Corrupt science

Science as much as anything else has suffered under the post-modern paradigm of relativity.

When truth is something someone decides for themselves then it is no longer truth because it is not fact based. We are all entitled to our opinions but we are not entitled to our own 'facts'. When truth in science is no longer fact based then science just becomes someones opinion and is easily corrupted into being another way of falsifying data in order to push an agenda.

Witness the man made corruptions of 'climate science' and the billions misspent in 'stopping' it.
This small extract from Jo Nova encapsulates the current dilemma:

“Expert” science panels should only ever be judged by their science not their politics. A successful panel can judge theories by objective criteria: do they predict the world around us, are they strictly logical, and do they have observational evidence (data) to back them up? With so many incompetent professors and meaningless Nobel Prizes, qualifications don’t guarantee ability anymore. The idea that we could ask “experts” how they vote or tally up their donations to political parties is profoundly unscientific. Nature has lost the plot.

If Daniel Sarewitz wants people to perceive scientists as rising above politics, I hate to say the bleeding obvious, but scientists need to actually rise above politics. Scientists need to stop being activists and start holding logic and evidence above all else, and speak cautiously about their ability to predict the world until they can demonstrate their ability to do it.

What we need are not Democrat-scientists or Republican-scientists, we need scientist scientists.

When some scientists are caught hiding declines, honest upstanding scientists need to denounce them. When good scientists don’t speak up about the bad ones, is it any wonder the public assumes that all of science is as corrupted, sick and self serving as every other human institution?

In climate science the self-correcting mechanism of reality takes an age to winnow the trash from the treasure. Billions can be wasted in the meantime. Compare that to the wizards of Silicon Valley whose products are tested day after day. Who cares about the political inclinations of those technologists? It works, or it doesn’t.

When scientists predict that there will be no more snow, and it snows, there ought to be a price. When a scientist can tell us the rains won’t fill the dams and that our cities need expensive desal plants, and he’s proven wrong yet suffers no loss of reputation or stature (or funds), what does it mean to be a scientist? Nothing. The people trashing the reputation of all scientists are the ones who stay silent while charlatans steal the brand-name and good will of science, and get away with profoundly unscientific behavior.
 

I might not agree with everythng she says,but when it comes to scientists acting like scientists I say...go girl!