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Credibility Lost – Hackers Could Save Scientific Integrity
December 2, 2009 | 3 Comments
November 20, 2009 is a date that will last for generations as a historical moment for the truth. Hackers, corrupters of another sort cracked into the leading European university where its server was holding thousands of emails and data that has unraveled the credibility of the human caused global warming scare. Now much, but not all is in the public domain.
The emails themselves show a pervasive disregard for scientific integrity, a check across the media and internet spectrum of views about global warming shows nearly all acknowledge the nasty reality that the data presentations if not the data itself is suspect – if not wholly misleading. Some writers, the media writers in particular are trying to soft pedal what remains still, a corrupted scientific effort, paid for in the main by taxpayers, producing a corrupt point of view and false data – not a scientific basis for analysis.
The breakout of the corruption had to happen. While it’s a shame the sunset on the global warming scare comes from a break in, the information itself could have been accessed through laws requiring the information be made public on request. But that has to leavened by the comment of one noteworthy ‘science’ perpetrator – he’d delete files before allowing them to be sent out. That took the behavior too far – corruption is too light, there was deceit, fraud and conspiring efforts well underway even though the documents aren’t fully clear.
The moment brings feelings first of dread, then relief and sadness.
Those “scientists” culpable in the story are due some serious legal trouble and fear for themselves in having to answer for the theft of funds, misleading publishers, the public and government officials, and the diversion of uncountable billions if not trillions of dollars world wide in economic impact. Prison terms cannot be considered unlikely, but necessary. Which leads to this writer’s fear – these people cannot be trusted, but believers in their story will listen to all explanations, excuses and furtive sleights of the facts, that the whole sordid episode will be drawn out even more, and perhaps there is a risk the idiot media and journalist community will hang onto the story in desperation. It’s not over yet, not by a very long way. Climate integrity might be sundered from those who told the story, but the media and journalists have yet to face the facts and bring both views to us. We’re no closer climate science reality than a month ago. What could be reality is languishing unpublished, unseen, and unfunded.
But it’s a great relief to see the proponents of whole human blame for global warming caught in their lie. Humanity is here on earth and affects the atmosphere, perhaps now we can learn just how for better or worse, the question that’s begged answers for decades. The storytellers’ evil, CO2, might now be seen for what it is – carbon and oxygen – the components of fuels and food for everything and everyone on earth.
There will be sadness, innocents from the masses of taxpayers, scientists whose work now must be thrown away even as they may have believed they were doing humanity a service, on to journalists faced with investigating instead of the easy sleight of just reporting the story. Funding must dry up, or the bloodletting must extend to those responsible for the granting, thus many innocent careers and lives will be harmed. Money for climate change? Not one cent until the public knows whom to trust. That implies journalists will investigate – a forlorn hope – as they as well have an integrity issue to recover as well.
All this leads to a simmering anger. Publishers, peer review committees, journalists, fund granting authorities and the perpetrators are all going to react as people do, trying to cover their arses with “damage control.” The lies haven’t ended; they more likely will get even more bizarre.
Hope remains and some good cheer. These people were going to get caught someday anyway. Now we’ll get a shot at not spending all that money to fix a phantom problem, great riches might not befall the Al Gores of the world. We, the vast bulk of people on earth could be spared being bled of our efforts to enrichen the storytellers.
Richard Feynman once said, “. . . It is interesting, therefore, to bring it out now and speak of it explicitly. It’s a kind of scientific integrity, a principle of scientific thought that corresponds to a kind of utter honesty — a kind of leaning over backwards. For example, if you’re doing an experiment, you should report everything that you think might make it invalid — not only what you think is right about it: other causes that could possibly explain your results; and things you thought of that you’ve eliminated by some other experiment, and how they worked — to make sure the other fellow can tell they have been eliminated.
Details that could throw doubt on your interpretation must be given, if you know them. You must do the best you can — if you know anything at all wrong, or possibly wrong — to explain it. If you make a theory, for example, and advertise it, or put it out, then you must also put down all the facts that disagree with it, as well as those that agree with it. There is also a more subtle problem. When you have put a lot of ideas together to make an elaborate theory, you want to make sure, when explaining what it fits, that those things it fits are not just the things that gave you the idea for the theory; but that the finished theory makes something else come out right, in addition.
In summary, the idea is to give all of the information to help others to judge the value of your contribution; not just the information that leads to judgment in one particular direction or another . . .
. . . I would like to add something that’s not essential to the science, but something I kind of believe, which is that you should not fool the layman when you’re talking as a scientist. I am not trying to tell you what to do about cheating on your wife, or fooling your girlfriend, or something like that, when you’re not trying to be a scientist, but just trying to be an ordinary human being. We’ll leave those problems up to you and your rabbi. I’m talking about a specific, extra type of integrity that is not lying, but bending over backwards to show how you’re maybe wrong, that you ought to have when acting as a scientist. And this is our responsibility as scientists, certainly to other scientists, and I think to laymen.”
November 20, 2009 was a good day, now anyone with a clear mind can see the AWG data is at best suspect, certainly falsified and a fraud caught early.
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The biggest and most disappointing part of this scandal is how the main stream media has deliberatly ignored it. ABC, CBS and NBC had not covered it in their morning or evening news shows.
The deliberate unreporting of the story is saddest part of the entire ordeal.
I remember when journalists were heroes for telling the hard truth. Now, they hide it.
Too true, Matt.
Even more disappointing to me are all the bloggers (not Brian!) who ignore or minimise the story because it is personally or professionally inconvenient. I won’t name names, but some of them are linked on the sidebar to your left.
Brian is one of the good guys who shoots straight, and I’m glad you found a new server host who will work with you, Brian.
Fools leading fools and being attacked by other fools!
Sounds like a comic book!