[RightWhale]

I look at science as a thing in itself, and those who do science as scientists. Educators, politicians, publishers, greenies, all these people on the periphery of science are not scientists and are not doing science. Science is being used for other ends, no doubt about it. The climate models are good, I think, and I know a little about them, but that they are being used for something other than science is a reflection on some educators, politicians, publishers, and greenies rather than on scientists or science.

[.cnI redruM]

While I will admit that there is a philosophical appeal to washing one's hands of the grubby strap-hangers and practicing science from a moral standpoint of altitude and distance, there is a point where rubber meets the road. The findings of scientists go through a process of data reduction similar to what happens when an empiricist actually measures something. That data has to be changed in form several times, before that data can be useful to the people fronting the $$ to acquire the information.

A scientists bears a personal moral responsibility for what happens to his data, with his name and prestige staked to it, once it gets published in a refereed journal. If the scientist turns a blind eye or doesn't deign to concern himself with what the lesser beings do with that scientific truth, that scientist is morally and professionally negligent.

I believe that the field of environmental science in particular, and much of science in general, has been overrun by people who intentionally and professionally misuse data to procure political and social propaganda. The scientist who watches that happen and then fails to throw the big red BS flag, has performed a regrettable error of omission.