Posted on 01/23/2006 7:26:53 AM PST by ZGuy
In our secular, post-religious society, the figure of the cassock-clad priest has been replaced by that of the white-coated scientist. Dispensing wisdom from the laboratory -- his every word is awaited breathlessly by a world thirsting for knowledge.
It's all very well having secular shamans, but when they're caught cooking the holy books once too often, the faithful start to get worried. Scientific fraud, like that perpetrated by South Korean stem-cell researcher Hwang Woo Suk, is not new. Newton did it; Dalton did it; even Sigmund Freud did it. In more recent times, IQ researcher Sir Cyril Burt committed fraud, as did Australian gynecologist William McBride.
Ernst Haeckel spun pictures of human and animal embryos out of whole cloth in order to show that they shared primitive evolutionary similarities. The year 2002 saw the uncovering of apparent frauds by physicists Victor Ninov at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and Jan Hendrik Schön at Bell Labs. [snip]
I venture to suggest that contemporary science is now so corrupted by the lust for loot and glory that nothing less than root-and-branch reform can save it. I share the late philosopher Paul Feyerabend's demand for a separation of science and state, or at the very least a radical curtailment of public financial sponsorship of scientific research. How could the millions thrown at scientists be anything other than a veritable inducement to misconduct? When you combine it with the honors and awards that await the next would-be secular savior of humanity, one wonders that fraud is not even more common.
Were a bishop to be caught doctoring the Gospels, I doubt any scientists would be rushing to approve the Church's latest request for help to build a new cathedral. Why it should be any different for the secular bishops of science is difficult to discern.
(Excerpt) Read more at sfgate.com ...
Amazing, I stopped reading after only 6(5.5 perhaps) words. I think that is a new record for me.
Continue reading. The piece is quite good.
........and Global Warming Theorists don't, I suppose?...........
Socialist welfare statists are a 10X bigger threat to science than IDers.
In the 1960's the federal government started pouring money into science. At the time, I disapproved, to the amazement of my colleagues, saying eventually scientists will tell the government whatever it wnats to hear. I think that has ocme full flower now.
In 1882, Friedrich Nietzsche's Parable of the Madman predicted that European civilization was on the threshold of absolute freedom and power, unshackled by any notion of God, who was not only dead, but moldering. And if any worshippers yet remained it was because they had not yet heard the great news.
At the age of 45, Nietzsche suffered a mental breakdown from undetermined causes, embracing a horse among other things and asking it to sing. Yet even so, he would have been surprised to learn that in barely a century, the European civilization he believed to be on the brink of "a higher history than all history hitherto" -- would have collapsed upon itself, eviscerated by two world wars and terminal demographics; that churches, now called mosques, would be filled with worshippers from Indonesia, North Africa and the Middle East.
If the Madman came to 21st century Paris, he might announce the death of other gods, alike without success. He would have come too early, the harbinger of an event that had not yet reached the ears of men. The tidings he would bring would be unfamiliar, "and yet they have done it themselves".
Sensational puff piece. In other words, "what a pant load".
Just what good has the scientist brought? Everyday we hear of people dying of dropsy, consumption, the vapors, broken hearts, boils, exzema, and the dread strep throat.
OTOH, many scientists have and are doing extensive research, to assist humans in obtaining better health
and alternative treatments as we continue to live in a growing toxic world.
An excellent article.
The author concentrates on medical research, but it applies to climatology as well.
"separation of science and state"...I like it.
To a sufficiently primitive mind, science looks like voodoo. This guy should philosophize a clue.
Money is thrown at science because it performs valuable work and we hope to encourage it. Corruption is part of the price.
and Global Warming Theorists don't, I suppose?Of course. The same forces that encourage fraud in science in general are doubled and tripled in the field of "climate change" where the rewards aren't just monetary but the love and adoration of the Hollywood crowd.
Congressman Billybob
Latest column: "The 'Chocolate' Minds of Mayor Nagin and Senator Clinton"
And who was it who caught these frauds? Other scientists, that's who. The wailing in this article about scientific fraud is documenting the successful efforts of science to police itself. There might be a rationalization to build a "double blind" process of funding where scientists don't know where their money is coming from, and donors don't know where it's going to eliminate the incentive for shading data. But this article doesn't make it's point well by painting science as an association of frauds.
Yep. I'll be surprised if you make it out of here unscathed with that observation, though.
Because they're our society's high priests.
My mother lost 3 siblings to deseases that we have no fear of today. It used to be very common for parents to lose maybe a third, or half, of their children by the time they were old enough to leave the house. You can go back to those dark days anytime you want, but the rest of are staying in the 21st century, brought to you by scientists.
True. The high priests of old explained the unexplainable to the masses, and that's what gave them their power. When there are no more questions that the old "priests" need to answer, then what good are they?
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