Haha! I grew near the UEA. Sad that such a well respected institution should be associated with these people.
Are scientists supposed to be infallible? We are all...I don't know...saint-like? How does the actions of this person reflect the entire scientific community?
These are the 'hockey stick' graph people. The computer model was developed in association with the MET office and led to their embarrassment at not being able to predict weather accurately. The computer model was flawed. I don't know if they fixed it though.
I read a different story about this in Nature News which said they 'lost' the written agreements between various nations about restricting access to the data, but nothing about loosing the data itself. I doubt those agreements are legal anyway because of freedom of information laws. While the CRU should be publishing these raw data regularly, I support the idea of restricting access to data until publication. I can't count the sleepless nights I've had about work that has taken me years to do, waiting for my boss to get around to reading my manuscripts before submission for publication (this has also taken years! Very wrong). There is a high level of competition in science. Scientists love to be the 'first' or to demonstrate that another scientist was wrong. Why would you potentially damage your progress by sharing raw data as it comes in?
The problem with climate change science is that governments have too much to loose if what we discover something about the planet that forces them to act. Medical science is different because better disease prevention/treatment means they have to spend/do less. You think NIH money is there purely from the goodness of the governments heart? <img src="/forums/images/graemlins/lol.gif" alt="" /> It's an investment, and thank goodness they see it that way for the good of you, your family, your friends...
What else you got about how science is controlling your life?
