Commenter Nails the Central Issue in ClimateGate: the Rigging of Peer-Review

The pro-global warming blog Climate Change Denial is spinning like a top. Devastated by the revelation of pervasive fraud in climate science, the warmists are clearly dazed and grasping at any tactics that might salvage their ideological hijacking of science, now laid bare. In their latest post, "Swiftboating the Climate Scientists", they ignore the transparent scientific misconduct and fraud revealed in the highest eschalons of climate science, and accuse the skeptics of attacking climate science for base ideological motives. The term "swiftboating" alone is risible and actually revealing; warmists are nearly all leftists, still simmering over the implosion of the Kerry/Edwards candidacy. It's ironic that these "objective" scientists and activists use a left-wing political slur to attack skeptics who demand honest science.

A commenter (Starchild, # 20) summed up the scope of scientific fraud revealed in ClimateGate quite nicely:

(1) Peer-review process is one of cornerstones of modern science. Actions described in e-mails are WAY out of normal review process I know. Actually they usually are explicitly prohibited by journal policies and ethics codes. Tampering with peer-review process, expecially to exclude opponents, are second most serious scientific crime after outright research fabrication. E-mails are clear enough and no amount of “context” could change interpretation. In any other research field I know, perpetuators would be expected to resign immediately on peer-review “games” alone.

(2) “I think I’ll delete the file rather than send to anyone” stance by Phil Jones is quite damning one, especially IN CONTEXT of repeated information requests. Again in branches of science, natural assumption would be that paper or papers in question are fraudulent. This could be cleared, but only afer serious explanation by author and INDEPENDENT and COMPETENT verification of research in question.

This is major scandal concerning Ethics of Science. “Damage control” of yours could deal with public opinion, but I believe scientific community would not allow it just go away.

The most pervasive manifestation of this fraud is the perversion of the peer-review process; it renders all of the 'consensus science' that has accrued under that process essentially worthless. Peer review is to science as jury deliberations are to criminal justice. It is sacrosanct. If it is tampered with, the verdict — scientific or judicial — is worthless, and must be thrown out.

The peer-review process in evolutionary biology is at least as compromised as the peer-review process in climate science. There is no "consensus" when the deliberations are rigged. No scientific conclusion is valid unless the raw data on which it is based is available to all for inspection and replication, and no scientific conclusion is valid unless the peer-review process is free of coersion and of ideological bias. Is there ideological bias in evolutionary biology, as there obviously is in climate science? Perhaps we should ask the 98.7% of evolutionary biologists who don't believe in a personal God that question.

It's easy to get a 'consensus' when one side controls the jury. That's a 'show trial', which is a succinct description of the peer review process in evolutionary biology as applied to intelligent design.

Copenhagen climate conference opens to dire warnings
By Richard Ingham and Marlowe Hood (AFP) – 7 hours ago

COPENHAGEN — A landmark conference on tackling climate change opened here on Monday, with negotiators from 192 countries aiming toward a deal to ward off global warming’s potentially catastrophic effects.

The meeting will climax on December 18 with more than 100 heads of state or government in attendance.

Opening ceremonies began with a short film featuring children of the future facing an apocalypse of tempests and desert landscapes if world leaders failed to act today.

“There will be hundreds of millions of refugees,” Rajendra Pachauri, head of the UN’s panel of climate scientists, said in the film.

“Please help save the world,” said a little girl, plaintively.

short film featuring children of the future facing an apocalypse of tempests and desert landscapes

The peer review process, when it works, is a fine way of filtering out the meretricious and fraud. But that supposes an honest usage and like so much else it becomes a means of promoting an agenda of one side or the other.
“You pass my paper for review and I'll pass yours” kind of back scratching.

The global warming fraud stands as an important example more for how the matter is being treated by the scientific community than the act its self.

Are the studies and papers on purported human evolution any different?

The papers on evolution... moot point, yes. Evolution is a theory, and nothing more than that. Moreover, it can never, out of necessity, become more than a theory. This is an a priori fact. See: much more than the climate, evolution is a model with an unknown quantity of parameters, variables. This alone excludes a total and provable set of factual truths (let alone that anyone ever could replicate evolution... and replicatability is a demand for scientific evidence. Finally: evolution is inevitably linked to central issues like the Big Bang, the absence time, you name it. Evolution is a usable concept to represent the development of species over time. However, it is crucial to realize that it can never be more than that. See it as a series of maps and instructions on how to build ever more complex forms of life. But: who wrote those maps and instructions? I think we know.

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