I wonder why “Credibility at risk, scientists say”? Well, could it be:

By not “stepping up” to defend the general strength of climate science in the wake of recent public challenges, the panelists acknowledged, bloggers and television pundits have been free to spin the revelations as evidence that most climate science is now suspect. And it most assuredly is not, the panelists maintained.

For instance, when a reporter asked what the scientists who were involved in the recent climate scandals did wrong, Rees responded: “We have no reason to believe they did anything wrong. . . .”

And that is what several ongoing inquiries into the scandals is meant to do, he said. Offer reassurance that nothing is being swept under the rug – and likely demonstrate that any wrongdoing constitutes “a minor element in the overall climate-change-science scenario, which is crucially important in formulating public policy.

The question, Gerald North of Texas A&M University wanted to know, “is just how much is enough?” One glaciologist he knows was asked to track down early glacial-melt data. Which, it turns out, were on the type of punched cards used in computers typical of the mid-1970s. The glaciologist couldn’t even remember where he might have packed away those boxes of cards.

Or maybe some data were analyzed by a now-obsolete program, like Fortran. Must a scientist find a copy of the program for a challenger, North asked – and teach him or her how to use it? And what if the challenger also wanted to probe influence on the interpretation of the data. Would it be reasonable, he asked, for that person to request that you turn over all emails ever exchanged between you and colleagues referring to the work?

Indeed, Cicerone charged, some climate scientists “are now receiving requests that are bordering on harassment.” They’re being asked, he said, for all of the data that went into a publication, sometimes in addition to all data analyses, all equations used in interpretations, detailed descriptions of all statistical techniques, all computer programs used – even access to any physical samples. These are fishing expeditions. And the demands they make, he said, often “are simply not feasible or are too costly.”

That’s why Cicerone called for the development of new standards and practices that define, by scientific discipline, what constitutes reasonable access to data.

http://www.newsweek.com/id/233887

Also, Cicerone criticizes the IPCC but not the NAS. Someone hold a mirror up for him.
=================

Argh… I’m still waiting for the official write-up and not just the AAAS/press marketing spin but it irks me when a small group of corrupt Noble Cause, redundant data recyclers get tossed in with “all of science”. It’s good to reaffirm for all the “broad questions of transparency and integrity”. The circling the wagons by non-climate scientists in support of “climate-change research” should make a lot of antennae twitch. Why “climate-change research” and not just “climate research”?

If they are true to their abstract and move from the “broad questions” to the specifics of “Ensuring the Integrity, Accessibility, and Stewardship of Research Data in the Digital Age, which calls on researchers to make data, methods, and other information underlying results publicly accessible in a timely manner” and “responsibilities of individual researchers, scientific journals, professional societies, and other groups in developing and implementing rules and procedures for data access and sharing of research methods.” (I add: including the cleaning up of peer-review) then there might be value in the outcome.

I think the ‘tells’ in the abstract are “the legitimacy of the scientific consensus on global climate change” “and Surface Temperature Reconstructions for the Past 2,000 Years, which examined the scientific evidence for paleoclimatic temperature reconstructions”.

My bet: ‘Nothing to see here, move on, the “three highly relevant National Research Council reports” say it all and we follow those religiously although most just don’t understand.’

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00qr4hw/Today_20_02_2010/

It reports Cicerone as specifically saying that the public should have access to the data so they can ask their own questions.

http://www.masterresource.org/2010/02/climategate-7-hard-questions-from-enron/