In climate science, refusing to share data is "standard practice"

It weren't me, guv, it was the other bloke what done it, honest me old cup and bone, strewth innit, etc...
Apparently, the Medieval Warm Period exists, after all. Or so said a University of East Anglia spokesman, Professor Edward Acton, when questioned in the House of Commons, yesterday.

The man he was there to defend, the AGW Liar-in-Chief, Professor Phil Jones, was rattled all over the place by the gentle questioning of the polite MPs. As Uncle Gary and Walter Block have said before, most modern professors are never challenged by students because modern degrees are heavily swayed by professorial opinions about students.

In the good old days you could argue with a professor as much as you liked because your final degree mark would be entirely based upon your (almost) objective performance in a finals exam marked externally by anonymous examiners, with only your candidate number linking you to your examination work. These days, with professors able to flunk students on a whim and with so much of a degree's final mark being weighed down with the continuous assessment of professorial oversight, it is much the smarter course for any student to pipe down, shut up, and write down professorial opinions as golden gospel law, at least until your degree mark is published (and probably after then, if you want to get a reference for your first non-tenured academic posts).

Therefore most lily-livered socialist professors hate being questioned about anything and are usually incapable of engaging in genuine debate without becoming emotional, defensive, and irascible, usually lashing out at any student daring to partake of this evil capitalist sin. So the falling apart of Jones, yesterday, the man who is bent on causing the rest of us to live our lives in energy-deprived poverty, was a joy to behold. So well done, the House of Commons. (And you don't hear that said very often on these pages.)

Even the Grauniad, the home paper of every aspiring socialist parasite in England, laid into the Professor, at least for a couple of paragraphs:

But the committee will be hard pressed to ignore the issue after the intervention of no less a body than the Institute of Physics. In 13 coruscating paragraphs of written evidence to MPs, it spoke of "prima facie evidence of determined and coordinated refusals to comply with honourable scientific traditions and freedom of information law", "manipulation of the publication and peer review system", and "intolerance to challenge ... which is vital to the integrity of the scientific process." Ouch.

They don't like it up 'em.

Go to 1:02:00 on the link below if you want to watch the whole thing yourself:

=> http://www.parliamentlive.tv/main/Player.aspx?meetingId=5979

Or watch the BBC News report, here:

=> MPs quiz 'climategate' scientist