Academic Thuggery -- Part 2

Further to my earlier post, here are some links to items of interest for those who wish to follow up on this.

Earlier this year, the NYT magazine ran an article by Nicholas Dawidoff titled The Civil Heretic describing the heir to Einstein's chair at Princeton's concerns with the climate change consensus.

This past Sunday, Times science columnist John Tierney ran a piece looking at the damage done when scientists fiddle with the data, noting that

I’m not trying to suggest that climate change isn’t a real threat, or that scientists are deliberately hyping it. But when they look at evidence of the threat, they may be subject to the confirmation bias — seeing trends that accord with their preconceptions and desires. Given the huge stakes in this debate — the trillions of dollars that might be spent to reduce greenhouse emissions — it’s important to keep taking skeptical looks at the data. How open do you think climate scientists are to skeptical views, and to letting outsiders double-check their data and calculations?

Finally, Popular Mechanics (of all places) has an excellent review of the fiasco that is a useful starting point for anyone interested in this issue.