From an editorial from nature.com, and published in the journal, they seem to think the d-word is proper vernacular.
Volume: 467, Page: 133 Date published: (09 September 2010) DOI: doi:10.1038/467133a
The anti-science strain pervading the right wing in the United States is the last thing the country needs in a time of economic challenge.
…
There is a growing anti-science streak on the American right that could have tangible societal and political impacts on many fronts — including regulation of environmental and other issues and stem-cell research.
…
The right-wing populism that is flourishing in the current climate of economic insecurity echoes many traditional conservative themes, such as opposition to taxes, regulation and immigration. But the Tea Party and its cheerleaders, who include Limbaugh, Fox News television host Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin (who famously decried fruitfly research as a waste of public money), are also tapping an age-old US political impulse — a suspicion of elites and expertise.
Denialism over global warming has become a scientific cause célèbre within the movement. Limbaugh, for instance, who has told his listeners that “science has become a home for displaced socialists and communists”, has called climate-change science “the biggest scam in the history of the world”. The Tea Party’s leanings encompass religious opposition to Darwinian evolution and to stem-cell and embryo research — which Beck has equated with eugenics. The movement is also averse to science-based regulation, which it sees as an excuse for intrusive government. Under the administration of George W. Bush, science in policy had already taken knocks from both neglect and ideology. Yet President Barack Obama’s promise to “restore science to its rightful place” seems to have linked science to liberal politics, making it even more of a target of the right.
==========================================
They say in a sidebar that: “The country’s future crucially depends on education, science and technology.”
I don’t disagree, but we also need to separate science from the global warming ideology that has hijacked it. The current backlash they speak of has in fact been brought about in part by allowing this to happen. I’ll point out though that the sort of idealogy we see in the global warming movement doesn’t seem to pervade other sciences, at least until somebody demands that one of the science organizations embraces or endorses the cause. That’s when the dissent starts. For example:
American Physical Society rejects climate policy plea from 160 physicists
Dissenting members ask APS to put their policy statement on ice due to Climategate
Witness Nature using the word denialism, born of the politically nurtured global warming ideology. If Nature’s editorial staff was not indoctrinated to at least some of that ideology, I wager they’d have used a different word. And they wonder why there is dissent while at the same time they use the word to insult people. I encourage subscribers to call them to task on this use of the word.
h/t to Dr. Leif Svalgaard
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R. Shearer says:
September 9, 2010 at 7:26 pm
As a scientist, politics had almost nothing to do with me becoming an AGW skeptic except that when I saw G.W. Bush jump on the global warming bandwagon I decided to do more investigation myself.
It was all part of our evil conservative plan. It’s called reverse psychology.
It is emblematic of the sloppy thinking in this editorial that opposition to embryonic stem-cell research is labeled as “anti-science”. (And I say this as someone who favors embryonic stem-cell research.) The vast majority of the opponents aren’t arguing that no useful treatments could come of this research; rather, they view it as immoral even if it could.
I could easily come up with all sorts of research projects that would produce useful scientific knowledge, but would horrify those on the left. (Are the people horrified by the study of Tuskegee inmates with syphilis “anti-science”? We learned lots from that study.)
Never has President Eisenhowers famous military-industrial complex speech become more relevant:
“Akin to, and largely responsible for the sweeping changes in our industrial-military posture, has been the technological revolution during recent decades.
“In this revolution, research has become central; it also becomes more formalized, complex, and costly. A steadily increasing share is conducted for, by, or at the direction of, the Federal government.
“Today, the solitary inventor, tinkering in his shop, has been overshadowed by task forces of scientists in laboratories and testing fields. In the same fashion, the free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research. Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity. For every old blackboard there are now hundreds of new electronic computers.
“The prospect of domination of the nation’s scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present and is gravely to be regarded.
“Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific technological elite.”
Larry Fields@September 9, 2010 at 6:50 pm
No, he’s not.
The ‘Green’ Party in West Germany was funded and directed by the KGB for the EXPRESS purpose of politically forcing US nuclear weapons out of said country. This is NOT a debatable fact; the KGB archives have said as much. After that issue became a moot point (via various treaties), did the Greens go away? No. They then set their sights on nuclear (and political) power, and have been quite successful in their goals. And there are sister parties in every major western nation.
