Denial of FOIA request caused tipping point at UEA?
“The last email exchange within the Climategate files is November 12, 2009. Within the tight circle of climate skeptics, the significance of this date is telling. It is coincidentally the day before a crucial piece of information was denied to the peer-to-peer reviewers.
On November 13, 2009, a letter was sent by the Director of Information Services at the University of East Anglia to Steve McIntyre refusing his request for temperature data under the UK’s version of the Freedom of Information Act. The timing of the denial, which was a day after the last email in the Climategate files, and the fact that the files were titled FOIA.zip and FOI2009.zip, which are both abbreviated references to this Act, provides a striking indication to the impetus of the leak. This denial may have been just enough to incite someone from within the guarded establishment to give others a peak behind the green curtain.
If the connection holds, it shows a fascinating circularity of how a denial of transparency actually led to a forced transparency – consequently displaying how a professional culture changes regardless of its resistance to change.” “Peer-to-peer review (part III): How ‘Climategate’ marks the maturing of a new science movement“