Two stories on this today, one about climate change and one about stem cell research.

From The Guardian:

Scientists sometimes like to portray what they do as divorced from the everyday jealousies, rivalries and tribalism of human relationships. What makes science special is that data and results that can be replicated are what matters and the scientific truth will out in the end.

But a close reading of the emails hacked from the University of East Anglia in November exposes the real process of everyday science in lurid detail.

Many of the emails reveal strenuous efforts by the mainstream climate scientists to do what outside observers would regard as censoring their critics. And the correspondence raises awkward questions about the effectiveness of peer review – the supposed gold standard of scientific merit – and the operation of the UN's top climate body, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

The scientists involved disagree. They say they were engaged not in suppressing dissent but in upholding scientific standards by keeping bad science out of peer-reviewed journals. Either way, when passing judgment on papers that directly attack their own work, they were mired in conflicts of interest that would not be allowed in most professions.

Similar rumblings are afoot in the realm of stem cell research. From BBC News:

Stem cell experts say they believe a small group of scientists is effectively vetoing high quality science from publication in journals.

In some cases they say it might be done to deliberately stifle research that is in competition with their own.

It has also emerged that 14 leading stem cell researchers have written an open letter to journal editors in order to highlight their dissatisfaction.

Billions of pounds of public money is spent on funding stem cell research.

Without ethical peer review processes in place there is no such thing as free inquiry, and there is no meaningful argument for the scholarly independence secured by the concept academic freedom. As I have said too many times to count on this blog, academic freedom is not a system of rights; it is a system of reciprocal duties and privileges that together comprise a standard of professionalism for academics. To the extent that professors are not ensuring their own ethical behavior--within disciplines and within institutions--they are helping to kill academic freedom and tenure.

UPDATE: Britain's Wellcome Trust--a major research funder--is arguing that "Expert referees who validate scientific findings should have their reports published to make science more transparent and accountable." Love it. And I'd gladly see that expanded beyond the sciences. Sunlight, as FIRE loves to say, is the best disinfectant.