Ok Davin...

Do you think my argument is that science is never wrong? Can you read? Go back and read what I said.

Your claims about Chemotherapy and cloning are apocryphal at best, and I for damn sure don't value your opinion on Cosmology over peer-reviewed experts in the field.

I'm re-reading what you said. But I didn't say science was never right either. While we're on the topic, who exactly are the peer reviewed experts in cosmology whose opinion you value so much more than my own? I'm curious.

Let's re-read your post....

One can make an equally large mistake by assuming that scientists do have agendas. At the end of the day, they are subject to peer review. The output of peer review is ultimately the very essence of their careers. Respect is afforded in science by being right, by being able to defend your ideas against all comers. By not being proven wrong by your peers.

In which corner of academia is this noble viewpoint being sustained? Who is still teaching this? It's certainly not valid in the real world. In the real world a scientist is valued on his contributions (usually in the form of patents, drugs, discoveries or somesuch) and what these contributions have brought to the organization who pays his salary. His income is directly proportionate to his "prestige" and his prestige is equated by his value $$$$ to the organization. His ability to get papers published is almost solely determined upon his or her institutional prestige and often the litmus test of agenda is then a key determiner when peer review publication is sought. If a research scientist obtains a certain amount of notoriety he/she will probably be held onto longer by an organization/educational institution because their presence adds to the collective "prestige" of the institution. Their ability to fend off the attacks of other institutions and groups rests largely with the size of institution and their clout. Suppression of dissenting thought is part and parcel of protecting their "commodities".

Respect is also afforded in science by proving others wrong via the peer review process- and the more visible the theory disproved the more respect you get. I have participated in this process, I would guess that you have not, nor that Larry has.

Yes, some think they can build their reputations by being attack dogs of the peer review process - if you can't create - it's much easier to pooh-pooh. Better yet...pooh pooh while stealing some ideas to modify slightly and proclaim as your own. This is all swell and fine and may earn "respect" - but not $$$. The bottomline is institutions want creators, patents, drugs and ideas. In the competitive peer review process, science is given a backseat and personal egos and institutional egos are the name of the game. But the institutions know where their butter is made and so the risk-takers and the creative or even "fringe" scientific element will find comfort in the unwavering support they receive for trying not just to think outside the box but to reinvent the box entirely.

In the end the output of the peer review process is all an academic has- its (I think) a lousy life and a lousy way of making a career- but they submit themselves to it.

Does science or scientists have political agendas? Yes, sometimes, but more often then not those political agendas are expressed outside the academic process(*)- even if they want to dress it up in scholarly garb. Case(s)-in-point: Noam Chomsky, Teller, Carl Sagan.

Well here I think I have discovered your misconception. You believe most hard science is created in academia - it's not. Almost all breakthroughs are formed in the corporate sector by teams of research scientists in corporate labs. IBM, GM, Sony, Proctor & Gamble...the list is endless. The internet was a military project, the secret to headache and pain relief was a job for the chemistry slaves at Johnson & Johnson. The corporate sector is often at odds with the idealism and anti-capitalistic tendencies of the educational institutions. If one is talented one will discard the leftist cloak of righteousness and go to work for the corporate sector.

And here is the kicker - the peer review process is only for those who need it. If you work for a large corporation - your peer review comes from the board of directors who will further develop your product, finance your research or patent your ideas. Peer review is like an advertisement for people in academia - who want to build their resumes. It is also used to justify research funding and provide results satisfactory enough to keep the funding coming. In academia this is the primary role and purpose of papers submitted for peer review - not the nobility of the scientific process (despite your protestations to the contrary)

Generally, if you want to find folks who are not making much money or whose funding cutoff looms like a sword of Damocles over their work - look at papers submitted for peer review. ;-)

There is politics in science just as much as there is in engineering or software design. However, just as in engineering, the product is divorced from the politics. There is no such thing as a workable 'Liberal' skyscraper or 'Family Values' Hydroeletric Dam. There is no such thing as a peer reviewed and vetted 'liberal' climate model or 'anti-abortion' cell model.

Scientists may be motivated by their politics to study a field, but if they produced Biased, flawed or worse- outright faked product, then it comes out in peer review and their careers suffer. They don't get tenure, they loose grants and they end up working at a Jr. College in Arizona. There are DOZENS of post-docs slavering after every opening, and HUNDREDS of impoverished top-notch European, Russian and Asian researchers dying to get into the american grant system by winning a spot in a department. Academia is where the brightest go to compete against eachother, from all over the world, and it is fierce!

Yes, it is fierce. But the bottom line is $$$. Grant money or corporate employment.

What you want me to believe is that there is a vast Emperors New Clothes conspiracy going on in climate study- where whole schools of thought are publishing flawed bullshit and getting away with it. This is a nice bedtime story told by someone who has not 'served time' in academia. But thats all it is. This is propaganda. Crap. It doesn't work that way.

Furthermore, you cant show me a concrete example of this- can you? Unless you turn to the works of a few discredited researchers or a few kooks outside climatoology who want to demonstrate 'the entire field' as 'fakery and nonsense'. This happens all the time, Tom, this animosity between academic fields. Most recently- the biologosts made a good run at the field of Anthropology with some rather 'stunning' results. You have Geneticists making these grandious claims about how Anthropology wasn't a 'real' science and that 'they' knew how to do this better.

In the end, most of the genetic data was shown to be flawed and naive- hell the famed 'mitrochondrial eve' stuff was shown to be crap recently when it was found that its NOT the case that all mitochondrial DNA is inherited in-toto from the mother.

What you and your 'Bloggist pseudo-intellectual' set has done is latch onto a few trivial obsetrvations (that climate change happens in general), and a few inter-academic rivalries and are trying to say that 'all science behind global warming is biased'. I think you are on a fools errand, and have the fools arrogance.

No, I dont think so. Take a look at this quote from the president of the IUCN, The world conservation union:

“The IUCN Programme is based on the belief that social groups have different needs, interests, rights to and responsibilities over resources. It is therefore designed to balance differences in tenure, power, knowledge and decisions.”

– Yolanda Kakabadse, IUCN President

(Emphasis mine)

Balance of power. Not conservation! Nothing in that statement has a whit to do with conservation! These groups exist to emasculate America and other world powers and turn the US into a puppet of the collectivist "uniworld" - conveniently adminsistered by these "benevolent balancers of power."

When you have these big heavily financed groups out there (and there are lots of them!) and are most are financed by the donations from folks on the left (maybe some folks here;-) and when these groups subsequently finance scientific research with the sole purpose of taking away America's power - you have to stand up against it and defy it. Tom is absolutely right. He may be cantankerous in his treatment of the issue - but he is absolutely right!

If your point is it happens all the time only outside academia - I'd say...BS! It happens in academia as students, researchers and educational institutions are recruited all the time to these various organizations who promise to make them a name for themselves as well as some $$$! You yourself said competiotion is fierce. Environmental science is mostly BS and so hard to prove or disprove, what grad-student wouldn't jump at the chance to produce global warming research and get their name plastered all over the BBC!

In the end, the science of global warming may be wrong or it may be right, but in the end the only politically motivated half-assed conclusions in the process are, frankly, yours.

Davin L.

Tom isn't paid to defend corporations or the stas quo. Neither am I. In the pentagon, like everywhere, you have these flakes running around who sponsor unscientific research just like this - with the sole purpose of embarassing the Bush administration.

If you want to believe we are somehow political prostitutes whose views are power motivated - be my guest. It shouldn't be too hard to see that that's clearly not the case.

SDAI-Tech1