[ForGod'sSake]

Since the majority of people I’ve associated with my life through have been scientists, I know your reasoning to be flippant and unsound.

You're right, I was unfair; I'm acquanted with a few myself. Many, maybe even most in the scientific community are still honest to God scientists but they aren't allowed to run with the big dogs. I thought this was fairly common knowledge around here; maybe not.

[SatinDoll]

There has been this trend over the past thirty years for nonprofessionals to be placed within boards or committees or organizations, that make baseless decisions affecting the lives of the rest of us. Or for people with radical agendas, such as anti-capitalist environmentalists, to make their way into government regulatory agencies through academia.

For example, the Jack Thomas Ward Report (the one on Spotted Owls) is an example I know of personally. Ward purposely excluded any exculpatory evidence demonstrating that these birds lived and survived outside of old growth forest in the Pacific Northwest.

One of my coworkers (I worked in the Nuclear Power Generation Industry for years) lived next door to a State of Washington wildlife biologist. This man, along with his biologist partner, observed a breeding pair of Spotted Owls nesting and rearing young in second-growth timber over a period of eleven years. This data was given to Ward but never included in the report. Same with the State of Oregon wildlife biologists; they too, had their data ignored.

Ward produced a biased, junk-science report that purposefully propagated a lie. He had no proof that these birds only survived in old growth forest, none at all. It was all done to shut down a thriving wood products industry and drive people out of rural areas.

I don't consider people like Ward to be real scientists. But I do understand where your thinking originated, I really do.