ABSTRACT
In November 2009 computer hackers struck what seemed to be a blow for transparency in science. Hundreds of private e-mails and thousands of documents were taken from servers at the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit, one of the world’s most respected centres for climate science. While university authorities cried foul and stressed the unlawful nature of the disclosure, climate sceptics rejoiced because the evidence, they said, showed collusion among scientists to overstate the case for human-induced climate change. The media, ever ready to pounce on scandal in high places, quickly dubbed the episode ‘Climategate’, an allusion to the disclosure of dirty doings by the White House under US President Richard Nixon. Enforced transparency in this case had the perverse effect of undermining years of hard-fought scientific consensus-building on a topic that is critically important to human survival on this planet.
