Megan McArdle has blogged several times about ClimateGate. It's been interesting to watch the progression of her thinking, from sympathetic to one side of the issue to sympathetic to the other side.
It isn't something that immediately grabbed her attention (she blogs mostly about economics). She didn't blog about ClimateGate until 11/23, the day after I blogged about it, and then only in response to questions from her readers ("ClimateGate"). At this point she sees nothing to make her question the science of climate change.
In her second post on 11/25 ("The Real Problem With the Climate Science Emails") she begins to see the issue.
On 11/27 ("More on ClimateGate") she links to a hilarious video—a spoof on the scientific peer review process. Highly recommended.
Her skepticism grows with a post on 12/1 ("Climategate III: The Mystery of the Missing Data").
On 12/2 she links to a number of other online discussions ("ClimateGate Link Farm") and another hilarious video, this one by Jon Stewart ("Mental Health Break").
Finally on 12/9 she gets it ("ClimateGate: Was Data Faked?"). In this post Ms. McArdle quotes extensively from Feynman's "Cargo Cult Science" speech to show why she is concerned.
I think Ms. McArdle gets it exactly right in this post. The concern is not that the establishment scientists deliberately set out to deceive the rest of the world in a grand conspiracy. The concern is a "subtler kind of bias that we indisputably know has led to scientific errors in the past." The concern is that the establishment scientists ignored Feynman's first rule of science: "The first principle is that you must not fool yourself—and you are the easiest person to fool." Did they fool first themselves, and then the public, into believing a bunch of hooey?
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