It's not a matter of toeing the line, it's a matter of not publishing politically motivated garbage. In the CRU case, it sounds like what actually happened is one of the editors at a journal bypassed the usual peer review process to allow some very dodgy work in. A bunch of other editors quit in protest, and some scientists, in private email, said maybe this journal isn't so good; maybe we shouldn't publish there. I think these are people who would welcome skeptical views if the science is good, but they are opposed to publishing bad science that's motivated by politics.
Well, the IPCC is publishing bad science that's motivated by anti-capitalism/environmentalism.
Good or bad, all the science in this subject is motivated by politics.
That's why it's a slippery slope. I wouldn't call it very subjective, though. In the paper that I referred to above, it was obvious. When you are a scientist who knows their field intimately, it's pretty easy to distinguish between good science where you don't like the result, and something that's just crap. I don't think anyone is having trouble publishing good science.
That paper may or may not have been obvious, but it's impossible to convince outsiders (the rest of us) without releasing the data.
But that's the whole problem; this is a political fight.
Well then nothing needs to be proved really. Let the group with 50+% of US votes win. And the next administration can reverse it, ad nauseum.
A statistician without domain knowledge is just a bozo. They don't add a lot of value in y experience. Meteorology deals with weather, not climate. Both of these fields sound like they have the requisite expertise, but I don't think that is necessarily the case. Is it really "obvious" that only papers with certain viewpoints get published in climate journals? I think that's what someone wants us to think. If your conclusions require evolutionary theory or other fundamental science to be wrong in order to make sense, you will probably have a hard time getting published in a prestigious biochemistry journal. That's not a conspiracy, that's just the nature of science. If someone can demonstrate that solid science is getting kept out of journals for political reasons, then I'd like to know about it. I just don't think that's happening here.
The problem is that certain arguments made in climate research go into statistics. Statistics is definitely relevant in confirming/disproving certain papers. Besides it's not that hard to study something outside of previous experience. It's even easier if your aim is to poke holes in other peoples research.
Also note, none of the big guys in the field have PhDs in the field of Climate research.
Finally, those emails weren't "leaked", they were stolen. That puts things in a slightly different light.
And you know this how ? It certainly appears that someone took the time to collect all the juicy bits of info in a package.
An insider leaking the info is much more likely than a hacker who's well versed in picking out juicy emails.
There are no personal emails in this package. Someone knew to pick out the useful data ...
Niner, there are scientific fields which go off the rails.
Nutrition and long term medicine are examples.
I believe strongly that AGW is one of those fields.
See, McIntyre merely started out attempting to recreate and validate ("audit") the models.
He and his website (Climate Audit) are explicitly non-political. His political sympathies are even leftish.
He gets no funding from big oil or anyone else.
I think that his treatment at the hands of climate scientists makes it obvious that they have something to hide.