Does the CRU even collect data? i thought they were some sort of aggregation organization. Maybe I'm wildly off base, but it thought a whole bunch of people working in independent fields with independent methodologies said, "huh. looks like it's getting a little warmer over time".

Isn't CRU's purpose to reconcile all that data? i'd be willing to stipulate they're a bunch if lying liars, but that doesn't mean all the raw data is faked, just that we don't understand the relationship between less ozone and tree ring thickness (or whatever metric scientist X chose to measure)

A major problem is they have refused to publish the raw data they used for their conclusions. One of the emails said something like, "I hope nobody figures out that the Freedom of Information act applies to us." (Britain's FOI act.) I also don't get the sense that they faked data. But they hand picked it from different sources at different times and used questionable statistical methods to make it look worse.

The Watergate is a hotel/office/apartment building. Why do all 'scandals' have to end with -gate?

Because it's a cheap way to make your opponents look sleazy and create a whiff of scandal around a topic.

"I am very sorry to report that the rest of the databases seems to be in nearly as poor a state as Australia was. . . . Aarrggghhh! There truly is no end in sight. . . . We can have a proper result, but only by including a load of garbage!"

Sorry, but that sounds like a normal database. Enter any organization with more than 3 employees to hear the same shouts of despair.

We should hold scientists to a higher standard than any organization with more than 3 employees. Especially if they are spending Other People's Money.

Sorry, but the "other people's money" thing irks me. You've experienced all the benefits of living in a society that chooses to fund things collectively with taxes, and paying taxes is part of being an active participant in that society.

That's not the perspective in question. The point is that when you are taking other people's money, you have a responsibility, as part of that society you mention, to take that money more seriously than you might take money you earn from your own labors.

Money is a big deal; money is retirement funds, money is food, money is medical care, money is all kinds of things. Money isn't just "big TVs" and "fast cars", though it is those things too. Society needs to take money to do various things, but the recipients should be treating it as a sacred honor, not their birthright. When you waste $1000 of your own money, you (hopefully!) do it in the knowledge that you can afford it; when you waste $1000 of public money, you should do it in the knowledge that at least some of the people that came from really couldn't afford it, especially if it brought them no value.

I say this in general, actually, not specifically in reference to any recipient of public money. And I say it with full knowledge that it's horrifically utopian and there's hardly anyone that actually acts that way. But they should.

But taking extra care of a database requires more time and therefore more money. There's a break-even point somewhere (not that I claim to know exactly where that is).

Funding things collectively has benefits only if I want the same things as everyone else. And I do to some degree. But anyone who decides to live his life a little differently than the majority knows about the massive drawbacks of pushing collectivism too far, as has been the case in Europe.

You don't get my point: it is normal that databases/software is a mess (as codinghorror says, all code is shit). Somehow work gets done anyway.

What is your solution: some certification maybe? Please - these are the worst companies... Otherwise, make a suggestion.

Oh please, comparing a few billion distributed over years and years in government projects to the multi-hundred-billion-dollar-a-year oil cartel is shameful "journalism." There's no science in this opinion piece, it's just Glenn Beck style arrow graph tin foil hat nonsense.

This whole "climategate" is smelling like hipocrisy in more than one way.

For 8 years Republicans raised a war against science by repressing environmental research by NASA and EPA, blocking stem cell research, supporting creationism and fighting the teaching of evolution.

Now, because one University in UK leaked a few comments out of context and concealed data and methodology they are "oh-so-shocked!" about all global warming research.