Stolen emails, climate change, and the practice of science

[tabatha]

A week or so ago, someone broke into a server at the University of East Anglia and made off with a range of emails and other data from the university's Climate Research Unit. This excited lots of climate change deniers, as they've long claimed that CRU had secret evidence that global warming wasn't happening, or something. Much web commentary followed, in which a supposedly "random sample" of these emails were widely distributed and dissected publicly.

My first thought on reading about this was not about climate change or the ensuing storm of BS about it. I thought of the scientists' privacy, now torn to shreds. I know I live on email, as do most scientists. In addition to work-related emails, I'm sure the server contained private notes to the researchers' loved ones and family, email receipts for personal purchases, and a host of other content never meant to be distributed publicly, or even in their professional circles. The breach of their privacy is atrocious, and I've lost all respect for anyone who commented on this incident without even noting the underlying crime and the associated violation of these people's most private discussions.

But as noted at BoingBoing, "Theft is bad. But if you're a researcher who can explain context to the general public, decrying theft shouldn't be your primary objective right now." The primary point, BoingBoing makes clear, is:

Evidence of vast conspiracy is sorely lacking. Ditto evidence disproving the scientific consensus on climate change. This isn't the "nail in the coffin" of anything. However, the emails do prompt some legit questions about transparency and how professional researchers respond to criticism in the age of the armchair scientist.

This is both true and not true. I disagree with the last sentence, but based on what people are saying about the emails (I refuse to read them or to link to sites which list the emails in their entirety), there's no smoking gun, nor are there powder burns or any other evidence that a gun ever existed. What we see is that scientists can be jerks, can be parochial, can respond badly to criticism, can circle their wagons against outsiders (especially cranks and dilettantes desperate to prove that the entire enterprise of climate science should be tossed out the window). In short, the emails prove that scientists are human. Anyone who didn't know that should look at some of Newton's correspondence, or should check out Chris Mooney's excellent Storm World – which book I previously wrote "deserves special praise for capturing the dynamic of scientific debate, humanizing the scientific process and inviting the public in to see how things work in a field they care about desperately."

Among those who need to spend less time idealizing science is CBS News's Declan McCullagh, who writes: "The irony of this situation is that most of us expect science to be conducted in the open, without unpublished secret data, hidden agendas, and computer programs of dubious reliability." First, that's not really irony, and second, anyone who has worked in academia knows that the software often sucks (as does commercial software, but scientific software is often highly customized), there are copious personal agendas, and lots of unpublished data waiting to be analyzed. Publishing data isn't easy, and casting databases open to the world runs the risk of letting your research get scooped. Lots of journalists, including science journalists, don't seem to get this, which is worrisome. Few deniers get this either, which is not surprising at all, though it continues to disappoint.

http://scienceblogs.com/tfk/2009/11/stolen_emails_climate_change_a.php

[LARED]

1. Regarding private notes; the bottom line is no one

should have any expectation of privacy on a work computer.

It's that simple.

[GMA]

2. These were not private emails.

They were subject to the Freedom of Information Act, since there was government funding. I don't feel at all bad for the scientists involved.

[notesdev]

3. This is the key to pretending this isn't a big deal

"(I refuse to read them or to link to sites which list the emails in their entirety)"

I guess he, like so many others, is more comfortable having his opinion spoon-fed to him. Easier than thinking for oneself!

[FarCenter]

4. Read them yourself

http://www.eastangliaemails.com/index.php

[FarCenter]

5. Scientists are human, science is difficult, and there is money involved

If you could measure it cheaply and accurately, and it proved something that was expected, you probably couldn't get it published in Nature or Science.

The real political power is not with peer reviewers of journals, but with the panels of senior scientists who comment on and approve funding proposals (although in many cases they are the same senior scientists).