Simon Carr: So, scientists are just as political as the rest

The University of East Anglia climate fiasco has caused some in the laity to go back reaching for their brains. But sketchwriters recognised it all well enough, especially those of us without degrees in climate science. The problem isn't science, it's politics.

We'd already heard about the refusal of information requests. The tricks to shaft opponents. The plan to de-register an academic journal that had gone to the other side. The impulse to destroy files. The refusal to share primary data ... We get that all the time in parliament.

And it fitted in with the communications strategy first leaked in the 1990s – the climatologists' plan was to spread global warming panic as a spur to action.But as soon as the scientists adopted a public purpose they moved along the spectrum from academics to activists to lobbyists to political advisers and – please don't think me cynical – that is a process of corruption and degradation.

And they're important, these East Anglians. They are in charge of data-sets that underlie the "settled science" of the multi-trillion dollar global warming movement.

And boy have they caught up with the lessons from the last decade of public administration (text in italics was written by the programmer processing the data at the university).

/"... the expected 1990-2003 period is MISSING – so the correlations aren't so hot! Yet the WMO codes and station names /locations are identical (or close). What the hell is supposed to happen here? Oh yeah – there is no 'supposed', I can make it up. So I have."/

That is, only if you know nobody's listening can you tell the truth. We saw that in No 10's private Iraq emails revealed in the Hutton enquiry.

/"Reconstruction is based on tree-ring density records. NOTE: recent decline in tree-ring density has been ARTIFICIALLY REMOVED to facilitate calibration. THEREFORE, post-1960 values will be much closer to observed temperatures than they should be, which will incorrectly imply the reconstruction is more skilful than it actually is ..."/

That is, use the same data in opposite ways to make them fit the hypothesis. Gordon Brown's always doing that.

/"... we know the file starts at yr 440, but we want nothing till 1400"./

That is, keep the pesky 1,000-year heatwave out of the stats or modern times won't look warm at all. Gordon did that for years.

So now we have to add climate scientists to the list of professionals who treat us as hawks treat chicks. The them-and-us is getting more pronounced. We're all drifting apart from each other – it's not to do with social equality but sectional interests, the triumph of the political class, and professional tribalism as they extract their fees from us with such impunity.

NB: Mind you, for all their apparent trickery the East Anglians might still be right. The pro-vaccine lobby in the mid-19th century falsified their data like billy-oh.