Why scientists lie -- and what to do about it

The American Thinker ^ | December 01, 2009 | Paul Shlichta

[Scanian]

The recent revelations of misrepresentation by CRU scientists about research on climate change should come as no surprise. Scientists, like all human beings, are sometimes tempted to lie or cheat and occasionally they succumb to those temptations.

Actually, scientists don't do too badly. According to a recent analysis of surveys of scientific misconduct:

"In surveys asking about the behavior of colleagues, fabrication, falsification, and modification [of data] had been observed, on average, by over 14% of respondents, and other questionable practices [such as 'dropping data points based on a gut feeling', and 'changing the design, methodology or results of a study in response to pressures from a funding source'] by up to 72%."

That's probably a better track record than sociologists or economists could muster. I shudder to think what the corresponding percentages would be for politicians or journalists.

[steelyourfaith]

 

Beam me to Planet Gore !

[Bon mots]

The Best of Al Bore:

"The Polar Ice Cap Will Be GONE in 5 Years!"

Click on the image below to see Al Gore claim that the ice cap will vanish in five years!

(It will not. It is thicker and larger than ever.)

"The center of the Earth is millions of degrees..."

The center of the earth is estimated to actually be between 4000 and 6-7000 degrees.

:)

---

[crazyhorse691]

An “Everybody else does it” defense.

[1776 Reborn]

Why are we suprised that academic scientists would lie about climate change when their colleagues have done this with our history and social sciences for decades?

[DannyTN]

An “Everybody else does it” defense.

Exactly.

[ClearCase_guy]

Perhaps scientists would smarten up if our culture just got into the habit of shrugging and saying, "Scientists lie. They make stuff up. You want me to fund that sort of thing?? HA!"

If they needed to clean house (and they do) in order to warrant future funds, they would.

AIDS research, Evolution, Climate Science, DDT ... the list is long for scientific research which is constrained by an existing ideology such that only scientific thought which is "appropriate" can be contemplated.

That's not science at all.

[wita]

The CRU miscreants might say, like Browning’s Mr. Sludge, “I cheated when I could...but there was something in it, tricks and all!” The basic “greenhouse’” mechanism has been under scrutiny for over fifty years and appears to be valid. The ability of human activity to significantly affect global energy balance is obvious from satellite photos and was demonstrated by the effect of halocarbons on the ozone hole [5]. And since our prodigal use of Earth’s resources, if unchecked, might well lead to eventual uninhabitability, some of the measures proposed by AGW advocates, such as economical energy/materials usage and replacement of fossil fuels with renewable ones, are simply prudent planetary housekeeping.

I therefore recommend that, while fighting against nonsensical schemes like cap-and-trade and avoiding extreme measures that would endanger our already precarious economy, we become judiciously cooperative about reasonable and gradual approaches to energy conservation, supportive of honest efforts to learn more about climate trends, and even receptive to measures for controlling and counteracting them.
NOTES

The writer begins to show he has no concept of the lengths to which reasonable people have gone to conserve energy and show a desire for dialog on the subject only to be laughted to scorn by the liars, deceivers, media, and all those who have bought into the scam. It has come down to a war between what is right, and what is WRONG. The same war that has been fought since Cain tried to quietly disposed of Able. It isn’t about right vs left, it is all about right vs WRONG.

[6SJ7]

A scientist who lies is no longer by definition a scientist, but a politician.

[grey_whiskers]

There IS nothing to it. Any warming we see is overwhelmingly the result of natural cycles.

Posting from a place which was under glaciers ~10,000 years ago.

Without the glacial retreat we'd have no Lake Superior.

And there were no SUVs for the last 9,970 of those 10,000 years.

See also "Hockey Stick".

Or better yet, RTFLeakedEMails.

Cheers!

[Scanian]

It has gotten geometrically worse since big money has entered the profession. Scientists have become thoroughly corrupted as visions of grant dollars and book deals dance in their heads.

[expatpat]

The basic “greenhouse’” mechanism has been under scrutiny for over fifty years and appears to be valid.

The mechanism is valid qualitatively, but no-one knows what its effect is quantitatively. Guesses of climate sensitivity to CO2 range from 0.5 to 5 degrees C, so the science is hardly well-understood, never mind about settled.

[supercat]

The mechanism is valid qualitatively, but no-one knows what its effect is quantitatively.

More importantly, there exist a number of feedback mechanisms, some of which are understood and some of which are not, which tend to regulate the Earth's climate pretty well even in the presence of severe perturbing factors. Some people claim that the feedback mechanisms will hit a runaway condition if CO2 gets much higher, but there is no particular basis for that claim. To the contrary, if such a runaway condition could exist under anything remotely close to current conditions, it would likely have already occurred (e.g. during the Medieval Warm Period). The fact that it has not is a pretty strong indication that it won't.

[expatpat]

there exist a number of feedback mechanisms

That's what I was referring to when I said it was not known quantitatively. The 'bare' effect, without feedback, can be calculated reasonably well (it's about 1.2C) but even the sign of the feedback is not known. There is some evidence that it is positive in the polar regions, where the air is dry, and negative in the tropical regions where cloud formation can offset the bare effect -- but no-one knows.