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Who’s Really Doing Science?

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Recently, comedian and talk show host Bill Maher defended his questioning of the wisdom of mass vaccination by saying it’s “not settled science, like global warming.”

And, around the world, scientists and critical thinkers and just generally knowledgeable folks fell out of their chairs, like so many calving icebergs.

Climate science remains controversial. Maher’s trendy gambit claiming that the science has been “settled” is absurd.

To really settle the matter, a whole lot more scrutiny would be required. And the critics who have mounted attacks on the anthropogenic — “human-caused” — hypothesis for global climate change would have to have their work considered more openly to earn any credit for the now-dominant hypothesis.

Why? Because science is all about open, public testing. As Karl Popper explained, science is the process of conjecture and refutation. When those who criticize a theory are castigated as being unscientific simply because they criticize, science is no longer happening. Then we have pure ideology, non-science if not pure nonsense.

Though the critics of anthropogenic global warming catastrophism often get dubbed as kooks and crazies by current scientistic prophets of doom, they are, in fact, doing the work of science. Even if they are eventually proved wrong.

And Bill Maher is no more the judge of “settled science” than I am.

Full disclosure: I haven’t got my flu shot yet.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

7 replies on “Who’s Really Doing Science?”

Maher, in spite of the name of his former TV show is very politically correct. Those who are politically correct will accept as faith what ever socialists tell them to believe.

As far as the science of global warming it is shoddy science to the core.

Although the H1N1 flu is getting a lot of press, in my opinion as a physician, IT IS JUST THE FLU! The science of vaccination is very well established, and generally safe.

However, the major reasons to get a vaccinated are only because big brother told you to to protect the drug company profits.

Where’s the science in these comments? Science is deriveud from observation, gathering of facts, developing a hypothesis, then challenging the hypothesis through scientific inquiry. Science is neither political nor ideological. The science for climate change and the virus HAS been released to the public. The deaths of more than 100 people can’t be explained by a conspiracy theory. Of course, evolution must be a conspiracy theory, too, since it can be discounted by a “poof, we exist now” rationalization (or irrationalization) of reality.

Global warming is settled science. Sure. Climatologists cannot agree on how to determine the average global temperature. Climatologists have never shown that the greenhouse gas effect applies to the entire planet and its miles thick atmosphere. Climatologists cannot explain why their models failed: global temperatures have not gone up for eleven years. Climatologists cannot answer the simple question: if temperatures rise, and more water evaporates, and more clouds form, then why won’t the earth cool again due to increased reflection of sunlight by the increased cloud cover? The climatologists left clouds out of their long-term climate model. This is settled science?

The science part of vaccination was settled decades ago: inject a person with all or part of a “bug.” The person forms antibodies against the bug. A person with antibodies is less likely to get infected by the “wild” bug.

Everything else is probability and risk assessment. What is the probability of being infected? If infected, what is the probability of severe illness and what is the probability of death? If vaccinated, what is the probability of antibody formation? What is the probability of a serious complication? What is the probability of death? Crunch the numbers and look at the results. Use the results to determine who would benefit most from vaccination and who should not be vaccinated. This isn’t science; it’s judgment based on risk assessments.

Thank you for pointing out the obvious flaws in the notion of anthropogenic global warming (AGW). Yes, the planet is, over the pretty long run, warming. It has been doing so for about a dozen millennia, even if it has been cooling since 1998, and there were the Medieval Warm Period and the Mini-Ice Age.

Nearly all of the work of science is what is called “falsification,” wherein a scientist zealously tries to prove that an explanation of things (“hypothesis”) is untrue. Whenever that act of falsification is blocked, as it is today with withholding of funds for falsification of AGW, then science, itself, is blocked.

And, no, I’ve not yet received a flu shot, either, in any year. Still, if my HMO offers a free one, I just may take a booster. For those who are half my age and have no contact history with H1N1 flu, the inoculation is really a good idea. This is especially true for those who live in a home in which persons live who go to school or religious services, which are the most significant sources of transmission of common diseases. Getting flu when one has no antibodies for the virus can make a person far sicker than getting a type of flu that one had had in an earlier year.

By the way, my formal education was in science. My college major was biology.

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