Posted on 09/25/2015 5:03:03 PM PDT by Citizen Zed
In, say, football, you can measure the 'leading team' either by a score if we're talking about the game, or if the season, by their record. By what measure are any of the media's "leading scientists" leading scientists?
I LOVE LOVE LOVE all this talk about 'One of America's leading scientists' or 'Most of the worlds scientists agree.'
By what standard of measure are they leading? And whom exactly is it that they are 'ahead of'? 'Ahead of' by what measure? That more 'leading scientists' agree with them than the scientists with whom they disagree? (I guess those would be the 'trailing scientists.') That's begging the question - proving the theory using the fact of the theory as evidence.
It's totally arbitrary, propaganda. How do I prove that it's totally arbitrary and propaganda?
Because America's leading political mind has just written that it is.
No matter what you add it just raving nonsense. Just like anything from Paul Ehrlich. The author of "Raving Nonsense for Fun and Profit".
“By what measure are any of the media’s “leading scientists” leading scientists?”
Excellent, and extremely valid point. At a time when less than 50% of research publications are ever cited - even once, and when ~89%% of papers on cancer research from the top journals can’t be replicated (Nature 483, 531–533; 29 March 2012), what exactly is ‘good’ science, and who exactly is a ‘top’ scientist? The matter of who is a top scientist is not decided by whether or not their results hold up, or if they find something that actually makes a difference. It’s decided by how much funding they have, and whether or not they get published in very visible journals (often a function of who much they sensationalize their findings, and who many people they know who might be reviewers). The real criteria should be based on whether or not they are correct in their findings and judgment - and whether or not their findings actually have a chance of making a difference.
Paul Ehrlich is the Gold Standard for being absolutely wrong with "scientific" predictions.
He has set the bar so high, no one will ever be as completely wrong as he!
"In ten years all important animal life in the sea will be extinct. Large areas of coastline will have to be evacuated because of the stench of dead fish." Paul Ehrlich, Earth Day 1970
"Population will inevitably and completely outstrip whatever small increases in food supplies we make, ... The death rate will increase until at least 100-200 million people per year will be starving to death during the next ten years." Paul Ehrlich in an interview with Peter Collier in the April 1970 of the magazine Mademoiselle.
"By...[1975] some experts feel that food shortages will have escalated the present level of world hunger and starvation into famines of unbelievable proportions. Other experts, more optimistic, think the ultimate food-population collision will not occur until the decade of the 1980s." Paul Ehrlich in special Earth Day (1970) issue of the magazine Ramparts.
"The battle to feed humanity is over. In the 1970s the world will undergo famines . . . hundreds of millions of people (including Americans) are going to starve to death." (Population Bomb 1968)
"Smog disasters" in 1973 might kill 200,000 people in New York and Los Angeles. (1969)
"I would take even money that England will not exist in the year 2000." (1969)
"Before 1985, mankind will enter a genuine age of scarcity . . . in which the accessible supplies of many key minerals will be facing depletion." (1976)
"By 1985 enough millions will have died to reduce the earth's population to some acceptable level, like 1.5 billion people." (1969)
"By 1980 the United States would see its life expectancy drop to 42 because of pesticides, and by 1999 its population would drop to 22.6 million." (1969)
"Actually, the problem in the world is that there is much too many rich people..." - Quoted by the Associated Press, April 6, 1990
"Giving society cheap, abundant energy would be the equivalent of giving an idiot child a machine gun." - Quoted by R. Emmett Tyrrell in The American Spectator, September 6, 1992
"We've already had too much economic growth in the United States. Economic growth in rich countries like ours is the disease, not the cure." - Quoted by Dixy Lee Ray in her book Trashing the Planet (1990)
"People are welcome to any religious belief they want but I don't want them planning my planet on the basis of ideas that they think can be ascribed to some supernatural monster written down thousands of years ago. That's just silly"
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