I don’t think that’s the whole story (questioning authority being the modern way), though the internet has been a massive influence in encouraging the Dunning Kruger effect. I fall prey to it myeself too, eg when I think I can do my own medical diagnosis based on google. Truth is, I can’t do it nearly as well as a medical professional can. That’s important to realize when confronting professionals, see eg http://ourchangingclimate.wordpress.com/2009/10/15/web-iquette-for-climate-discussions/

A carpenter (or doctor/plumber/laywer/scientist, whatever) doesn’t like me (a know-nothing about carpenting) to continuously question what he’s doing. Try it out. I guarantee you that professionals in any walk of like would get irritated at such boundless questioning, nevermind boundless contempt/suspicion.

The ivory tower residents may occasionally deem it worthwhile to state that the bloggers can’t or won’t be able to understand the weighty matters of interest to the community of scientists, or even to offer explanations so we can better understand the implications of their publications, but there simply cannot be any give and take on matters of substance.

Perhaps this theory also helps explain why the corrections are seldom acknowledged.  Once weather data sets have been used to publish anything, a correction might lead to increased work by the authors on already published work.

There are no brownie points in the publish-or-perish world for retracting or fixing already published papers.  No lines are added to the list of peer reviewed paper, the funding for the paper has long been used up, and new work is where the interest and the money are focused.

First of all, I'm not sure which post of mine you refer to–it's very hard to identify them with the current thread implementation at this blog. But your point is valid. It has come to seem obvious to me that Mann08 considered potential drawbacks with the Tiljander proxies, since they discuss these issues in the Methods. You're right, somebody coming new to this debate wouldn't know that from reading some of my comments.

But comments have to be kept short and on point. There are many other caveats and provisos I could list — but don't. Anybody who takes the time to learn about the case will quickly appreciate the point you raise.

Still, credit should be given when due, and you're right, Mann08 authors did consider the issue. Though they mistakenly didn't give it enough credence and disqualify these proxies, in my opinion.

As far as "crowing about conspiracies" — I am at a loss to respond to that. I don't believe I've ever done that, and regret it if I have. People aren't perfect, and social organizations aren't perfect. This applies to climate scientists and to the institutions of climate science — of course. In my opinion, the treatment — lack of treatment, actually — of the shortcomings of Mann08 can teach about what's wrong. That should help set climate science on an improved course.

"Most planes don't crash" isn't an argument against investigating the crashes that do occur. Do events like Sullenberger safely landing his jet in the Hudson River also teach about aircraft safety? Yes, they do. Both good processes and bad processes should be acknowledged and appreciated.

In your post, you do not mention the fact that Mann et al. were fully aware of the possible confounds in the Tiljander series -  long before the skeptics themselves (as shown by this CA post). Which is why they also performed their reconstruction without the contentious proxies – and found no significant difference (Fig. S8). Again, all this was done in the original paper itself, without any input from the skeptics.

Now consider an outsider, who hasn’t followed the controversy, coming to this blog and reading your post. He would likely conclude the exact opposite, namely, that Mann et al. were unaware of the potential problems with the Tiljander series, that the skeptics uncovered the previously unknown “error”, that scientists refused to admit it and “circled the wagons”, etc. Thus, due to the fragmentation of information sources, an honest layman reading your post  would come to conclusions that are not just wrong, but are actually the opposite of what really happened.

When “insiders” cannot recognize problems with their Consensus — or diagnose them as being the result of Enemy Conspiracies, etc. — many “outsiders” respond by becoming more skeptical of insiders’ other claim

But when “outsiders” keep crowing about conspiracies in the face of contradicting information, “insiders” are likely to just shrug and move on. Which I think is precisely what is going on.

Since a good proportion of the "skeptical" public think that "we" (the vast majority of climate scientists) are wrong, they naturally see the first part of MT's statement as arrogance. Which brings us back to square 1: How do we convince people that we're not as wrong as they think we are? Probably not by appealing to our expertise, which is kinda strange, because in daily life it's the most common thing there is, trusting people on their field of expertise.

A person close to me once told me off when I was asking all kinds of critical questions about how to lay a floor down in the house. At some point he got pissed off and asked me: "How would you like it if an outsider kept questioning whether you did a good job?"

Probably what most scientists that are involved in this kind of important policy debate need, is a couple years of sales courses, because I feel that most of you if you had to sell a product or service for a living would starve.