well maybe there wasn’t as much "Big Science" in the 19th century as their is today.  but i would dispute the idea that to whatever extent science was ever the province of shabby-coated professors that it is now in the thrall of gold-plated megalabs.

in the 19th century and previous, science was the sole province of either the rich and bored, or else the province of those who wholly depended on the rich and bored for patronage.  money has always been a factor, and if it is less so today, that’s only because the work isn’t being funded out of a noble’s own family wealth.

there was never a time period, in my view, when science was ever mostly done by people with passion and a part-time job.  in fact, the average wealth of an academic scientist has probably declined in the past 200 years.

still we’re arguing of specifics here when i think we’re in agreement on the general thesis. i never claimed science was immune to anything, though i would definitely dispute the idea that if global warming were proved wrong that anyone would even be out of a job, let alone delivering pizzas. the entire medical establishment prior to the 90s believed that ulcers were caused by stress and stress alone. when it was finally proven that there was a disease-vector as a root cause in at least some of the ulcers, nobody who argued otherwise was executed for being wrong. They suddenly just had to find new ideas on which to get grant money.

That quibble aside (one I suspect you concur with), I agree with you completely that the tendency to become hidebound and intolerant in orthodoxy is a constant in human experience and has never really changed much. Witch hunts do indeed happen in the sciences as well as elsewhere. You’re absolutely right.

But, I cannot agree that money has nothing to do with it. Science was certainly more pure when the average scientist was either a passionate part-timer who had a day job, or, a shabby-coated professor who made little money but had his students and a small income to pursue his studies and when there was little or no money on the line if his theories or his research turned out to be fundamentally flawed. That’s why tenure was originally created–originally. Not just to protect unpopular ideas, but scientific ideas that might turn out to be wrong. Tenure looks almost nothing like that now in the sciences.

Today, millions, even billions of dollars are at stake. People’s entire livelihoods depend on getting grant money in the sciences, and getting the grant is key to keeping your job as a scientist rather than going off to work in some mundane non-science job. That’s economic pressure no matter how you slice it–and by the way, economics IS a science you know. ;-)

The fact is that the business world, and the government world, has pretty advanced rules regarding conflict of interest and things you just don’t do if you want to be trusted. Including little things like third-party, disinterested-party audits. Science’s conflict of interest rules in most areas these days (especially grant-driven research) is antiquated and dysfunctional.

Look: if it were to turn out that global warming was never a serious problem and not really caused by humans, this isn’t going to be a case of some people simply being mocked. Careers will be destroyed and people with PhDs will be out delivering pizzas for a living. Billions will have been poured down a rathole. And, some academics who profited very well indeed (a small handful, granted, but they exist) will not just look foolish, they’ll look like scam artists who bilked others out of millions.

That’s not an environment that engenders open-mindedness to new ideas and questioning mentalities. It’s just not. Anyone in the business world could tell you so. Anyone in government can tell you so. Yet somehow we think the sciences are immune to all that because… what? Scientists aren’t as vulnerable to these economic pressures as much as the rest of us?

"Economics" does not mean "average scientist gets filthy rich." "Economics" means "I keep my job or I don’t."  And "big money" doesn’t mean "evil rich bastards with money pulling the levers" (for the most part). For the most part, it means, "there are billions of dollars and therefore hundreds, thousands of jobs on the line here, and people with those jobs don’t want them to go away."

It’s human nature.

Scott: Yep. This is true in multiple areas of the sciences these days, not just this one. We’ve somehow inherited an idea, back from the days BEFORE science was tied to big money (government or corporate) that scientists were "pure" (in Al Gore’s words) because they were committed to the truth and nothing else. Except now their salaries are usually dependent on putting forth a certain party line, and they react in outrage when someone suggests that the normal laws of economics, good business ethics, and good government ethics just don’t apply to them because THEY’RE SCIENTISTS!

How dare we question how they’ve spent our money, and whether they’ve spent it wisely, and whether our grant money is really going to the right people for the right research?

I’ve looked at issues relating to GISTEMP a bit, including filing a FOIA.  As best I can tell, there’s no formal Quality Assurance process on any of this.

Mistakes get made.  Maybe they’re caught, maybe not.  There doesn’t appear to be any real worry about doing things right.  What’s worse, various people involved seem to be intent on concealing as much of the process as possible, which makes it very difficult to find any mistakes.