I would be careful about feeling like one is learning much from this source. Just to address this first paragraph, the only reference (highlighted by me) made with regard to peer review is to a Union of Concerned Scientists site detailing political interference in scientific findings. The only references to climate change here are cases of trying to make the issue go away. What she appears to be referring to (but without a cite, could plausibly deny) are discussions about how to keep an *already published* paper from being cited in the 2007 IPCC report. (They were unsuccessful, which suggests something about the claims of their overarching power.) The publishing of this paper, which casted historical local climactic variations as a precedent for global temperature rise, eventually lead to some half of the editorial board of the journal resigning in protest. It's what is called, when one imagines one's discussions are private, a crap paper, bad enough that I can explain it if anybody wants.
In short, she seems to be appealing to the FUD created by a anti-scientific PR campaign to advance this evergreen of "rogue scientists". But it sure sounds exciting, doesn't it?
Under the second link, there's some more interesting discussion in the comments, including some links explaining the subject of Mazur's interest:
<http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2008/03/will_there_be_mud_marijuana_an.php>
Will there be mud, marijuana, and Free Love, too?
Category: Weirdness Posted on: March 4, 2008 3:21 PM, by PZ Myers
There's going to be a meeting this summer in Altenberg of a small subset of evolutionary biologists to discuss the next step in the evolution of evolutionary biology, which this article describes as a "Woodstock of evolution", populated with scientific "rock stars". All I can say is "bleh." This meeting sounds like it will be wonderfully entertaining, but get real: it will not settle or even define much of anything. These are interesting times in biology, with a lot of argument at a high level about levels of selection and evo-devo and modes of speciation and self-organisation and etc., etc., etc. (and I have to rush to say that these debates have nothing to do with creationism, although the creationists love to pretend that the scientific arguments are related to their flat-earth philosophy). However, the actual state of the theory will be determined by the working scientists who produce useful results, not by theorizing at a mansion in Vienna. Expect emergence from a practical perspective, not rock-stars issuing edicts.
[....]
Also here:
<http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2008/07/altenberg_meeting_next_week_ex.php>
-- Andy