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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?"
The argument from incredulity is often applied to science by the layperson. You don't need an opponent or a debate to use a logical fallacy. The fact that the Kitzmiller vs. Dover case had to happen proves that people question science regardless of it's validity.
"A casual stroll through the lunatic asylum shows that faith does not prove anything." ~Friedrich Nietzsche
Didn't we see the same bloviation from the mainstream media when cold fusion went from the energy source of the future to a byword for scientific fraud? It seems to me if the reputation of hard science could survive out and out fraud like that, it will probably survive the climate change "fraud".
Science shouldn't be "accorded automatic stature and respect" any more than politics should. There's no reason to trust a scientist any more than you'd trust your barber.
The problem isn't that people aren't automatically believing science, it's almost the exact opposite: people are automatically doubting science. And that's quite another thing entirely.
When I was a kid, I used to genuinely believe that humans were on a path to greater wisdom, more profound discourse, and perfect knowledge.
Lately, I just see a bunch of power-hungry assholes doing their utmost to discredit intelligent thought and dumb-down the world around them, so they can continue on an unimpeded path toward greater assholism.
If libertarians are so opposed to effective government, why don't they all move to Somalia?
The lay public has been mistrusting science for quite a while now. Witness the disbelief in findings regarding the lack of connection between autism and vaccines, brain cancer and cellphones and climate change.
/. all the time - cue all the rants about how nobody gets funding unless they parrot the party line about global warming and how doctors who support vaccinations are just puppets of Big Pharma.
We're already well into the era when people doubt the motives and findings of scientists. You can see it here on
Problem is, people really believe that they can become experts on extremely complicated topics and weigh the evidence for themselves. I'm not saying we need to have blind trust in authority, but sometimes you've got to recognize that someone who studied climatology for X years might actually know a thing or two that you can't pick up from reading a blog.
If people are afraid to question what we now consider laws in physics, mathematics, etc, then there will never be breakthroughs in learning.
I mean, there are extremes, and people shouldn't be disbelieving scientists just because they're scientists, but at the same time, we shouldn't always take things at face value just because Bill Nye the Science Guy says so. There is a happy medium...
Newtonian Mechanics are valid, just not as accurate as Relativity. Relativity is, in essence, a more accurate version of Newtonian Mechanics. It refines it, but the basic conclusions are very similar, save for extreme circumstances. Though relativity is more accurate, it's much more complicated, so most people will calculate things with N.M. It works fine at human-experienced scales, speeds and distances. Creationism is entirely different from evolution. It in no way refines the idea for more accuracy, it just throws the whole damn concept out the window and says "We know, and we're right because we said so." And it should be noted that Einstein, unlike the evolution-deniers, backed up his claims with math, logic and science, rather than just anecdotal evidence. Fact checking when you are an informed person or scientist is one thing, saying something is wrong because you don't get it and some old book told you it's wrong is entirely another, invalid, way of thinking.
"A casual stroll through the lunatic asylum shows that faith does not prove anything." ~Friedrich Nietzsche
Government has been funding science for much much longer than a couple of decades.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_society
Just out of curiosity, if pure science is not funded by government, how should it be paid for? By private industry? Do you somehow think that we can place greater trust results of science paid for by corporations?
Who could have possibly predicted that accepting hundreds of billions of dollars from governments over the last couple of decades could have somehow politicized Science?
-Peter
Dwight D. Eisenhower - 1961.
"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 scientifictechnological elite."
Hundreds of billions??? You have the wrong side. 20 Billion dollars over 30 years for the entire world. Compared with 37Bn dollars given as subsidies to fossil fuel and nuclear power industry *EACH* *YEAR* by the *US* ALONE* and I think you find the finger points a different direction.
How many people would want a piece of THAT action?
Much more.
please, please, please get your facts straight on what these scientists did with their data when they 'threw out raw data'
they threw out siberian tree-ring data for certain years (i believe it was 1960 to present) that they were using to infer local temperatures and, instead, used the actual local air temperatures. this turned a graph that showed temperatures over a period of time longer than thermometers have existed in from one relying on only tree-ring data, to one relying solely on tree-ring temperature data to one using mostly tree-ring data with some tree-ring data replaced by more accurate actual temperature readings.
yes, the tree-ring data in this location diverges unexpectedly from the actual temps recorded. that is a problem to explain. but it has nothing to do with the fact that the temperatures really did continue to increase.
