In “Bloggers peer review a scientific ‘consensus,'” Gordon Crovitz writes (Wall Street Journal, December 6, 2009),
Unlike Watergate, Climategate didn’t come to light because investigative journalists ferreted out the truth. Instead, this story so far has played itself out largely on blogs, often run by the same scientists who had a hard time getting printed in the scientific journals. Climategate has provided a voice to the scientists who had been frozen out of the debate.
This may be how information-based scandals play out in the future: A leak from a whistleblower directly onto the Web. Expert bloggers then assess what the disclosures mean—a Web version of peer review.
Yes, precisely. Today’s scandals do not usually involve conventional stuff like pricey hotsie totsie dancers at the lab holiday party, on the tax tab. No, it’s more like this:
Blogging scientists have been busy reviewing the 15,000 lines of code by programmers that were included in the “Documents” folder of the leaked materials. The latest twist is hidden notations in the data from programmers that indicate where they had manipulated results. The programmers expressed frustration when the numbers didn’t fit the case for global warming.
Comments in the code include “These will be artificially adjusted to look closer to the real temperatures,” referring to an effort to suppress data showing that the Middle Ages were warmer than today. Comments inside the code also described an “adjustment” as follows: “Apply a VERY ARTIFICIAL correction for decline!!” Another notation indicated when a “fudge factor” had been added.
Read the rest here. You will be amazed at the nonsense and sloppiness – for example, locating weather stations near heating vents, etc. That would be like me forecasting the weather standing beside the vent from the dryers in a nearby apartment building’s laundry room. No wonder it would be Florida to me and a frozen waste to you.
Why this matters: There are probably a number of areas where fudge is factored, but we don’t know which ones, do we?
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