“The prospect of domination of the nation’s scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present and is gravely to be regarded. Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite.” *
Global Warming and the Irrelevance of Science – an essay by Richard Lindzen..
Funny this is so close to the “bonus army march” plug below…Ike and McArthur were the two officers in command of the troops and tanks that broke it up.
Funny how the comment about a “military Industrial complex” gets the repetition when taken as a whole was less relevant to his speech than the above.
Excellent article, a little long but worth the read.
“One would think that by the second decade of the twenty-first century, the intellectual poverty of technocracy and the primacy of politics over it would be a well-established truth in need of no further defense.”
– Evgeny Morozov
I remember (born in ’51) many of my friend’s fathers disparaging Ike as being a lightweight, a buffoon and an FDR clone in disguise. My Dad never took a stand to me even when I asked him but he did tell me he voted for him.
Since then, of course, I’ve changed my mind quite a bit, although I’ll never forgive him for the way he treated Patton both in the “slapping” incident (first public indication of PC in the military) and the stopping him from hightailing into the heart of Germany (and also never heeding his warningings about that incompetent fool Monty).
If he did nothing else right at least Operation Wetback was a resounding success.
A government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity.” Under these circumstances, when the government wants a particular scientific outcome the ideal arrangement is vulnerable.
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Next on the Agenda-
They might tell us the Zika Virus is caused by Climate Change……. OH ! … Wait !
http://www.smh.com.au/environment/climate-change-could-worsen-diseases-like-zika-virus-experts-say-20160128-gmfrcj.html
One thing I noticed while I worked on my Ph. D. in electrical engineering was how many of the professors in my department had, in effect, become government welfare bums. They couldn’t or wouldn’t do any research unless they had funding and, often, that funding came from government grants. They risked none of their own money or resources, assuming they had any, and, consequently, spent much of their time shilling for cash–someone else’s, of course.
One result is that only those topics and ideas that were lavishly funded would be investigated. The consequence of that was a tendency towards intellectual group-think. There was little imagination, no originality, and no risk to speak of.
Another is that what one’s investigation yielded positive results. No one was going to get funding to examine a concept only to have it proven wrong, even though that is scientifically and intellectually legitimate. In other words, if one was going to apply for research money, it was a good idea to know what the outcomes were going to be ahead of time.
So much for letting truth prevail.
Then again, what should one expect in an environment where the main goal is to achieve tenure and, thereby, have a job for life?
What you write about is precisely what con-men and swindlers do, that is, do as little as possible for as much as possible AND on someone else’s back.
That’s what government has morphed into.
It’s always been about the money and it will always be about the money.
Years ago, the government intervened when people saw that private business was creating a monopoly. Thus came “anti-trust” legislation. Today, though, there is nothing to stop the government when it violates its very own anti-trust legislation.
In other words, who is going to arrest the sheriff?
That’s when a country begins to crumble.
Eisenhower’s quote goes right to the heart of the matter. Provision of public funding for university research, while necessary given the scale and expense compared to a century ago, has had a corrupting influence on both politics and science. For the former, it provides justification for public policy which it does not deserve, and for the latter it directs research and conclusions into areas which government wishes. It also promotes scientists into public policy arenas for which they are no more qualified than any layman.
Fact is, Eisenhower was a very wise and patient man. He had the nearly impossible job of keeping Britain and the US both working together operationally during WW2 despite the greatly differing interests of the two nations. His decisions as President were nearly all sound and wise. Unlike his blundering successor, he managed to keep the US out of Vietnam.
Unfortunately the Lysenkoism of AGW is so pervasive in our society that unless a miracle of some sort occurs it will drastically change our lives through loss of freedom and our standard of living.
Unfortunately, academe has largely become an intellectual con game. As I wrote earlier, the main objective is to achieve tenure. Once on that gravy train, one’s objective is to remain on it.
When I said “con game”, I don’t mean fraud or plagiarism, though many researchers have deliberately stooped to that. Many inflate their activities by publishing papers that are often thin in content.
