Prof Gwyn Prins, best known to readers here as one of the authors of the Hartwell paper, was discussing Wikileaks and related issues on BBC Radio's The Moral Maze (audio here). At one point the conversation turns to Climategate (about 34 mins in).
Portillo: There was an interesting case recently where climate change scientists found that their emails had come into the public domain and these emails appeared to cast doubt on the way in whcih had been arriving at their conclusions and, now, I understand that people have a right to privacy and I understand that normally an email between one person and another is a private matter but it seemed to me that where these emails between scientists touched upon something which they had been making claims about which had enormous consequences for our fiscal arrangements and for our behavioural arrangements and so on, that these were a matter of geniune public interest.
Gwyn Prins: I agree, and this is an area on which you and I will have no difficulty in seeing eye to eye, because we are now into a different area. The leaks from the University of East Anglia Climatic Research Unit are exceptionally interesting and exceptionally worrying and what is also worrying is that the inquiries that have been held so far have not resolved the fundamental problems about them. But what made them of public importance and interest was that it appeared that people with expert knowledge were allowing themselves to cross the line into advocacy and that is where it becomes a political issue.
It is interesting to see the failure of the Climategate inquiries discussed so openly on the BBC. I wonder if any Science and Technology Committee members were listening?