I've been watching the debate over the hacked emails from the global warming guys. It's interesting to see the contortions that the AGW guys are having over a piddling little statement like "hiding the decline".
I'm no scientist, but I've taken courses in statistics and my professors hammered certain concepts into my all-too-thick skull. Concepts like data is data and if you fudge your data to arrive at a pre-determined result, then the whole world gets to call bullshit on your entire body of work.
That's what is happening now. Lots of folks are calling bullshit over fudged data. If a scientist does anything to hide data, then the rest of the world gets to argue over the validity of your results.
You may not like the data. The data might lead you to an inconvenient truth, but it's still the data. Polar bears may still be drowning, arctic ice may still be shrinking, but fudged data lets the entire world doubt the results.
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