The blogger goes :
"My concern is that global warming has become on par with religious dogma. When anyone, including legitimate scientists, dares to present contradictory data or a different interpretation of current data, they are attacked and harassed. It is assumed that they have evil intentions or are shills for the oil industry. Anyone who does not toe the global warming party line is considered akin to Holocaust deniers. Any data that deviates from the established doctrine is dismissed as biased or not worth looking at.
This is a problem. Science should not be politicized. A particular interpretation of the data should not be taken as the gospel from on high. Our knowledge of science evolves over time. Just a few decades ago, scientists were concerned about the catastrophic effects of global cooling and the coming Ice Age. Going even further back, to the 1630s, Galileo was convicted of heresy by the Church for supporting the radical Copernican theory that the Earth revolves around the sun, rather than the other way around. We should not be subjecting scientists to another Inquisition because they do not agree with commonly accepted ideas. Science does not advance without people who are willing to challenge the dominant paradigm.
"
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1.23.2007
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2 comments:
Leave it to a marketing person -- somone who makes their living off of manipulating messages -- to write a post like this.
What I want to know is this: why do non-scientists always call for the de-politicization of science when they don't agree with the research?
Ridiculous.
I think the author is misrepresenting (or for that matter, not understanding) the dichotomy between the two parties.
The so called "non-scientists" are nothing but the puppets of the government or vice-versa. Their short-term aspirations of collecting $$ will be soon put on the back burner if they don't give a hoot about the rising threat of global warming.
From what I gather off the net,
"Kate Soper argues that the 'nature-endorsing' views of environmentalists/scientists and the 'nature-skeptical' views of critical social theorists (non-scientists?) and cultural activists (a la religious activists?) need not be mutually exclusive, but that they can inform each other in a rich and rewarding dialectic." - something that is lacking now.
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