The Motley, Motley CRU (Climatic Research Unit) Has Given All of Science a Massive Black Eye
Ken Green of The American Enterprise Institute sums up the fallout from Climategate:
Most troubling are the suggestions that a tribe of incestuous climate scientists may have actively conspired to undermine the peer-review process, until now considered a determinant of what is worthy of scientific consideration, and what is not.
Science is vitally important for the operation of a highly technological society, and that science must be open and transparent, and must adhere to the scientific method and the institution of science, which has no place in it for hiding data, hiding data-processing, shaping data to conform to pre-existing beliefs, undermining the peer-review process, cherry-picking reports in order to slant political IPCC reports, or slandering critics by comparing them with flat-Earthers, moon-landing conspiracy theorists, or holocaust deniers.
The climate scientists at the CRU have given not only climate science, but all of science, a massive black eye, and should the public lose faith in science, a great deal of the responsibility will accrue to them. The scientists involved in the Climategate scandal should be permanently removed from any position in which they can influence climate policy. They should be excluded from peer-review panels, banned from participating in the IPCC process in any capacity, and kept far away from editorial positions at journals. Their data and methods must be made absolutely transparent and available for outside inspection.
5 Comments:
A deceitful lone wolf scientist is easily uncovered via peer review and scientific method. But now we have a deceitful wolf pack of scientists conspiring to advance an agenda. This will have a ripple effect in the scientific community since all data will be seen as suspect. This event can not be swept under the rug. It must be confronted, reveled for want it is "fraud" and all conspiring parties dealt with swiftly.
I've never put much trust in the peer review process. It's always a bit of a ruse - "It's been peer reviewed so it must be true!" - is pretty silly.
Also, what possible difference does it make if the public trusts scientists or not? As long as new products and services come out and get cheaper, the public is happy.
If one studies the Structure of Scientific Revolutions by Kuhn, you find the behavior cited by the climate scientists to be exactly what is to be expected, they have agreed on a paradigm and are resistant to challenges. Search for the title for more information. This is the way science really works because it is done by human beings not calculating machines. The scientific method as taught in school is at best rarely how science is done, being a washed out, boiled down, bleached version of the way things really work. Science builds a model of reality, tests it and tweaks the model to match observations until the tweaks become creaky and Occam gets his razor out. Then a period of fermet occurs and a new model of the world arises.
This is all a distraction orchestrated by climate-change deniers.
Get over arguing about the reality of global warming, if you think we can't afford to fix it, then say so.
The phony concern for the morality of science is hypocritical.
"This is all a distraction orchestrated by climate-change deniers."
....says the crowd who sticks their fingers in their ears and declares at the top of their voices "La La La La! We can't HEAR you!" like the stubborn little children they are.
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