The Dutch environment minister, Jaqueline Cramer, on Wednesday demanded a thorough investigation into the 2007 report by the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change after a Dutch magazine uncovered it incorrectly states 55 percent of the country lies below sea level. The the Dutch national bureau for environmental analysis has taken responsibility for the incorrect figure cited by the IPCC. Only 26 percent of the Netherlands is really below sea level.

When Cramer heard of that blunder she wrote a letter to the IPCC, saying she was "not amused" there were mistakes in the scientific report she bases the Dutch environmental policies on. Now she is confronted with errors in the data about her own country. "This can't happen again," the minister told reporters in The Hague on Wednesday. "The public trust in science and politics has been badly damaged."

So peer review is worth what?

Recently, one mistake after the other has surfaced in the IPCC reports. De Telegraaf reported yesterday that temperature measurements have turned out to be no longer comparable with earlier ones because thousands of weather stations in open, colder areas have been removed. Dates for disappearing glaciers were also changed - 2035 became 2350 - and anecdotes in a mountain-climbers magazine were promoted to scientific sources.