Compare and Contrast

First, let's look at this article.

Freedom of information laws are being misused to harass scientists and should be re-examined by the government, according to the president of the Royal Society.

Nobel laureate Sir Paul Nurse told the Guardian that some climate scientists were being targeted by organised campaigns of requests for data and other research materials, aimed at intimidating them and slowing down research. He said the behaviour was turning freedom of information laws into a way to intimidate some scientists.

A clear message; the climate scientists do not like FOI requests, and see them as an unwarranted intrusion into their affairs; one that should be limited.  That caught my eye immediately, in a scientific context.

At first sight, this seems a reasonable request by them.  They have work to do, and they are being held up in that work by a torrent of incoming demands that they catalogue and release their information - worse, they need to release the information to bodies that are obviously critical of them and wish to use the information to pick their work apart.  Surely this is wrong?  Surely this is a waste, a diversion of scientific effort?

Well, let's see the contrary view, amusingly enough courtesy of exactly the same media organisation:

An Oxford academic has won the right to read previously secret data on climate change held by the University of East Anglia (UEA). The decision, by the government's information commissioner, Christopher Graham, is being hailed as a landmark ruling that will mean that thousands of British researchers are required to share their data with the public.

Why is this a landmark?

Critics of the UEA's scientists say an independent analysis of the temperature data may reveal that Phil Jones and his colleagues have misinterpreted the evidence of global warming. They may have failed to allow for local temperature influences, such as the growth of cities close to many of the thermometers.

And there, in a nutshell, is the basic point of science.  You don't just publish your findings, your conclusions, your recommendations for policy. You publish your data.  All of it.  All the data that you relied on in reaching your conclusions, and (in fact) all of the data that you discarded or disregarded because you thought it was flawed, false or irrelevant.  You do it for one, simple, reason.  There might be someone else out there who knows better than you.  Someone who spots something you didn't.

That is how science works.  The climate scientists at UEA don't understand that.  They don't understand how science works.  Their view is that a basic scientific norm should not apply to them.

Remember that.