Pchah.

Rich.

IMO I think this is a key takeaway. Governance and oversight were completely missing at UEA through the whole affair. In the corporate world–even in government–a head would roll. The University needs to revisit its policies and procedures (including escalation and dispute resolution mechanisms) and put them out there publicly.

Looks like the Guardian debate is warming up as well, Trevor Davies has joined the panel. UEA’s VC’s don’t come out of the inquiry very well in my opinion showing very lax management. I’m tempted to ask SidF’s question. As an occasional supplier to government, bids often require compliance to a slew of ISO quality and security standards, yet UEA/CRU were happy to let ‘world leading’, high policy impact work get done on a wing and a prayer.

Exactly so. In the good old days that would have worked, no problemo. But these old boys don’t quite seem to get that things have changed. The real indication of that, is that they continue to write their cunning conspiracies down in emails. It’s almost comical. At some point perhaps they’ll get their heads round the whole FOI thing, which is what started this thing off in the first place.

Harrabin’s piece made a fascinating distinction between the informality of the scientists, versus the obsessiveness of the blogosphere. Which is simply a way of saying that the scientists aren’t used to having people check up on whether they’re telling the truth. People are now obsessively checking what the scientists do and what they say. And this really irritates some people.

This rings untrue to me. I don’t recall any skeptics thinking the inquiries were going to do more than skim the surface and exonerate East Anglia.

Harriban concludes by suggesting Steve McIntyre expected the proceedings to be more of a court style hearing. Though Steve may have preferred that, I don’t recall he or anyone else, expected it.