Guest Essay by Kip Hansen
Prologue: This is the fifth, and last, in a series of essays discussing ongoing scientific controversies—each one a so-called “science war”. This essay attempts to illuminate the similarities that exist between the four previous topics and, of course, the Climate Wars.
Warning: This is not a short essay. Dig in when you have time to read a longer piece.
So far in this series, I have written about The Salt Wars, The Great Barrier Reef Wars, The War on Sugar and most recently The Obesity Epidemic [aka The Obesity Wars]. At the end of each of these essays, I have encouraged readers not to get ahead of themselves by drawing parallels to the Climate Wars, promising that I will get to it in the end–this essay is that end. What follows is my analysis of the core elements of Modern Scientific Controversies.
All Modern Scientific Controversies (MSCs hereafter) begin with one required element without which there would be no MSC. That element is an ADVOCACY CAUSE (the Cause hereafter). We have seen these Causes in each of the MSCs discussed in this series: in the Salt Wars, the Cause is to “reduce the dietary salt intake of the general public to save lives”; in the Great Barrier Reef Wars the Cause is to “save the reef from destruction by human activity”.
In each case, the Cause is a position made up of three planks – like a political platform. These three planks, in each and every controversy, are: the Problem, the Truth, and the Solution.
MSCs usually, but not always, start off with a widely recognized Problem that needs resolution. In the Salt Wars, the perceived Problem is too many people are suffering from High Blood Pressure which increases public health care costs results in the premature deaths of too many citizens. It is something real, is actually happening (at least epidemiologically). In the Climate Wars, the average surface air temperature (as far as can be determined) seems to have risen by 1°C or so since the mid-19th century (which coincides with the beginning of the modern industrial era) and while, to some, this is good news, it is perceived by some to be a grave problem. In the Obesity Wars, rising numbers of the obese are considered to be driving up health care costs and harming the health of many.
We see that the Problem must be something real that can be convincing said to be actually happening and that can be communicated to be a situation that requires a solution or …. something bad continues or takes place in the future.
MSCs don’t always start with a problem to be solved…they can start with a preferred action—the Solution—and through back-formation, arrive at the problem that the solution could be said to solve.
The next two elements—planks—of a Cause are the Truth and the Solution.
Let’s start with the Truth. For the advocacy cause to gain any respectability—any veracity—the Truth element must be irrefutable. Let’s look again at the Salt Wars: the Truth of the Salt Wars is that dietary salt increases blood pressure. This is a fact—every time you feed a human a reasonable dose of salt, be it in his soup or on his mashed potatoes, the person’s blood pressure will go up for a period of time. In the Obesity Wars there are two Truths in play: “calories in > calories burned = weight gain” and obesity is a risk factor for many adverse health conditions. Both are facts, irrefutable. In the Climate Wars, increasing CO2 concentration in the atmosphere causes the Earth system to retain energy that would otherwise be re-radiated into space [h/t Physics].
In each MSC, the Advocacy Cause a Solution is then presented as an application of the Truth that brings about the necessary resolution of the Problem. We are all aware of these proposed solutions: Force everyone to lose weight to solve or prevent obesity, save lives, and reduce public health care costs; greatly reduce the amount of salt in the public diet through education, propaganda and government regulation of food manufacturing and prevent heart disease; stop all human activity that could adversely affect reefs and spend more money on reef research; reduce consumption of added sugars through a public campaign of sugar shaming, regulations and punitive taxation. [Post publishing addition (h/t to reader gregjxn): Notice that in almost all cases, the Advocacy Cause Solution contains an element of coercion or enforcement in which the general public or some portion is required to comply or participate in the Cause’s Solution–by direct government intervention, regulations and laws, public propaganda campaigns, required changes to public school curriculum, etc. 1816 hrs Eastern Time 2 Jan 16 17]
MSCs can feed on one another, the Great Barrier Reef Wars feed on the Climate Wars, the War on Sugar feeds on the Obesity Wars. They become mutually reinforcing.
I know, I know…..I hear some readers saying “But…But…But….”. You are right.
The other Key Factor in MSCs is that the Advocacy Cause—the three plank platform—ALWAYS has one or more serious FLAWs. Without the Flaw, there could be no controversy, the Advocacy Cause would simply, slowly or quickly, become the accepted reality of its science field and segue into public policy—there would be no opposition. The Flaw can be scientific—applying any of the three planks: Truth, Problem, or Solution. There may be something about the science of it that makes it invalid, inapplicable, unlikely, untenable, impossible, foolish or nonsensical. The Flaw can be social—the public may not believe the Problem, the Solution may be unacceptable socially, the Truth may offend moral sensibilities. The Flaw can be political: any of the three planks can simply be impossible politically in the area of concern.
Let’s look at some of these Flaws.
In the Salt Wars the flaw exists in the Truth (and thus infects the Solution). Dietary salt does increase blood pressure, but for the vast majority of the population the increase is very small and not clinically important. [see Minimal Clinically Important Difference — Defining What Really Matters to Patients by Anna E. McGlothlin, PhD and Roger J. Lewis, MD, PhD] It is only for those genetically-determined to be salt sensitive that salt reduction becomes part of the solution for high blood pressure. The Advocacy Solution of “reducing the dietary salt intake of all citizens” is thus flawed and rightly deemed by its medical opponents as being an ill-advised experiment that uses the entire population as a cohort (experimental subjects) without their informed consent; an experiment that may well have negative effects for most of the subjects.
In the Great Barrier Reef (GBR) Wars, there is a Flaw in both the Problem and Solution. It is true that human activity can harm reefs, especially near-shore reefs and reefs subject to intense sustenance over-fishing and that high surface sea water temperature can and does cause coral bleaching. In general, the problems are local in scope and thus solutions must be specifically local—for this island, we must stop sustenance over-fishing, stop the use of improper, destructive fishing techniques, dispose of wastewater from the city further out to sea. For the GBR, Australia has long-enforced very stringent restrictions on activities that could harm near-shore reefs and the results have been and continue to be very positive – the drum-beat of continued demand to further restrict human activities, which restrictions are unlikely to have much, if any, additional benefit, is seriously flawed. The advocacy position in the GBR Wars that is in support of the Climate Wars is an additional Flaw, bleaching occurs when El Niño comes into play, and Super El Niños bleach even more – cutting CO2 omissions will have little to no effect on sea surface temperatures and affect only very-near-surface reefs.
