In any event, the total number of people killed by the Inquisition and the Crusades was not any greater than numerous other wars and persecutions throughout history, committed by people of every religion and no religion. It is important to draw a distinction between religion and the things that were done in the name of religion but in reality were motivated by political power, military ambition, and simple cruelty and sadism.

If this seems unreasonable, do you think that it would be appropriate to say that atheism is responsible for all of the people killed under Stalin and Mao, because those two dictators and their followers were avowed and apparently sincere atheists?

In regards to the Bible and slavery, it would be more accurate to say that some passages of the Bible accept slavery rather than endorsing it. Other aspects of Biblical ethics, especially in the New Testament, are very much contrary to slavery, which was what motivated certain groups of Christians to become strongly opposed to slavery.

And where exactly are the alleged handouts? In my studies as a grad student in atmospheric science, I have encountered representatives from many climate-oriented research organizations and universities, and nowhere have I seen researchers rolling in dough because of their scientific claims. In fact, what I have very often seen is organizations asking for money from organizations asking for money from someone else. Beggars begging beggars. As far as I can tell (and I’m not the only one on the internet with this opinion), that’s the state of current climate research, the same research that the conservatives claim is needed to clarify the question on global warming.

I’m going to have to ask you for some hard evidence that these handouts exist, or I will have no choice but to conclude you have little idea what you are talking about.

It would also be different if the bible didn’t specifically endorse slavery, which it does consistently.

Most of the slave owners were not atheists, but certain strains of Christianity (notably the Quakers and some Methodists, Congregationalists, and Presbyterians) were indeed on the forefront of the movement to abolish slavery. They were a minority of all Christians, but I say that if one is going to condemn Christianity in general for the Crusades or the Inquisition or other persecutions that were carried out by particular groups of Christians, then one should also credit Christianity in general for the positive things accomplished by other groups of Christians.

One self-correcting aspect of the scientific endeavor, arises from the fact that posterity will declare a winner, and everyone wants to be right in hindsight. No one is typically so much smarter than ALL his colleagues that NONE of them can grasp his point. Eventually, good ideas convince some others (who are excited by the prospect of being right), and the field moves on. For example, Einstein dissented from the Copenhagen interpretation of the quantum theory, but those who believed in it forged ahead with it.

Furthermore, what really ultimately helps someone’s scientific career and reputation is being right. Remember that the truth of the situation will become more and more clear as time passes. How many of these guys really want to be sitting there at age 80 telling their grandchildren that they were one of the people who was wrong?

You contend that the G8+5 governments feel that taking steps to slow global warming is somehow in their economic interest to the extent that they bribe people to claim that global warming is not anthropogenic. This seems almost 180 degrees backwards to me. For instance, the Bush administration seems to think the reverse. Does the economy of the United States somehow work the opposite of the those of the other major industrial countries? If the United States Government feels that curbing AGW would reduce its GNP and monetary standard of living, why would the other G8+5 countries feel the opposite about its effect on theirs? Each of these governments is influenced and lobbied by its richest domestic entities, many of which fear that their profits will decrease rather than increase if they are forced to take steps, for instance, to reduce emissions. So I just can’t visualize your depiction of governments paying off climate scientists to lie to the detriment of the countries’ own present economies.

My first guess is that almost all the “bought” people, if there are any, would be on the side of denying AGW because that seems to be the side whose profits might be jeopardized. I certainly don’t mean that everyone who dissents from the consensus is insincere. I do not doubt that there may be those whose best considered opinion is on the other side. My second guess is that most climate scientists are quite scrupulous, so the consensus view is probably sincerely held.

Paul S: My apologies, I forgot that all of the slave owners were atheists and it was the large number of christians who fought for their freedom. Give it up, religion was not on the forefront of abolition of slavery. It may have been a minority group of them, but the majority were not in this basket.

@Don Edwards

Nice theory, but think about it this way. Climatologist are saying the situation is all but settled, that we know it is happening and we need to divert funding from climate research to reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Does that really sound like the sort of thing a bunch of greedy, money-grubbing people would say?

I think it could be argued that the current form of the Bible exists precisely because it went through a “Peer review” back around the 3rd Century, with learned men debating which books should and should not be considered canonical.

The problem is, those men were learned for their time. There are those who try and “move Christianity with the times” (the Anglican church being perhaps a prime example, with ordination of women now firmly ensconced), and there are those who remain adamant that God’s word is God’s word, then and now, and that the Bible is literally true. In the US, the latter seem to be emphatically in the ascendancy, no matter how many inconsistencies are pointed out to them.

