No real scandal in the over-scandalized hacked climate research correspondence?

As it is widely discussed in the blogosphere nowadays an anonymous hacker has posted private emails, files and other documents belonging to a noted climate researcher which produced a lot of noise in the cyber space and in the common public. We decided not to pass by the latest developments and cover some of the most important highlights.

 The files posted by hackers allegedly include years of email correspondence belonging to Phil Jones, director of the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia in Norwich. Actually the UEA confirmed the leakage of the information but on the ground of high volumes it said that it could not confirm that every divulgated mail letter was genuine.

 In one of such messages Professor Phil Jones says: "I've just completed Mike's Nature [the science journal] trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie, from 1981 onwards) and from 1961 for Keith's to hide the decline." Meantime, Michael E Mann, the fabricator of the celebrated hockey stick graph, told the Washington Post recently — that skeptics “are taking these words totally out of context to make something trivial appear nefarious.”

 While the information was represented by some skeptics as a proof that the scientists are suppressing the facts and trying to hide the truth, that there is no consensus between them. On the other hand advocates of the scientific society say that this only shows that the researchers are ordinary people like any of us and sometimes they use poor speech when arguing with each other.

 The research unit's website had been moved to an emergency web server, presumably as a result of the breach.

 The RealClimate website, a forum for climate change scientists, disputed skeptics' claims that the emails showed any attempt to manipulate results. "More interesting is what is not contained in the emails," the site noted. "There is no evidence of any worldwide conspiracy, no mention of George Soros nefariously funding climate research, no grand plan to ‘get rid of the MWP’ [Medieval Warm Period], no admission that global warming is a hoax, no evidence of the falsifying of data, and no ‘marching orders’ from our socialist/communist/vegetarian overlords."

 Judging from the data posted, the hack was done either by an insider or by someone inside the climate community who was familiar with the debate, said Robert Graham, CEO with the consultancy Errata Security. Whenever this type of incident occurs, "80 percent of the time it's an insider," he said.

While some readers have misperceived our article as a whitewashing of the illicit scientific practices in fact Ecommerce Journal does not support any of the positions. As reported in many sources there were real facts of oppressions and layoffs that struck those who tried to disclose the truth. We may only say that after all the single fate awaits all of us in terms of the climate change and the scientists that conceal the real data won’t evade either.