In a MSC not previously covered, the Flaw is social. Unless you are a pediatrician, involved in the fight against STDs (sexually transmitted diseases) or a school administrator, you may not have heard of the controversy surrounding Human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine. The vaccine is recommended by the CDC for all 11-12 year olds. It has become simply another of the large range of normally administered childhood immunizations. The MSC though stems from—you guessed it—an Advocacy Cause. In this case, the Cause is to require that all girls entering junior high school to be vaccinated for HPV to be allowed to attend school. This movement, entirely unnecessary, poisoned the HPV vaccine effort – many citizens did not want to think that their precious little girls needed to be vaccinated against a sexually transmitted disease at age 11 or 12, if ever. The Flaw is that the Solution proposed in the Advocacy Cause was socially unacceptable. Very few parents, however, had any objection to their pediatrician’s suggestion that children be vaccinated against HPV as part of the normal course of childhood vaccinations. It was only the Advocacy Cause to enforce vaccination through the public schools that generated opposition. In this MSC, as in others, there are also other contributing Flaws: the current vaccines only prevent some of the many types of HPV infections, the current vaccine can cause anaphylactic shock in some patients receiving it, etc.
In most of the MSCs, the Flaws are the very aspects of the Advocacy Cause intentionally introduced by the Advocates to inflate and exaggerate the seriousness of the Problem, to pump-up the effectiveness of their proposed Solution and/or to increase the applicability, scope, or significance of their Truth.
Dan Kahan, of the Cultural Cognition Project, has his own (his project’s) idea of what causes these MSCs, which his group labels the Science Communication Problem. I do not agree with their blindered social science conclusions but in one or two cases, Kahan has correctly identified the source of the problem: Advocacy gone wrong. It is a shame that Kahan and his associates are unable to take a few steps back to achieve perspective, instead, they assert the position that seems to be that any-and-all consensus statements from authoritative sources must be True, Pure, and Unbiased and therefore any opposition to their dictates must be irrational and caused by “cultural cognition”. John P.A. Ioannidis, taking a much more pragmatic view, states simply: “Claimed research findings [and their consensuses – kh] may often be simply accurate measures of the prevailing bias”.
Many of our MSCs rely on “white hat bias” to gain support for their Advocacy Cause. Who could be against “fighting cancer” or “saving whales” or “preserving the world’s coral reefs”? The Advocates respond to criticism by repeating (endlessly and with infinite variation) their Truths and defy opponents to “deny the science” and invariably accuse opponents of “supporting (or being supported by) Big Tobacco or Big Oil”. Advocacy Solutions are forever exaggerated in effect: “will save millions of lives” and “bring about a brighter tomorrow”. Opponents, who have the audacity to point out the Flaws are vilified as “anti-science” or “against progress” and scientific findings by opponents are denigrated, regardless of their validity.
For Advocates “The Cause” often becomes all-consuming and leads them into behaviors that have been distasteful, harmful, duplicitous and illegal. I leave it to readers here to inform each other of examples.
The Bottom Line:
All Modern Scientific Controversies are brought into being by Advocates, who build an Advocacy Cause on a three plank platform of a Truth, a Problem, and a Solution.
- In each MSC the Advocacy Cause contains major, invalidating Flaws in one or more of these planks.
- Advocates, usually on the basis of white hat bias, use exaggeration to increase the seriousness of the Problem, the applicability of the Truth, and the benefits of their Solution.
- The more heated a MSC becomes, the worse the behavior of the participants – personal attacks, denigration of valid scientific findings, guilt by association, assassination of professional reputations, backstabbing, and name-calling are all par for the course — usually confined to the Advocates but also infecting opponents in some cases, when they find themselves frustrated, abused, vilified and fighting for their reputations.
- The general public is left confused and polarized with their trust in Science and Scientists betrayed and left diminished by the public display of uncivil and unscientific behavior on the part of the scientists involved.
- And in the Climate Wars all of the above in spades.
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Author’s Comment Policy:
I enjoy reading your comments – I read them all, every one, as long as WUWT leaves comments open. I do try to reply to comments specifically addressed to me, leading with “Kip….”. I strive to keep my replies pertinent to the topic of the essay and hope you do will do the same.
Regular readers will know that I have little interest in what are called The Climate Wars, particularly as “fought” in the comment sections of the various climate blogs. I generally do not respond to salvos from either side of the climate divide. There are plenty of opportunities for Climate Warriors to battle elsewhere – please take that kind of activity to those other blogs.
I’d love to see your analyses of Modern Scientific Controversies – you may see many things that I have failed to see.
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The “Nuclear Winter” was the ho@x closest to CACA, including many of the usual suspects.
Remember when Saddam set fire to the oil wells? That one disproved the nuclear winter theory, in spades.
It never had a valid scientific basis. It was pro-Soviet political advocacy from the start, espoused by nuclear freeze activists like Sagan, Schneider and Ehrlich.
The other interesting aspect of Saddam and the Kuwaiti oil wells was that he deliberately allowed them to pour crude oil into the Persian Gulf in what was the biggest oceanic oil spill of all time. According to standard environmental dogma, this should have poisoned all sea life in the area for ever. However, when they came to do a clean-up operation about 18 months later, they couldn’t find any oil. It had, presumably all been metabolised by the aforementioned sea life.
Interestingly enough, no-one seemed to remember this when BP had its oil well blowout in the Gulf of Mexico a few years ago, in much the same climatic conditions.
Roger,
Environ@zis have managed to make enemies of the oil-eating microbes which naturally cleaned up the Gulf of Mexico spill:
http://www.livescience.com/54330-oil-eating-microbes-threaten-shipwreck-ecosystems.html
Thankfully, the real test has not been done.
Roger Graves and R. Shearer ==> It has been found that those pesky bacteria (and other micro-life) are eating the pelagic plastic as well: An Ocean of Plastic.
I meant the test to prove or disprove “nuclear winter.” I’d rather we not find out if the models are correct or not.
Chimp- there are plenty of oil eating microbes, but what appeared to happen at least in the USA was that they ate mostly the light fraction. The heavy tar fractions(significant amounts, some washed up), coalesced and sank to the bottom. They are still getting covered with sediment but present no real biological problem.
R. Shearer
January 2, 2017 at 3:38 pm
We don’t need to detonate 60,000 nuclear warheads to determine whether nuclear winter could happen or not. The assumptions behind the GIGO models are so preposterous that there is no reason to imagine that such a thing is possible.
Their soot assumptions were unphysical and targeting entirely different from both the US SIOP and Russian strategic war plans. Most strategic warheads would have been used against military targets like command centers, silos, air and sub bases rather than central cities capable of burning.
Most tactical warheads would have been used against armored formations in open country, such as the KGB-misnamed “neutron bombs”, ie enhanced radiation warheads, which are anti-tank weapons. Their assumptions for underwater explosions were high but not impossible, however. Every Soviet sub, including old diesel models, carried nuclear torpedoes. Every Red Army artillery battery of 152mm and larger had nuclear projectiles.
