Synogenes.com

It only takes a few stolen emails and an article or two referring to Climategate to cast aspersions on the reputation of scientists investigating climate change. Suddenly, because someone has made allegations that the scientists were trying to bias the results of the work, the presentation of the story is shaped in the form that the evidence for climate change itself is somehow questionable.

This subtle ad hominem attack on the science is reminiscent of the campaigns in the US against junk science, by which was meant not badly conducted science or results presented as science but unsupported by evidence. Instead what was meant was that you should automatically discount the evidence altogether, not even reading it. The oil companies, following the disgraceful record of the tobacco companies, branded any scientific results they wished to ignore as junk science thereby hoping that no-one would actually look at it. The just raised the accusation of bias and let popular prejudice take its course.

This is the very opposite of a scientific approach. Science relies on publishing the evidence, presenting the theories, challenging the hypotheses that come from those theories, and testing the claims. In science, everyone has a vested interest in finding out the truth of the claims. That is why data is published, is criticised, is reproduced. It is as important for the scientist to find out that they are wrong, as to find corroborating evidence.

Until now, it may have been common for scientific results to be criticised on the grounds of inadequate methodology, or too small a sample size, or insufficient detail, or poor predictive capabilities in a theory. It has even been occasionally the case that an individual scientist will be challenged as to their results - sometimes, they've even been exposed to have fiddled their data. But it's the very fact of peer review, of reproducing the evidence and challenging published work, that enables such self-correction to take place.

But now, because of some stolen emails quoted out of context, Saudi Arabia is claiming that the whole of climate science is biased. A moment's thought tells us that this cannot be the case. Whether or not you think that the behaviour of any individual scientists deserves criticism, it is still a fact that the polar ice caps are melting, that the atmosphere of the earth is warming up, that carbon dioxide levels are rising. The evidence is still there regardless of anyone's particular beliefs - science is independent of anyone's particular beliefs.

Part of the smear story concerns the use of the word "trick" in an email to describe a statistical technique to remove bias in a sample of data. When we have a table of figures that already contains measurements from more than one source, we need to be able to process those figures to separate them out. Removing the influence of one cause to display an underlying trend is a statistical technique that is often described as a trick, rather like we describe a quick way of adding fractions, or dividing by a hundred. It doesn't mean a fiddle, or a con, or some deception. It means a technique.

There never was any indication in the emails that anyone was biasing or fixing the figures but calling into question the behaviour of the scientist is a classic case of trying to undermine the credibility of the scientific evidence. It is rather like finding that Einstein has stolen a pencil and therefore claiming he is dishonest, so he must have fiddled his scientific data. It's a nonsense. The scientific data stands on its own merits.

But the smear campaign does give states like Saudi Arabia, whose prosperity depends on increased oil use, an oportunity to try to discredit the case for global warming. This isn't a case of Climategate but of Oilgate, trying to tar good science with the smear of doubt to push a narrow economic agenda.

Already there has been an outcry from reputable scientists. Hopefully this disgraceful tabloid smear campaign will be left dead in the water and will serve only to highlight the narrow self-interests of those who put the interests of capital over global climate.