>"It's not clear that this is the fault of scientists. It's also very clear that certain political groups intentionally cultivate this misunderstanding, so that they can convince the public that an entire field of science is wrong."
It sounds like you're excusing bad behavior by saying that other people sometimes behave badly. There is no "certain political group" that is over-representing the value of "peer review" to the public, unless we are talking about environmentalists:
No "certain political group" forced the scientists involved in this scandal to act in unethical and secretive manners. Just because politicians act in unethical and dishonest ways doesn't mean that scientists are excused for sinking to their level.
Nope. I'm not excusing bad behavior. I think those scientists were being immature and irresponsible. But their bad behavior doesn't change my belief that the field of climate change research is valid.
Truth be told, the evidence I've seen doesn't even change my confidence level in their paper -- because unlike "skeptics", I never felt that any one source of historical temperature data was terribly likely to be precise in the first place. Fortunately for climate science, there are many other independent sources of historical temperature data, and all show the same trend. I believe it's extremely unlikely that they're all wrong. Certainly not in the same way.
(In case you were wondering, that's a core difference between skepticism, and "skepticism". A skeptic can be convinced that he's wrong. A "skeptic" wants only to convince others.)
It sounds like you're excusing bad behavior by saying that other people sometimes behave badly. There is no "certain political group" that is over-representing the value of "peer review" to the public, unless we are talking about environmentalists:
http://www.reuters.com/article/latestCrisis/idUSGEE5AP1Y5
No "certain political group" forced the scientists involved in this scandal to act in unethical and secretive manners. Just because politicians act in unethical and dishonest ways doesn't mean that scientists are excused for sinking to their level.