Who’s the other Grand Champion of the Environment? Gorbachev, comfortably snug in SanFran.
And what do enviros demand?
Collective action. Collective planning. State control. The subjugation of individual lifestyles to needs of the many and the betterment of the planet. The suppression of dissent, and punishment of ‘unbelievers’.
I think I’ve heard this tune before.
If looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, and walks like a duck . . . it’s probably a duck.
As to your other point, yeah, I’d say that particular Nobel Prize was a bad call.
It was a sign of the times: once upon a time, all the ‘smart people’ thought Margaret Sanger was the ‘cats meow’. Here’s a quote:
“Organized charity is itself the symptom of a malignant social disease. Those vast complex, interrelated organizations aiming to control and to diminish the spread of misery and destitution and all the menacing evils that spring out of this sinisterly fertile soil, are the surest sign that our civilization has bred, is breeding and is perpetuating constantly increasing numbers of defectives, delinquents and dependents. My criticism therefore, is not directed at the ‘failure’ of philanthropy, but rather at its success” – Margaret Sanger, The Pivot of Civilization [NY: Brentano’s, 1922], p. 108).
There were MANY dubious ideas being tossed about in the early-mid twentieth century.
Owen says:
September 9, 2010 at 7:11 pm
“… elegant experimental work.”
I must have missed that.
We applaud their determination to do the right thing and stand up and be counted. Don’t know why they didn’t before, but, me feels these guys represent the tip of the ice berg. You have to add in almost all Geologists who feel AGW is bunk……and….epidemiologists who didn’t buy the migrating Malaria BS……
I personally agree with the comments about the Nature editorial being overtly political. It is the mostly the political/environmental left that is eager to question the science of conventional farming, GMO’s, chlorination of water, not to mention basic biology like how to determine if something is alive or not. For them, whether an embryo is alive is a philosophical/legal question. Whether something should be afforded legal protection is a philosophical/legal question, the biology is absolutely straightforward. Because the majority of reporters are not centrist or conservative they assign blame towards conservatives for a so-called war on science. My personal conclusion is that conservatives are suspicious of science and scientific policies advocated by governments and international entities, while liberal environmentalists have a distrust of manmade or corporate science and technologies. As a conservative and an agricultural scientist, I am constantly exposed to misinformation and fear mongering promoted by mostly left wing environmental groups. I just keep hoping I’m not exactly like them in my distrust of AGW claims.
Also thanks to Watts up with That and all your contributors and commentators for a great science-based site that has many respectful and thoughtful comments.
A minor correction to bubbagyro, September 9, 2010 at 7:02 pm.
Eisenhower gave his farewell speech in 1961 from the Oval Office, not in 1957 at Dartmouth.
The rise of federal funding of science during and after WWII contributed to the creation of the scientific-technological elite. Once created, the government began to rely on this elite to make decisions concerning public policy.
The Nature editors are concerned that their influence is being curtailed by the “right wing” yet they should look in the mirror for the real reason that the public is wary of some of the science. When scientific journal editors are advocating public policy, they become politicians not scientists. The public has a right to be wary.
I am a politician who used to be a scientist so I think I know the difference.
I finally got my hands on “The Hockey Stick Illusion” and can hardly put it down. It has told me all I need to know about the integrity of the folks who run “Nature”. This editorial tells me more than I need to know. Pathetic vindictive self aggrandizing bullies.
“First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you- then you win”
Natures editorial sounds like fighting words to me.
