How Climategate killed 'peer review'

The establishment's peer review process is one that subjects an author's scientific research to the scrutiny of other experts in the same field of research. An author typically submits their research to a recognized peer review publication, and this publisher then sends the article to a select group of peers for critical review. The peer review literature is a lot like the mainstream media. It's an old system where the spaces on its pages are guarded by a very select group of gatekeepers. It's a control system of sorts -- an elite group is the decision maker that designates which papers are to be, or not to be, considered serious.

As Climategate has shown, this process became compromised -- causing an instability. As seen in the leaked emails, many within the climate establishment were interrelated and working together to ensure their message of global warming wasn't diluted. There were even desires to redefine the peer review literature to punish journals that published skeptic's papers.

The global-warming establishment's futile attempt to resist pressure from an opposing, grassroots collective caused a shift to occur -- displaying a process known in certain scientific circles as self-organization. The new order that has emerged has placed a new definition on the label peer -- that of an amorphous group of intelligent online observers, detached from the outcome, with an extremely solid grasp on the topic at hand. This peer-to-peer review network surrounds and attacks the study, in search of chinks in its armor. It's not pretty, but through this social, open dialogue, problem areas inevitably rise to the top.  In a case where politics comes into play, it appears that this review process is much more rigorous -- it ostensibly sanitizes the outcome from the affects of interested parties.

We no longer live in an age where a system can be entirely controlled. Information lacks the protective coat that it once had -- bureaucracies can be infiltrated and cracked, and access to broadcast tools are pervasive. When a system is no longer operating correctly, pressures mount, causing an inevitable instability. And when the hands of Big Government play a part in molding the consensus, or in this case Big Global Government, the peer-to-peer review network and the undermedia will play the unavoidable role of getting to the truth -- a truth desperately needed when crafting policy that will affect every living human and their offspring.