Puncturing Faith in Science

ClimateGate was inevitable. If it wasn't over Climate Change (formerly Global Warming), then I'm sure it would have eventually been over something else.

Here's the closest I've found to explain why. But while it does tend to fall into the "let's soften the blow" political side of the ClimateGate noise, it still does get to within an inch of the wider subject of this post, ie- what we believe.

Because the overwhelming majority of people are not scientists, taking firm positions on anything for or against matters "scientific" is wholly a matter of preference. None of the scientific evidence is gathered by any of us non-scientists, nor is it evaluated by any of us non-scientists, and none of us non-scientists participate in the rigorous and time consuming effort of publishing conclusions and enduring an endless succession of peer reviews.

We only get to find out what's going on when consensus begins to emerge from that process, or sometimes when some eureka moment has occurred. And even then, when the information is put to us, we either like what we hear or we don't. Some of us non-scientists will grudgingly accept the conclusions we don't like, but most of us won't. Why? Because we are all prejudiced about science, itself.

We either have faith in science and the process of scientific discovery and development, or we don't.

I have long felt that having blind faith in anything is to merely be blind. And if a science based issue has a controversy attached to it, then we can hardly conclude that a consensus has been arrived at, now, can we?