"Of all the accusations made by the vociferous community of climate sceptics, surely the most damaging is that science itself is biased against them.

That was a view I put forward nearly a year ago now in another article for the BBC News website, and nothing has changed my mind since.
The year seems to have brought no diminution of the accusations flying around the blogosphere. "The research itself is biased," as one recent blog entry put it. That particular posting gave no evidence to support its claim of bias. I have seen none that did, which made me wonder whether there was any evidence.

Drought or deluge?

In that earlier article, I invited sceptics to put their cards on the table, and send me documentation or other firm evidence of bias. For my part, I agreed to look into any concrete claims.
Given the fury evidenced by sceptical commentators, I was expecting a deluge.
I anticipated drowning in a torrent of accusations of research grants turned down, membership of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) denied, scientific papers refused by journals, job applications refused, and invitations to speak at conferences drying up.
I anticipated having to spend days, weeks, months even, sifting the wheat from the chaff, going backwards and forwards between journal editors, heads of department, conference organisers, funding bodies and the original plaintiffs.

The reality was rather different.

I received emails from well over 100 people; some had read my original article, others had seen the idea passed around in blogs and newsgroups.

Four people said they had had problems getting research published, and three sent me the papers in question. The other said he did not want to disclose details as he was preparing his paper for submission to another journal.

Of the three papers I did receive, one was far from complete, and another was a review article from an author who endorsed the IPCC position and said the bias was against scientists "supporting man-made climate change".

The third was from Reid Bryson, a US meteorologist and climatologist whose team at the University of Wisconsin has developed its own method of looking at historical climate change. He said he had had problems getting research published on the extent to which he believes volcanoes drive climate change. But he had not kept his rejection letters, so it was impossible to investigate specifically.
( From HHO see a realistic assessment of  vulcanic activities )

A fifth correspondent said magazines had turned down letters for publication; but letters are not research, and magazines are not journals, which perform a vital role in the formal processes of science.

In terms of first-hand claims of bias, that was it."

In the full article below Richard Black deals with the claim of sceptics who claim the sun played a major roll, the so-called controversies about the "hockey-stick" etc.