Another academic paper on the meaning of CLimategate comes in the shape of this study, by Marianne Ryghaug and Tomas Moe Skjølsvold.
This article analyzes 1073 emails that were hacked from the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia in November, 2009. The incident was popularly dubbed “Climate Gate”, indicating that the emails reveal a scientific scandal. Here we analyze them differently. Rather than objecting to the exchanges based on some idea about proper scientific conduct, we see them as a rare glimpse into a situation where scientists collectively prepare for participation in heated controversy, with much focus on methodology. This allows us to study how scientists communicate informally about framing propositions of facts in the best possible way. Through the eyes of Science and Technology studies (STS) the emails provide an opportunity to study communication as part of science in the making across disciplines and laboratories. Analysed as “written conversation” the emails provide information about processes of consensus formation through ‘agonistic evaluations’ of other scientists work and persuasion of others to support ones own work. Also, the emails contain judgements about other groups and individual scientists. Consensus-forming appeared as a precarious activity. Controversies could be quite resilient in the course of this decade-long exchange, probably reflecting the complexity of the methodological challenges involved.
The paper is also being discussed at Klimazwiebel.
(H/T Messenger)