The whitewashers slip up:
A member of the panel set up to investigate claims that climate change scientists covered up flawed data was forced to resign last night, just hours after the inquiry began. Philip Campbell stood down after it was disclosed that he had given an interview in which he defended the conduct of researchers at the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit (CRU), insisting that they had done nothing wrong.
That’s just science at work, right? Because nothing says “science” like the editor-in-chief of Nature being caught out in a lie about his lack of predetermined views on the subject. I am not saying that all scientists are dishonest, corrupt, ideological propagandists, I am merely pointing out the obvious fact that because some of the most institutionally-respected scientists have proven themselves to dishonest, corrupt, ideological propagandists, the logical observer has no choice but to distrust anything a scientist says that is not independently replicable. The fact that one can have reasonable confidence in the scientific method absolutely does NOT mean that it is reasonable to have confidence in the scientist who claims to have utilized it.
And, for the sake of the obtuse scientific illiterati, I will once more point out the important and obvious fact that peer review is not, and has never been, any more intrinsically scientific than white lab coats or being unattractive to women.