The Climategate scandal puts all of Western civilization at peril. J.R. Dunn wrote on the American Thinker blog
There is always a deeper level to the damage caused by fraud. It strains social relationships, generates cynicism, and debases standing institutions. What has suffered the most damage from AGW is faith in the scientific method, the basic set of procedures -- it could be called an algorithm -- governing scientific investigation. These procedures embody simplicity itself: you examine a phenomenon. You gather data. You construct a hypothesis to explain that phenomenon. [...]
The technology developed from scientific research has created a world that would be unrecognizable to our forebears of even a century ago. Technology has transformed diet, health, communications, and transportation. It has doubled lifespans in advanced countries. Prior to the modern epoch, few ever caught a glimpse of the world past their own farming fields. India, China, and Africa were wild myths, the Pacific and Antarctica utterly unknown, the planets and stars merely pretty lights in the sky. Technology opened the world -- not just for everyday men and women, but for invalids, the disabled, and the subnormal, who once lived lives of almost incomprehensible deprivation. Technology was a crucial factor in the dissolution of ancient empires and the humbling of aristocracies.
I cannot help but think of the fable of the Boy who cried Wolf. I am close to the point where if a scientist tells me the sky is blue, I feel I have to look for myself. That is pretty simple. How do you handle a situation where there is something so complicated that it is beyond the ken of non-scientists, maybe even beyond scientists outside the specialty involved? Let's hope it never requires a quick reaction. It is going to be tough to look at initial claims of scientific knowledge with more confidence than you would give a diet-pill huckster.
