Scientists Need Ethics Training and Anger Management

by Pearl Hahn 

Apparently in today’s scientific community, it is common practice to reach a conclusion via popular opinion instead of through a civil exchange of data. The hacked e-mails from the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit reveal something akin to a mob mentality of “us vs. them,” complete with the express desire to “beat the crap” out of non-believer Dr. Patrick Michaels in the religion of global warming.

Not even the exchange of data through scientific literature is safe, as the climate center’s director Phil Jones said of skeptics’ research, “we will keep them out somehow– even if we have to redefine what the peer-reviewed literature is!”

Somewhere, Galileo is rolling in his grave. After all, without heretical skeptics like him, we may still be teaching our children that the Earth sits still on its axis all-year round.

These emails merely scratch the surface of how deeply politics are entrenched in climate science, but finally they are lifting the veil on the previously hidden ugly side.

Courtesy of Climate Audit, here are some more troubling excerpts from the emails:

Phil Jones:  “I’m getting hassled by a couple of people to release the CRU station temperature data. Don’t any of you three tell anybody that the UK has a Freedom of Information Act!”

Kevin Trenberth to Michael Mann: “The fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can’t. The CERES data published in the August BAMS 09 supplement on 2008 shows there should be even more warming but the data are surely wrong. Our observing system is inadequate.”

Michael Mann to Phil Jones: “I would not give them *anything*. I would not respond or even acknowledge receipt of their emails. There is no reason to give them any data, in my opinion, and I think we do so at our own peril!”

Pearl can be reached at pearl@grassrootinstitute.org