Free Republic

Science should be a profession, not a priesthood.In March 2020, the iconoclastic French microbiologist Didier Raoult announced that the anti-malaria drug hydroxychloroquine had cured all 36 COVID-19 patients enrolled in his clinical trial. Many of Raoult's colleagues rejected his conclusions, arguing that the trial was too small and noting that it was not randomized and controlled. But as the deadly coronavirus spread rapidly throughout the world and governments responded with draconian lockdowns, public attention was quickly drawn to the chance that a common and inexpensive drug might rid the world of the danger. President Donald Trump promoted hydroxychloroquine as a...

We'll be able to have more productive and honest conversations with one another the sooner we realize that while morality takes sides, science does not.Even as coronavirus vaccines slowly make their way into the population, debates rage around the world on whether lockdowns should continue or be implemented anew. Often in these debates, one hears the term “science” tossed about irresponsibly, sometimes by participants on both sides of the argument.Most of the time, however, when people say that we should “follow the science,” they mean we should listen to the expert advice of medical professionals who argue in favor of...

The multi-colored placard in front of a $2-million home in North Center Chicago proudly proclaimed, “In this house we believe: No human is illegal” – and “Science is real” (plus a few other liberal mantras).I knew right away where the owners stood on climate change, and other hot-button political issues. They would likely tolerate no dissension or debate on “settled” climate science or any of the other topics.But they have it exactly backward on the science issue. Real science is not belief – or consensus, 97% or otherwise. Real science constantly asks questions, expresses skepticism, reexamines hypotheses and evidence. If debate,...

One of the reasons why humans are handicapped in our understanding of reality is because of our reliance on the “scientific method”. It is a system based on observation. The problem with this method is that our understanding of reality is corrupted by the limits imposed by observation. Indeed, as well well know, it is the perception of the observer that changes our reality. This is a well understood rule. If you the reader, don’t “get it”, then you need to study quantum mechanics 101. For in the last two decades the entire foundation of our understanding of reality has...

Activists pushing climate change socialism are frustrated by their inability to persuade rational people of their irrational arguments. At heart: can you be a scientist while rejecting the scientific method? There is absolutely zero evidence of man-made global warming -- none whatsoever. Moshe Pritsker, a former post-doctoral researcher at Harvard Medical School and CEO of JoVE, told Live Science. "The reproducibility of published experiments is the foundation of science. No reproducibility -- no science." Just because one can buy a lab coat for $46.39, that doesn't make them a scientist. Today "science" has degenerated into "thought experiments." That is, "imagineering"...

For three decades, global warming alarmists have harassed society with stories of gloom and doom as a result of the carbon dioxide emitted into the air by the burning of fossil fuel. They are exercising precisely what prominent writer H.L. Mencken described as “the whole point of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed and hence clamorous to be led to safety by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary”. In fact, the man-caused global warming or climate change panic may well be the best hobgoblin ever conceived. It has half the world clamoring...

“Science” is not a set of facts but a process or method that sets out a way for us to discover information and which attempts to determine the level of confidence we might have in that information. In the method, a “claim” or “hypothesis” is stated such that rigorous tests might be employed to test the claim to determine its credibility. If the claim fails a test, the claim is rejected or modified then tested again. When the “scientific method” is applied to the output from climate models of the IPCC AR5, specifically the bulk atmospheric temperature trends since 1979...

Limited access to research details and a culture that emphasizes breakthroughs are undermining the credibility of science It’s hard to argue against the power of science. From studies that evaluate the latest dietary trend to experiments that illuminate predictors of happiness, people have come to increasingly look at scientific results as concrete, reliable facts that can govern how we think and act. But over the past several years, a growing contingent of scientists has begun to question the accepted veracity of published research—even after it’s cleared the hurdles of peer review and appears in widely respected journals. The problem is...

Fewer than 1 percent of papers published in scientific journals follow the scientific method, according to research by Wharton School professor and forecasting expert J. Scott Armstrong. Professor Armstrong, who co-founded the peer-reviewed Journal of Forecasting in 1982 and the International Journal of Forecasting in 1985, made the claim in a presentation about what he considers to be “alarmism” from forecasters over man-made climate change. Now it looks like maybe, one tenth of one percent follow the scientific method” said Armstrong in his presentation, which can be watched in full below. “People just don’t do it.”

In classrooms across the country, high school students are taught the scientific method. It consists of constructing a doubtful hypothesis and designing a series of experiments to test the hypothesis with the observable facts. After a number of tests prove positive. The student can then take the facts and reach a conclusion. When a conclusion is constantly verified,it is enshrined in what might be called "established" science.There is a second kind of science that uses methods very different from those of "established" science. In fact,this science,if indeed it might be called such, uses the exact opposite method. It consists of...

