If Steve McIntyre or others in the field are willing to testify that this was fraud, then perhaps it could be successfully prosecuted. I would not like to be the guy who had to explain such complex, highly technical research to a jury that had little or no science background. If Marcott had a grad student research assistant who would testify that he or she was told to fabricate results or to discard results that did not support AGW, that would be a huge help to the prosecution. Without such a smoking gun, and without heavyweight expert witnesses, prosecution for fraud sounds to me like an uphill battle.
At some point something has to be done. You cannot have two absolutely differing facts. Science can debate causes until they’re blue in the face and politicians can latch on to one that serves their cause or purpose. But how can you have two opposite “facts” without fraud?
Science is about experimentation and falsification.