Government grants should come with a contractual stipulation that FOI requests must be met.

Second, maybe the inquiries would have had more credibility if members of the public at large had been included, as one was in the investigation of the accident at Three Mile Island. Unfortunately, she went on to publish a minority report, Item 1 of which seems relevant this many years later:

The President’s Commission on the accident at Three Mile Island

ITEM 1

This item represents the feelings of the undersigned and a majority of her circle of citizens who lived through the TMI accident.

The report concluded that the errors and sensationalism reported by the news media merely reflected the confusion and ignorance of the facts by the official sources of information. It further concluded that the press did a creditable (“more reassuring than alarming”) job of news coverage.

In fact, these conclusions are not generally supported by the staff reports. There were reliable news sources available. Too much emphasis was placed on the “what if” rather than the “what is.” As a result, the public was pulled into a state of terror, of psychological stress. More so than any other normal source of news, the evening national news reports by the major networks proved to be the most depressing, the most terrifying. Confusion cannot explain away the mismanagement of a news event of this magnitude.

It is requested that the news media undertake a self-evaluation on an individual basis and review their role in this accident which was not limited to equipment damage but also included psychological damage. ……..

Anne D. Trunk

October 25, 1979 (emphasis added)

You have already stated that you have no desire to audit the CRU temp record, so why do you need it?

In a formal communication I’m as good at complete factual dryness as anyone else, rare indeed are the times that a system or activity has been so ineptly conducted that my finely honed laconic wit can slip in a few jabs without compromising professional integrity. CA on the other hand is a blog, its supposed to have wit and personality, better to be thought a little hostile than completely boring.

I personally am amazed at Mr McIntyre’s restraint. As one who has had his life “Enhanced” by externally imposed quality systems and management practices. The idea that you could produce an analysis based on a method that you can’t calibrate against your best and most recent instrument data; then claim that its “standard practice” to conceal the fact; justifies a whole truckload af sardonically witty whup-ass. It’s the sort of cloth eared inanity that would do credit to Gonzo the Great and the mock-Swedish chef. First class intellectual Onanism, just plain dumb. To suggest, when you notice you’ve queered the pitch, that all you have is a need for a better “communications strategy” is the bit that justifies endless and loud urine extraction until they wise up and smell the metaphorical coffee, assuming of course that the whiff of pseudo-intellectual bovine excrement that hangs around them can be sufficiently dispersed.

As a citizen of the UK it scares the hell out of me, how an investigation can be so obviously a white wash and not a single member of the political elite not say a word is worrying.

Then again free speech against the government in the UK is now becoming an idea of past generations enforced by a bunch of hooligans:-

http://eureferendum.blogspot.com/2011/04/dont-know-nuffink.html
http://bristol.indymedia.org/article/704202

For my part, I find the “exoneration” by the British enquiries thoroughly predictable. The AGW “Team” triumphantly cites these on its blogs – especially those which eschew any notion of criminal or malign intent. However, the findings are politely scathing when it comes to commenting on the sloppiness of the scientists and their willingness to comply with the spirit of FOI. No scientist wanting to advance his or her career would want those comments on their CV when applying for a job. However, the scientists in question all had the good luck to be in tenured positions and hence the comments, while actually quite damning (as in “damning with faint praise” or “masterly understatement”), made no difference in the long run to their careers.

Part of the problem, of course, is that “Team-like” behaviour is rife through much of science though the issues involved just aren’t all that newsworthy. Of course, there are very many scientists and scientific faculties which are very honourable exceptions. I suspect however that the enquires simply couldn’t afford to make the “Team” accountable without setting precedents which would have ramifications across the scientific spectrum (more the pity but that’s precisely the way politics works). And science, like every other field, cannot escape politicisation whether within at the level of the “teacup” of the local faculty and the preferences of its Dean or on the grand scale of “The Future of Our Planet.”

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Why attempt to hide the decline if the above is true.