The stakes are higher than most conservatives realize. When the fraud of man-made global warming finally dies, folks will start thinking: What else were we lied to about? How could the high priests of modern knowledge have confidently insisted something that was never remotely plausible? A key element of progressivism is having wise philosopher-kings who make benevolent decisions for the masses. It is a core element of conservatism that you can make decisions for yourself. But for progressives, it is essential to convince the public that the designated authorities know better than you do, including what to eat, how to...

The word “pseudoscience” is used to describe something that is portrayed as scientific but fails to meet scientific criteria. This misrepresentation occurs because actual science has creditability (which is to say it works), and pseudoscience attempts to ride on the back of this credibility without subjecting itself to the hard intellectual scrutiny that real science demands. A good example of pseudoscience is homoeopathy, which presents the façade of a science-based medical practice but fails to adhere to scientific methodology. Other things typically branded pseudoscience include astrology, young-Earth creationism, iridology, neuro-linguistic programming and water divining, to name but a few.

(PhysOrg.com) -- A software developer has created a "chatbot" program for Twitter to automatically detect set phrases associated with arguments put forward by those skeptical of anthropogenic global warming, and to send automated replies of set phrases debunking their arguments. Nigel Leck’s creation is @AI_AGW (also known as Turing Test), and the script searches the Twitter site for hundreds of phrases he believes tend to be used by those who think global warming is not occurring, or who think it is occurring but is not anthropogenic or entirely anthropogenic. When the script finds one of the phrases it then "tweets"...

Many writers have waxed long about why obama rules the way he does. Was it because of his father? Or his long association with mark davis? Or that his mother abandoned him? Liberals are very one dimensional "thinkers", to use that term, I admit is a stretch. They cannot see beyond their views, but profess themselves to be deep thinkers. Yet, daily their plans and programs go bad in the real world. Probably because the real world is 3 dimensional, and for their every "action" there are ramifications they never thought about. If they live in their cloistered halls of...

Liberals and the Scientific MethodWarmists are acting as enforcers of orthodoxy, not seekers of truth.  True to their mission as the organs of the liberal establishment, Time magazine and the New York Times ran stories in the midst of the great snowmageddon warning us against drawing any politically incorrect conclusions. “Skeptics of global warming,” cautioned the Times, “are using the record-setting snows to mock those who warn of dangerous human-driven climate change — this looks more like global cooling, they taunt. Most climate scientists respond that the ferocious storms are consistent with forecasts that a heating planet will produce more...

“Peer-review. Peer-review. Peer-review.” This used to be every Climate Change Alarmist’s favourite mantra – most memorably deployed by tofu-crazed green activist Ed Begley Jr when he went postal on Fox News. Sadly, their beloved peer-review is now dead – killed by Climategate. So argues Patrick Courrielche at Big Journalism in the thoughtful piece I mentioned yesterday. He explains: The establishment’s peer review process is one that subjects an author’s scientific research to the scrutiny of other experts in the same field of research. An author typically submits their research to a recognized peer review publication, and this publisher then sends...

The East Anglia Climate Research Unit (CRU) revelations come as no real surprise to anyone who has closely followed the global-warming saga. The Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) thesis, to give it its semi-official name, is no stranger to fraud. It would be no real exaggeration to state that it was fertilized with fraud, marinated in fraud, stewed in fraud, and at last served up to the world as prime grade-A fraud with nice side orders of fakery and disingenuousness. Damning as they may be, the CRU e-mails are merely the climactic element in an exhaustively long line. A short tour...

http://www.genomeweb.com/proteomics/team-sequenced-proteins-t-rex-now-sequences-hadrosaur?emc=el&m=380314&l=9&v=1771019082

Some time ago many in the Church of Global Warming abandoned the exclusive use of the term "global warming" to describe current climate trends. "Climate change" is the preferred term now, since many weather events in recent years do not appear to fit the perception of what we would see on an unnaturally warming planet. I will continue to use "Anthropogenic Global Warming" (AGW) to describe this ideology. Although atmospheric CO2 concentrations continue to increase, global temperatures have more or less plateaued in the past decade. Since the plateau occurred at a warm average temperature, we've been treated to innumerable...

WACO, Texas (BP)--Baylor University officials ordered the shutdown of a personal website of one of a handful of the school's distinguished professors because of anonymous concerns that the site, hosted on the university’s server, supported Intelligent Design. Robert Marks, distinguished professor of electrical and computer engineering at Baylor, launched a website called the Evolutionary Informatics Lab in June to examine whether Darwinian processes like random mutation and natural selection can generate new information. Marks' conclusions, as explained on the website, placed limits on the scope of Darwinism and offered scientific support for Intelligent Design. In July, a podcast interview with...