The early 20th century equivalent to the late 20th century CACA sc@m was the eugenics consensus, which enjoyed similar institutional support.
I’m convinced that eugenics is a big part of the push behind the solutions for CAGW. Same crowd looking at a finite pie.
I agree. One difference might be that eugenicists wanted to get rid of certain groups deemed inferior, while CACA acolytes seem to hate just about everybody, but especially the white males who advocated eugenics, except for their special and superior selves, of course.
Good insights into what makes up a controversy and why. Easy read as well.
The vaccination recommendation for only female teenagers is also clearly discriminatory. While of course males are at no risk of cervical cancer/neoplasias, they are the co-carriers that propagate it to females who are at risk, and thus should also be the target of stopping HPV transmission.
Further men are susceptible to several cancers of which HPV is the initiating causative agent, oral-pharyangeal and rectal cancers clearly have an HPV origin. We do not need to get into any written descriptions of how this happens, suffice to say it is a reality.
As for making it a mandatory vaccine, I do agree that school enrollment should not be the social mechanism to force compliance. It should come from doctors urging in private to parents and their younger patients.
I agree.
Vaccination in general is under attack from both Left and Right. It should be encouraged but not made mandatory. Herd health kicks in below 100% coverage. At what level of vaccination for each preventable disease, I don’t know.
I should say herd immunity.
re; vaccine,
Can’t agree. If your child had leukemia and becomes susceptible to all virus etc whilst going through chemo, why should your child be put at risk because other choose not to vaccinate. These children can die from measles.
These children and many others like them are protected by the herd.
I was specifically referring to HPV vaccine. Measles is different. Ro is at least 10 with this respiratory virus. Vaccination for MMR should be mandatory, no question. If smallpox were still circulating, then that one too. But it’s not. Polio is also a highly contagious public health threat that is still present in some parts of the world, enough that the Salk and Sabin vaccs need to be continued.
It is always possible to think of seemingly valid reasons why the state should force people to do things. There is always a claimed benefit for somebody. Just about every modern mass murdering tyrant did so, and meant it.
I am absolutely pro-vaccination but we must always have choice.
I will agree that Vaccinations are beneficial. However, I would still want to maintain people’s personal freedom by leaving it up to them whether or not they want to get vaccinations. Those choices have consequences, but maintaining personal freedom and not letting the government force something on its citizens (you) is also important; at least to me.
Measles is extremely infectious via the respiratory system, it is most infectious for the 3 days prior to becoming symptomatic. In a school environment is almost inevitable that unvaccinated individuals will contract the disease if an infected child attends the school. With such a infectious disease the ‘herd immunity’ isn’t so effective. Unfortunately the success of the earlier vaccination program has led people to think that measles is a trivial disease, the memory of the death rate associated with it having been forgotten. Death rate in USA and UK in modern conditions is about 3/1000 cases, in the early part of the 20th century it was more like 25/1000 cases.
The CDC recommends vaccination for both sexes:
“CDC now recommends 11 to 12 year olds get two doses of HPV vaccine—rather than the previously recommended three doses—to protect against cancers caused by HPV. The second dose should be given 6-12 months after the first dose. For more information on the updated recommendations, read the press release: https://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2016/p1020-hpv-shots.html”
Bear in mind that virtually all sexually active adults will contact one or more HPVs during their lifetime, the vaccines are particularly targeted against the cancer causing ones (in both sexes).
Phil. ==> You are quite right about the CDC — linked that page in the essay. The MSC “centered on proposals to add the vaccine—for girls only—to the schedule of mandatory immunizations required for middle school enrollment. ” see Kahan’s essay.
The interesting issue in this MSC is that the same parents had no objections to their pediatrician’s recommendations for vaccination.
BTW, the Advocacy arose from “Women’s Rights” groups, according to Kahan.
Here is another example. Well worth the read.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/10/06/for-decades-the-government-steered-millions-away-from-whole-milk-was-that-wrong/
Alex => Yes, The Fat Wars (not fat people but what fat is bad, is fat bad, etc)
Ah yes, the well meaning government busybodies . . . .
“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.”
C. S. Lewis
KeithO ==> Thank you for quoting the inestimable C.S. Lewis. Always a treat.
Thanks, Kip, that was a very worthwhile series of essays.
Just in my own field (biomedicine), there are quite a few trends and fads based on flawed science that don’t quite get the scrutiny and discussion they deserve — maybe at some point there will be “wars” around them, but there aren’t now.
Michael ==> I learned a lot doing the series — there are about a half-dozen unwritten essays, research done but not written up. I was really curious about the similarities discussed today — and it took a lot of digging to find them.
Quality work. Good job.
Kip, the internet has shaken my belief in any paid for science. You have laid out a blueprint to largely weed out the bad apples. I thank you for your efforts.
Advocacy cause aka Noble Cause. And what misery those have visited upon mankind over the millennia.
Excellent analysis of the various “wars”. I am having trouble attempting to relate it to the overall war on science which begins with a lack of skepticism regarding populary held causal theories and is exacerbated by lack of understanding of basic sound research principles and statistical analysis. The one good and freqently occuring example of which is differentiating between correlation and causality. Then there is always the commonly occuring intentional ignoring of sound research principles for advancement opportunity or funding reasons.
In any event, good post.
Jim G1 ==> The “War on Science” is partly a result of of the downside of Modern Scientific controversies.
Quoting #4 in the Bottom Line: “The general public is left confused and polarized with their trust in Science and Scientists betrayed and left diminished by the public display of uncivil and unscientific behavior on the part of the scientists involved.”
Kip,
This, I believe, is even more true for those who have some knowledge of scientific method, data gathering, and statistical analysis. The more one knows, the less likely for them to trust what they are told without some checking. Unfortunately, this is is rather small part of the general population. Most just drink the coolaid.
Jim ==> The teaching of critical thinking skills, starting in 6th or 7th grade (the beginning of true literacy for many) is essential to turn this around.
In the Internet Age, it is even more important that kids learn how to distinguish between sources of information and to judge the value and validity information for themselves.
I learned early to place almost all apparently trustworthy incoming information into a mental bin labelled “possibly true”–where it remains awaiting more confirmation. I have a mental bin labelled “probably false” as well. I have a very very small bin labelled “true enough to be usable”.
Kip,
“White Hat Bias” is not a phrase I’m familiar with, but it will be in my lexicon from now on. I have heard of “Noble Cause Corruption” which is, I think, what happens when people with white hat bias become too emotionally involved with their cause. Once they accept the notion that their cause is so noble that achieving it justifies any action, they are lost.
Noble Cause Corruption publications.
e.g. Noble cause corruption: Do the ends justify the means?
And of course, “Noble Cause Corruption” is practically admitted by CAGW alarmists. Only they don’t call it that. They call it “post-normal science.”
