Apologies for my snappiness... I'm too easliy trolled by Pete.

"And if this metadata hasn't been published - and should the calibration data be available they will find something else - we have to insist the "would publish if there is nothing to hide" is wrong"

You're correct, but this doesn't happen as a paper wouldn't get through peer review if the method and data were not available. None of this has happened in Mann's case, he and his colleagues are simply on the arse end of a smear campaign.

Empirical data is the raw material of science and essentially is owned by no-one. It might be hard for the conspiracy theorists, inverted snobs, capitalists, religious fundamentalists and politicians to believe but most scientists just want to find out why things are like they are, why the happen as they do and what it all means.

There's no agenda apart from the discovery of fundamental truth. To suggest there is is simply wrong.