"Climategate" whitewashed.

[Brian Ellis]

As I said at the time, the affair was scientifically meaningless. It was a crude political attempt to upset the Copenhagen meeting. This opinion has now been officially confirmed.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8618024.stm

Edit: notwithstanding, some of the actions by the people there were very clumsy. In their defence, scientists have never been renowned for their tact or diplomacy.

[Technoid]

Uhm, I think I'm my reading comprehension is taking a vacation...

In My understanding Whitewash usually dont mean that the accused got cleared of wrongdoing because they where innocent of said accusation .

Anyway, I did read the 8 Pages report and it was pathetic. It serves a political agenda.

[Brian Ellis]

There were two kinds of accusation:
1. that they destroyed unique scientific evidence to bolster their position re climate change. This is untrue because a) the destroyed data were not unique (many places had this raw data) and b) they maintained the corrected data, which are what are used globally. This was the important charge against the scientists and has been proved to be unfounded; this is what I meant by "whitewashed" in a succinct title.

2. That e-mail communications were very clumsily worded, possibly even slanderous, especially if taken out of context, as was done. From the science point of view, this is not material, but the guys should have known better. How many times has anyone said the same kinds of things? However, if I were to say that Technoid should be hanged, drawn and quartered, the tone of voice would betray the meaning that I don't agree with him and that I don't mean it literally. Unfortunately, e-mails don't have a tone of voice and, if I were to post here the same sentence, it would take on a completely different meaning of complete disagreement with him and a very pejorative sense. Yes, these scientists were very clumsy in their e-mail exchanges.

The whole thing came to light -- and the timing was perfect -- in a clumsy and futile attempt to scupper any chance of an agreement at the Copenhagen meeting. I agree that this had a political motivation, pure and simple, but was transparently obvious. This was why it did not achieve its aims; the agreement was scuppered for entirely different reasons!

The important thing is that the science has not suffered, only the personal reputation of a few scientists with a poor sense of diplomacy.