Einstein questioned "valid" laws of science and look what it got him.
Indeed I shall - it got him a series of logical arguments with which to dispute the wisdom of the time. Gradually, through debate and observation and experimentation, more and more people realised he had made a series of logical points that disproved the old ways of doing things.
Let us compare this to the argument from incredulity - the equivalent would have been Einstein saying, "But I don't understand it! How does it work? No, look, see, the feather and the hammer land at different times! Ha! Scientists are dumb!" in which case I doubt he would have quite the same status in the history books.
Be smart, help people!
They threw out the data 25 years ago -- long before the majority of these scientists had any agenda at all, besides getting laid, because it was on magnetic tape and punch cards, and they were moving buildings. But hey, don't let a few facts interfere with your conspiracy theory.
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
NASA destroyed old tapes of data too.
Why? Because back in the days storage space was a premium. There just wasn't the room. Someone made an executive decision to make more space and they decided to get rid of the raw data.
Not saying this is what happened to the climate data, but sometimes shit happens. This isn't stuff people consider historic, so while we'll go out of our way to save Terabytes of White House email because it's instantly an historic record (...the ones that still exist *snort*) no one gives a poop about the raw data on the mytosis of genetic material in the Burandan Sea Slug.
We tried that with the state lottery system. It turns out that most people can't understand statistics, and if they could, we wouldn't be able to afford the schools that don't teach it.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
If the Pythagorean Theorem required an increase in taxes people would start to doubt it. There was an interesting research paper in which conservatives were given a news article which outlined a study with evidence for humans being responsible for global warming. At the end of the article they either appended a paragraph explaining possible regulation and taxation solutions or a paragraph suggesting that we needed increased Nuclear Power to solve the problem.
Those who read that the solution was taxes were more likely to doubt the validity of the science than those conservatives who read the article with no mention of increased taxes but instead read about Nuclear power.
The problem with climate change science at this point isn't the science it's that the solutions go against conservative values.
"Liberals are trying to take over the world through fascism. Global Warming increases taxes and gives the government increased control over our lives. Therefore Global Warming is an eco-fascist plot to take away freedom and control us." The science doesn't actually matter one way or the other.
The real lesson of Galileo wasn't that science will persecute those it feels are heretics. It's that you can't change the minds of those who base their scientific conclusions not on empiricism and research but on whether or not it threatens completely unrelated personal beliefs.
We might not have perfect models or understand every nuance of climate change but we have pretty good research on the larger points. Challenges to climate change are similar to those against Evolution. "There is no way to know what really happened 100k years ago, because we can't trust proxy data or radio-isotope testing.", "Scientists don't completely understand the underlying mechanisms or why it's happened in the past or when exactly it'll happen in the future.", "There isn't enough time to do real studies since the time frames are so large.", "This is just a liberal plot to destroy our country and fill our children's minds with pseudo science." "It's a modern day religion.", "The scientists are suppressing dissent and withholding their data." "The science isn't settled." "So-and-so admitted that they have huge gaps in their understanding and that it's frustrating to not know X one way or the other."
You're assuming that everyone who has an opinion about this will actually be informed, will take the time to look through those proofs, reproduce those experiments, etc.
Read this.
In particular, look at that graph. Are you frightened yet?
Evolution is one of the crowing triumphs of modern science. It has more evidence than any other theory I know of, from many branches of science -- the "tree of life" is repeated, exactly, in genetics, in the fossil record, in the geologic record, everywhere we care to look for it. It informs pretty much all of modern medicine and biology, and it is a humbling look at our origins and our true status with respect to other life on the planet. It is beautiful, important, and solidly supported by fact.
Even the Catholic Church has officially embraced evolution, and the big bang theory, as truth.
And a third of Americans reject evolution outright. These aren't people who just aren't sure -- they say it is definitely false.
Want to guess why?
Because they feel it threatens their religion. Because if evolution is true, the Earth (and certainly the Universe) cannot be six thousand years old, and they must accept that they are descended from apes -- or that, by any honest classification, humans are still a species of ape. Because they cannot accept the fact that at least some part of that religion is a fairy tale, or at least a metaphor.
