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You may speak for yourself. In my opinion, all too often scientists do, in fact, treat science as dogmatic belief. Try and get a medical doctor - a scientist by training, to consider alternative medical care, even as basic as aspirin instead of acetaminophen or St. Johns Wort instead of prozac. Another example, the current "Global Warming" hysteria has been fed by scientists who have converted belief into falsification of evidence.

I would ask you, how many scientists do you, personally, know? How much of the scientific/medical literature have you read? On what basis do you make the pronouncement that the majority of scientists treat science as "dogmatic belief"? I would propose that unless you surround yourself with scientists and are very well versed in the scientific literature, you do not have *any* kind of insight into how we (scientists) think or believe.

If you have unsuccessfully tried to get an MD to agree to some "alternative" treatment, did you entertain the possibility that the MD in question has a professional obligation to not provide treatments whose efficacy has not been thoroughly investigated by the research community? There are any number of reasons an MD might not go along with "alternative" treatments--for instance, they may be aware that St. Johns Wort has not undergone rigorous, controlled testing, and they do not know whether chemicals in the herb might interfere with other drugs you are taking, or exacerbate your condition. It is simply irresponsible to prescribe therapies that aren't supported by good, research-based evidence. (This isn't to say you can't find an MD to go along with "alternative medicine." Many MDs do put profit above medical ethics.)

Now, for the Global Warming hypothesis. With this issue, unfortunately, leftists who have always wanted to control every aspect of our lives saw a perfect opportunity to try to do so. It was the perfect issue for them, because it allows them to mask their lust for ultimate power over other people's lives as being concern over the future of our planet, the only planet we know of that can support life. The ability of climate scientists to get funding does not depend on any global warming hypothesis, since there are any number of scientific reasons to fund their research (better prediction of hurricanes, better understanding of thunderstorms, etc.). Unfortunately, leftist politicians decided to direct funding towards "global warming" and away from other worthy areas of research, to the extent that almost any request for funding contains some catch-phrase about how it ties in to "global warming".

What the global warming fiasco illustrates is that freedom-hating leftists have an unbounded ability to twist any scientific subject into something that serves their agenda. It is *not* a condemnation of science or the scientific method.

“I would ask you, how many scientists do you, personally, know?”

Many.

“How much of the scientific/medical literature have you read? “

A fair amount

“On what basis do you make the pronouncement that the majority of scientists treat science as “dogmatic belief”?”

Really? You misquote me and create a strawman and want to be taken seriously? ROTFLMAO! Try reading what I wrote rather than what you believe I wrote, then get back to me.

As for doctors and their odd (and unscientific) beliefs, read http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/index.php/the-case-of-john-lykoudis-revisited-crank-or-visionary/ and then, if you have any integrity at all, get back to me with your apologies. (Yes, plural.)

The "dogmatic belief" comes from an over-reliance on the null hypothesis coupled with Occam's razor, to the point that "not sufficiently demonstrated and publicized within peer-reviewed channels" becomes *equivalent* in the scientist's / doctor's mind to "necessarily false".

Look at the troubles early doctors had in advocated aseptic conditions in surgery; the role of Heliobacter pylori in ulcers; the dogmatism of Ben Santer, Michael Mann, Gleick, etc. in AGW.

Over *time*, science does have an error-correction feature: but like the garbage collection feature in Java, or like the error-detecting mechanisms in DNA replication, it is not foolproof, even over a timespan of decades or (possibly?) centuries. And it is explicitly dependent upon the expenditure of large sums of money and tens of thousands of people being supported with taxpayer money and devoting their lives to nothing else: which, as Heinlein points out in another context, is a very rare circumstance, and not the default condition of human culture.

Cheers!