Normally I don't post stuff on politics or science though I follow both. So this post is a bit of an exception.
I have been following the news stories on “climategate” (I am using the popular term though attaching gate has becoming something of a cliche), which appears to have first broken at Air Vent, when I can. Outside of a few science and climate blogs, it appears to have been largely covered by the right wing papers (quite naturally) though it does raise reasonable doubts about the conduct of the researchers involved. Most of the press appears to have taken a hands off approach and some have suddenly turned ethical and not published the hacked material. There is a good deal of discussion on the science itself, a posting by a climate researcher and the group appears to be fairly key researchers but I don't mean to get into that as I do not work in the area. The point that got my attention is the bit on the submission of documents in response to an FOI as well as the characterisation of the material as hacked. It all reminded me a bit of Glenn Greenwald’s effective rebuttal of Joe Klein’s rant.
The media publishes all kinds of material, mainly salacious, under the pretext of “public interest” but are apt to invoke privacy when the material compromises them as with Klein. Likewise scientists. In a profession based on transparency and counter-checks, it is odd that the emails actively discuss ways of evading FOI requests. Like the closed clique of Washington politics who Greenwald lambasts in his article, the whole process of influencing peer review, manoeuvering the appointment of editors and creating the Catch-22 of not allowing publication of papers by researchers who come to different conclusions and then dismissing the authors for not publishing in peer reviewed papers speaks of a clique that doesn’t seem to be answerable to anyone, least of all the public (nothing here that you can understand, move along seems to be the general approach). It’s a pity that most news sites and blogs have been dismissive (apart from Monbiot) – their only stance appears to be that it doesn’t compromise the decades of research by many groups on climate change or change anything at the UN sponsored fest at Copenhagen. This may be so but it still doesn’t address some of the issues raised by the emails. Then again, after many years in research, all of this is hardly surprising.
I have been following the news stories on “climategate” (I am using the popular term though attaching gate has becoming something of a cliche), which appears to have first broken at Air Vent, when I can. Outside of a few science and climate blogs, it appears to have been largely covered by the right wing papers (quite naturally) though it does raise reasonable doubts about the conduct of the researchers involved. Most of the press appears to have taken a hands off approach and some have suddenly turned ethical and not published the hacked material. There is a good deal of discussion on the science itself, a posting by a climate researcher and the group appears to be fairly key researchers but I don't mean to get into that as I do not work in the area. The point that got my attention is the bit on the submission of documents in response to an FOI as well as the characterisation of the material as hacked. It all reminded me a bit of Glenn Greenwald’s effective rebuttal of Joe Klein’s rant.
The media publishes all kinds of material, mainly salacious, under the pretext of “public interest” but are apt to invoke privacy when the material compromises them as with Klein. Likewise scientists. In a profession based on transparency and counter-checks, it is odd that the emails actively discuss ways of evading FOI requests. Like the closed clique of Washington politics who Greenwald lambasts in his article, the whole process of influencing peer review, manoeuvering the appointment of editors and creating the Catch-22 of not allowing publication of papers by researchers who come to different conclusions and then dismissing the authors for not publishing in peer reviewed papers speaks of a clique that doesn’t seem to be answerable to anyone, least of all the public (nothing here that you can understand, move along seems to be the general approach). It’s a pity that most news sites and blogs have been dismissive (apart from Monbiot) – their only stance appears to be that it doesn’t compromise the decades of research by many groups on climate change or change anything at the UN sponsored fest at Copenhagen. This may be so but it still doesn’t address some of the issues raised by the emails. Then again, after many years in research, all of this is hardly surprising.
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