blowfish,
thanks for your comment. My point is not to argue for ID - since I'm not an ID person. My point was to argue that scientists are just as human as anyone else - and subject to poor thinking. I was surprised that not a single person read and commented on Dr. Lindzen's article in today's WSJ. But none of us like to examine things that point to our faults - myself included.
ampu
Science is not a foible-driven kuhn-ian knitting circle, nose-in-the-air critiques by non-scientists to the contrary notwithstanding. Science is the most powerful intellectual solvent ever known because it formalizes, and raises to a high art, filtering out individual conceits and errors through peer-reviewed publication, followed by field verification by a largely critical and resistant audience. Inumerable feeble critiques of science based on pop psychology have come and gone for centuries, science remains, because, at the end of the day, science pays intellectually and tangibly profitable dividends and pop psychology pays lip service. And this "outsider" theory of science isn't significantly borne out by experience. Ideas matter when they pass muster in the scientific obstacle course, not when some knight on a white horse comes thundering in with a spanking new idea.
First of all, at least 317 people read the article on FR. Second, it seems rather disingenuous for a professor at MIT to be saying that people lose their jobs for saying what he is saying. Has he lost his job? I'm sure climate critics are disappointed that their policy recommendations are not being accepted, but that is politics, not science.
If it were not for the public policy aspect, climate science would not be perceived as unusually contentious.