

Scepticism's limits: on climate data manipulation claims - corbet
http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2009/12/trust_scientists

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lucumo
_> So, after hours of research, I can dismiss Mr Eschenbach. But what am I
supposed to do the next time I wake up and someone whose name I don't know has
produced another plausible-seeming account of bias in the climate-change
science? Am I supposed to invest another couple of hours in it? Do I have to
waste the time of the readers of this blog with yet another long post on the
subject? Why? Why do these people keep bugging us like this? Does the spirit
of scientific scepticism really require that I remain forever open-minded to
denialist humbug until it's shown to be wrong? At what point am I allowed to
simply say, look, I've seen these kind of claims before, they always turns out
to be wrong, and it's not worth my time to look into it?_

 _> Well, here's my solution to this problem: this is why we have peer review.
Average guys with websites can do a lot of amazing things. One thing they
cannot do is reveal statistical manipulation in climate-change studies that
require a PhD in a related field to understand. So for the time being, my
response to any and all further "smoking gun" claims begins with: show me the
peer-reviewed journal article demonstrating the error here. Otherwise, you're
a crank and this is not a story._

