The Institute of Physics tells us.
The Institute is concerned that, unless the disclosed e-mails are proved to be forgeries or adaptations, worrying implications arise for the integrity of scientific research in this field and for the credibility of the scientific method as practised in this context.
In plainer words, climate science lacks credibility. That climate scientists tell us we are doomed unless we repent of our sins against Gaea is not good reason to think we are doomed.
The CRU e-mails as published on the internet provide prima facie evidence of determined and co-ordinated refusals to comply with honourable scientific traditions … This extends well beyond the CRU itself – most of the e-mails were exchanged with researchers in a number of other international institutions who are also involved in the formulation of the IPCC’s conclusions on climate change.
Yes, they are condemning the entire field, not just Phil Jones, not just Hadley CRU
… proxy reconstructions are the basis for the conclusion that 20th century warming is unprecedented. Published reconstructions may represent only a part of the raw data available and may be sensitive to the choices made and the statistical techniques used. Different choices, omissions or statistical processes may lead to different conclusions. This possibility was evidently the reason behind some of the (rejected) requests for further information.
In plainer words, evidently the reason that Climate scientists refused to make their data available because if other people looked at the data, they would have concluded the climate scientists were full of $#@%. This is a reference to the alternate climate reconstructions in Steve McIntyre’s report on the CRU emails.
The e-mails reveal doubts as to the reliability of some of the reconstructions and raise questions as to the way in which they have been represented; for example, the apparent suppression, in graphics widely used by the IPCC, of proxy results for recent decades that do not agree with contemporary instrumental temperature measurements.
This is a reference to “Mike’s Nature trick … to hide the decline”
There is also reason for concern at the intolerance to challenge displayed in the e-mails. This impedes the process of scientific ’self correction’, which is vital to the integrity of the scientific process as a whole, and not just to the research itself. In that context, those CRU e-mails relating to the peer-review process suggest a need for a review of its adequacy and objectivity as practised in this field and its potential vulnerability to bias or manipulation.
Peer review was in practice priestly review for theological correctness.
Fundamentally, we consider it should be inappropriate for the verification of the integrity of the scientific process to depend on appeals to Freedom of Information legislation. Nevertheless, the right to such appeals has been shown to be necessary. The e-mails illustrate the possibility of networks of like-minded researchers effectively excluding newcomers. Requiring data to be electronically accessible to all, at the time of publication, would remove this possibility.
Climate researchers should make their data available as a matter of course.
The scope of the UEA review is, not inappropriately, restricted to the allegations of scientific malpractice and evasion of the Freedom of Information Act at the CRU. However, most of the e-mails were exchanged with researchers in a number of other leading institutions involved in the formulation of the IPCC’s conclusions on climate change. In so far as those scientists were complicit in the alleged scientific malpractices, there is need for a wider inquiry into the integrity of the scientific process in this field.
As they said before, it is not just CRU, it is the entire field of climate research
How independent are the other two international data sets?
13. Published data sets are compiled from a range of sources and are subject to processing and adjustments of various kinds. Differences in judgements and methodologies used in such processing may result in different final data sets even if they are based on the same raw data. Apart from any communality of sources, account must be taken of differences in processing between the published data sets and any data sets on which they draw.
All one big conspiracy.
This was fast. There are still dead-enders (almost 100 years later, now) who claim that maybe Margaret Mead wasn’t lying, and ten years after her lies, as far as I know, the great and the good all said she was telling the truth. I would have bet that nothing like this was going to happen any time in the next ten or twenty years. I would have made the bet even after climategate started to break, even after I knew the substance of the emails.
There is real cause for optimism here. This is an example of what one might call real peer-review — the opinions of smart people who are genuinely disinterested, or at least interested primarily in science. Disinterested because they are not experts in the relevant area; disinterested because they have no reason to care if they piss off climate scientists; disinterested because their opinions have no direct effect on climate scientists (no paper to be rejected, no grant to be not funded, no tenure case to be denied).
One of the toxins of peer review is the idea that you need expertise in an area in order to evaluate the quality of research in that area. This idea is transparently false. Anyone who knows math and statistics well and who has thought about the epistemology of science a bit is competent to judge practically any science. This is especially true if they are willing to invest some time in learning a little of the relevant substance.
Yes, but the state continues to back theocratic pseudo science. Belief is mandatory, if one hopes to get places in Academia.