And you don’t have to go back in history. The current debate over global warming (I should be precise and say “human-caused global warming”) isn’t transcending squat. Both sides would agree on that.

It’s not quite science of course. In fact I would say that calling it a debate over “observation” is incorrect. “Urban VIII v. Galileo Galilei” was a debate about observation (specifically, observation vs. hypothesis). The global-warming debate is a debate about “observation-based modeling”, which is much muddier.

Ever tried to argue against warming? I have. And that was before my current jaded, cynical attitude kicked in. It’s always useful to try that, to see how firm your side is …

Anyway, It’s not fun. You get yelled at over things that won’t happen for a hundred years if they happen at all, but as if they already happened. It’s like arguing over the diameter of the planet Vulcan. The hypothetical one that was supposed to be influencing Mercury’s orbit. in 1899.

The sad fact is that at this point, most of the pro-warming arguments seem to begin and end at “the scientific consensus”. Which isn’t bad. Citing the current consensus is a valid strategy. Urban VIII used it quite effectively in the above example. But it’s not argument - not dispositive, nor usefully testable.

Nothing transcends ideology. To paraphrase an argument from another arena, the problem is not that some scientists are Republicans and some are Democrats. The problem is that 100% of scientists are humans.

If an alien came to this planet, learned English, got herself an Internet connection, and read any week’s worth of “Bad Astronomy,” would she conclude that this site’s content “transcended ideology”? Of course not. (Maybe at first, but then she’d run into yesterday’s “Phil. Harmonic.” post.)

I must point out that Phil isn’t claiming that BA transcends anything. (As the Buddha might say, to claim detachment is to contradict it.) But neither is he claiming the contrary.

Anyway, my mama always told me that sarcasm was the lowest form of wit and I would never stoop so low… meh, who am I kidding.

Patriotism is an intrinsically subjective phenomenon. Scientists are (usually) predisposed to adopt an objective viewpoint. They are interested in something that transcends national boundaries, to which those boundaries are, if anything, actual obstacles. If another person has a potentially productive point of view, the scientist will be interested in it. To not show an interest would not simply be antithetical to science but also against the scientist’s personal self-interest because it would also compromise their ability to do science.

That said, scientists are also human, and as prone to political biases as the next man perhaps, sometimes, even more so because they are so adamant that they have an objective point of view. Do not imagine that the distribution of nationalities at an institution does not affect the working environment, nor that the countries who foot the bill do not exert an influence on what is done there.

[[Working in Saudi Arabia allowed me to interact with people from numerous other cultures.]]

Just a bit of sour grapes — I wouldn’t be allowed to work in Saudi Arabia, since I’m “racially” Jewish. They don’t allow Jews in the country, though they made a temporary exception during Desert Storm. They nearly refused to allow Henry Kissinger into the country when Kissinger was the US Secretary of State.

One more reason I’m not fond of the government of Saudi Arabia.

Just to pick two completely random letters out of the alphabet.

For example:
<sarcasm>I saw the docudrama on what will happen when they calculate the mass of the Higg’s boson. I think it was called Lexx or something like that. There was a giant Holland-eating dragonfly. Anyway, the whole of the planet Earth was compressed to the size of a pea!</sarcasm>