Where do we assemble for the victory parade?
bubbagyro says:
September 9, 2010 at 7:02 pm
Lucy Skywalker says:
September 9, 2010 at 5:34 pm
Well said. That’s a double bingo! The shame of Nature is beyond belief. They seem to want the great unwashed masses to bow down and worship their caricature of science and scientists. No thanks.
how does Nature explain the millions of CAGW sceptics who fit none of the editorial’s descriptives? people such as myself, for instance.
why won’t Nature and the rest of the MSM use the words “CATASTROPHIC ANTHROPOGENIC GLOBAL WARMING” to argue their case? better still, why won’t the MSM use the words “CATASTROPHIC ANTHROPOGENIC GLOBAL WARMING REQUIRING CAPPING, TRADING, OFFSETTING, UPSETTING AND/OR TAXING CARBON DIOXIDE” to argue their case?
why won’t Nature and the MSM stop saying sceptics DENY climate change, when every human being KNOWS the climate changes?
anthony –
maybe it’s time for WUWT to solicit examples from readers for a piece –
“CAGW hypothesizers undone: In their own words”
there are so many great examples available which we could then print out and circulate.
Jim has it EXACTLY right…
Jim says:
September 9, 2010 at 7:17 pm
This article isn’t political, it’s all about money. If conservatives get power and slash Federal spending, a lot of scientists might hit the bricks. Personally, I think the way Federal funding is disseminated needs to be re-worked. I would be for giving money ear-marked for scientific research to the States and let them decide who gets the money; in the US of course. I would also be for cutting the total amount. Hopefully, it wouldn’t be p*ss*d away like some is now.
—
This screed by Nature is all about the gobs of Climate Ca$h that these clowns stand to lose if real budget cutters get elected this fall in the US (I’ll be working hard for that goal). My hope is that we can defund the crap science, which we CANNOT AFFORD ANYMORE! Why, for example, do we need a National Climate Service? Why do we need ten expensive government-funded groups creating climate codes that don’t work (or aren’t properly validated and documented)? There is so much needless waste. If people think their research is valuable, perhaps they can get private industry or rich individuals (like Al Gore and George Soros) to fund them. I mean if the Catlin Group can fund arctic exploration, they can fund GCMs…
There is nothing “anti-science” about acknowledging that the government science gravy train must come to an end because we are trillions of dollars in debt!
They say in a sidebar that: “The country’s future crucially depends on education, science and technology.”
They also say it right in the editorial:
[snip]
Don’t worry, global warming skeptics can just tune out all the journals and magazines and TV channels and websites and books and scientists and scientific organizations and scientific data that they don’t like. I hear the Arctic sea ice recovered splendidly this summer – those corrupt, deceitful scientists don’t know what they’re talking about.
Billionaire Rush Hudson Limbaugh III, and the Koch brothers, are never wrong.
REPLY: Ya know, “geronimo” I get rather upset when people accuse me of “missing” things when they themselves don’t understand what’s going on here, especially when you play the roll of anonymous troll. You see there’s a thing called copyright and fair use. Fair use says I can copy a few paragraphs and provide a link, but not the whole article. Your complaint (and subsequent copying of more of the article) therefore is denied.
Read the policy page about changing handles. – Anthony
OT Peer Review, Reviewed. Found Lacking.
Just a small number of bad referees can significantly undermine the ability of the peer-review system to select the best scientific papers. That is according to a pair of complex systems researchers in Austria who have modelled an academic publishing system and showed that human foibles can have a dramatic effect on the quality of published science.
http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/43691
Basically they are saying if anyone disagrees with us they must be right wing nut jobs.
The truth is the computer models at University of East Anglia in Britain were poorly written and I suspect written backwards to prove their beliefs. Now that they have been discovered their last refuge is to call those who disagree with them nuts -jobs.
The Climate Change Industry is DOA. There will be no Cap & Trade legislation and their golden goose has been cooked, by themselves.
Eric Anderson says:
September 9, 2010 at 6:47 pm
Eric, you are too right (no pun intended) – CAGW climatology is not the only ‘science’ that is this ideological…
What an appalling, nasty, bigoted editorial. I guess if you can’t address the science, just start labelling people instead.
I think I made a convert yesterday – all I had to do was to point out to a grad student (arts, not science) who was going to make money from the fight against global warming (he had just finished cursing Big Oil for ‘leaking’ the Climategate papers just before Copenhagen). As I said over a year ago, the way to defeat this is to paint CAGW as a corporate, right-wing conspiracy designed to put more money into the pockets of the oil companies and other interest groups.
