Megan McArdle, playing the Isn't This awful! (but please don't check the link to observe the dishonest idiocy) Game. The subject is climate scientists' stolen and then misrepresented correspondence:
They apparently tried to organize a deletion of files in order to avoid an FOI request. This is horrifying, and I simply cannot understand why so many of their supporters are willing to downplay it.... More worrying is Real Climate: "Suggestions that FOI-related material be deleted ... are ill-advised even if not carried out. What is and is not responsive and deliverable to an FOI request is however a subject that it is very appropriate to discuss."
Words fail one, reading that latter comment. Ill-advised? Deleting data in order to avoid an official information request is a crime, as is trying to coordinate same, even if you fail in the execution. It's also grossly unethical, and hard to reconcile with any reasonable understanding of science. Moreover, it's the sort of thing that is often done by people who have nasty secrets, so it's hard to pass it off with a blithe, "Oh, dear, now that was a wee bit naughty!"
Imagine reading this email exchange coming from, say, senior officials in the Bush administration. Would any of these bloggers regard this as the ethical equivalent of jaywalking on an empty street?
It's entirely possible that the aspiring self-censors were merely trying to avoid some trivial embarrassment, since we have no idea what, if anything, was actually deleted. But it does not inspire the kind of trust you want to have in people who are advocating massive economic dislocations.
Dummy: none of the "data" relevant to the FOI issue were deleted, and no effort was made to do so. No, you should not suggest doing so -- as RealClimate says. Besides, "data" is a silly word to use: the deletion suggestion was in regard to emails, not scientific data -- making McArdle's remark that "we have no idea what, if anything, was actually deleted" delightfully horseshitty, since the evidence for this hypothetical "deletion" scandal comes from an email which McArdle is speculating might not exist, the dizzy dope.
And besides even that, of course, a "suggestion" is not a "failed execution," nor is it "coordination." If only just one member of the Bush administration had at only just one point wondered about getting rid of politically inconvenient evidence, and then apparently got shot down... well, if that had happened, I'd have a better goddamn opinion of the Bush administration. A comparison between a group that didn't in fact do something in regards to emails and a group that in fact DID do something very egregiously in regards to emails, is, what is the term, oh yes, pretty fucking obnoxiously misleadingly dumb.
And besides THAT, McArdle never gets around to explaining why the CRU had problems with FOI requests, and there's nothing sinister about it:
From the date of the first FOI request to CRU (in 2007), it has been made abundantly clear that the main impediment to releasing the whole CRU archive is the small % of it that was given to CRU on the understanding it wouldn’t be passed on to third parties. Those restrictions are in place because of the originating organisations (the various National Met. Services) around the world and are not CRU’s to break. As of Nov 13, the response to the umpteenth FOI request for the same data met with exactly the same response. This is an unfortunate situation, and pressure should be brought to bear on the National Met Services to release CRU from that obligation. It is not however the fault of CRU. The vast majority of the data in the HadCRU records is publicly available from GHCN (v2.mean.Z).
I'm certainly not going to be inspired to trust anyone drawing snap negative conclusions and tossing around allegations of criminal activity about many years worth of illegally obtained correspondence on a difficult scientific subject without carefully reconstructing the complex context in which the correspondence takes place. (A process that I can't imagine happening in less than months, at least, if done responsibly.) After all, the most immediate "scandal" here is with whoever coordinated this nasty smear campaign, but for some mysterious reason the "ethics" of the thieves in this regard are not under review by the McArdle-class bobbleheads, even though these thieves are demanding no less than that no action be taken to avert mass human suffering. "Inspire to trust," my left nut.