Mickey,
They do however speak of doing their bit for the “cause”.
Paul Penrose ==> “White Hat Bias” and when used in a science dispute it allows the proponent to consider himself “one of the good guys” and his opponents “the bad guys”. It is the kissing cousin of Noble Cause Bias.
Well done, but perhaps you omitted the rôle of the Sociology of Established Groups (think of Semmelweiss ~1850 against the medical establishment for 25+ years).
Ditto for the rôle in MSC’s of striving to gain &/or preserve prestige & hierarchy.
Society seems to be far more influenced by emotion/politics than logic/science. As proof of this, you reference the name-calling that erupts at certain stages of MSC’s from Scientists who call themselves logical.
And plate techtonics.
And the Bretz (Missoula) Floods. The Old Guard needs to die off for scientific progress to continue.
Although sometimes they can be convinced by evidence, as in the case of Helicobacter pylori bacterial infection causing gastric ulcers.
“The Old Guard needs to die off for scientific progress to continue.”
A good example of this is N-Rays “discovered” by French physicist Prosper-René Blondlot in 1903. That mistaken theory only truly died off when Blondlot died.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N_ray
Lorne White ==> I named (and limited) this series Modern Science Controversies to keep them separate from historical science controversies and those specific times when new ideas were fighting for acceptance against long-established paradigms.
The two types of controversies don’t share a common origin — though some of the behaviors are the same.
We may find that Climate science segues from a Modern Scientific Controversy into a Classical Science Controversy as the advocacy for CAGW dies out and modern climate scientists are left fighting the entrenched AGW-old-guard.
The Limits of Knowledge and the Climate Change Debate, Brian J. L. Berry, Jayshree Bihari,
and Euel Elliott, Cato Journal
CACA has already so corrupted science in general and lowered its prestige that it may take decades to recover, if ever.
Yet when you mention the sad state of science to the media educated, they look at you like they haven’t got a clue what you mean.
Pop ==> Took me a minute to realize you mean “those educated by the Media” as opposed to those who have magically managed (against all odds) to receive a real education. Quite agree.
Sorry, bad choice of words on my part. Should have written ” MSM indoctrinated” instead of “media educated. Facts and factoids look alike to anyone who takes everything at face value (one of the vulnerabilities of faith).
Pop,
It’s true that people who should know better buy into the media’s parroting of 97% consensus among “all scientists” on CACA and accusation that the GOP is “anti-science”. I find that some who get their news from the MSM are still willing to consider instances of anti-science on the part of fellow liberals.
This may be so when looked at through our particular prism, but for others it demonstrates the worth of science – that it can identify environmental threats and advocate solutions.
Science teaching in the UK is being given greater and greater emphasis and includes its mandatory climate “science” component. It is this transmission of scientific “truth” to the young that is so insidious. How many of us are lectured by our offspring to reduce salt intake, cut down our fat intake or beat ourselves for our carbon footprint? Some science advocates have much to answer for, even invading our homes through our loved ones.
“it is humanity’s ability to exploit that ecology to an almost infinite extent that is important and relevant. In other words, the critical variables of creativity and innovation are absent from alarmists’ consideration.” David, I’ve been arguing this for over 15 years, it is a fundamental flaw in many environmental scare stories.
Kip, thanks for an interesting series of posts. When you first started, I presumed that a couple of obvious issues would be included in the list of 5 controversies which you did not name. To wit, 1) the arguments by anti-government conspiracy believers against mass public vaccinations, 2) the arguments by eco-activists against genetically modified crops (this group overlaps to a large extent with CAGW supporters), 3) the arguments by command economy Utopians for social engineering of populations via artificial genetic selection (Eugenics), admittedly mostly a dead issue now, and 4) perhaps most famous controversy, the battle of believers in inerrant Biblical literalness against the sciences of evolution and genetics, a long lived, perhaps never-ending battle. In these 4 cases, we have a lot of variety of primary motivations, but there is definitely a “cause” in each case. My understanding of the idea behind the power of these respective memes are
1: Vaccine opponents seem to want to thwart governmental intrusion and infiltration into our freedoms. This is a true conspiracy belief, but it points out the dangers of weak-assed science like CAGW being pushed by bureaucrats and government funded scientists and activists. If they push for control of people over objective truth, they will incentivize more anti-government conspiracy believers.
2: Anti-GMO believers are brainwashed by the modern eco-activist movements from a very early age in public schools and by media and officious elements with poor science training. Exhibiting piety in this movement is an important reward mechanism. Virtue signaling is perhaps a replacement for many young people who no longer have church or faith as part of their training and education. This is the same style of religious observation as is the virtue signalling around CAGW.
3:Eugenics, although mostly discredited now, because of the Nazi atrocities, is nevertheless, not dead. It is still part of the darker aspects of Malthusian wet-dreams. If, as the Malthusian believes, human populations must be diminished, I suspect there are more than a few who would also want to control the “quality” of humans that remain in that much more limited society. Would not a true Malthusian be likely to prefer young over old, the able-bodied over disabled, “normal” over birth-defects, high IQ over low IQ, healthy over sick? Of course they would. The real issue here is that Malthusians, including CAGW believer believe that “experts” are capable of such enlightened engineering at all. Ironically, eugenics is not scientifically invalidated, but discounted almost purely on the idea that humans may not be ethically experimented upon without their informed consent. Does the rabid Malthusian intend to give everyone free choice? Given the recent examples from RFK Jr, to the AGs and screaming rights deniers on local campuses, I don’t think so.
4: Evolution opponents are simply between a rock and a hard place. Their religious belief calls upon them to believe in literalness, and in spite of the near perfection of the story of Adam and Eve as a metaphor for the evolution of human intelligence, they cannot allow themselves to see the beauty of the story as metaphor. At least they are defending the word of God, something in their own minds bigger than themselves. Again, piety forces the believer to avert his gaze from the actual evidence, the fossilized bones, the remarkable realization of the vast tree of life, the newer understanding of the causes within DNA and individual reproduction. I recall many years ago, on Usenet newsgroup alt.skeptic, one believer on the edge of losing his faith in a young Earth finally began to see the truth of the evidence and then fired of his last salvo, saying God just made the world to look like it’s billions of years old.
One of the major fallacies in many of the health studies is that a particular condition, behaviour or lifestyle (smoking, obesity, high blood pressure) increases health care costs for the state. Over the short run, this may be true, but in the long run, it is thin, healthy people who cost the health care system the most, as can be seen in this study:
http://www.plosmedicine.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pmed.0050029
Healthy people also live long enough to draw on pensions and old age security.Dead smokers do not, even though they paid their share to fund these plans.
Hmm. I never thought about it that way. Thanks, Trebla. It has occurred to me that the optimum benefits strategy for a health insurance company is that which kills old clients as quickly as possible.
