The idea of scientific enquiry

The much touted peer reviewed scientific consensus on AGW ( or as I like to call it ... cue the scary music...."The Warming") has been under sustained attack all week thanks to a "hacker" (or more likely a whistleblower) releasing thousands of emails from the University of East Anglia Climate Research Unit. These dudes, along with NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies have been the primary pushers of the theory that man-made activities have pumped so much CO2 in the air that it has caused planet Earth to warm up.

Now I have my beefs with the science and the premise (as detailed in all my previous posts here) however, this post is not about that.

This is about how the process of science has been perverted in the name of a political agenda. When the most vocal proponent of The Warming (apart from the Goracle and his immediate circle) George Monbiot is publicly acknowledging the damage of the leak (in the pages of The Guardian no less!!), one would hope governments, NGOs and the disgraceful UN would 'recalibrate', however there is too much money and power at stake for an about face.

So instead of a public mea culpa from the scientists who have been caught red-handed "hiding the decline" via email conversations, we have endless arguments about the definition of "trick":

"Scientists often use the term “trick” to refer to a “a good way to deal with a problem”, rather than something that is “secret”, and so there is nothing problematic in this at all."

And how the words "hiding the decline" don't actually mean what you think it means. This also doesn't explain away the very clear, precise and unambiguous programmer's comments in the code.

However, to get a full understanding of how the actions of the staff at CRU are bordering on criminal and how badly they have damaged their cause, read this posting from a guy who attempted to get the data from the 'scientists' at the CRU to replicate their results...you know, how science is supposed to work...

"Science works by one person making a claim, and backing it up with the data and methods that they used to make the claim. Other scientists then attack the claim by (among other things) trying to replicate the first scientist’s work. If they can’t replicate it, it doesn’t stand."
...
This is not just trivial gamesmanship, this is central to the very idea of scientific inquiry. This is an attack on the heart of science, by keeping people who disagree with you from ever checking your work and seeing if your math is correct.

Read it all. It's long, but if you have the time, it's worth it.