Climategate

Climategate is a scandal involving the hacking of email messages of researchers at the Climatic Research Unit of the University of East Anglia in Britain. Scientists entrusted with temperature variation data, used to evaluate the global warming hypothesis, were caught exchanging messages suggesting data slanting to minimize indications of cooling patterns. Defenders argue that data indicating warming over preceding decades still shows recent global temperature increases but climategate remains significant for several reasons.

The most obvious implication is a strong ideological bent toward global warming political policies by individuals who are considered gatekeepers for the objective gathering of empirical data. That in turn discredits science- the very discipline used to evaluate global temperature variation hypotheses. Can the public trust researchers and their data or are researchers as susceptible to political pressures as non-scientists?

A more subtle but deeply troubling aspect of climategate relates to the publication of scientific papers through what is known as a peer review process. As a researcher named Mann, who disliked the fact that a science journal published a dissenting view, wrote:

Perhaps we should encourage our colleagues in the climate research community to no longer submit to, or cite papers in, this journal. We would also need to consider what we tell or request of our more reasonable colleagues who currently sit on the editorial board.

Mann is considering ways to retaliate to as to intimidate the journal's editorial board. He does not like the theme of a dissenting paper. It's politics, not science. This should send a chilling message to those who value science as a metholoogy for producing objective data. But perhaps it was unrealistic in the first place to expect that scientists could separate their political passions from their gathering of related data. In any case the actions of Mann and others raise concern about the integrity of the peer review process. That castes doubt about the reliability of scientific data and the integrity of those generating it. It also clouds political positions grounded in data. That includes political policies based on warming assumptions.