In fact, we can infer from its outcomes (health and financial) that the intentional strategy of the Medical Establishment is to kill us as slowly and as expensively as possible. This is not to say that doctors and nurses aren’t genuinely working on our behalf; it’s just that they don’t determine policy. It’s the insurance and pharma and hospital companies that do that. The result is hyper-expensive and ineffective “sick-care.”
The USSR was infamous for encouraging smoking and drinking in order for its subjects to die before old enough to collect state pensions.
Tebla, I’ve often seen evidence that taxes on smoking in Australia significantly exceed the costs of smoking-related illnesses. Doesn’t stop people arguing for higher tobacco taxes on the (totally false) grounds of the health costs imposed.
What about the widespread hysteria over the largely imagined epidemic of ritual satanic abuse? Then there are the widespread somewhat corrupt practices involved in activities related to recovered memory syndrome. Who is ever held to account when the public is infected by largely mythical problems and the madness of crowds sets in?
Rob R ==> Interesting phenomena usually classified under the heading of Urban Legends — some of which are so widely spread and believed as to enter into daily public discourse and policy — as did the Satanic Rituals thing — some police forces actually assigning a detective unit to the issue.
Kip, good essay. I feel though that we need to explore further the Flaw in the Truth element of the MSC.
What I feel is common and can be demonstrated in all your example MSC’s, is that the Truth expounded by the Advocates of a particular solution might be irrefutable, but it is not the only Truth. There can be more deeply hidden truths that are significant to the perceived problem and as a consequence point to different solutions.
Take the salt example. Let us suppose it is irrefutable that added salt increases blood pressure to some degree in every human being. But if, as you state, salt is really a problem with a small minority of human beings, then is there something as yet unidentified, or at least under appreciated, other than salt that is the real danger? The case of the bacterial cause of peptic ulcer disease comes to mind.
I submit that there can also be a mis-diagnosis of the problem. Is coral bleaching necessarily bad? Might it be the aqueous equivalent to a forest fire? Are not forest fires necessarily a bad thing? Well, evolution has created species that depend upon forest fires as part of their life cycle, such as the lodgepole pine. The obvious parallel to the CAGW “problem” is obvious. Never mind the beneficial aspect of higher CO2 concentrations to the members of the Plant Kingdom, it has never been obvious to me that a warmer climate is a bad thing overall, much less catastrophic.
Stephen Rasey ==> All very good points. And, of course, the Truth element itself can be flawed or be a flawed understanding, even if widely accepted. To work as the Truth plank in a MSC it must at least be seen to be irrefutable.
It is left to the Opponents of a MSC Advocacy Cause to point out the Flaws as they discover them. The Advocates, naturally, attempt to cover up or shout down the Flaws as quickly as they are pointed out.
For the sake of creating a MSC, it matters not if the Truth is really true. — the Advocates merely need to be able to say it is true and have most people believe it.
\\ To work as the Truth plank in a MSC it must at least be seen to be irrefutable. //
Maybe we should revisit the definition of MSC.
\\ All Modern Scientific Controversies (MSCs hereafter) begin with one reqauired element without which there would be no MSC. That element is an ADVOCACY CAUSE (the Cause hereafter). //
I submit that there are some “Controversies” that are “Scientific” and “Modern” that do not include Advocacy (of Social Policy). The nature of Dark Matter and the existence much less the nature of “Dark Energy” to name just two in the realm of Physics. Aside from the advocacy of spending money in the research into these fields, I submit that these MSC’s are different in nature to the Salt et al MSC’s of your post.
I suggest that we rename your subject MSC’s to be “Scientific Socially Advocating Controvercies.” (SSAC) We can drop the “Modern” in that Eugenics is a SSAC that is a century old, yet still an SSAC.
Or, “Socially Advocating Scientific Controvercies” (SASC) to put the horse properly before the cart.
Stephen Rasey ==> The distinction is definitional, of course. Not all science subjects that are controversial within their fields qualify as the type of MSC that I have been writing about — those that in the public eye and the media become, and are often publicly labelled a Science War, as the Salt Wars and the Obesity Wars are commonly called.
These other types of “science topics which are controversial” — which are actively being argued and sorted out in the journals and halls of Academia and Research Labs — are most certainly different — though they sometimes result in harsh treatment and harsh words. They lack the public nature because the lack the public Advocacy.
Truthfully, the idea of trying to engage an essentially clueless general public on one side or other of the Dark Matter controversy is absurd. I know people who have posted photographs of the Milky Way galaxy (our galaxy) on their cubicle’s bulletin boards….taken from outside the galaxy–without a clue as to what is wrong with that idea. I have never been able to convince such a person that the photo was a fake–because they “got it from the NASA web site!”
So, yes, not all science controversies are “Wars” in the sense I am using — which is why I use specific examples.
There are additionally: The Cholesterol Wars, the Fat Wars, the Ozone Wars, the DDT Wars (mostly lost by the realist side), etc.
A large part of the difference between an MSC and a mere scientific controversy is the issue of advocacy. In an MSC, everybody is required (forced, even) to change something: reduce salt intake, reduce cholesteral intake, exercise more, stop creating CO2.
Whereas in a simple scientific controversy, there is no advocacy, no demand for people to do anything (except for providing funds for more research).
A large part of the difference between an MSC and a mere scientific controversy is the issue of advocacy.
This is the reason why I think a form of “Advocacy” be in the name of the class. Modern Scientific Controversy is not specific enough. I suggested “Socially Advocating Scientific Controversy” is more explicit without looking at the fine print.
Surely a key difference is that a scientific controversy is debated while an advocated controversy is asserted.
Both sides in the Darwinism / Creationsim debate were willing to debate the issue. It was a great controversy but both sides cared about finding the truth. Even though both sides were confident that they had it already. They were still willing to debate, famously.
In advocated controversy it is not considered worth debating. The other side is so clearly wrong that they must be silenced, not defeated. Whether this is because they are not so certain they have the truth already is a moot point. They won’t let the question be heard anyway.
Because the truth is not the issue.
The cause is the issue.
the “Truth” behind AGW is that increasing CO2 levels will irretrievably lead to a positive-feedback Venusian death-spiral.
[????? .mod]
Not so, Venus’ surface temperature is so much hotter because of its thick atmosphere, as was discussed previously here on WUWT. See, for example:
https://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2012/06/27/venus-one-more-time/
I think maybe Paul is referring to what many people in the general public think of as the “truth” to CAGW.
Good points. Part of the Truth problem, and what you call hidden truth, is also that correlation is often muddled with causation.
Kip,
A good, clear analysis.
The compulsion in HPV vaccinations is a well known risk amplifier, incidentally.
