I’ve been following the so-called “Climategate” with some interest, especially come from a science studies/actor-network-theory perspective. Recently, a bunch of hackers released emails from scientists at the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, just in time for the climates talks at Copenhagen. Parts of these emails reveal some of the discussions that go on between scientists, some of which, to an outsider, comes across as suspiciously partisan. For example, some calling on their colleagues not to cite scientists and journals with dissenting views on the anthropogenic (i.e. human-caused) issue of global warming, or suggesting ways of making the data seem more aligned with their theory as they really are.

Climategate has created quite an uproar. Those whose emails have been cited try to downplay the significance of the events, arguing that this is really how scientists work, and that no malice was intended in the emails. Much of it, they argue, have been taken out of context or simply misunderstood. Others point to these emails as examples that climate research scientists are far from objective and that global warming is just a hoax.

I haven’t read anyone who’s actually questioned why scientists would actually go so far to create such a hoax that really wouldn’t benefit them all that much. It’s also interesting that people are more concerned with the contents of the email than with the fact that these private emails have been illegally hacked and released to the public.

I’m quite curious to see what academics in science studies will say about this. Science studies (or social studies of science, or studies of science and technology) is a field that investigates the social practices of scientists (mostly “hard sciences” like physics, chemistry, etc.). One of the earliest (if not the earliest) work was Laboratory Life by Bruno Latour and Steve Woolgar, although people (including scientists themselves) have written about this kind of thing decades before (e.g. Thomas Kuhn).

The fundamental misunderstanding seems to be that scientists are and should always been 100% objective. While I think they are usually objective, that doesn’t necessarily mean they’re unbiased. In the academic papers I’ve read, I notice that people tend to cite people they know and are friends with, which tend to also be people who, more or less, share their points of view. I think the pressures of the academic community also makes them more guarded about their data, and how they interpret it. At the same time, the public needs to have a better understanding of how scientists work, and that, in fact, Climategate isn’t really a sign of a hoax as much as it is a behind-the-scenes glimpse at how scientists communicate. Too much of our lives are run by people behind closed doors. That includes think tanks as well as large organizations like the World Bank or the International Monetary Fund whose decisions impact millions of people around the world. These folks could use with a lot more disclosure themselves.