Posted on 05/22/2015 7:25:50 AM PDT by Academiadotorg
In the final decade of the Cold War, President Reagan urged Americans to “trust by verify” when engaged in arms control negotiations with the Soviet Union. When digesting academic research, it might be a good idea to reverse this formula and verify first, and then, if possible, trust, the information offered.
Case in point: Harvard historian Naomi Oreskes. In a chapter in the book How Well Do Facts Travel? Oreskes attempts to unearth a connection between global warming skeptics and the energy industry, specifically a company called Western Fuels. Oreskes asserts that she has in her possession “leaked Western Fuels memos.”
“She claims she found them ‘in the archives of the American Meteorological Society (AMS) in Washington, D.C.’ and advises, ‘scholars wishing to consult these materials should contact the AMS,’” Ron Arnold writes in the April 2015 edition of Environment & Climate News. “AMS is actually headquartered in Boston, Massachusetts It maintains a small Washington, DC office for government affairs, but it has no archives.”
“The AMS archivist in Boston verified no such documents ever existed in the society’s archives.” E & C News is published by the Heartland Institute.
By the way, Oreskes’ research was featured in former Vice-President’s factually challenged film on global warming—An Inconvenient Truth.
I think it was “Trust but verify”.
The real inconvenient truth is that you simply cannot trust professionals in most academic fields for accuracy in their books or posted research. Why? Because no one ever really checks their data. If they list a source and lie about it, it simply continues to be a ‘truth’ which can be cited over and over by others with the same point of view to reinforce their arguments.
And if they ARE checked out and it emerges that the data is either false, non-existant or ‘massaged’ out of all recognizable fact, then there is seldom a retraction or any punishment from their employer. Witness the false narrative of Elizabeth Warren which got her a job as a victimized ethnic group member, but did not result in her firing when the truth came out.
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