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Climategate

Various folks are getting upset for one reason or another about the hacking and redistribution of internal emails from the University of East Anglia's climate research unit.

Frankly, I can't be arsed commenting on it — because marine biologist and SF writer Peter Watts has already said it for me:

The fact is, we are all humans; and humans come with dogma as standard equipment. We can no more shake off our biases than Liz Cheney could pay a compliment to Barack Obama. The best we can do-- the best science can do-- is make sure that at least, we get to choose among competing biases.

That's how science works. It's not a hippie love-in; it's rugby. ... Science is so powerful that it drags us kicking and screaming towards the truth despite our best efforts to avoid it. And it does that at least partly fueled by our pettiness and our rivalries. Science is alchemy: it turns shit into gold. Keep that in mind the next time some blogger decries the ill manners of a bunch of climate scientists under continual siege by forces with vastly deeper pockets and much louder megaphones.

No comments on this bully-pulpit effusion, folks; it's going to attract trolls, and I simply can't be arsed dealing with them. (Going to a Gary Numan gig this evening, then the pub, then bed, then back to work on the novel. And when I get through it, the planet's still not going to be statistically significantly colder. OK?)

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This page contains a single entry by Charlie Stross published on November 26, 2009 6:10 PM.

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