US science agency refuses request for climate records

To be fair, they're refusing to turn over scientists' communications, not the data itself. This is absolutely the right move, because scientists are people, not politicians. If any scientist has at any point said something that isn't politically expedient it is guaranteed to be used against them in a political attack which will ignore and supersede any fact-based discussion of the (peer reviewed) data/analysis. Basically, politicians who disagree with the science now want to comb over emails to find ways to politically discredit the science.

It's easy to say that the scientists should be more political in their communications, but that doesn't really make sense. Many many people work on this type of project and it only takes one person to communicate something controversial. Moreover, the ability of the scientists to internally disagree about things like the method and degree of data normalization or homogenization is essential to producing high quality results. In fact if the science is done well someone at some point in the process _should_ communicate doubts or counterpoints to proposed data handling strategies. Those kinds of internal disagreement strengthen the scientific result, but weaken it politically. Congress should not be given additional tools to conflate and confuse science and politics.