Quote of the Week – get your war crimes trial tickets now!

I don’t think Thomas that our IPs would interest anyone if they want to hack people’s computers they can do it without us knowing. And not believing in CO2 or meteors causing climate change ain’t a crime. But feeding people with misinformation about what causes climate change and prohibiting or restricting life saving energy sources blamed is, well in my mind at least.

Well Americans have the NSA, we don’t in Australia. But we have ASIO so far so good, just don’t get paranoid.

Why would anyone with a modicum of common sense even think that CAGW would cause a billion deaths? In other words, if it gets hotter, people die, so its better for it to get colder – sure as hell it ain’t gonna stay the same! ANybody ever heard of freezing to death?????

“But thank you all for providing your IPs to my archived log files.”
Idiot. All you have is the IP address of the shared wireless router.
In my case, the router in a public library.
It’s always the smart asses who are dumb…

You know, thinking about it, said academics petulant little outburst is a bit rich. Coming as it does from a faction known to want Earth’s population reduced significantly to ‘sustainable’ levels.

As is invariably the case, those who want to prosecute people for daring to differ:
about a set of facts that the majority of scientists clearly agree on.
haven’t a clue about the workings of science. The author of the above line, and a closet totalitarian, also describes himself as a philosopher whose research interests include “ethical theory”. In my experience, whenever I find myself in violent disagreement with a medical article, it’s most likely written by an “ethicist”. Most medical ethics is, IMHO, unethical.
Science doesn’t operate by consensus. That should be obvious to anyone with a modicum of knowledge about science but so much misinformation about the workings of science has been distributed via the MSM that I have to constantly correct colleagues of mine who speak of the “science” of medicine. Medicine is an art, not a science as medicine, to a large degree, operates by consensus.
In a true science, 99.99% of scientists can hold a particular view but it only takes one scientist with a new theory that explains reality better than the views of the 99.99% to totally demolish “scientific consensus”. At this time CAGW as a scientific theory has been disproven. Just because those whose careers are based on the veracity of CAGW continue to support it makes not a whit of difference to the truth of the CAGW theory which has now morphed into a non-disprovable religious belief. Usually when people start talking about imprisoning those who disagree with them one knows that they’ve run out of scientific arguments and are seeking to silence those who have clearly proven them wrong.
Two of the factors that may be responsible for such a widely held misconception of science are, IMO, “medical science” and the legal system. Medicine makes a very big deal about consensus. The BC College of Physicians makes it clear to physicians that if their views on particular aspects of medicine are at variance with the consensus view, then they must so indicate in any communication to the public or they face loss of medical licensure. This is a rather blunt instrument for keeping physicians in line. When one looks in detail at various aspects of medicine, virtually every field contains a consensus view that is valid at a particular date. UpToDate, a resource used widely by physicians for the latest treatments for various conditions, is entirely consensus based and authored by physicians who are deemed the world experts in a particular area. If one practices according to these guidelines then one is virtually guaranteed to not get sued even though the treatment may be the wrong one for an individual patient.
Having come from a neurophysiology and neuropharmacology research background into medicine I found much of medical research to be sorely lacking. Admittedly, much of this is due to the marked heterogeneity of ones experimental subjects and despite disproval of the cholesterol hypothesis of coronary artery disease, this is still the consensus dogma in the US. When I asked a cardiologist at a CME event in Florida why US physicians still adhere to a disproven hypothesis his answer was “because the lawyers still believe in it”. In keeping with the BC College of Physicians guidelines about communication of medical information to the public, I should note that this is my personal view although a well respected cardiologist in BC gave a talk about 7 years ago entitled: Cholesterol; why everything you’ve learned about it is totally wrong
The legal corruption of science is another reason I believe that the public has delusions about the scientific method. Law courts rely on a judges decision as to who constitutes an expert in a given area. I first fell afoul of this unscientific practice the first time I had to appear in court regarding a patient with a brain injury. In keeping with my scientific background, I collected numerous references from medical journals which supported my position and these also corroborated the findings of the neuropsychiatrist who I had sent the patient to. In what I thought was an appropriate use of journal evidence my medical legal report contained references to the papers which I had utilized. The lawyer who was representing my patient was incensed and demanded this material to be removed from the medical legal as I was a GP, not an expert in neurology. My pointing out the years of neurophysiology and neuropharmacology research I’d done was to no avail and that’s when I learned that courts are completely driven by credentialism. In court I was limited to describing my clinical findings and to a larger degree deciphering the handwriting in my chart notes which, embarrassingly, in a few cases I couldn’t read myself.
It makes no difference if an expert witness is correct; what matters is whether the court agrees to their credentials to give testimony regarding a particular aspect of medicine. Again, the unscientific consensus system at work that gives such abominations as the class action lawsuit settlement for women with silicone breast implants based entirely on the testimony of “experts” whereas the science proved the opposite.
A judge choosing the testimony of one scientist expert witness over another scientist expert witness in his final judgement puts far more weight on how well the scientist comes across in a courtroom environment rather than whether the opinion of one expert has a closer match to reality than the other. Lawyers go out of their way to find “expert” witnesses that are more likely to come across well in a courtroom setting rather than finding a scientist who is the most likely to be closer to the truth.
With even the notion of an objective reality under attack in the post-modernist weltanschauung, it’s easy to see how consensus rather than fit to reality of a theory has come to dominate impressions of science. This is profoundly disturbing and the solution is for all readers of WUWT to correct people when they make this fundamental error in conversation. This should especially be the case in challenging “medical science” as a physician operates on heuristics which are learned under the tutelage of skilled practicioners of the art of medicine. A physician is isomorphic to a wetware expert system that, more often than not, can diagnose and suggest treatments for various disorders. Occasionally medicine utilizes the techniques of science but physicians who utilize purely “scientific medicine” perform more poorly than those physicians who utilize their wetware with laboratory evidence as well as personally significant observations of a patient to perform non-algorithmic diagnoses. A skilled physician should be viewed in the same light as a master potter, not a scientist.