Derrick Jackson usually has a must-skip column in the Boston Globe once a week; today is no exception. In "Reclaiming Science" he profiles Jane Lubchenco who will be bringing "science" back to the White House:
The Bush administration paid so little attention to any of this that Lubchenco told the Associated Press a month before the presidential election, "The Bush administration has not been respectful of the science."Said Ms. Lubchenco. Jackson's love letter casts aside the idea of objectivity to portray Lubchenco as a Cassandra unheard by the unscientific Bush Administation. Is her science sound? Who cares! Lubchenco is the sole source for the column and since her science falls on the side of Al Gore and all the other Lubchencos in the world, it must be correct.
Maybe Jackson should have read some Michael Crichton:
I want to pause here and talk about this notion of consensus, and the rise of what has been called consensus science. I regard consensus science as an extremely pernicious development that ought to be stopped cold in its tracks. Historically, the claim of consensus has been the first refuge of scoundrels; it is a way to avoid debate by claiming that the matter is already settled. Whenever you hear the consensus of scientists agrees on something or other, reach for your wallet, because you're being had.Stick that in your furnace and burn it, because it's going to be bitterly cold here in New England this week.
Let's be clear: the work of science has nothing whatever to do with consensus. Consensus is the business of politics. Science, on the contrary, requires only one investigator who happens to be right, which means that he or she has results that are verifiable by reference to the real world. In science consensus is irrelevant. What is relevant is reproducible results. The greatest scientists in history are great precisely because they broke with the consensus.
There is no such thing as consensus science. If it's consensus, it isn't science. If it's science, it isn't consensus. Period.
Extra - PowerLine: "It's really, really cold out there!" What are you going to believe, your freezing arse or the consensus scientists?
More - Gateway Pundit: "Brrrrrrr"
2 comments:
Somehow, amazingly, this spaz-tastic hysteria seems to be waning.
I notice all the AGW prophets are taking a much more nuanced position now, temporarily abandoning the "AGW deniers are traitors" BS in favor of phrases such as "we need more data" and "it's a complex phenomenon".
Snoop-Diggity-DANG-Dawg
Of course it is waning. They got their majority in both houses and the Presidency. NOW they can go for the long term funding aspect that includes stopping all progress until their studies produce results. Which will be about the same time we have a red sun.
Blair
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