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Comment by akamaka | Hacker News Reader

This seems extremely serious, much more than the leaked email affair. The claim in question has been very widely cited. PBS Frontline even chose this glacier story to lead off their 2 hour special on climate change:

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/heat/view/1.html (see Chapter 1, 3:30-6:30. The actual claim is at 6:00 in the video)

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While serious, I don't think the ramifications of this are greater than the leaked emails - more on that here: http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100022157/... (I suspect the words "peer review" will be treated with considerably greater skepticism in the future)

They can and will likely chalk this up to some administrative error, but the underlying contents of the leaked emails, charges of fraud of some of the most prominent authors of the IPCC reports is far more significant. More from a (formerly?) strong supporter of the IPCC reports here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/georgemonbiot/2009/nov...

That a couple of scientists said some dumb stuff in private emails does not call into question the entire peer review system.

It's not about calling the entire peer review system into question - it's about being skeptical about whether or not results can be trusted on the sole basis they've been peer reviewed - particularly in areas of scientific controversy.

From the linked article: "As Climategate has shown, [the process of peer review] became compromised – causing an instability. As seen in the leaked emails, many within the climate establishment were interrelated and working together to ensure their message of global warming wasn’t diluted. There were even desires to redefine the peer review literature to punish journals that published skeptic’s papers."

It's not just climate science (as I've been reading on nutritional science with Gary Taubes and Robert Lustig).

Definitely not - you misunderstood. The leaked emails and this story are just the beginning of the process of uncovering the greatest scam/racket in recent history. And I assure you Sir, that these Indian dudes are not the last to have their names dragged through the mud (and more, I expect). Too much public money and trust has been wasted by these shameless scoundrels.

You know, the world runs on oil, reserves of which are estimated by various parties with wild inconsistencies. And yet, people publish oil reserve figures over and over again, all around the world, and policy makers base the plans of their nations on that.

Glaciers in the world, and yes, in the Himalayas, are in retreat. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retreat_of_glaciers_since_1850) The rate of retreat, given the seriousness and the surprise of the sound bite, may have been seriously and widely overestimated, and, yes, misrepresented. But in just the same way as the available reserves of oil are misrepresented to government officials everywhere (for they must be misrepresented some of the time, estimates being inconsistent, and varying over time: e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_reserves#OPEC_countries)

Yes, it is a case study in the spread of alarmist claims, it should be a rallying call for more scientific integrity, but to emphasize the existence of a widely-cited, less than supported claim as evidence of systemic scientific malfeasance, when it is but one amid a sea of measurements, predictions and threats, seems to me to be falsely elevating the form of scientific inquiry above its function: to understand the world better than we other wise would, perhaps to make better decisions, perhaps just to wonder. It is, in other words, to miss the avalanche for the snowflake.

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