If there's lasting value to what appears so far to have been a fear - driven, pro forma,
ritual public humiliation of Gleick, it might lie in further exploration of the full implications of AGU's hasty and incomplete response.
It is exactly the same as the great
ritual humiliations of the Tudor courts, half a millennia ago - from the bawdy
public songs to the self - important constitutional contortions of the great and good.