Can't leave scientists alone with science

By Denis G. Rancourt, PhD


(This article was first published on my climate blog.)


If the generalized global warming fever and "climate change" hysteria has taught societal observers anything it is that you cannot leave scientists alone with science.

The scientific enterprise is embedded, and scientists are manufactured service intellectuals.

Two outcomes are possible.

In the first extreme scenario, those scientists that are mainly responsible to recruit young minds and to fabricate the illusion of research freedom are given freedom within the framework of professional advancement based solely on peer-reviewed publication output. The result is irrelevant gibberish, as any institutional analyst would predict.

In the other end-point scenario, research funding is tied to professional advancement and is determined by government agencies and corporate interests. The outcome is again precisely as would be predicted: the research output exactly satisfies the contractual conditions.

This is true whether one is patenting a genetically modified organism, or approving a new "non-addictive" pain medication, or developing a next-generation delivery system for nuclear warheads.

The on-going episode of global warming "science" has illustrated a structural flaw in this otherwise functioning state-science system: If scientists are given career-enhancing supra-national political instruments to create exaggerated relevance of their work in driving a globalist agenda, then they will take the opportunity and run.

Such runaway irrelevance is already known to occur on its own within a career-centered science network (the so-called Gold Effect). [1]. With the climate scare example, we see that the phenomenon is highly amplified when there is a strong corporate or institutional and propaganda-supported driver.

Usually, societal observers and ordinary citizens would not notice. In this case however, the shrill alarmism that has been generated, propagated by the mainstream media, and condoned by the science establishment, is stratospheric. The independent-thinking blogger can detect the tenuous nature of the claims of everything from imminent human species extinction to continental flooding to engulfing forest fires to unprecedented mega-storms to war-causing droughts, and so on. [2].

You can't leave scientists alone with science. Thankfully, in this case, the propaganda runaway has caused the insanity to be palpable, influential domestic forces are not buying in, and a large segment of the middle-class is not swallowing it; species extinction or no species extinction, bumblebee migration or no bumblebee migration.

The heroes in this story -- in this unique and historic example where a large segment of society has correctly perceived a widespread profiteering construct -- are the bloggers and vloggers, the domestic industrial interests that resist finance globalization, the USA political networks that reject global governance, and, of course, the exceptional scientists that refused to compromise intellectual integrity and publicly said so.

All of this, in circumstances where the relevant planetary physics is straightforward, if anybody cared. [3].


Endnotes

[1] See the description of the Gold Effect in:  Rancourt, D.G., Cancer arises from stress-induced breakdown of tissue homeostasis, Research Gate (December 2015), 25 pages. DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.1.1304.7129

[2] My critical review of the global-warming "science" of forest fires may be one of the best illustrations of how bad the science is, as I document the "runaway" recorded in the scientific literature: Rancourt, D.G., Anatomy of the false link between forest fires and anthropogenic CO2, Research Gate (May 2016), 18 pages. DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.1.2059.6087

[3] Rancourt, D.G., Radiation physics constraints on global warming: CO2 increase has little effect, my climate blog (June 2011), http://climateguy.blogspot.ca/2011/06/radiation-physics-constraints-on-global.html

Denis Rancourt's articles and interviews on climate are listed HERE.
Links to all my articles are HERE.