Sounding like the lame excuse of a 5th grader, claiming her dog ate her homework, the University of East Anglia's CRU claimed this past August in response to a request for the original data by Roger Pielke, Jr. that "we do not hold the requested information."   As Roger posited in his blog...

I found that odd. How can they not hold the data when they are showing graphs of global temperatures on their webpage? However, it turns out that CRU has in response to requests for its data put up a new webpage with the following remarkable admission (emphasis added):

We are not in a position to supply data for a particular country not covered by the example agreements referred to earlier, as we have never had sufficient resources to keep track of the exact source of each individual monthly value. Since the 1980s, we have merged the data we have received into existing series or begun new ones, so it is impossible to say if all stations within a particular country or if all of an individual record should be freely available. Data storage availability in the 1980s meant that we were not able to keep the multiple sources for some sites, only the station series after adjustment for homogeneity issues. We, therefore, do not hold the original raw data but only the value-added (i.e. quality controlled and homogenized) data.

Say what?! CRU has lost track of the original data that it uses to create its global temperature record!? Can this be serious? So not only is it now impossible to replicate or reevaluate homogeneity adjustments made in the past -- which might be important to do as new information is learned about the spatial representativeness of siting, land use effects, and so on -- but it is now also impossible to create a new temperature index from scratch. CRU is basically saying, "trust us." So much for settling questions and resolving debates with empirical information (i.e., science).

Normally, scientists retain all their data from their experiments.  They do this because it provides backup if they are ever challenged and also to share with other scientists who are interested in learning from their work.   It makes the work reproducible, which is one way to make it bulletproof.  And now that some internal emails have been released, we know what the words "quality controlled and homogenized" truly mean.  

Governments are prepared to turn their economies upside down on the basis of this work and these "scientists" didn't bother to keep the original data set that everything was based upon?  How could you validate the work in the absence of the original data?  You can't and this makes every lick of work by this outfit suspicious -- no scientist worth their salt could rely on this work, barring a complete audit by independent scientists.

UPDATE: the CRU server link posted above returns the following - apparently there is an emergency going on over at the CRU at the moment ;-) :

Page temporarily unavailable

The main CRU webserver is currently down.

These pages are being served from the CRU Emergency Webserver.

Not all pages from the main server are available, and what pages are available may be out of date.

Climatic Research Unit