I like your ‘White Hat Bias’ and will use it alongside Noble Cause Corruption, which I used as ‘Virtuous Corruption’ to get better alliteration alongside ‘Virtual Environmental Science’ in the subtitle of my 2007 book ‘Science and Public Policy.’ The ‘Virtual’ applied both to reliance on computer modelling and the pernicious effect of the communications revolution on the safeguards, the QA, if you like, the scientific process relies on. As the Climategate e-mails showed, e-mail has made a level of communication among a small number of experts possible. That often overlooked component of globalisation, the jumbo jet, made travel cheaper and thus more frequent, so networks of researchers grew – at a time when the increasing specialisation of knowledge meant smaller cohorts of specialists in each area of knowledge. Result: peer review increasingly became pal review.
Your emphasis on the advocates is also important. Langdon Winner wrote of ‘reverse adaptation’ – the definition of ends to suit available means. We also have in political science March and Olsen’s ‘garbage can decision making’, where problems meet old solutions in the garbage can, where they have been discarded. So some problems are good because they justify particular solutions. Government energy conservation specialists thought climate change was great, because it supported their solutions. (I noticed this in the 90s when interviewing these people).
We might also add the phenomenon of apocalypticism with climate change (and possibly the GBF). Activist scientists might not see themselves as similar to millenarian movements, but their responses to disconfirming evidence is exactly as described in Festinger et al in their ‘When Prophecy Fails’, which gave rise to his ‘Theory of Cognitive Dissonance’.
Anyway – some thoughts.
Aynsley Kellow ==> Thank you for reading here. Appreciate your insightful input.
“We might also add the phenomenon of apocalypticism with climate change (and possibly the GBF). Activist scientists might not see themselves as similar to millenarian movements, but their responses to disconfirming evidence is exactly as described in Festinger et al in their ‘When Prophecy Fails’, which gave rise to his ‘Theory of Cognitive Dissonance’.”
Yes, spot on. The analysis in Festinger is exactly what is happening in climate activism.
Also, as I posted in an earlier thread, a common element is the transfer of religious feeling onto the controversy. People are having all the feelings which their ancestors used to have about heretics and unbelievers, but they are directing them to those who differ from them on an issue of science and public policy. They are also in the same way splitting the world into the elect, a smallish number, and the damned. And they are reserving especial hatred for false prophets and those who lead the faithful astray. The feelings about apostates, such as Lomborg, are particularly strong.
Chesterton said that the problem with a society losing its faith was not that it no longer believed, but that people felt free to believe anything at all.
Great series, Kip. In my line of work the controversy over refrigerants and the ozone hole was a frustration, in that the replacement gasses operate at higher pressures and require more coil surface, increasing maintenance costs. Recovery and licensing our pipefitters was also costly. All from ‘educated opinion’ that man has to be causing everything we observe.
The idea of the Flaw is a good one. Necessary for their tombe a controversy. In each of your previous essays it was mainly a Flaw in only one of the Three Planks. Mistatement of the Problem (salt), Exaggeration of Truth certainty (obesity), omission of relevant Truth information (GBR), ignoring Solution difficulties (Dieting often does not work because metabolism resets).
CAGW has multiple flaws in each of the three Planks. Problem defined only in the future by flawed models that do not account for natural variation. Polar bears do not depend n late summer ice, and GW does not impact spring ice. Truth that observational sensitivity is half of modeled, and that sea level rise has not accelerated. Renewables solution expensive (subsidies) and intermittent. Perhaps that’s why there has been such appeal to (biased) authority (IPCC) and effort to claim ‘the science is settled’.
What CAGW did which the other advocacy cause examples did not is capture a broad swath of diverse special interest advocacy from outside the climate MSC per se. It was a locomotive to which many wagons got hitched. Developing nations saw the Green Climate Fund potential for extortion. Greenpeace saw the anti-industrial potential. WWF saw the fundraising potential in ‘endangered’ polar bears. Academics saw lucrative grant and career opportunities; Shukla and his wife personally took out over $6 million through his ‘research foundation’. CAGW became a real gravy train. That is why it has gone on so long despite its many serious flaws.
ristvan ==> Yes sir, the CAGW Advocacy Cause has really gotten a hold on society, infecting many areas of scientific research (mostly through funding bias). I think this is because the idea of Global Warming itself piggy-backed on the Rachel Carson-esque environmental apocalypse meme, Erlich’s Population doom, and the Club of Rome end of times. AGW can be claimed to affect so many parts of everyday life, and any change perceived as negative can be blamed on it, whether it is real or not — the public is so confused that they will believe or disbelieve almost anything.
A similar situation exists in the field of human nutrition — so many
flasefalse claims have been made from so many authorities that the general public either believes everything they say now (health food faddism) or believes nothing they say.“the general public either believes everything they say now (health food faddism) or believes nothing they say”. And exactly!
I’m on the believe nothing slope…gathering more to disbelieve daily. Common sense says….well, it would if any of it had been learnt and retained. Today we are exposed to the largely worthless output of a multitude of Universities in UK and from the US. A Professor here and a Doctor there…many, many! I sometimes have difficulty believing medical doctors let alone the aforementioned. Occasionally, I meet a doctor (med) who is someone who doesn’t pretend to be…with all that over bearing utterance stuff and glares/looks. My common sense approach on most things is to look at the motivation for it initially and very carefully. Trying to keep most of the present day alarmist crap in memory is truly difficult! Also, one size does not fit all…in any respect.
More of a gravy juggernaut than a train. My understanding is that is was almost “born” to be a Behemoth through an unfortunate serendipity of events.
When Margaret Thatcher broke the mine strike in the UK, she was determined that no small group would ever be able to hold the country to ransom again. She needed to find an energy source other than coal to depend on. Oil was unreliable with troubles in the Middle East, so nuclear was the only answer. But everyone had been conditioned to shun anything with the n-word in it. She had to brainwash the unwashed that fossil fuels were bad, so laid the money on the table to do that job. Someone dug up enough on an obscure little something to start the AGW ball rolling.
About the same time, Greenpeace were at a loose end, having achieved all of the legislating they’d wanted. The Berlin Wall fell and all of the anti-western pro-communism brigade needed something to paint on their placards, now that their ideal had crumbled before them. The stage was set for a new anti-western, anti-industrialization, anti-capitalist idea to be instantly flooded by idealists, propagandists, rent seekers etc.
I can’t think of anything else that had such a ready and willing hoard of unemployed minions so eager to take on a new “purpose”.
