Scandals, human nature, and ‘Climategate’

What is a 'scandal'? I would argue that is an entertainingly sensationalized piece of gossip, glorified as news, about some instance of particular people, usually influential or important, acting in typically human ways with absurd or criminal results. A scandal is typical human behavior taken out of context. Basically, it is human nature in action, and then people act like they’re ‘shocked’- even though there’s nothing surprising about humans being human. What I mean is that people acting in ways that are sex-hungry, power-hungry, mean, prying, vindictive, conspiratorial, corrupt, and paranoid are just as much parts of us and our nature as all of our more likeable qualities. So, with Climategate-redux: Are scientists human and susceptible to bad qualities? Yep. Does that mean the science is bad? No, it means the merits of the scientific studies in questioned need to be determined by review of the methods of data collection and analysis used, to examine whether data was inappropriately excluded, ignored, or purposely misinterpreted, all of which are possible but, I think doubtful. Repeating what scientists say to each other in their capacity as colleagues with, inevitably, shared interests and a group mentality ('us' v. 'them' springs eternal in the human breast, no matter how intelligent the person) does not constitute systematic review of a body of data: it constitutes gossip that has been interpreted, incorrectly, as calling the data into question.