The Sound Of Settled Science

Unsettled Science 15 Comments

Matt Ridley;

As somebody who has championed science all his career, carrying a lot of water for the profession against its critics on many issues, I am losing faith. Recent examples of bias and corruption in science are bad enough. What’s worse is the reluctance of scientific leaders to criticise the bad apples. Science as a philosophy is in good health; science as an institution increasingly stinks.
The Nuffield Council on Bioethics published a report last week that found evidence of scientists increasingly “employing less rigorous research methods” in response to funding pressures. A 2009 survey found that almost 2 per cent of scientists admitting that they have fabricated results; 14 per cent say that their colleagues have done so.
This month has seen three egregious examples of poor scientific practice. The most recent was the revelation in The Times last week that scientists appeared to scheme to get neonicotinoid pesticides banned, rather than open-mindedly assessing all the evidence. These were supposedly “independent” scientists, yet they were hand in glove with environmental activists who were receiving huge grants from the European Union to lobby it via supposedly independent reports, and they apparently had their conclusions in mind before they gathered the evidence. Documents that have recently come to light show them blatantly setting out to make policy-based evidence, rather than evidence-based policy.

But read it all.

15 Replies to “The Sound Of Settled Science”

  1. It’s OK for scientists to skew data to promote their careers, as long it’s not as shills for big oil, banks, drug manufacturers and capitalists and entrepreneurs in general.
    Other than that, shilling is a good thing, it’s cause social justice activism.

  2. Progressive culture has indeed corrupted science. For the last two generations, ideology has increasingly trumped objectivity. Entire “disciplines” have been concocted to attract institutional enrollment based on their green theological attributes rather than fealty to science. Conservation Biology is such an example and one where the benefits quickly became apparent to its adherents. Premised on the anti-industrial revolution of the new left, its discipline is content with reinforcement of hypotheses rather than testing to disprove. As an example, it managed to halt virtually all sustainable forest harvesting of public forests in the USPNW and thanks to progressive laws ensuring endless litigation, that continues today.
    The emboldened theocracy now has its sights on Energy as control of access to energy is control of everything in the modern world. In this pursuit, the largest scam in the history of the planet, CAGW (demonizing a single variable – CO2) has employed the symbiosis of statism, politics, and ideologically allied pseudo-scientific clergy. The later, financially nourished by the former to rationalize the inquisition while reinforcing the dogma through control of academia. In short, Lysenkoism on steroids.
    Is an institutionally credentialed scientist a whore if he sells out to a political / cultural movement he agrees with (with plenty of institutional agreement, even perhaps a “consensus”) as opposed to becoming unemployed or working in the private sector for “ideological” enemies? Evidence indicates that most employed “scientists” are indeed whores.

  3. The result is that no one believes these ‘experts’ and if anything really big does happen, it will be Chicken Little.

  5. Natural weather patterns, not man-made global warming, are causing the historic drought parching California, says a study out Monday from federal scientists.
    “It’s important to note that California’s drought, while extreme, is not an uncommon occurrence for the state,” said Richard Seager, the report’s lead author and professor with Columbia University’s Lamont Doherty Earth Observatory. The report was sponsored by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
    http://www.usatoday.com/story/weather/2014/12/08/california-drought-cause-noaa/20095869/

  6. The liberal news media idiots tried to blame HURICANE SANDY on GLOOBAL WARMING just like they tried to do with HURRICANE KATRINA

  8. Thanks for posting that new link John. It gave me the best laugh I’ve had all day. It appears everything that could go wrong has but you notice that each time it was someone else’s fault. Don’t worry though, the forest that Peru wasn’t going to cut down anyway will claim all that bad carbon What a bunch of hypocrites. I can guarantee you that they’ll be a lot more in selecting a site for the next meeting, wouldn’t want the pampered babies to suffer the effects of real weather.

  9. Someone described science as the best (not perfect) defence against self deception. This, of course, presupposes that one is, in fact, seeking to discover the laws of nature and not manipulating and cherry picking data in order to reinforce one’s prejudices.
    A pseudo-scientist posits an assertion and sets out to “prove” it. A scientist proposes a hypothesis and sets out to test it.

  11. The purpose of climate science is to enforce a political ideology world-wide. It is Lysenkoism.

  14. Copenheagan hundreds of world leaders arived in their jets and were driven to the HQ in 11 mpg limos and followed by the usial celeberties and wanna be hippy wanks and back in Sept several thousand Useful Idiots lead by AL GORE and ROBERT KENENDY Jr marched trough the streets carrying stupid signs and banners with dumb slogans written on them or pictures of sunflowers and i heard that Robby Kennedy Jr got ia little huff when a conservative journalists questioned him on his own hypocracy

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