No, there is not a huge difference. A corrupt scientist no more damages the scientific enterprise than a pedophile priest damages the Church. The pedophile priest scandal with the bishops’ cover-up certainly damaged the credibility of the Church as much if note more than the so-called “climategate” damaged the credibility of science.
Let’s look at the individuals here. Look inside each of them. Forget for a moment the consequences and scandals in each case. Put yourself in the moment the action is taking place, in the moment before the news is spread all over the world, can you do that?
To me the huge difference is the personal motivation. In this scenario we agree that both men are corrupt. The corrupt priest does it because he wants to satisfy a personal need or inclination, which is bad an repugnant, don’t get me wrong. The act is a matter between him an his victim (adult or young, man or woman). Another thing we must consider is that this crime is present in all society: protestant pastors, teachers in schools, foster parents, step parents, bosses, military people, husbands, wives, friends, in other words, persons with any kind of authority. You’ll find this kind of predators among these persons, the Catholic Church doesn’t have a monopoly on pedophilia or sexual harassment. It’s an epidemic that has no distinction of religion, race, gender, profession, country of origin, wealth or lack of it, etc.
Furthermore, this corrupt priest is not trying to convince all members of his church to be with him and satisfy his needs. It’s just him and his victim. He does it in hiding. He doesn’t preach in the pulpit the lie that what he does is good. On the contrary, he wants to hide what he does from the rest of the world.
The other corrupt fellow wants to deceive a lot of people. He wants to frame the human mind of thousand and millions of people to think what he wants us to think. He is the expert, he knows more, he works in the open, he uses his pulpit to spread his lies. He doesn’t believe in God and he really wants to destroy the notion of God from the mind of human beings (check Richard Dawkins, scientist, website).
I agree with your argument that the scandal damages the credibility of both institutions, the Church and the scientific community. But if we expect priests to be honest, truthful, pure, celibate, what’s wrong with expecting scientists to be at least honest and truthful? I don’t expect them to be pure or celibate. We, as Catholics, can’t have a set of standards for one group of people and another for set for another group.
