Perhaps you’ve seen the John Malkovich//Glenn Close, Colin Firth/Annette Benning, or Ryan Phillippe/Sarah Michelle Gellar movie versions of the story, but the original Les Liaisons Dangereuses is a book outlining a tale of deceit and subterfuge through a series of letters.
Jillian Melchior deserves kudos for citing the 18th-century novel in a new Commentary article on another scandal fueled by secretive correspondence:
At first glane, Climategate’s leaked correspondence is the Dangerous Liaisons of the scientific world. Despite the drumbeat informing the public that science strongly supports the climate-change thesis, the hacked data paint a picture of a community of experts afraid of scrutiny, wiling to use underhanded methods to silence doubters, and content to eliminate evidence that might undermine both their theories and their funding.
Yet the scandal has not led to serious policy reconsiderations or even significant stigmatization for many of the scientists and organizations implicated. Instead, even as fundamental suppositions about climate change were being challenged, the Environmental Protection Agency took initial steps to implement the most extensive carbon-emissions regulations the United States has ever seen. And only a few weeks afterward the Copenhagen Climate Change Conference, with 192 countries in attendance, began without meaningfully addressing the Climategate e-mails.
