Climate Scientists' Email Scandal

There may well be some ethical lapses on display in these communications, but most (of the random few I read) appear to be demonstrations of the way science works, especially in the case of a rapidly developing field with high stakes politically. Scientists become political and combative when there are major points of contention in their field. This is normal. Kuhn’s “The Stucture of Scientific Revolutions” lays this out in several examples. Why does this process nevertheless result in scientific progress? Probably because there are different scientific camps, each with their own biases, in competition with each other. As more knowledge accumulates, the camps shift in relative power, and, most importantly, as someone said, the older generation eventually dies off and the newer generation can fashion ideological commitments more in tune with current data. The question here, and the risk, is whether the unusual interest in climate change from the non-scientific world will corrupt this process by exerting excessive political and financial pressures.