Talk:Climatic Research Unit email controversy

Biased POV

This article is EXTREMELY biased in favor of the scientists that bullied a journal. This one article alone is one of the biggest blights on Wikipedia as a whole. I mean, FFS, you guys won't even post some of the incriminating evidence and let readers decide for themselves! I find this entirely stupid that even after years talking about this, I can't even use Wikipedia as an unbiased reference on this issue. You won't even call it "climategate"! But whatever, I guess I'm a nobody (read: non-regular contributor) that doesn't matter, right?

173.29.158.58 (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 02:51, 6 October 2012 (UTC)

See Climatic Research Unit documents#Peer review issue. . . dave souza, talk 05:58, 6 October 2012 (UTC)

There is no incriminating evidence. Also "Climategate" is a misleading and biased name which doesn't fit the details of the controversy 199.60.104.18 (talk) 22:55, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

scare quotes in second paragraph

The second sentence states that "Climate 'sceptics' argued that...". To me, these appear to be scare quotes. I tried to search for the quotations in both sources by doing a CTRL-F source for '"sceptics"' and '"skeptics"', which didn't give any results. I was going to remove it myself, but it's a really controversial article and I just wanted to get consensus. Discuss-Dubious (t/c) 00:09, 18 October 2012 (UTC)

Fair point, the terms sceptic and skeptic are often misleading in this context. The source for the first part of the paragraph uses the phrase "climate change critics" which avoids that ambiguity, so I've tried out alternative wording which covers both these critics and those acively denying the significance of human caused climate change. . dave souza, talk 08:58, 18 October 2012 (UTC)

That actually turned out pretty well. Thanks! Discuss-Dubious (t/c) 00:50, 22 October 2012 (UTC)

Requested move

The following discussion is an archived discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: No move. Cúchullain ^t/c 20:34, 7 January 2013 (UTC)

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Climatic Research Unit email controversy → Climatic Research Unit email hacking incident – This doesn't appear to be a controversy anymore. Current sources on this page are in nearly complete agreement that the emails are not evidence of scientific misconduct. I found only one post-2010 source cited in this article that suggests otherwise (News Corp.'s Weekly Standard). I believe continuing to title this article as a controversy gives undue weight and legitimacy to this diminished minority view. Matt Fitzpatrick (talk) 12:04, 13 December 2012 (UTC)

Note: The last move action on this article was the reverse, from Climatic Research Unit email hacking incident to Climatic Research Unit email controversy. The discussion for that move closed March 2010 and can be found at Talk:Climatic Research Unit email controversy/Archive 30#Requested move. Matt Fitzpatrick (talk) 12:25, 13 December 2012 (UTC)

• Sounds good, IRWolfie- (talk) 17:18, 13 December 2012 (UTC)
• Support. History, along with all the investigations and reports, has shown that the 'controversy' was entirely manufactured. The police have said it was definitely an outside attack on a server. Good call. --Nigelj (talk) 19:13, 13 December 2012 (UTC)
• Modest Support I saw the req. move and was afraid it was a certain moribund equine that continues to be pounded How many inquiries has it been now with not one finding fault with the science? Anyway, suffice it to say there aren't any real controversies remaining. However, there was certainly controversy in the past (even if largely manufactured) so I don't have a huge problem with the current title. Sailsbystars (talk) 00:14, 14 December 2012 (UTC)
• Oppose - this is clearly against the previous decision which had a much larger participation. It was described as More neutral title; a compromise between "CRU hacking incident" and "Climategate". If the title can be changed, you will need to respond to demands that it is moved to its most common title, and it just is not worth having the debate. Wikipedia survives best when compromises are recognised as such and respected, as with Derry/Londonderry --Rumping (talk) 22:46, 16 December 2012 (UTC)
• Oppose, per WP:DEADHORSE. A minor change in the existing title from "email" to "data" and/or "information" might be appropriate, as not only E-mail was — looking for neutral term — improperly published. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 12:04, 17 December 2012 (UTC)
  • And now I'm kicking myself for not being aware that information other than emails was also involved. Thanks for calling that to attention. I'd say that's a dealbreaker for the exact name I proposed. Matt Fitzpatrick (talk) 12:36, 18 December 2012 (UTC)
    • Well, there's always Climatic Research Unit hacking incident. From what I remember, the word e-mail only got in there because people at the time said, 'but everyone's only talking about the e-mails'. I think the useful idea here is to get away from the terminology that the hackers and their supporters hoped to see in 2009, to go forward with a neutral, non-committal, descriptive WP:TITLE. First, they hoped for a 'climategate' which would bring down climate science like Watergate brought down a government; then they hoped for a massive controversy in which the whole of climate science would be re-written and many scientists' heads would roll. In fact they got nothing much - the science was left unchanged and 8 reports exonerated all the scientists of any misdeed. So all that really happened was that a computer got hacked and the hackers got away with the crime. The rest was smoke and mirrors. And bloggers. --Nigelj (talk) 17:56, 28 December 2012 (UTC)
• Oppose, per previous arguments. Proposed rename not an improvement, imo. Sorry. --Pete Tillman (talk) 20:08, 18 December 2012 (UTC)
  • No need to apologize. Mr. Rubin's argument on the word "email" was convincing. I think scrapping this proposal and restarting the discussion from scratch might be best. Matt Fitzpatrick (talk) 18:38, 22 December 2012 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

Also Known as Climategate? Really?

I have never heard or read anywhere but in Wikipedia a reference to this case as the "Climatic Research Unit email controversy". This should have given me a hint of what was coming in the article which is heavily biased. I can understand disagreements but these must be reflected on the article itself and yet no disagreement appears at all giving the the impression that bad bad hackers constructed a big conspiracy to damage some poor climatologists.

