Inspired by a post at climateprogress. The overlap between Joe Romm's post and my post ends at the inspiration :).
I'm just a regular old scientist, toiling away in anonymity. When I screw up, my boss may or may not chew me out, but all in all, even if I hit the absolute peak of my profession in the future, very few people will have ever heard of me.
This is in sharp contrast to how I imagine life is now for climate scientists, who must live a completely different life, as a direct result of the politization of their work. I know some real climate scientists post on these forums, so I'd be interested to see if I have my guesses right.
My life:
I publish a paper or present a poster, include an email address, and only get one response from someone who was interested in going to my school.
Climate scientists' life:
They publish a paper, they get a flood of threatening emails, the kindest of which merely question his or her sanity. The worst of them threaten actual violence, though thankfully they don't appear to contain the intensely personal details that make some threats far scarier.
My life:
I could make a big discovery (this is a hypothetical at the moment, sadly!), and no one knows my name still.
Climate scientists life:
They make a big discovery, and Congress subpoenas them and they get hate mail. Freedom of Information act inquiries flood in from people who want to try to find errors, and they blare on about how the scientists won't answer them, but after the information is given they never say a word.
My life:
I send an email expressing frustration, and the only one who ever reads it is the recipient.
Their life:
They vent in an email, and it's twisted into a big conspiracy. The entire world reads only the bad emails and skips over the many emails showing actual cooperation.
My life:
It doesn't matter whether my work is going well or badly, no media ever gives a shit. I'll never be interviewed, even if I am the first to make some drug.
Their life:
When the media fairly reports on their work, the media get harassed, too. Some elements of the media interview them and only use "gotcha" questions. Some elements of the media completely distort comments, then refuse to correct the record. The media, in a likely effort just to sell papers and ads, make a false equivalence that ends up making it seem like there's a much higher degree of disagreement or debate than there really is. And, when the scientists get fed up and get surly with the media, that's spun to make it "what do they have to hide".
My life:
I screw up, and only my boss, wife, and maybe a few labmates ever know. The rest of my results are only called into mild question, and certainly it doesn't invalidate anyone else's results in my own lab, let alone in other people's labs. At worst, I'd have to issue a correction to a published paper, but this hasn't happened yet.
Their life:
One of them screws up a bit. This somehow means that all of their work, along with the work of all other climate scientists, is automatically invalidated. Corrections are treated like they mean that every paper ever written in the field is automatically null and void.
My life:
To my knowledge, no web pages exist specifically to debunk me. If one does, I'd be the most surprised of everyone.
Their life:
Multiple blogs try to debunk them, and visitors to those blogs often never get exposed to actual science. Rational, nuanced responses are twisted into words and phrases that end up bearing no resemblance to what they actually said.
My life:
It snows, and I take longer to get to work. Maybe I skip work for the day.
Their life:
It snows, and they get hate mail and a barrage of media coverage questioning their entire body of work.
My field:
One group makes a big claim, and other groups get a "that can't be right" vibe, which results in experiments being done to verify the original results and / or test the underlying hypothesis. If the hypothesis or results are wrong, the group in the wrong often retracts the paper (sometimes under extreme pressure from the journals), but this all plays out well outside of the public eye (stem cell papers excepting). (I'll link in comments to chem blogs discussing some recent "that can't be right" discussions, if anyone wants)
Their field:
Skeptics make big claims, and when the claims are tested by climate scientists, the resulting corrections / etc aren't acknowledged by the skeptics, and often they're just repeatedly blared out, with no care about proper scientific procedures or practice. The disproved claims "stick" and people are left only hearing about the incorrect claim (which gets big media coverage) and not the corrections or rebuttals (which even good reporters often fail to mention).
My field:
I don't get paid much, and I get government funding.
Their field:
They don't get paid much, and they get government funding. Somehow this low salary and funding is viewed suspiciously by people, while these same skeptics ignore that the funding for their "intellectuals" (used loosely) is from organizations that have financial reasons to obscure the actual facts surrounding climate change.
My field:
Papers and rebuttals go through peer review. Scientists who put out press releases and speak to the media without submitting their results to peer-reviewed journals are viewed with suspicion at best. Even press releases of peer-reviewed research is viewed suspiciously (though I disagree with the latter - I think scientists working in fields of interest to the general public should be out there in front shaping the message, lest it be shaped for them. But I digress.)
Their field:
Papers go through peer review. Skeptics claims sometime slip through peer review, but often are trumpeted in non-peer reviewed formats and released directly to the media. Said media love a controversy and run with it. Rebuttals to the skeptics go through peer review and actual scientific testing, yet this is somehow ignored.
Being in the sciences is tough enough when I'm anonymous. I am held to high ethical standards and my boss demands a lot of me. Climate scientists are no different, and they have the added demands that I can only dream of having to face. Particularly those scientists whose email inboxes are flooded with hate-mail, I'd love to know whether they'd appreciate notes of support, or whether they think it's better to not further clog the inboxes (to be honest, I don't know which they would prefer, and I won't deign to speak for them).
If you're an actual climate scientist, I'd love to hear your take, though apparently the poll doesn't really have an option for you. Perhaps you could pick the "pie makes no sense" option :)
Edit: I think I'm going to post a few stories of real controversies / falsified data / etc from my own field in a few days, as examples of what actual fraud and / or bad science is.