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When someone says the science is settled, that proves they do not understand scientific principles.  Unfortunately, much of what passes for science now, is neither settled or true, 

"The problem with ­science is that so much of it simply isn’t. Last summer, the Open Science Collaboration announced that it had tried to replicate one hundred published psychology experiments sampled from three of the most prestigious journals in the field. Scientific claims rest on the idea that experiments repeated under nearly identical conditions ought to yield approximately the same results, but until very recently, very few had bothered to check in a systematic way whether this was actually the case. The OSC was the biggest attempt yet to check a field’s results, and the most shocking. In many cases, they had used original experimental materials, and sometimes even performed the experiments under the guidance of the original researchers. Of the studies that had originally reported positive results, an astonishing 65 percent failed to show statistical significance on replication, and many of the remainder showed greatly reduced effect sizes.

Their findings made the news, and quickly became a club with which to bash the social sciences. But the problem isn’t just with psychology. There’s an ­unspoken rule in the pharmaceutical industry that half of all academic biomedical research will ultimately prove false, and in 2011 a group of researchers at Bayer decided to test it. Looking at sixty-seven recent drug discovery projects based on preclinical cancer biology research, they found that in more than 75 percent of cases the published data did not match up with their in-house attempts to replicate. These were not studies published in fly-by-night oncology journals, but blockbuster research featured in Science, Nature, Cell, and the like. The Bayer researchers were drowning in bad studies, and it was to this, in part, that they attributed the mysteriously declining yields of drug pipelines. Perhaps so many of these new drugs fail to have an effect because the basic research on which their development was based isn’t valid."

Much more at:

http://www.firstthings.com/art...5/scientific-regress

If a study or experiment can't be replicated, its probably false.  I spent much of my career ferreting our scams and frauds.  Over and over, the reason was greed and a need for esteem.  Pretty much the same here -- grants, iron rice bowl, and name in prestigious scientific journals. 

Psychopaths and sociopaths come in all IQ levels.

TRUTH -- THE NEW HATE SPEECH!

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It appears those who can make a buck in the "green" industry are colluding with Dems to scare people and silence opposition.

From: http://eelegal.org/2016/04/15/...te-climate-skeptics/

Emails Reveal Schneiderman, Other AG’s Colluding with Al Gore and Greens to Investigate Climate Skeptics

 Washington, D.C. (April 15, 2016) – The offices of New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman (D), and other politically-aligned AGs, secretly teamed up with anti-fossil fuel activists in their investigations against groups whose political speech challenged the global warming policy agenda, according to e-mails obtained by the Energy & Environment Legal Institute (E&E Legal).

E&E Legal released these emails on the heels of a Wall Street Journal report about a January meeting, in which groups funded by the anti-fossil fuel Rockefeller interests met to urge just this sort of government investigation and litigation against their political opponents.  After the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) criticized these AGs’ intimidation campaign, the U.S. Virgin Islands’ Claude Earl Walker — one of the AGs working with Schneiderman — subpoenaed ten years of CEI records relating to the global warming issue.

The e-mail correspondence between Schneiderman’s staff, the offices of several state attorneys general, and activists was obtained under Vermont’s Public Records Law, and also show Schneiderman’s office tried to obscure the involvement of outside activists.  His top environmental lawyer encouraged one green group lawyer who briefed the AGs before their March 29 “publicity stunt” press conference with former U.S. Vice President Al Gore not to tell the press about the coordination.  At that event the AGs announced they were teaming up to target opponents of the global warming agenda.

David Schnare, E&E Legal’s General Counsel, noted, “These emails show Schneiderman’s office suggested their outside-activist green allies deceive the press; meanwhile, AGs in his coalition have subpoenaed at least one policy group’s correspondence with the media. We call on these AGs to immediately halt their investigation and lay out for the public the full extent of this collusion, producing all records or information provided them in briefings or other work with the outside activists, including those they are trying to keep secret through a Common Interest Agreement.”

 

Well, even though I don't agree with everything in the article, it was an interesting read, until the author said:

"Some of the Cult’s leaders like to play dress-up as scientists—Bill Nye and Neil deGrasse Tyson are two particularly prominent examples...".

That's where everything went south.  To say Neil deGrass Tyson 'plays dress up as a scientist' shows that the author is an idiot and didn't do his home work.  Apparently a person with a PhD in Astrophysics from Harvard does not qualify as a scientist in the authors mind. 

http://www.haydenplanetarium.org/tyson/profile

So, what we really have here, is an anti-intellectualism treatise camouflaged as an open-minded critique of certain aspects of science.  The authors real intent is to create widespread doubt within the public mind in the validity of all science.

 

 

OldSalt posted:

Well, even though I don't agree with everything in the article, it was an interesting read, until the author said:

"Some of the Cult’s leaders like to play dress-up as scientists—Bill Nye and Neil deGrasse Tyson are two particularly prominent examples...".

That's where everything went south.  To say Neil deGrass Tyson 'plays dress up as a scientist' shows that the author is an idiot and didn't do his home work.  Apparently a person with a PhD in Astrophysics from Harvard does not qualify as a scientist in the authors mind. 

http://www.haydenplanetarium.org/tyson/profile

So, what we really have here, is an anti-intellectualism treatise camouflaged as an open-minded critique of certain aspects of science.  The authors real intent is to create widespread doubt within the public mind in the validity of all science.

 

 

The article is hardly anti-intellectual.  It reveals a number of non-repeatable experiments that the scientific community took as real, only to be found false.  The gravitation wave failure was a surprise to me.  Tyson has popularized science and has an admirable academic background. 

Bill Nye is an engineer by training.  However, he's strayed into the climate change political sphere.  When anyone claiming to advocate science takes the line that anyone who disagrees with him should go to prison, then he is the same as a medieval ecclesiastic court.

OldSalt posted:

Yeah, its also funny that the author tries to castigate Bill Nye then the author himself is only a mere software engineer. 

Isn't it ironic -  software engineer, who claims engineers are not scientists, trying to discount the entire scientific community.

Can you discount or disprove the more important items of the article -- the erroneous (purposeful and mistaken) scientific claim?  One condemnation of something one does not agree with does not destroy the entire argument.  I've audits where I knew that much more was stolen than I could prove. But, was satisfied with the results. 

I have little doubt that most of what is written is accurate since the author borrows most of it from other sources.  What I do have a problem with is his opinions.  The manner in which the article is presented is an to attempt to cast doubt within the less educated public on the entire scientific community thereby discrediting science in its entirety in favor of religious dogma. 

OldSalt posted:

I have little doubt that most of what is written is accurate since the author borrows most of it from other sources.  What I do have a problem with is his opinions.  The manner in which the article is presented is an to attempt to cast doubt within the less educated public on the entire scientific community thereby discrediting science in its entirety in favor of religious dogma. 

While the article is in a religious journal (Catholic), the purpose is to caution against science as a cult, not to discredit science, which is what those who would make science a cult would achieve.

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