The problem is, in order to reject evolution, they find they have to doubt just about every legitimate scientist who has an opinion on the subject, and keep themselves willfully ignorant. Furthermore, in order to believe the earth is six thousand years old, they pretty nearly have to stick their fingers in their ear and go "la la la la" in order to avoid pretty much every branch of science that has anything to say about the subject.
That is, if they are right, even the most basic grade-school cosmology must be wrong -- there are objects more than six thousand light years away from us. Geology must also be wrong -- not merely carbon-dating (which is already quite rigorous), but the kind of time scales modern geology suggests. And of course, modern medicine must be wrong -- our understanding of things like antibiotics relies on evolution to work.
And yet, they will feel qualified to address these issues, to challenge real scientists with such arguments as, "That's microevolution. Show me one 'kind' turning into another, and I'll believe it." When this fails to get them anywhere, they again close their eyes, ears, and minds, and ultimately turn to the very simplistic, reassuring, and ultimately wrong words of Ken Ham: "Who should you believe -- God or the scientists?"
The problem here is not just the validity of evolution. It is that in order to believe what the creationist wants to believe, they have to reject huge chunks of modern science. In order to continue to be relevant, they have consistently attempted to get their strange ideas taught in school -- not just as a philosophy, or a class in its own right, but as part of science.
And it's not just america -- 22% of Canadians are creationists. Something like a third of Americans are.
So, the short answer is, yes, laypeople absolutely will doubt whatever they feel they have a problem with. If they doubt evolution, cosmology, Einsteinian relativity, geology, archeology, paleontology, etc, just so they can believe a certain way, it's certainly not a stretch that they would doubt anything that conflicts with their actual (polluting, wasteful) lifestyle.
And unfortunately, even when 99.9% of scientists agree on something, it doesn't help if they can't convince the public -- because laypeople are also voters.
We need another Carl Sagan.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Real skepticism provides criteria by which it can be satisfied. Unchanging skepticism in the face of evidence is not scientific.
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
There is the difference, just as people have been distrusting some sciences recently there has also been an increase in intellectual elites showing distain for the, lets call 'em Plebes. I think it stems from being walled up in Universities and not having to work for a living.
Someone in the real world that works on cars, develops deodorant or makes heart medication doesn't say "I'm a Scientist so I'm right!" They say "I'm an automative engineer, or a chemist that works on medication, or I'm a chemist that designs right guard." Its like the BASF commercials here in the US, "Helping Make Products Better."
All too often in the debates about GCC someone who is a climate researcher will go "Well I'm a climate researcher so I'm right and the people that don't agree with me are idiots." Yea, not the best way to approach people. /Disclaimer, I spent the last 6 years at a University not working for a living, now I'm out doing real work again.
But how do you explain all this to your average Sarah Palin follower? That's the scientists' conundrum here.
An effective way to start is to not insult them. Maybe rather than thinking that a college level education is what is needed, why don't you try and describe it in a manner that anybody at an 8th grade level could grasp? You might get a more welcome and understanding response than by being an elitist prick.
Change this later.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Other research centers also collect similar data, and some have open-sourced their algorithms.
And yes, their conclusions are similar to those of the CRU. That's what the GP means by saying that criticisms have been answered.
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
Just because one has the "right" to say it, doesn't mean they should.
Aristotle would call it Hubris - "to cause shame to the victim, not in order that anything may happen to you, nor because anything has happened to you, but merely for your own gratification. Hubris is not the requital of past injuries; this is revenge. As for the pleasure in hubris, its cause is this: men think that by ill-treating others they make their own superiority the greater."
I've done both academics and working both in agriculture and the public sector and in my view no one "earns arrogance".
Yes, there is a long, long list of people who should have been told to STFU. Newton, Galileo, Celeste - ohh, the list goes on and on.
Seriously, #1 on my list would be that douchebag, Al Gore. He did more to politicize the global warming crap than anyone. If you want my most serious opinion on GW - yeah, the earth is warming. It's going to warm, no matter what we do. Do I really think that mankind is hastening the inevitable? Wellll - not really, but it's possible. Yeah, let's do whatever we can to clean up the environment, and to stop wasting shit - that makes sense with or without the threat of global warming. Stop polluting. I like it. Those things that you just HAVE to have, you should shop for the most energy efficient model. Stop driving cars to the corner for a gallon of milk. Stop wasting. Everyone will benefit - global warming or not.
