Climate Gate, as it's called, was a huge scandal and the researchers faced essentially no consequences for their misconduct. In fact, Judith Curry, another prominent climate scientist was essentially driven out of academia for calling out the malfeasance.

The Replication Crisis has revealed that most scientific findings don't replicate, that's not always due to malfeasance, but it often is. Replication studies don't publish well, so nobody does that vital work. People are also afraid of criticizing their colleagues.

I'm telling you from inside the science machine that it doesn't work the way you think it does. There's lots of political bias, group think, censorship, and outright fraud. I was a research assistant in climate science for years and now I'm an economist. I've seen how the sausage is made, so to speak, and it isn't what people think it is.