Will Wilkinson chimes in on "climategate":
The hacked/leaked emails and data seemed to me like prime fodder for motivated cognition. My expectations were pretty much met. Many alarmists have inappropriately minimized the importance of the evidence of a shameful conspiracy to enforce what is clearly an ideological party line among climate researchers. Many skeptics have gone too far in using the revelations as grounds for casting doubt on the entire scientific case for AGW. But, clearly, the thrust of the scandal vindicates the skeptics’ claims that the science of climate change is conducted in an ideologically charged atmosphere, that there really are coordinated attempts to suppress or marginalize studies and scholars out of step with the favored narrative, and that there really are coordinated attempts to make evidence in favor of the favored narrative look better than it really is.
Will does say in a comment that the illicit goings on he "had in mind" were things like the infamous source code providing for "very artificial corrections," as discussed in this post (ostensibly authored by a similarly unmotivated cognizer). It's just not clear, though, whether Will ever "had in mind" countervailing posts like this one before arriving at his informed view of the matter.
Particularly ironic is Will's notion that the scandal vindicates the skeptics' claim that climate science is conducted in an "ideologically charged atmosphere": the ideological charge is largely a function of the skeptics' claims. And Will himself comes very close to admitting as much:
The scientific implications of the Climategate files are probably small, but the political implication is certainly large–because of the politicized nature of climate science confirmed by the files.
Here, Will takes care to distinguish the scientific from political implications. And he takes care to note that the implications for science are "probably small." Which is, one would think, to say that as a normative matter, we ought to view this scandal substantively as rather insignificant.
Unfortunately, Will goes on to draw a quite different moral:
The idea that the science behind predictions of potentially catastrophic warming is rock solid and that the putative scientific consensus reflects the rock solidity of the science licenses the inference that there is no scientifically respectable excuse for skepticism of or disagreement with the consensus. That is a big stick to thump people with. But the Climategate files strongly suggest that at least some of the science is not rock solid and that the scientific consensus is at least in part the product of silencing or marginalizing those who might upset it. The files have made “How can we be sure that you did not fudge your data” and “How do we know that dissenting voices have been given a fair hearing?” questions that we now must ask rather than questions skeptics can be effectively shouted down for asking.
Wait a minute. Will had just finished saying the implications for science are small. Now he's saying that what were once scientifically illegitimate questions are now scientifically respectable grounds for skepticism. That doesn't seem small to me.
But of course Will's whole line of argument trades on a collapse of the very distinction he had just before taken the care to set up. Based on that distinction, the scientific consensus is now (more or less) what it was ex ante; the only thing that has changed significantly is the politics - the balance of power between "alarmists" and "skeptics." Normally, Will would just dismiss this as stupid political noise. Instead, he draws the remarkable conclusion that we ought to believe something different about the science.
Why does Will do that? I'm not sure. But I think it might have something to do with his motivation.
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For more motivated cognition on Climategate, see my exchange with Stuart Buck here in the comments.
