At 06:46 AM 12/5/2012, Rob Dingemans wrote:
There is no need for them to be threatened at all.
It is just a matter of what they are being told, taught and are
"believing" into something like the way a religious person does and
the workings of the human mind and clever use of psychology and media.
For example see what happened during the 30s in Germany, which
resulted in world war II.
Most citizens were actually truely believing what they were told by
their nazi leaders; there were only few people who were able and
willing to understand what really was going on.
Those few who openly opposed were quickly identified and "exterminated".
And nowadays this principle has still not changed.
A possiblility is being asserted as if it were an established truth.
Rob is technically correct, the "principle" has not changed. Science
is not established by majority vote of some broad body of experts,
who are sample for opinion regardless of whether or not they have
actually studied an issue.
*However*, it is also true that AGW skepticism, not ordinary
skepticism, which is essential to science, but extreme skepticism
that rejects an entire field or broad conclusion, is rare among
experts who *have* studied the issue, though it does exist. So,
certainly, non-experts can point to experts with opinions that
somewhat confirm their own.
To the extent that it is true that skeptical papers cannot get
published, this is a serious problem. However, that problem must be
addressed directly, not by attacking the majority view as somehow a
matter of "religious belief."
The suppression problem arises easily when people believe that
critical issues are involved. When AGW becomes a political issue,
people with a certain point of view, comfortable with it as the
majority opinion (whether it actually is or not), may believe that
allowing publication of "unconfirmed" research that seems to
contradict their view will cause political harm, which could be
extremely serious. It goes back to a belief that the ends justify the
means. If the end is protecting humanity from some huge disaster,
then some minor level of censorship can be justified. Right?
Wrong. Censoring contrary views damages the process by which humanity
makes collective decisions. It creates a kind of rigidity that is
unresponsive to new research. It makes it impossible to correct errors.
A political process which is vulnerable to, say, isolated and
unconfirmed research results, is a defective political process, and,
again, that is an issue of great importance in itself. We tend to
assume that our political processes are a given, that they can't be
improved, hence political activists will, again, take pragmatic
positions that are inimical to genuine consensus formation. And we
see this, certainly, at the extremes on many issues.
But the more we are, collectively, seeking clarity, seeking to
resolve confusion with consensus (internal and external), the less
effective will be such polemic.
A position does not become false because it is advanced with improper
arguments, that is actually the responsibility of those debating.
On cold fusion, Jed Rothwell is correct about the "conspiracy." As
far as I can tell, there is no conspiracy to "suppress the truth."
There are people and agencies who have openly and privately acted to
suppress research, but they do not believe that they are suppressing
"truth." They believe that they already know the truth, i.e., that
cold fusion is a complete mistake. They are ignorant, but they are
also unprincipled, they are willing to damage research, to prevent
the resolution of issues around cold fusion, in the name of
preventing error and waste of money. They have no care that they have
damaged reputations and careers. And they have become closed,
impervious to evidence.
Cold fusion is often, by pseudoskeptics, compared to N-rays and
polywater, as allegedly "pathological science." While a few parallels
might have seemed legitimate at one time, cold fusion was never
identified as artifact by controlled experiment, in ways that should
be possible if it *is* artifact, and in any way similar to what
happened with N-rays and polywater. All that happened was that the
main discovery, anomalous heat, was initially difficult to confirm,
and that it was also found that cold fusion did not produce *major*
radiation, as would be expected from "fusion," even though some
possible fusion reaction mechanisms would not produce that radiation
-- or might not produce it, plus, at the time, cold fusion was *not
known to be fusion.* That took more evidence. At the time of the
formation of the "bogus" cascade, it was really only a finding of
anomalous heat, with many varying and often unconfirmed additional
possible characteristics, dangling like a warehouse full of red herring.
