless" if hit with similar exposures? At the core of this IMHO, lies the fact that science goes to great pains to project an image of detached impartiality in its inner workings, while the reality is that, as in any other human endeavour, it is a product of great and often violent clash of egos, personalities, convictions and interests. To pretend otherwise, in climate science, quantum mechanics, entomology, or surface chemistry is inviting public disenchantment. This holds even more strongly for issues that are politicized. Think "heritability of intelligence". Think "peak oil".
The amazing thing is that despite all this egregious human fallibility and occasional pettiness, science works. I think that this is important to stress especially since the forces of obscurantism, especially in the US, will use such incidents not just to slander climate science, but Science in general. In this context the answer to the "scandal" is "yeah people occasionally behave badly (although I personally would protest strongly to my being judged publicly on the base of private, often casual, email exchanges), but the damn system works". The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom - William Blake
Would even cosmology or evolutionary biology, say, prove "faultless" if hit with similar exposures?
Is the wrong question.
Why is no one asking if the climate deniers fake their evidence, lie, manipulate the public, whore for their rich benefactors, and other questions that might be of passing interest?
This is how you do a certain kind of PR - not by looking at the evidence, but by smearing the character of those involved.
It's completely predictable, and it's disappointing, but not entirely surprising, that the climate science camp has been put on the defensive, when there are so many possible offensive moves that could mitigate the impact of this.
But we won't get the offensive moves, because the climate scientists still think it's about the quality of the science - when it very much isn't.
attempts to prevent scientific data from being released(2,3), and even to destroy material that was subject to a freedom of information request(4). Worse still, some of the emails suggest efforts to prevent the publication of work by climate sceptics(5,6), or to keep it out of a report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change(7).
occurs in other controversial science branches? Would it excuse the above, even when considering "violent clash of egos, personalities, convictions and interests"?
People exercising their pettiness, ire and general jerk-ness in online media is not what I, at any rate, would call an earth-shaking revelation. If there is nothing else, that part will blow over.
And if you know something is crap you would try to keep it out of a serious journal out of professional courtesy alone, so the "suppression" part is not a big deal.
But if they were doing tainted science...
How much substance do you see in these allegations? The fact is that what we're experiencing right now is a top-down disaster. -Paul Krugman
Personally, I note that there is significant vindication for the problems and speculations Steve McIntyre has continuously posed about major publications of these scientists.
I'd question if holds up to science, as it has simply not been possible to reproduce or test some of the work published by the scientists mentioned in the emails. I hold reproducibility as of the key pillars of scientific method.
Even before the emails were exposed, there was no "science". The emails simply confirm this.
