On What Some are Calling "ClimateGate"

by Eli Kintisch on 23 November 2009, 4:49 PM | 0 Comments

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Megan McArdle of the Atlantic Monthly offers a particularly clear analysis on the story rocking the climate science world:

I have so far seen no evidence of the kind of grand conspiracy that some critics have charged. Rather, to my mind this is about how real science (unfortunately) does sometimes get done.

Scientists are human beings. They react to pressure to "clean up" their graphs and data for publication, and they gang up on other people who they dislike. Sometimes they're right--there's a "conspiracy" to keep people who believe in N-rays from publishing in physics journals, but that's a good thing. But sometimes they're wrong, and a powerful figure or group of people can block progress in science.

I'd say that the charge that climate skeptics "are not published in peer reviewed journals" just lost most of its power as an argument against the skeptics.

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