In the modern world of Wikileaks and ClimateGate, where and how you get things and their credibility matters less than how opponents can make political hay with it, the impact on science is evident as well.
Jennifer Couzin-Frankel and Gretchen Vogel writing at Science detail how accusations of scientific fraud from an anonymous e-mail address sent to the researchers in question but also to other prominent stem cell biologists, several scientific journals, and reporters has the paper authors defending themselves, virtually without cause.