Yesterday's Big Outrage Story: a secret cabal of scientists whose work does not support Catatonic Anthropomorphic ManBearPig is secretly funded by Big Carbon!!!!
Er.
Well, we all know that Tobacco Science is not to be taken at face value, because the researchers know exactly what outcome the funders want, so there's a strong incentive to come up with a certain kind of result.
Those of us who are paying attention will realize that Government Science has exactly the same problem, only on a larger scale. (Seriously, if you spend a year examining all available evidence and conclude that the sky isn't falling, what do you expect to happen to next year's budget?)
Even without funding issues, ego-driven science, groupthink, and the bandwagon effect can draw many basically honest researchers along a false path for quite some time. N-Rays, anyone? Or everything we've known about nutrition and heart disease the past few decades?
So here's the thing.
If a politician is secretly on the payroll of someone with an agenda contrary to the public interest - a Prohibitionist parties with the bootleggers, say, or a bank regulator's high-flying lifestyle is supported by the megabanks, or the person responsible for creating Internet regulations is in bed with Big Cable - this is a big deal, because that person is in a position to influence public policy directly, significantly, and in secret, and motivations matter.
If, on the other hand, a scientist's motives are off-kilter, there's no need to examine his motives. If he's actually doing science, as opposed to politics, his work may be examined, and repeated; if it's wrong, it will be seen so.
Scientific research is supposed to be repeatable. Scientific theories are supposed to make testable predictions. If the results are repeatable and support the theory, what matter if the scientists are in the camp of an oil baron or of a divinity-school dropout?
And if the theory makes a hodgepodge of contradictory predictions, and the research requires fudging numbers without a coherent explanation? Maybe there's no science going on, at least at the level being publicized.
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