A fascinating essay! While not disagreeing with any of it, another generalization about these MSCs might be made: They always involve coercive actions, generally by a government body. Because of this, the Causes may be classified into two groups: A) Those that by their nature require communal action – there is no way even to provide any relief from the Problem without it and B) those that do not. Obviously, for Advocates seeking relief from the human tyrannical itch, the former are to be preferred to the latter. Of the examples mentioned by Mr. Hansen, the (B) are The Salt Wars, The War on Sugar, The Obesity Epidemic, and The HPV War while (A) include The Great Barrier Reef Wars and The Climate Wars. The value of a type (A) Cause is much higher than a type (B) Cause. This is clearly seen in The Tobacco Wars in which a type (B) Cause was converted to a type (A) Cause using second hand smoke.
gregjxn ==> Excellent point, and one I should have made (it was part of my finding — somehow left out of the summary). A MSC Solution usually includes some enforced or coerced policy on the general public or industry, business, states, etc.
I have made an addition to the main essay to ensure that this point is understood.
This is a good point, but it should be stressed that this is usually (despite the best urgings of the likes of Naomi Klein) an attack on capitalism, but frequently a regulatory policy* that disadvantages one sector to the benefit of others. With CAGW, the former is the coal sector, the latter includes not just renewables and nuclear, but also the gas sector. There is a reason why Chesapeake Bay Energy gave $25m to the Sierra Club for its ‘Beyond Coal’ campaign.
*I am an enthusiast for Theodore Lowi’s classification of public policies into types: Distributive (e.g. subsidies at the taxpayer’s expense); Regulatory (restrict on a sector basis, advantage another sector); and Redistributive (capital vs labor). As Bruce Yandle points out with his Bootlegger and Baptist theory of regulation, morals crusaders amplify the influence of the gaining sector and make it more palatable to support their causes by seeming to raise the campaign above self-interest.
Thanks Kip for another well thought out presentation.
Hopefully some day all the nonsense of the fake crisis will end some day, however I am not that hopeful, given the media.
Of course this has been going on for as long as I can remember, mostly from the environmental/green crowd more recently with a complicit media to carry the crisis everyday in the news. Remember peak oil/energy crisis, Y2K, impact of fats, eggs, butter, etc, even dangers of various epidemics. Of course some caution is helpful especially with medical concerns but over hyping is the name of the game.
Fed preparing to drop warnings on dietary cholesterol: http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2017/01/feds_preparing_to_drop_warnings_on_cholesterol.html
R. Shearer ==> And about time, too!
exactly, kinda affects one’s trust in any information that comes out of the system, period.
Very interesting, advocacy is certainly a common feature and these are too often simple solutions looking for problems. I would add the nutrient–dead zone “war.” Fisheries (long history of politicalization) catches are often positively correlated with nitrogen concentrations, sometimes also with other nutrients. Like carbon dioxide, nitrogen is treated as a ‘bad’ pollutant, which it can be, but of course, is an essential element. Oh, the complications of toxicology. These are not metabolically dead (misuse of language) areas, many temporary, and the nutrients (conservation of mass) go places. In Louisiana there is some evidence that it forces some movement from benthic to pelagic species and fertilizes adjacent areas. The fishermen always knew this and exploit it.
‘Scientist Advocates,’ with a fawning press, went after corn farmers, who have strong incentives to save nutrients. It is a real and complex problem tied up with the ethanol/biomass situation and other sources of nutrients, but far from the crisis suggested. It has produced a bandwagon of applications causing unwanted consequences. Also it caused at least some diversion from other less spectacular research directions. Some things have been corrected in the literature, such as this being primarily a difficult to predict (climate connection) stratification phenomenon, exacerbated by the nutrient concentrations, but some discussed on line have not, at least that I know about.
Despite this there are a lot of good papers, links etc. Will only give this one to show the admitted advocacy evidence.
“Fortunately, …decrease(s)(of) excess nutrient loads proceeded without complete scientific consensus.” From, Rabalais, N. N., R. E. Turner and W. J. Wiseman, Jr. 2002. Gulf of Mexico Hypoxia, A.K.A, “The Dead Zone.” Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics. 33:235-263.
Advocacy is still popular and proceeding, further evidence of widespread MSC, but in this case mostly (at least publically) an argument as to whether it or “land (actually marsh, often called wetland) loss” is worse for the fisheries. Both are negative value judgments, but there are effects and the science is fascinating and again stimulated by the oil (another demon?) spill.
I wonder if I could make a point about the difficulty of defining the truth in the llight of inadequate (but unknown) scientific knowledge? The point in question is gastric acid and ulcers, which is now regularly held up as an example of medical idiocy.
1) Helicobacter pylori is now known to be the cause of peptic ulcers (PU).
2) Gastric acid secretion is usually increased in patients with PUs
3) Hydrochloric acid causes pain when it is infused over a PU.
4) Operations such as the Bilroth I and II and Vagotomy and pyloroplasty removed partof the stomach that produces most acid (the Antrum) and generally rearranged the plumbing. This vastly reduced the amount of ulcerss (although causing all sorts of other problems).
5) Removal of acid by proton pump inhibitors (Cimetidine,Ranitidine etc) causes PUs to heal (even ulcer carcinomas).
6) PUs will heal when acid is removed despite the presence of H Pylori.
7) H Pylori is a very fastidious organism and is difficult to culture. Many people speculated that there might be an infective element and experiments were performed to see if gastric contents of PU patients would cause PU in normals (I well remember participating in one of these experiments as a medical student – frankly somethings are best forgotten). The results were inconclusive.
8) Marshall and Warren isolated the organism, managed to culture it (difficult) and then show that ingestion causes PUs (Koch’s postulate)
9) Some series have shown that 80% of people with H ptyori do not develop ulcers, implying that its presence alone is not neccessarily ulcerogenic. There are mutations that appear more virulent than others beause they produce epithelial adhesion molecules and, in fact, may locally neutralise gastric acid concentration by the action of urease that splits urea into ammonia and CO2 (hence flatulence with PUs).
The point I’m making is that these controversies can be scientifically confusing because there are a large number of apparantly contradictory data. Clearly the story is not as simple as many people believe. Fortunately there was never a strong “ulcer advocacy group” (at least in the UK), wanting a “solution” that could be imposed on the population despite PUs being extremely unpleasant and sufferers desperately wanting a cure.
It is the chloride ion rather than the Sodium that causes hypertension.
Carbohydrates are a greater factor in obesity than fats.
Carbon dioxide absorbs, but does not significantly radiate, or “re-radiate”.
The greatest problem is advocacy. Science requires suspension of belief.
gymnosperm,
“Science requires suspension of belief.”
Total BS we’ve been indoctrinated (by A-holes) to believe, I say. No beliefs, no science . .
A game is being played with the word belief, that is totally nonsensical . . though it plays well with people who don’t consider how their own mind works, apparently.
PS~ Had you written this, I’d have complimented you instead;
Science requires awreness of belief.
