Open science and the climate crisis

Abstract

In 2009, the climate research community was rocked by the Climategate controversy, an email leak that allegedly provided evidence of data manipulation [1]. While that allegation was shown to be unsubstantiated [2], it focused the community’s attention on the importance of transparency in generating findings that are both robust, and seen to be robust. Data errors [3] and challenges in reproducing findings [4] have prompted similar self-reflection in the fields of economics and psychology respectively. Energy research has so far avoided a similar crisis of trust. But for how long, and at what cost?