One such case stands out for me. The supervisor I had when I started grad studies did that. He took a set of data, published half in one paper, published the remainder in another, and took half of each of those sub-sets and produced a third. The result is 3 somewhat lacklustre publications for the price of one that would have had some real substance to it.
Does anyone check? Not really. All that’s of concern is the *number* of publications as well as the journal in which they are published or the conference where they were presented. Status, as well as volume, counts.
One reason I’m glad I never became an academic was that I didn’t want to play that game. I would write something and try to have it published when I was good and ready and that it had some real content.
One reason I returned to university was because I was disgusted with what I dealt with in industry. Sadly, the academic environment turned out to be little different.
By the way, I can tell a few stories to tell about certain government projects I worked on….
Exactly. Research is rarely driven nowadays by the what the investigator has in mind. Instead, it’s subject to the whims of whoever’s funding it.
It comes, therefore, as no surprise that the “climate change” hoax holds such sway. Much of the money comes from government agencies and, in order to have access to it, researchers have to go along with the doctrine.
If funding were to come from neutral sources, if such exist, it might be interesting to see just how many of those “climate change” advocates really do support it.
I found the same conditions when I worked in academia. That’s one of the factors that motivated me to be self employed, working in the private sector doing the research I considered important.
Bingo! That’s what I’m doing as well.
I’m semi-retired, live off the money I saved and invested over the years, and work on my research whenever I can. That way, I’m my own funding agency, I get to decide what’s worth looking at, and if and when to write something. I don’t have to publish for the sake of publishing as my job status, such as it is, isn’t dependent on the number of titles I add to my CV.
I say to people when we’re discussing science. What is the Scientific Method. Is it making a theory without showing your research, then expecting others to disprove it, ’cause it “sounds right?” Some people think that’s true. Enough said. Math on any scale whatsoever is completely beyond most of the whole language and personal esteem calculator victims of modern education, bereft of common sense to forward the progressive narrative.
People intuitively know CAGW is BS but they still don’t connect it with statist government, increased taxation and further pressure on the poor. They’re disengaged. In southern ON they went for the shiny pony; their compunction for self-inflicted injures now affects us all. ON and AB are heading for the dumper and quick, there may not be enough of an oil & gas or manufacturing industry to take advantage of the international recovery in one or two years time. Pulling $billions out of the economy won’t help at all.
We’ve voted ourselves into decline with free stuff, climate change sycophantasies and embarrassed ourselves on the international stage with our selfies PM, voting away stability and standing in favour of statist idiot royalty, and their rent seeking court jesters, who all, contrary to reality, actually think they’re wise and witty, using their false narratives to screw with our liberty.
I shake my head a time or two every day, while not watching one second of mediocracy TV news and reading far and few between of their other garbage, preferring my own reliable sources. I do keep up with the daily beckoning gong show that is Canadian politics – nasty, brutish and boring. At least the US scene offers entertainment and yes, hope for public sanity and common sense to, maybe, recur.
Bingo — that is exactly what has happened. I regularly got annoyed when people accused Harper of “ignoring” the science on issues. He did not. It is primarily that the left’s view of science is HIGHLY selective on many, many policy issues from mandatory minimums, to drug policies, to climate change. Here is a summary of how the science has been seriously distorted to push the climate change agenda. This may have been posted before — in case you missed it, it is a good one:
What the climate wars did to science:
http://www.rationaloptimist.com/blog/what-the-climate-wars-did-to-science.aspx
The narrative on the left is always one-sided an myopic. Plus they like to shout down all of the alternative voices.
If the general public had even HALF a notion of the “games” played to secure government funding for scientific research … they would be 99% against the JUNK-science of Global Warming. YOUR tax dollars are perpetuating this MYTH. Money that could be so much better spent FIXING … REAL … environmental problems. YOU are being LIED to ! … and they have the temerity to call it “science”
I saw a good item yesterday and I forgot to save it. Ike was standing with McAthur when they attacked 10 thousand WW1 veterans in 1932. It was an eye opener for any people who think the army will support them against a tyrannical government.