[holden]

Despite the "all due respect" disclaimer of your acceptance bias comments, though suitably instructive in other ways, they don't seem to me to analogize appropriately between EAU and FR in that at FR, the guys at the top of the "bringin' in the grants" chain don't nix the contrary-evidence discussions, except in cases of abuse. Furthermore, FR movers and shakers have not to my knowledge evidenced outright fraud, a hook, I note, you didn't seem to leave as one of the possibilities for the CRU-related crowd.

You might reasonably refer to something like the Romney examples of late, which are, IMHO, a pre-emptive response to the type of abuses which have saddled the Republican presidential ticket with the likes of McLame. The cauldron of discussion that sorted all that out was very well represented by the spectrum of Republican (and other) input.

On the resonably instructive side of your comments, there is a certainly among FR members a raft of "less-thoughtful", predictable responders, who in typical parlance might be called "the choir." They do tend readily to "pile on".

Your insightful comments about the double blind clinical trial method and overcoming the limitations (and predispositions) of human psychology, are tremendously on-point, however. Thank you.

The crew@CRU had overwhelming career-advancing and financial incentives dangling before them. To suggest "self-delusion" would explain their behavior would typify excuse-finding, blame-minimizing psychologizing that has so muddied our legal system. The fraud clearly perpetrated by these hucksters, while fanned by the high and mighty from the Leftist political classes, has diverted hundreds of billions of dollars from useful purposes to entirely counter-productive ones while falsely destroying the professional careers of many of our highest-minded true scientists and presenting skewed examples to those still coming up through the ranks. That's more than mere self-convinced delusion at work there.

Many politicians, e.g. Babs Boxer, appear insufficiently prescient or savvy to let the crew@CRU be the fall-guys and extract themselves from culpabilty. Perhaps they are simply more guided by the Boutos Boutros-Ghali and Coffee Ananas examples of how UN scandals like Food-for-Oil have played out.

Leftist Media, Leftist politicians, Leftist academics (now there's a redundancy) and Leftist movers and shakers in the scientific world all seem to be punishably complicit in this greatest fraud of all time! I won't be excusing anyone just because the claim they were deluded.

HF

[Lonesome in Massachussets]

I come to FR for confirmation bias, to hear a congenial view point. I get contrary “information” continuously from the LSM, especially in this benighted commonwealth.

[Lonesome in Massachussets]

I worked with a guy who was an atmospheric scientist in the early 1990's. He was a little befuddled by the "ozone hole" hysteria, but attributed it to scientists who needed a raison de grant after the fall of the Soviet Union. A lot of atmospheric science was funded by the DoD, when that dried up they were looking for other sources. Ozone depletion served their needs for a while, but Global Warming is the Comstock Lode of environmental hysteria for chaps who are handy at grantsmanship.