The article leads you to believe that all experts agree there was nothing wrong in the Climategate and this is patently false.

Dr. Richard A. Muller, (Professor in the Department of Physics at the University of California at Berkeley, and Faculty Senior Scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, where he is also associated with the Institute for Nuclear and Particle Astrophysics) talking in a public conference about the Climategate said:

"As a scientist now I have a list of people whose papers I won't read anymore. You are not allowed to do this in Science" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8BQpciw8suk)

As a response to what he considers was a deliberate attempt to hide data.

I was going to fix the article with professor Muller remarks but long ago I stopped attempting to fix heavily politicized articles like this one, instead, when I read one of these, I go to the talk section to check what other people with less influence in the editing have to say about it.

Unfortunately Wikipedia still has a long way ahead to become a reliable source for these kind of articles. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Viraltux (talk • contribs) 11:27, 17 December 2012 (UTC)

I'm afraid I cannot agree with Viraltux, as the statement is not relevant to the controversy; however I agree that Muller has shown he is no longer a scientist. Correcting the quote to produce an accurate statement.:

"As a scientist now I have a list of people whose papers I won't read anymore." You are not allowed to do this in Science.

— Arthur Rubin (talk) 12:11, 17 December 2012 (UTC)

As for Muller's quote, I've read that Muller reversed his position in 2012. Could you find a more recent source from him?

As for the title of this article, [[Climategate]] may indeed be the best choice. That term's prevalent in current media, even the article's own recent sources. The complication is that the term "climategate" implies not just a scandal, but also a conspiracy or coverup. This article's recent sources often enclose the term in quotation marks, suggesting non-endorsement, and most reject that any conspiracy or coverup occurred. An article with text and sources contradicting its own title could be awkward. Matt Fitzpatrick (talk) 14:18, 18 December 2012 (UTC)

It is not for us to consider whether a given name "implies not just a scandal, but also a conspiracy or coverup" in deciding whether to use that name as an article title. That's up to reliable sources, in their decision as to whether to use that name in referring to the topic. Our job, in deciding titles, is to follow their usage. --Born2cycle (talk) 16:13, 18 December 2012 (UTC)

You are absolutely correct; the 14th chapter of Michael E. Mann's newest book is titled, "Climategate: The Real Story." Yopienso (talk) 17:46, 18 December 2012 (UTC)

I would also tend to use the term "Climategate", simply because everyone uses it. I am wondering, however, whether the rule for the best title is as simple as usage. The discussion on the other move request above suggests otherwise and that the name is already a compromise after a long debate. One exception to the "most-used rule" is on the German Wikipedia: the article about the Kristallnacht is called Novemberpogrome 1938 as people did not want to use the Nazi euphemism and explicitly state that it was a pogrom. Sorry for the Nazi comparison; I simply do not know another example. VVenema (talk) 20:40, 27 December 2012 (UTC)

I think Climategate is useful as an AKA at the beginning and perhaps throughout the article in particular places; I'm not sure if anyone suggested renaming the article to Climategate --- if so I would respectfully disagree, because of its somehow informal or unencyclopedic tone. TheSoundAndTheFury (talk) 17:32, 28 December 2012 (UTC)

Answering to Matt Fitzpatrick, no, Dr. Muller did not change his mind about the Climategate, he did though changed his mind about the global warming being caused by humans after he lead the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature. Dr. Muller criticism in the Climategate has nothing to do with the global warming being real or not, but with the fact that data was hidden from the 60s on to give the impression that the tree ring proxy temperatures were a good measure for estimating global temperatures. When the Climategate revealed this trickery he no longer could trust the rest of data and so he repeated the measurements to make sure no more "tricks" were used in the rest of studies. Once he finished his own study he stated that global warming is real and probably caused by human produced CO2, but this does not change the fact that proxy data was removed and that the Climategate is a great example of bad science even if legally cannot be called fraud. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Viraltux (talk • contribs) 13:59, 11 January 2013 (UTC)

Actually, the treatment of data and the divergence problem in general were carefully "hidden" in the published literature... --Stephan Schulz (talk) 14:40, 11 January 2013 (UTC)

Climategate III

All 200,000 emails have been released today March 13, 2013. In one, Michael Mann's tree-ring hockey stick proxy data is referred to as "crap" by the peer reviewers. Lots of data there.

The wikipedia whitewash of the Michael Mann nature trick is insufficient to contain the actual goings on.

Therefore we should create a new section "2013 release by FOIA".— Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.30.68.87 (talk • contribs) 04:50, 14 March 2013 (UTC)

We must have verification from high quality published reliable sources before anything is added, and where allegations are made against living people, the more stringent requirements of WP:BLP apply. Please sign your posts in future. . dave souza, talk 08:27, 14 March 2013 (UTC)

I haven't seen anything exciting from it - just a couple of retreads from v2, which itself had nothing exciting over v1. Looks like a damp squib so far William M. Connolley (talk) 08:52, 14 March 2013 (UTC)

Totally uninteresting indeed. All a bunch of yelling from a mountain top, which used to hold snow and no longer has any. Something that has not happened in thousands of years, but hey. These retards are still trying to deny reality. Please, Adam Curry and John C Dvorak, and all you No Agenda type people, go see this, as a whole: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xugAC7XGosM&t=13m44s and FOR ONCE try and actually listen to what she is trying to explain here. She has no motive(s) to lie or make shit up on any of these matters. You, Adam Curry and John Dvorak o.t.o.h. have. 86.93.250.232 (talk) 21:31, 5 May 2013 (UTC)