Those who try and move with the times may be wrong, but they are attempting to understand how to balance the conflicts of experience and faith. Those who do not simply discard experience (=evidence) and remain adherent to their dogma.

I know of many young scientists that have had difficulties in getting their ideas considered seriously, because University “Barons” thought otherwise.

For an example of the dogmatic attitude that sadly appears to come natural with power and age to many people, check the travails of S Chandrasekhar.

http://tinyurl.com/yrrdpp

The fact that there seems to be a consensus among atmospheric scientists in favor of anthropogenic global warming, is in large part (although not entirely) due to the dynamics of the political debate on the subject.

Namely, there’s a large body of money being handed out by various political groups – including governments, the UN, and “environmental” activist groups that have been protesting against any sign of capitalism or prosperity or industrialized-world economic progress for 40+ years, among others – to scientists on the one side. I don’t have a link handy, but I’ve read a reference to a research proposal being rejected to study “whether global warming is affecting xxxx” – but approved and funded after they changed the first word of the title to “how”.

And on the other side there’s a much smaller (but still quite large) body of money being handed out by various political groups – including oil companies and automakers, among others – to scientists mostly on the other side.

Now the scientists who take money from power-hungry organizations and come to conclusions amenable to those organizations are somehow thought to be praiseworthy, while the scientists who take money from money-hungry organizations and come to conclusions amenable to those organizations are thought to be vile.

Whereas the scientists who take money from money-hungry organizations and come to conclusions unfriendly to their sponsors are thought to be brave and important (and can then get money from power-hungry organizations), while the scientists who take money from power-hungry organizations and come to conclusions unfriendly to their sponsors are thought to be retired and unimportant. Unless they then get jobs with money-hungry organizations, in which case they are thought to be sell-outs and even more vile.

See, all politics. I haven’t once mentioned the quality of the science being done.

(But then… scientists are human, and they observe other humans. Can anyone imagine the above pattern of behavior NOT having a negative impact on the quality of the science being done?)

Now in this specific subject, what I see is that there WAS good reason to question whether global warming is occurring at all. However, one after another, the reasons have been dealt with. The evidence overwhelmingly says, yes it is occurring. There may be a small fringe that still denies this, but I don’t quickly recall seeing a credible report of an instance of this that is less than two years old.

Meanwhile, though, anyone who questions whether said global warming is human-induced or even more specifically induced by human releases of CO2, or whether more power to government is the best response, is assumed to be denying that global warming is occurring at all.

And that includes scientists quoted in the UN report on the subject (who presumably have some credibility), who publicly claim that the UN report misquotes them AND falsely claims their endorsement in order to add credibility to a conclusion the evidence doesn’t support.

There is a profound difference between “global warming isn’t happening” and the current criticisms of the anthropogenic theory. But if the supporters of that theory won’t give the critics a public airing, they can’t publicly address the criticisms.

(Perhaps I should say “don’t have to” rather than “can’t” – unfortunately it’s hard to know, in the absence of a public airing, which is more accurate.)

Well here I am objecting to my own previous comment. I really don’t like the term “old dogmas.” I used it as an accomodation to Maurizio’s post (2:57 pm), but I think it is a miscasts the situation. Scientists typically love to challenge not only other peoples’ ideas but even their own ideas, sometimes maybe not so much challenge as to explore alternatives.

If you can’t understand this, think of the time you proved a difficult geometry theorem or completed a challenging crossword puzzle. There is a sense of satisfaction in “solving it”, “getting it right”, “nailing it”, or however you relate to the process. Think of the time you completed something, then realized that there was a way to improve it, and then modified your own previous creation. It felt good. You savored it. Now suppose that you are actually exploring the very frontiers of human understanding, on the verge of a more penetrating or comprehensive view of reality. Would you enjoy that? I bet you would.

So would you (personally) want to perpetuate an “old dogma”? Well, I guess that you (personally) can only answer that personally. Doesn’t sound very satisfying though – sort of like pretending that that crossword puzzle was finished when you knew something was still wrong.

Well, the sciences that I am most familiar with are physics and astronomy. It seems to me that for the last 70 years or so, most of the great advances were in some way the result of better physical equipment (better telescopes viewing in more wavelength ranges, linear and circular colliders, etc.). I can’t immediately think of any “old dogmas” being overturned except in the light of new, previously unavaialble, empirical evidence.

Actually, that’s good. I like people. They remind me of me.