‘Nature’ is afraid to see where science funding is going to go as this sham weakens a nice scientific nest egg. That reminds me – big science funding has also historically been from right wing (i.e. defense and corporate) sources. Once upon a time the suspicion of science and undermining of funding of same came from the left wing. I suspect that at heart this suspicion on the part of the left is still there, and that many on the left found themselves in support of ‘science’ only when it could be used as a nice tool with which to bash western and capitalist civilization, and in the case of some of the other ‘science’ the right wing opposition to which ‘Nature’ is harping – i.e. embryonic stem cell research – its moral underpinnings. I once got accused by a student of imposing ‘moral correctness’ for decrying the use of prisoners in horrifying experiments in the Nazi Death Camps. I was too stunned to think of an appropriate response 🙁
…we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific technological elite…
And really, in the end, that is exactly why the public feels that we should have some sort of say in all of this. Isn’t it? It is all about having our rights as Americans to eat eggs even though they are
unhealthy healthy unhealthyhealthy. Because science, once discovered, remains settled, and should never be exposed to moral questions, since they are outside the realm of science.When the climate science community is skeptical about catastrophic global warming in PRIVATE, why not everyone?
Here is what they say in PRIVATE:
1) “Be awkward if we went through a early 1940s type swing!”
http://www.eastangliaemails.com/emails.php?eid=927&filename=1225026120.txt
2) “I think we have been too readily explaining the slow changes over past decade as a result of variability–that explanation is wearing thin.”
http://www.eastangliaemails.com/emails.php?eid=947&filename=1231166089.txt
3) “The scientific community would come down on me in no uncertain terms if I said the world had cooled from 1998. OK it has but it is only 7 years of data and it isn’t statistically significant.” [This statement was made 5-years ago and the global warming rate still is zero]
http://www.eastangliaemails.com/emails.php?eid=544&filename=1120593115.txt
4) “The fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can’t.”
http://www.eastangliaemails.com/emails.php?eid=1048&filename=1255352257.txt
5) “I know there is pressure to present a nice tidy story as regards ‘apparent unprecedented warming in a thousand years or more in the proxy data’ but in reality the situation is not quite so simple.”
http://www.eastangliaemails.com/emails.php?eid=138&filename=938031546.txt
6) “IPCC is not any more an assessment of published science (which is its proclaimed goal) but production of results”
http://www.eastangliaemails.com/emails.php?eid=186&filename=968705882.txt
If the climate science community itself is allowed to be skeptical about man made global warming in private, why can not everyone in PUBLIC?
I should have set my last sentence apart as sarcastic for clarity.
Tom says: September 9, 2010 at 5:40 pm — “Weird editorial for a magazine like Nature; I wonder who wrote it.”
I’m wondering too. How would one go about rebutting it? The writer(s) took a rather ignorant stance, or perhaps, a deliberate and politically motivated rant to obfuscate the facts and mislead the reader. How could anyone writing for such an august journal completely avoid the tremendous amount of data and analysis regarding the Holocene Interglacial warmth thousands of years ago or the more recent Medieval Warm Period?
The irony here is science is supposed to be about skeptical thinking vs. dogmatic thinking. The group that is truly anti-science are the non-skeptics because they are so dogmatic.
I am a scientist.
I am skeptical.
And I am damn proud of it!
Doug in Seattle says:
September 9, 2010 at 7:28 pm
I rather enjoy watching the truly anti-science AGW elite (sorry – Its MMCC now isn’t it) self immolate over the impending demise of their pseudo-religion.
It scares me greatly that they still have control over science’s governing bodies and many of the world’s governments (including my own), but their panic over their dwindling powers of persuasion and loss of the public’s trust is fun to watch.
Hubris – they assumed that we were so stupid that we would not see through their lies.
On that fatal assumption rests their failure.
I don’t know about you, but it seems to me that they’re stuck in adolescences.
Girma says:
September 9, 2010 at 9:05 pm
Here is what they say in PRIVATE:
3) “The scientific community would come down on me in no uncertain terms if I said the world had cooled from 1998. OK it has but it is only 7 years of data and it isn’t statistically significant.”
http://www.eastangliaemails.com/emails.php?eid=544&filename=1120593115.txt”
This says it all really, doesn’t it?