But, as for man CAUSING global warming - BULLSHIT!!! How many ice ages has the earth had now? And, how many interglacial periods?
The earth didn't end with any of the ice ages, or during any of the interglacials.
It's time to adapt, people. Doomsayers go under the bus. People with a plan can get on the bus.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
I think the issue here is that someone like Al Gores makes a film full of factual inaccuracies, wins a Nobel peace prize for his efforts and is lauded by the pro Climate change scientists.
The scientists should actually have pointed out the inaccuracies in the video, but they didn't. So when average Joe like me sees this, what do I use to draw my conclusions? Well its not rocket science - Al Gore talks rubbish and the scientists still support him. Where does that leave the credibility of the scientists? Well in my book, up the creek without a paddle.
As far as I am concerned, this is an engineered crisis to manipulate people to start being more conservative with their energy consumption, while moving towards using sustainable and renewable forms of energy and manufacturing. While I am all for the objective, I object being lied to and coerced, and will never be able consciously align myself ethically with people who believe that they have the right to behave in such a manner.
Participatory Governance : The only feasible option for a real democracy, where everyone really does have a say.
> two words - Sarah Palin.
And we thought BDS was bad enough. The mention of Mrs. Palin's name seems to instantly polarize any conversation, so why bring her into this thread, already a certainty to become a veritable flamefest?
But since you did, lets do examine her ideas on the merits instead of ad hominim attacks on her. Seems she is saying pretty much what I have been saying here on /. for years. That the science and politics of GW and especially AGW have blurred into a horrid muddle such that even the raw data (where it hasn't been destroyed) isn't trustworthy. Therefore basing multi-trillion dollar reordering of the world's economy on it is stupid. Therefore The Won trying to ram a New Deal on Carbon down our thoats by hook (Copenhagan) or crook (EPA) isn't even on the same planet with science, it is ideology, pure and simple.
> Because of some possible (and if so quite serious) data shenanigans, Obama should boycott
> the talks entirely to send a message. i.e. Quit.
Yes. Because the reaction has been to attack the messengers, bury the whole matter and proceed on the same predetermined course. By going Obama is declaring for that faction. No other spin is possible. The only exception would be if he went and used the occasion to put his speaking skills into the service of Science by utterly flaying the whole perverted exercise, which we both know won't happen.
Global warming MAY be happening (but probably hasn't for a decade now..), AGW even MIGHT be the major cause. But with even the raw sensor data in serious doubt (ask Google about the recent review of the raw data in Darwin or the rerun of the New Zealand long term trend data from their raw data. The rot extends far beyond EAU's CRU now.) and the main actors proven by their own words to be activists instead of scientists who can say? And that is the point, nobody who hasn't got a few years to dig into data has no rational basis to decide. The experts are tainted on both sides by trillions of dollars of incentives, political/religious beliefs and the raw data is suspect. So on the one hand we might all be Doomed! yet the only proposed solution to the possibility is 100% certain to produce ruin. So the rational person looks for option #3 and says, so just how much would mitigation cost should we do nothing and the Warmers prove to be right?
If you are going to cry wolf on such a biblical scale as the AGW theory does, you really should make every attempt to be open and above reproach. If the warmers had truly believed the science was settled they should have put together a datadump worthy of the claims. Put the full raw data, the adjustments with detailed explanations for each out along with the complete fully commented source to the models used to process it that gave the results that lead them to their frightening theory of doom. Let everyone fully examine the whole thing to the best of their abilities. That would have settled the science.
Instead they let Al Gore ride in and turn the whole thing into a crappy PowerPoint, then into a movie and finally ride it to become the Nobel Goracle with a hundred million dollar personal forture riding on a pet theory that just happened (amazing coincidence, Trust Me!) to require the exact same policies his ilk had been pushing since Karl Marx defiled the Earth with his presence.
