Month: November 2009
Bruce Chapman on “Hide the Decline,” the Mantra of Corruption
Discovery Institute President Bruce Chapman has written an insightful essay examining the broader significance of the ClimateGate scandal, including its implications for the Darwin-ID debate. Noting that certain major media outlets have tried to spike the ClimateGate story, Chapman observes that “the story is just too compelling to suppress in other outlets and on the Internet.” But he goes on to ask: what will it take for the media to take up the exactly parallel case of scientists who question the ability of Darwinian natural selection to explain the origin of life and the development of species? In several instances (the Richard Sternberg case, the Guillermo Gonzalez case), email trails have shown a similar attitude of entitlement and coercion. And Read More ›
Wesley Smith on “The New Inquisition: Ideology’s Corruption of Science”
Wesley J. Smith has an excellent post at his First Things blog on how the recent ClimateGate scandal is just a symptom of a much broader problem involving the ideological corruption of science: Global warming isn’t the only field in which we have witnessed this kind of brazen ideological corruption of science in recent years. I have seen the same approach taken repeatedly against heterodox views in the human cloning/ESCR controversy, to the point that people have been driven off of faculties or denied tenure. My colleagues at the Discovery Institute face a similar buzz saw in their pursuit of intelligent design hypothesis, and then are taunted by the censors for not being published in peer reviewed journals. Indeed, when Read More ›
Booker on “the Worst Scientific Scandal of our Generation”
British journalist Christopher Booker, writing in the British Telegraph, has a thoughtful essay that puts the various aspects of the ClimateGate scandal in context and provides insight into the relative impact of each component of the scandal. Climate change: this is the worst scientific scandal of our generation
The Secret Life of Climate Researchers
Iowahawk has a delightful post on a newly evolved species: climate researchers. Money quotes: Like other species in the order homo scientifica, the climate researcher gathers and organizes data to lure grant money to the hive. In contrast to those other species, however, the climate researcher has evolved a set of complex violent behaviors to insure any data leaving the hive is perfectly adapted to nature’s most lucrative and sweetest grants. It really is a marvel of natural selection, and explains why the climate researcher continues to thrive in any kind of weather condition…The ear-piercing screech of the swarm warns the intruder that they will cut off his peer review unless he retreats. But the the hungry skeptic is not Read More ›
“Hide the Decline”: the Music Video
It’s going viral. Very funny. link