AP Claims It's Just How Scientists Are: How Would They Know?

SEE HERE An AP story makes out as if the ClimateGate emails are within the normal range of scientific activity. Perhaps that is true in the agenda-driven realm of climate science. In less emotionally laden, more objective areas where the only goal is discerning the truth, virtually all of these behaviors would be seen as inappropriate. These emails don't read like science but like crusades, i.e. goal-oriented behavior not truth-oriented behavior. That is where I think the difference lies.

The data manipulation alone aimed at achieving a priori determined results (a warming trend for example) are out of bounds. The intention of such manipulation is clearly to achieve an intended result that the researchers desire. That is not science, period! Scientists don't decide what the outcome is supposed to be before they do the experiment, at least not if the outcome is unknown before hand. In the case of well established results, the expectations may be used to test the ability of the experiment to produce the correct result. That doesn't apply here. There is no "correct" result. The question is: "How does the climate system work?" The question is not:"Can we make human generated CO2 account for warming (Oh, no warming?)? — Can we create the warming we need to show that human generated CO2 accounts for it? Frankly, that's what it looks like they were doing.