. . . apart from the fact that scientific hypotheses, data, and experiments, honestly assessed, means "The Science" is almost never "settled," and is always subject to change. There's a huge and increasing problem that many scientists have an agenda, letting their politics infect their supposed objectivity. This was prophetically stated fifteen years ago in a quote I just ran across in the Wall Street Journal, by University of California Santa Barbara biologist/ecologist Daniel Botkin:
Some colleagues who share some of my doubts argue that the only way to get our society to change is to frighten people with the possibility of a catastrophe, and that therefore it is all right and even necessary for scientiststo exaggerate. They tell me that my belief in open and honest assessment is naïve."
How prescient Botkin has turned out to be. Scientists who cry wolf, by exaggerating and trying to frighten us, are responsible now for the increasing and dangerous lack of respect the public has for science and scientists. But that lack of respect has been earned. SMDH.
