> Scientists often use the term "trick" to refer to a "a good way to deal with a problem", rather than something that is "secret", and so there is nothing problematic in this at all. As for the ‘decline’, it is well known that Keith Briffa’s maximum latewood tree ring density proxy diverges from the temperature records after 1960 (this is more commonly known as the "divergence problem" - see e.g. the recent discussion in this paper) and has been discussed in the literature since Briffa et al in Nature in 1998 (Nature, 391, 678-682). Those authors have always recommend not using the post 1960 part of their reconstruction, and so while ‘hiding’ is probably a poor choice of words (since it is ‘hidden’ in plain sight), not using the data in the plot is completely appropriate, as is further research to understand why this happens.
I’m not people. I’m one person. And this is me at my most normal. I generally hate jumping to conclusions. (I could be misjudging myself now, don’t want to exclude that possibility :)
I wouldn't call ugh's response either blind or a defense. I've used almost that exactly line (here I used a trick to hide the trend) for perfectly legitimate uses — what if you're trying to analyze the fast signal?
The volume of leaked correspondence does begin to form a context, but before the heavy and severe claim of scientific misconduct is really substantiated it's going to require scientific analysis of the fault. Cherrypicked quotes appearing on a news site is often known as researcher bias and it's just as big a flaw.
Try approaching the quote without trying to prove any pre-conceived notions. Similarly, I might say "I used John's useful hack in the logging module to hide errors (from the user)".
Try approaching the quote without any pre-conceived notions on the meaning of the English language. Similarly, I might say "I used John's hovercraft to hide the fact (from my date) that mine was full of eels."