Or take James Hansen. He is going around saying anyone who "Denies" his theory should be tried for crimes against The Earth. Were he just another crackpot pundit he could be safely ignored. Look at MSNBC's raings, we are pretty good at ignoring crackpots. The problem isn't even that Hansen wears the robes of a High Priest of Science!, hell he has the NASA patch on his robes, in the ranks of Science! that is better than a cardinal's hat. No, the problem is that the rest of the priesthood hasn't taken any action against him.
When a heretic priest comes busting into yer temple demanding everyone adopt a new set of beliefs the established church
Democrat delenda est
This isn't only happening in Climate science. My wife works in Mollecular Biology and has told me dozens of stories about PHD's fudging their results so that they can maintain their grants. Big Gov't gives them money to prove certain things for them, so inevitably, they need to prove those things to keep getting the money.
This happens wherever people's livelihood depends on Government Grants. Invariably, someone will end up committing fraud to keep getting the grants.
I love the irony in these CRU scientists refusing to release their data because "all they want to do is prove it wrong". Where would we be if Newton, Galileo, Einstein and others had felt that way. Methinks they doth protest too much. Besides, How the hell can you build a climate model without allowing for variations in the solar output??? How can you embed the data in the code. That is the number one rule for coders. Keep the code and data separate. If the data changes, the code can still run a new set of data. These huge gaps in logic keep me a skeptic.
"People are stupid; given proper motivation, almost anyone will believe almost anything."
My logic tells me that true science is more about questions than answers. I believe that we continually need to move forward but with enough doubt about how far we have come to be able to freely discuss "facts" that we have already established.
In the fable of the Blind Men and the Elephant ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blind_Men_and_an_Elephant ), various people correctly observe things and make differing conclusions about them. While there are definitely times to apply Occam's Razor and accept certain facts and move on, that does not mean there is not more to the story that can be observed later from a different angle.
Any "scientist" who works to "shut up" the opposition, has ceased to be a scientist and has turned into a political creature. Science is not about manipulation but about free and open discussions based upon the merits of the arguments.
Coding Blog
I've seen him lauded for raising awareness of the issue. Like most popularizers, he's been criticized on the details by scientists, including those who support the broad consensus view on anthropogenic global warming. The Nobel Prize was the Peace Prize, not one of the scientific prizes.
In fact, plenty of them have, including those who support the point Gore was making in the speeches and video.
Free speech is one thing, but when talk-radio (just one example) come out with completely made up 'facts' and statistics on the fly to please their listeners, they ought to be fined hard if the study they pretend their stats come from doesn't exist in peer-reviewed form. I've listened to them 'debate' the current climate problems, and it would have been a good laugh if it hadn't made me cry first.
Non-Linux Penguins ?
There is actually a parallel between why the media jumped on Tiger and the science flub so badly. In both cases the media attention is strengthened by the idea of breaking an otherwise stable 'uninteresting' topic.
Tiger is important in the world (of entertainment). He is an awesome sportsman, successful, rich, married nice girl, blah, blah, whatever. Problem for the media has been that we already know all of this by now. There is rarely ever anything new, or better (media point of view) bad to report. Well...the car crash ignited this massive media blitz against him for the sake of _trying_ to bring the guy down to 'the rest of us'.
Science is also seen as uninteresting. It's all logical stuff done by smart folks that know what they are doing. Nothing to report on. Problem is that those boring and smug scientists are behind all this science that is telling us to change our lives, and we can't come up with any reasons to tell them to buzz off, because well...those reasons typically have to be scientific, and we can't beat them at their own game.
And up comes a reason we can slap them over the head with...they cheated, and we know all about that. You know what says the media to fuel a story they have been itching to get away with, they probably all cheat!
By your logic, what right did a (then) non professional scientist like Albert Einstein have, meddling in a respected and obviously 'more-qualified-than-thou' field of professional science?
Actually, by the GP's logic, Albert Einstein's PHD in Physics made him qualified enough to question the established scientific thinking in the field of physics in a rigorous and meaningful way.
And it's absolutely no accident or quirk of fate that it took someone who was well studied in the field to up-end the established thinking, while the 'theories' of gaggles and gaggles of uneducated crackpots claiming to be following in Einstein's footsteps continue to come to naught. Because Einstein, armed with his PHD, understood the existing physics and thus its realistic flaws and limitations. Whereas the crackpot is theorizing from a position of ignorance.