(Especially if you spelled awareness correctly ; )
Hmm. So science is advocacy and only holes tell you not to indulge?
Definitely hinges on the semantics of “belief”. Is an idea a belief? Is a hunch a belief? Is an hypothesis a belief?
Maybe all three. Is this different than advocating your idea, hunch, or hypothesis as the one and only truth; as an indisputable basis for potentially ruinous public policy?
I think it is fundamentally different.
” So science is advocacy and only holes tell you not to indulge?”
Not at all, science by it’s very nature involves belief in a great many things (often referred to as an education ; ) . . and no one is capable of just “suspending” the particular aspects of the particular belief(s) that might undermine their view of a very complex matter, or the like, it seems to me. The A-holes I spoke of try to convince us that big important scientist people can fairly easily achieve selfless impartiality, and speak to us as trustworthy Oracles of absolute truth, not mere belief, such as we simple folk can manage ; )
@gymnosperm January 2, 2017 at 3:00 pm
“Definitely hinges on the semantics of “belief”. Is an idea a belief? Is a hunch a belief? Is an hypothesis a belief? Maybe all three. Is this different than advocating your idea, hunch, or hypothesis as the one and only truth; as an indisputable basis for potentially ruinous public policy? I think it is fundamentally different. ”
IMHO, the term “belief” implies an acceptance of truth without evidence.
Idea, hunch, hypothesis OTOH imply that their truth will only be entertained if sufficient evidence is forthcoming to support them. These latter terms “belong” in science; while “belief” certainly does not.
“IMHO, the term “belief” implies an acceptance of truth without evidence.”
Where’s your evidence for that restrictive def8inition?
JohnKnight and Alan Rogers and gymnosperm ==> Words have standardized defintions. Here is the comonly agreed upon definition for BELIEF:
Only the bolded sub-set of “religious conviction” is outside the realm of science. This does not imply that religious or spiritual truths are somehow less “true” or “real” than scientific truths — just that they exist in a part of human experience that we separate, by convention, from science.
It is perfectly scientifically correct to say that “I believe that the many of the surface temperature records have been adulterated.”
I see nothing about ‘belief’ implying accepting things as true without evidence, Kip. I seriousness doubt anyone actually does that . . but I often see people express a strong belief that others do it . . along with the (to me, somewhat narcissistic) belief that if they are unconvinced by evidence, it is not evidence at all.
John ==> Of course, you are right! That was my point in posting the definition.
It is sometimes posited by the non-religious that religious belief or conviction is somehow not based on evidence. That is not true — it is just a different kind of evidence — spiritual evidence — which can no more be explained to those who have never experienced it than color can be explained to the blind.
Thanks for participating here.
From pp 45/46 of The Big Fat Surprise (Simon & Schuster, 2014), by Nina Teicholz.
—
When I started my research I expected to find a community of scientists in decorous debate. Instead, I found researchers like Ravnskov, who, by his own admission, was a cautionary tale for independently minded scientists seeking to challenge the conventional wisdom. His predecessors from the 1960s onward hadn’t been convinced by the orthodoxy on cholesterol; they’d just been silenced, worn out, or had come to the end of their careers. As Keys’s ideas spread and became adopted by powerful institutions, those who challenged him faced a difficult –some might say impossible– battle. Being on the losing side of such a high stakes debate had caused their professional lives to suffer. Many had lost jobs, research funding, speaking engagements, and all the many other perks of prestige. Although these diet-heart opponents included a number of researchers who were at the top of their fields, including, notably, an editor of The Journal of the American Medical Association, they were not invited to conferences, and were unable to get prestigious journals to publish their work.* Experiments that had dissenting results, they found, were not debated and discussed but instead dismissed or ignored altogether. Even being subject to slander and personal ridicule were surprisingly not unusual experiences for these opponents of the diet-heart hypothesis. In short they found themselves unable to continue contributing to their fields, which of course is the very essence of every scientist’s hopes and ambitions.
* The former editor of The Journal of the American Medical Association was Edward R. Pinckney, whose 1973 book, The Cholesterol Controversy was followed in 1988 by a groundbreaking scientific critique of the evidence used to support the diet-heart hypothesis. This second effort is still the most thorough critical review of that science ever written, but he could not find a publisher. (Pinckney and Pinckney 1973; Smith and Pinchkey, 1988)
—-
My comment on this: (see http://www.winface.com/amt/tale2.html ):
It almost doesn’t matter where you open Fat Surprise: within a few paragraphs you need only change a few words to imagine yourself reading about climate change deniers fighting to put science ahead of politics, to get overwhelming contrary evidence accepted by people whose minds are blinkered by money, prestige, politics, doctored data, and their own prior commitments to rather obviously absurd positions.
I didn’t “dig in” yet.
My interest in the topic has always been, what is the current lever being used to suppress Freedom. For me, primarily, the Freedom of Religion in the US. People can believe whatever they want here as long as they don’t infringe on the next guy’s right to believe what he wants. “Government” is NOT to be the arbitrator of what is OK to believe. It is only to stop the infringements of this and other rights by others.
“Government” has become the chief infringer.
“Science” to explain and understand and apply the laws of the natural realm is wonderful. But “science” hasn’t a clue about the spiritual realm. It can’t. That can’t be “analyzed”.
When “science” stays humble and honest about the natural realm, we all benefit in the natural realm no matter what one may believe about a spiritual realm.
But when “science” is used for political power or to use political power to suppress a belief in anything it can’t analyze, “Houston, we have a problem”.
Gunga ==> I carry a copy of the US Constitution in inside pocket of each of my suit and sports coats. It helps to settle arguments in which one side says “That’s against (or protected by) the Constitution.”
And you are 100% correct — “science” as an endeavor, in today’s world, has excluded itself from investigation and understanding of the entirety of everything spiritual — the most important aspect of human life (possibly all life).
To me, this is a good thing or we would be seeing the suppression of all “unpopular” spiritual ideas in the journals and by the Learned Societies.
The majority of the world’s scientists, however, are believers in some sort of spiritual answer to the question of life and existence, including myself (as a person interested in science).
I must have been typing my punctuation correction as you were typing your reply.
Romans 1
Some who look (even examine) what around them is admit there must be “something bigger” than they understand. Some don’t.
I’d prefer not to live in a country where ‘the don’t’s” or where what some might believe about the “something bigger” differs from what I believe don’t have the Government’s authority to chop my head off (or less).
Not quite a typo but horrible opening punctuation:
“My interest in the topic has always been, what is the current lever being used to suppress Freedom. For me, primarily, the Freedom of Religion in the US.”
Try this:
“My interest in the topic has always been, “What is the current lever being used to suppress Freedoms?”, for me, primarily, the Freedom of Religion in the US.”….