Steve McIntyre has found a molehill and is doing his best to make a
mountain out of it. I do not mean to be unduly critical of him in those
words - I understand the frustration that can occur when one finds what
appears to be a significant problem, only to be brushed off in a manner
that seems to be rude and dismissive. IMO (and IME), scientists are
probably no better and no worse than other types of people in this
respect, they have their own egos and prejudices and do not like to be
told that they are wrong. My own experience in this area is already in
the public domain and does not need repeating again.

Although it is only natural that McIntyre should try to talk up the
importance of his work, he seems to completely misunderstand the
scientific process in his talk of audit trails and replication. Sure,
work should be reproducible, and it is embarrassing for those who find
errors in their work or, what is worse, have errors pointed out by
others. Peer review is indeed a rather superficial check on the
validity of the work, and can certainly be subverted by a determined
effort at dishonesty. But scientific research is already subject to a
far more relevant and stringent test than he advocates. It is an
intensely competitive and adversarial process, with rivals continually
trying to improve on each others' work. One could even characterise
this as "prove each other wrong", but generally it takes the form of
incremental advances that modify the previous results, rather than
completely overturning them. Results that are strongly divergent from
the existing status quo will certainly be carefully checked in
subsequent research. But, except in the most exceptional cases, merely
checking that a rival had done their sums right is very unlikely to
reap any real benefits - even if some error or inaccuracy is found in
the calculation or description, it may well not impact significantly on
their results[1], and if no error is found, then this replication still
provides no assessment of the validity of the underlying assumptions
and methodology of the work. However, the alternative - which is how
science actually works - of developing new and improved methodologies,
more accurate data sets and better models actually provides a much more
rigorous check of the correctness of the underlying assumptions and
conclusions of earlier research, which is, after all, the main goal.

I have no direct knowledge of the IPCC process, but McIntyre's picture
of climate research consisting of a cosy coterie of pals all working
towards supporting a "consensus" and patting each other on the back
certainly doesn't ring true with me. The "consensus", such as it is,
represents the equilibrium in a dynamic tension with different people
pulling in different directions. Taking the example of the climate's
equilibrium response to 2xCO2, the consensus view of ~2-6C is not
because everyone one is trying to agree on this range, but because
no-one has yet found any credible cause for disagreement, despite
numerous alternative models and methods (the range itself represents
the amount of disagreement, to a certain extent). We can see in eg the
recent climateprediction.net results, and the comment published on
realclimate.org, evidence of the dynamical tension underlying that
consensus view.

So while I have some sympathy for McIntyre's cause, I disagree with his
conclusions. While his molehill should not just be ignored, it must
also be kept in perspective.

James
[1] It may be worth noting James's Law of computer bugs - the
undiscovered bug probably doesn't matter. FWIW, I found a bug in code I
used for a recent publication, and correcting it just makes the results
marginally more accurate. The bugs that made the method fail completely
were corrected at a much earlier stage :-)