Science is made by scientists, and scientists are people too. Therefore there will always be biases, and there will always be seismic changes every 20 or 30 years, when the old professors enjoy their pensions and their dogmas are finally challenged.

Peer review is a flawed process, as demonstrate by the very long list of IgNobel prizes. But as with democracy, we do not know of anything better. The best weapon is to keep the minds ready to accept new ideas, and the mouths ready to question every idea.

It can take generations (even centuries) for entrenched flaws to be rooted out.

Really? Do you have any examples of this? In physical science, not social science. This is a common claim for people criticizing the scientific method, but they never seem to have any good examples backing it up. And don’t say “Newton”, his ideas were right based on the best knowledge available at the time. When better theories were developed they became accepted in a matter of a few years.

My point, and Higgs’, is that the peer review process (even in the world of science) is worked by humans who have biases – greed, ego, etc. Therefore, the flaws allow bias to persist.

You are the one who is missing the point. Yes, scientists have biases. But they often have opposing biases, so that the biases cancel out.

The fact is that it is very rare in the physical sciences for articles to not get published at all. The truth is that yes, biases and grudged can get in the way of publishing articles, but this happens less than a lot of people criticizing science like to portray. Think about it this way. Remember, in the article, how he says how small many scientific communities are? How they all publish in the same journals, go to the same conferences, send their students to each others’ labs? If an editor (editors are not anonymous) showed strong, overt bias in his choosing of reviewers how well do you think he or she will be able to function in that small of a community? Do you really think the other scientists are going to put up with him or her? And even if he or she did, people could just publish in a different journal on the same subject, or present in a conference, or wait for the editor to change (editors are always temporary). Yes, what Higgs is describing is theoretically possible, but in practice it is much more difficult and much less common than he makes it out to be.

Now people may not get published in “top-tier” journals, but that isn’t a big deal. Few articles get published in top-tier journals, that is why they are top-tier. In fact most of the time researchers don’t even bother trying, and many researchers go their entire career without ever getting published in a top-tier journal. For laypeople like Higgs (no matter how he tries to portray himself, that is what he is), as well as journalists, top-tier journals are all they ever hear about. But for scientists top tier journals are fairly irrelevant. It may be prestigious to get published in them, but pretty much all real scientific work is done in smaller, subject-specific journals. Higgs seems to think it is some sort of insult to not get published in top-tier journals, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. In reality, top-tier journals have their own limitations that make publishing in them problematic as well.

I am not saying that peer-review is perfect. It is a human process designed by humans and run by humans. But these critics of the scientific method generally greatly exaggerate the extent of the problems in order to dismiss scientific knowledge they don’t like (which is exactly what Higgs was trying to do, he is trying to dismiss knowledge gained from the scientific method in general in order to attack global warming). Overall peer review works very well. If it is is flawed and arbitrary as Higgs presents it as, why would scientists put up with it? If, as Higgs says, getting published is pretty much random, why do it at all? The fact that scientists, who know far more about peer review in physical sciences than Higgs does, support it so strongly probably indicates there is some benefit to it.

I’m not a scientist, but I value science and I try to stay reality-based. I think I share with many (most?) scientists two assumptions I can only support from pragmatism, not from evidence:
o There’s a natural explanation for every natural phenomenon
o Given two equally powerful explanations of the evidence, the simpler one is “better” (Occam’s razor? Parsimony?)

Is that dogma? I think a religious person would say those are my articles of faith. I’m not comfortable with that characterization, but I can’t refute it convincingly.

        [test]

It can take generations (even centuries) for entrenched flaws to be rooted out.

This bleeds into the discussion as a whole. Although Irishman made some good points, he then veered off and missed the main point that even a flawless process is corrupted by biased people. “Scientific process” is an idea that is practiced by biased people. These people interpret evidence differently. The naturalist interprets evidence differently from the supernaturalist. They have different starting points (axioms), and neither has an ability to prove their axioms (that’s why they’re axioms).

BTW, I am a meteorologist with a background in climate, but my point here is not even to speak about “climate change.”

BTW(2), I disagree on scientific grounds with much of what is purported about anthropogenic climate change, as do many other atmospheric scientists.

No one is claiming peer review is perfect, but this guy is basically saying it is garbage which it most definitely is not.

Anyone that thinks the peer review process eliminates bias is deluding himself. Read Robert Higgs’ article:

http://hnn.us/blogs/entries/38532.html

(I specifically refer to his discussion about peer review).