The Science Credibility Bubble

eldavojohn writes "The real fallout of climategate may have nothing to do with the credibility of climate change. Daniel Henninger thinks it's a bigger problem for the scientific community as a whole and he calls out the real problem as seen through the eyes of a lay person in an opinion piece for the WSJ. Henninger muses, 'I don't think most scientists appreciate what has hit them,' and carries on in that vein, saying, 'This has harsh implications for the credibility of science generally. Hard science, alongside medicine, was one of the few things left accorded automatic stature and respect by most untrained lay persons. But the average person reading accounts of the East Anglia emails will conclude that hard science has become just another faction, as politicized and "messy" as, say, gender studies.' While nothing interesting was found by most scientific journals, he explains that the attacks against scientists in these leaked e-mails for proposing opposite views will recall the reader to the persecution of Galileo. In doing so, it will make the lay person unsure of the credibility of all sciences without fully seeing proof of it, but assuming that infighting exists in them all. Is this a serious risk? Will people even begin to doubt the most rigorous sciences like Mathematics and Physics?"

Comments

Re:What

[LWATCDR]

Okay I have to say that I both agree and disagree.
Yes Science should be shown be accorded more stature and respect than politics. Real science is based of data while the vast majority of politics is based on opinion.
The fact that light travels at a fixed rate in a vacuum is not an opinion.

The problem with climate change is that it has moved out of science and into the realm of religion.
Even on Slashdot people will claim that Global warming caused by mans activities is proven fact. It is not. It is still a theory. A theory with a lot of data to back it up and one I happen to believe is valid but still a theory.
IIt is always right to question a theory and it is always wrong to throw out data that is "messy" just because it could "confuse" people.
I have a Religion and it isn't Science. I have Science and it isn't a Religion.

Re:Modern-Day Galileo

[ehrichweiss]

Crap, html formatting gets me again...

"Does this also count, if the "skeptics" do not use science to make their case, are given media exposure much greater than their viewpoint is worth, and has funding that far exceeds the research funding of the real scientists?"

YES, as a matter of fact it does. The loons on EITHER side of the debate only harm the debate and knowledge base in general.

"I guess than that trying to shut up the "creation scientists" is the wrong way to go - instead, we should use our limited time and resources endlessly debating them. Do that for flat earthers, too."

Well the problem is that you can clearly show that the Earth isn't flat and that evolution is real because there is hard data to back it up. However the AGW camp has data *models* which is a way of saying "this is my best hypothesis thusfar" yet they're stating that they know beyond a reasonable doubt that it's true whereas the real truth of the matter is that what they **know** beyond all reasonable doubt is data collected within the past 50 years; everything else is a part of these models.

To take this up a notch, we've known the Earth is round for hundreds of years; we've known about evolution for about 150 years and have had all that time to collect data but the same cannot be said for climatology as an actual science.