Similarly, there are actual climatologists who take issue with certain studies and more so the strengths of their conclusions. They are useful. Then there are people who are not climatologists and don't understand climatology claiming it's all a huge conspiracy and it can't possibly be true because of the sun, ha ha, those stupid scientists never thought of the sun, or natural climate cycles, yeah, only the true rebels have ever thought of that etc etc.
It's not hard to tell the difference.
after all, only someone trained in, say, Canon Law would be qualified to speak authoritatively on christianity, right?
To the extent that I accept the existence or need of any worldly 'authority' on Christianity (which is to say not much... after all it's ultimately about a personal relationship between you and the Creator), then absolutely yes. Because if you haven't studied the Bible and Theology beyond attending church on Sunday, then you sure as fuck aren't an authority on either.
I mean, what are you trying to say? That you can be an 'authority' on something without having studied it? That only accepting people who actually know things about the subject at hand as authorities is elitist, or equivalent to Religious Orthodoxy?
Einstein is a very bad example for that point of view!
The enemies of Democracy are
common sense, gut instinct and 41 years in the school of life tells me something smells bad about the whole AGW agenda
You should not rely on gut feelings when there is better information to hand. And there is. Ah, but you suspect that info is all cooked and made up, to support some agenda, which might be only to keep the government funding flowing? Your instincts missed much more plausible and likely explanations.
Science is competitive, as everyone can see from some of the less than honest suggestions in those emails. If there was good evidence that Global Warming was not real or was not our fault, there'd be a bunch of scientists eager to enhance their reputations by publishing this. To suppose that the majority of scientists could have agreed on the same something that isn't true and joined a vast conspiracy is ridiculous, and that's why people who entertain such thinking are given short shrift and dismissed as cranks, nutcases, and conspiracy theorists.
Perhaps you think it's not like that, it's more that this bandwagon has gotten sufficient momentum that most scientists are jumping on uncritically? You see, we have this thing called "peer review" that does a decent job of stopping that. Who is there qualified to check a scientist's work? Only another scientist, a peer. Obviously scientists can't spend too much time reviewing each other's work, so the system that's been adopted is to have 2 other scientists review each new work. It weeds out most of the garbage.
Face it, any numbers older than about 50 years ago are based on best-guess, nothing more.
No. This is another typical assertion, this claim that we don't or can't know very much. Oh yes we can! You think 50 year old data is worthless? You are wrong. Such data can and has been checked and cross checked. When tree ring data, lake sediment data, ice core data, historical data, and more, and from many different trees, lakes, ice cores, and observers are all in agreement, it's a safe bet that the data is good.
Now for the other explanations you have overlooked. Chicken Little doesn't work for the government, Chicken Little works for the media. The media is forever "sexing up" the news because drama sells. Of course they've cherry picked the juiciest emails. They love controversy, and will happily jump on and enhanced manufactured controversy as well as report on real controversy. For instance, among the educated, there is no controversy about Evolution, and anyone who suggests there is a controversy between Evolution and Creationism hasn't troubled with "trivial" things like reading any of the evidence, or giving the evidence a fair hearing, and learning why scientists concluded that we evolved. Those people won't spend time informing themselves. The rest of us are understandably annoyed when these ignorant trolls who won't spend time studying the issue they want to discuss try to waste everyone's else time with nonsense.
I always placed my belief that the scientists knew a hell of a lot more than me, and I could trust what they said. But recently, perhaps with age, has come the same cynicism I now feel for corporations, pharmaceuticals, politicians etc ...
And finally, you throw in the false equivalence. You think scientists are just as prone as corporations to manipulating and manufacturing evidence to support a conclusion? We're all equally scummy? Wrong again. Of course science is not immune to misconduct. But I might suggest that corporations, politicians, etc are more prone to unethical behavior than scientists. Science is all about finding the facts and modeling them, an activity inherently resistant to cheating, lying, and denial, and in which the chances of getting away with any of that are much lower. Soon as a few other scientists try to duplicate some fantastic result and cannot, the trouble starts. Those who have tried (Cold Fusion comes to mind) have been caught
Intellectual Property is a monopolistic, selfish, and defective concept. It is "tyranny over the mind of man"