Peter Wood and Ashley Thorne of the National Association of Scholars analyze the deliberate distortion of data on climate warming by faculty members and researchers at the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit (CRU).

The NAS has a unique perspective on this scandal:

Our work on sustainability, however, has brought us into contact with scientists who have complained bitterly about the strong-arm tactics used by global warming theory proponents to impede other lines of research. It has become increasingly apparent that the ideological fervency that NAS has documented in the sustainability movement has extended into the scientific journals and funding agencies.

Wood and Thorne hold out hope that these scandalous revelations about CRU

will alter the burden of proof. From this point on, proponents of global warming theory will receive no benefit of the doubt. Wanton extrapolations, reliance on models in which data can be endlessly readjusted to fit the thesis, and attempts to stigmatize critics as scientifically illiterate will have to stop. Ad hominem attacks on critics suggesting that they are in the hire of “big oil” or other interests will be seen for the shabby evasions they always were. Let’s hope that the result of this scandal is a restoration of principled inquiry to an important public policy debate.

I’m not so sure. The Left has huge sums of money and other incentives riding on their anthropogenic narrative of global warming and will fight back hard. Maybe these “scientists” will just be more stealthy in their massaging of data and communications on the subject.