The Crux

Roger Pielke Sr has put his finger on the most damning aspect of the information resulting from the CRU hack, and it came from a comment today made in "defense" of the authors involved.

A comment at "Real Climate" asked:

It would be nice to get comments from the authors for lines like this. This can of course be understood in many ways…

“I can’t see either of these papers being in the next IPCC report. Xxx and I will keep them out somehow – even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is”

[Response: Bad papers clutter up assessment reports and if they don't stand up as science, they shouldn't be included....-gavin]

And what counts as a "bad" paper? Why, one that doesn't support the pre-ordained vision of course. The fact that such moral language is used in the first place, and so glibly, should raise red flags everywhere. Are we talking about science here, or some sort of catechism? Notice, what they are talking about doing is redlining peer-reviewed work not as a result of it having been shown deficient by other peer-reviewed work, but through an act of fiat by a self-appointed cabal who prefer reality to be defined by their principles rather than by observation and experimentation.

They are in fact ideologues of the worst variety. They are messianic "true believers" who live in what they view as a dirty corrupted world, filled with enemies they call "skeptics" or, in a more religiously suggestive manner, "deniers." Never fear! Somehow our heroes have managed to gain access to the "answer;" a secret knowledge which will allow them to redeem the world, and to make it the best of all possible worlds. It is this "knowledge" that allows them to take methodologically rigorous scientific work and arbitrarily deem it "bad." But, they only do so because they want to "save the world." It is thier "purity of heart" which automatically makes all of their actions laudable, even if they fly in the face of the demands of rationality, logic and the scientific method.