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Correction of "Publisher's Weekly" review, October 5, 2004
| Reviewer: | Patrick J. Michaels (Waynesboro, VA) - See all my reviews |
Their review states:
"...his remedy for biased science is not better science but a "wider source of bias" in the form of more funding of climatology by the fossil fuel industry"
My text is very clear on this. From Chapter 12:
"Environmental science funding should not derive from a single provider, but such a monopoly will inevitably develop as long as the political process provides the vast share of scientific largesse. In this environment, private sources, ,meaning indivuduals and foundations, have little incentive to fund basic science."
"One solution to the dilemma of predictable exaggeration is to take advantage of the relationship between science and its funders, recognizing that nothing is free. There is clearly a broad spectrum of interests on climate change, ranging from those who are threatened by regulations to th ose who will thrive from them".
Both the basic language and a long prior history of writing on this indicate that I surely am not confining this to the fossil fuel industry! I have written voluminously that breaking the problem of monopoly funding means getting ALL interests involved even if the total amount of support remains constant. That means the Sierra Club as well as Chevron-Texaco. That means Honda/Toyota (which probably benefit) as well as Ford (despite W.C. Ford's public protestations, they have a lousy track record on total corporate fuel economy).
I think that should have been very clear in the book and I apologize if it was not.
Publisher's weekly is also aghast that I think Academic Tenure should be abolished, but, as argued repeatedly in the book, the problem with tenure is that those who judge the applicants are those who must be in the monopoly stream in environmental science research, which make any assistant professor reluctant to work outside of that stream. In other words, in this case, tenure destroys, not fosters, diversity. Anyone who has ever sat on a Promotion Committee is painfully aware of this difficulty.
I gave this four stars because I suspect that's going to be the overall rating and I didn't want to bias the results.
Hope you all enjoy the read. It's worth it just for the cover, which is a beaut. It was fun to write.
PJM