By This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 13th, 2010 at 11:40 pm and is filed under Civil Society (Self) Regulation and Effectiveness, Environmental Governance, Global democracy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
Scientists at the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit (CRU) were cleared this week of the serious accusations that threatened to crush their credibility, but were firmly criticised for failing to uphold an adequate level of transparency.
Accusations mounted following the public disclosure last November of thousands of personal email communications between CRU staff and other leading climate researchers, believed to have been obtained by anonymous hackers. It was claimed that the emails showed evidence of the CRU suppressing dissenting voices and manipulating data. The affair, predictably dubbed ‘climategate’ by many in the press, cast doubt on the validity of climate change research and it has been suggested that it harmed talks at last years Copenhagen conference on climate change and significantly impacted upon public opinion.
In the biggest inquiry into the saga to date led by senior UK civil servant Sir Muir Russell, it was concluded that there was no evidence of serious scientific misconduct relating to data fraud and dissent suppression. But the findings did cast a light on some of the CRU’s shortfalls and failings, labelling them “unhelpful and defensive” and concluding amongst other things that “there has been a consistent pattern of failing to display the proper degree of openness”.
In raising key questions of issues in the openness of data and the accountability of researchers, the findings of the Russell Report should reverberate around the entire research and scientific community, especially those involved in research holding the potential to become politicised. Gone are the days when science is unquestioned by those outside the traditional academic establishment. As science becomes ever more intertwined with politics it is becoming increasingly necessary for raw data to be made available for independent inspection.
The leaked CRU emails affair itself raises the question of ‘who are scientists accountable to?’ In the past scientific debate was largely confined to a closed scientific community whereby scientists were essentially accountable to each other. The advent of new communication technologies and the desire for a more open society have contributed to a formation of complex knowledge networks that have begun to bridge the gap between formal institutions of research and civil society. After the exposure of the CRU’s emails, it was apparent that much criticism arose from the blogosphere and other informal networks. The scientific community may view these as nothing more than disruptive ‘rabble rousers’ but it is likely that they will have to find new ways of developing accountability mechanisms that address their relationship with civil society. Perhaps the biggest challenge facing the scientific and research community is that of building effective systems to regulate scientific discourse. The closed nature of the traditional peer review system has yet again been shown to be not without its problems. The argument that peer review is unaccountable, holding the potential to suppress viewpoints and allow for bias are likely to continue unless the issue is addressed.
It is unlikely that this report will draw the saga completely to a close: it is in no way an exoneration of the CRU and somewhat inevitably anthropogenic climate change sceptics will view it as something of a white wash. For climate scientists, it is important that they begin to address some of these issues head-on in order for them to get on with producing research of the highest validity into an area of utmost significance for policymakers and indeed for humanity itself.
Tags: Access to knowledge, Accountability, APRO, Climate Change, Power, research accountability, science
July 14th, 2010 at 6:57 am
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