Wednesday, November 25, 2009

The Newmarks on ClimateGate

Betsy Newmark has some comments on What is so disturbing about Climate-gate.

What should be disturbing to anyone involved in science or who just took a high school science class is the cavalier attitude to data and research. What raises scientific research above research in other fields such as the social sciences is the rigor demanded of observing phenomena and reporting on the results. And the sine qua non is the willingness to share data so other scientists can duplicate your tests and examine your methods. And yet, this is what those researchers at East Anglia and other researchers at American universities have been trying to do. They've been refusing data requests, trying to avoid Britain's Freedom of Information laws, while intimidating scientific journals to keep critical studies out of publication. Then they deride their critics by saying they're not being published in the same journals that they just threatened if they published such critical studies.

This is a total rejection of the scientific method. And for what? To protect their theories about man-made global warming. Here they're asking nations across the globe to spend hundreds of billions of dollars and rejigger their entire economies because of their warnings about global warming. And yet they totally reject any attempts for an honest, yet skeptical examination of their theories.

She also links to her husband's post, listing a baker's dozen links on global warming.

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