CRU's work hardly constitutes an "entire branch" of climate science or meteorology, must less the whole tree (!) of human knowledge.
What happened here is that some players in a controversy were revealed (gasp) to have strong opinions, and even an agenda. And other players, themselves no less possessed of agenda, are using it to attack the subject via guilt by association. Meh. Lots for Fox News to spit about. Not much really interesting here.
some players in a controversy were revealed (gasp) to have strong opinions
Foul ball. This is not what was revealed.
They're shown to have acted on those opinions, at the very least, unethically manipulating the presentation of study results to exaggerate the conclusion they agreed with.
Any maybe more than that. Depending on the context (which I don't know), it may show that they actually manipulated the data, which calls into question all further research that uses the data coming out of that study.
What happened here is that some players in a controversy were revealed (gasp) to have strong opinions, and even an agenda. And other players, themselves no less possessed of agenda, are using it to attack the subject via guilt by association. Meh. Lots for Fox News to spit about. Not much really interesting here.