Manufacturing a scientific consensus.

A recently retracted climate study highlights the corruption in peer-review within the climate sciences.

Climatic Research Unit Email Controversy ("Climategate")…

In November 2009, an anonymous hacker or group of hackers illicitly accessed the servers of the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia in the UK. They extracted over a thousand emails and several thousand other documents. Shortly thereafter, these documents were leaked to the public. As CRU is a leading institution in climate research, the emails contained correspondence between many top climate scientists worldwide.

Reporters quickly seized on specific excerpts from the emails, alleging that they revealed misconduct among climate scientists. Several main points of contention emerged:

1. Data Manipulation: Some emails seemed to discuss "tricks" in representing data. Critics claimed this was evidence of data manipulation to exaggerate global warming. However, "trick" was claimed to be used in the sense of a clever method to solve a problem, not deception. You decide.

   I’ve just completed Mike’s Nature trick of adding in the real temperatures to each series for the last 20 years (i.e. from 1981 onwards) and from 1961 for Keith’s to hide the decline. [emphasis added]

   • Phil Jones 11/16/1999

2. Suppression of Skeptical Views: Some emails revealed frustrations with climate skeptics and discussed ways to counter or exclude their perspectives, including pressuring editors of scientific publications. Critics saw this as an attempt to suppress dissenting views.

3. Peer Review: There was evidence in the emails that some scientists were not happy with certain journals or editors that published papers critical of the consensus view on climate change. This led to accusations that the scientists were trying to unduly influence the peer review process.

   So what do we do about this? I think we have to stop considering Climate Research as a legitimate peer-reviewed journal. 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…

   -Michael E. Mann 03/11/2003

While the scientists at the center of the controversy were largely exonerated, the event had a significant impact on the public perception of climate science. The controversy casts doubt on the integrity of climate scientists and the research they produced. "Climategate" also led to increased calls for transparency, better communication of science to the public, and a reevaluation of some aspects of the peer review process.

Climategate 2.0…