That isn’t the issue. Does modern science also go back and change old data PERMANENTLY and IRREVOCABLY because it doesn’t fit in with their preconceived result? Oh, and throw the real data away after the changes?

Sorry, but that’s NOT how modern science works. Having a preconceived result in mind is totally acceptable, changing the facts because they don’t fit in with your particular view is NOT acceptable.

Maybe I didn;t phrase what I meant that well. Some of the code(two verified with this behaviour so far) will output certain ‘preconceived’ results with a very wide range of inputs and appear to have been designed that way (with some very basic obfuscation(hence my perjorative ‘script-kiddie’ reference). Sorry I was not more clear.

The abstract says: “The cause of this increasing insensitivity of wood density to temperature changes is not known, but if it is not taken into account in dendroclimatic reconstructions, past temperatures could be overestimated.”

Obviously the code did the exact opposite: past temperatures are underestimated and the proxy must be corrected to compensate.

Am I missing something?

It might not seem right to you, but this method of approaching problems actually works. If it didn’t, no scientific progress would have been made since about the time of Newton and we’d all still be living in the dark ages.

Before you approach a problem esp. a computational one, you have a predicted outcome in mind based on theory. You then apply known rules to your program, and hope it’s results agree with your predicted outcome. If they don’t, you try to adjust your theory slightly, write these adjustments into the program, and so the cycle continues until you have agreement.

This is certainly the way my field of physics is done, and I know from studying philosophy of science that this is the way all modern science is done.