In a Climate Where Science is Being Raped by Political Correctness, Can the Scientific Method Be Restored?

The video above, "Restoring the Scientific Method," is taken from the recent 6th International Conference on Climate Change. Follow this link to all the videos from that conference. (via Anthony Watts) The ICCC was instituted to provide a forum where an open exchange of information regarding issues of climate could be exchanged, without regard to political correctness.

But climate is just one small -- albeit multidisciplinary -- area where science is engaged. Political bias distorts outcomes from a wide array of topics where political correctness has taken an interest in science. Of course, none of the other politically hot topics in science have declared their intention to take over the advanced world's economies and industries, as climate science politics has done. So climate clearly warrants citizen oversight on a large scale.

But if science can be distorted and prostituded in the area of climate, it can be hired out to powerful interests in other areas as well. Scientific misconduct and outright fraud appears to be more common than previously thought, in the age of a growing dependency on government for research funding.

In Hitler's Germany, science was bent to do the will of the Fuhrer, to prove the superiority of "the master race." In Stalin's USSR, science was perverted to prove the superiority of the socialist system. Dissenting (honest) scientists were sent to the Gulag or worse.

In the modern world of government-financed science, groupthink in both funding agencies and in laboratories plays a powerful part. If the scientist does not play to the prevailing expectations of the financing agency and the power-clique controlling scientific publishing, he may lose his grant, his lab, his ability to publish, and his livelihood. Scientists generally understand the rules that must be obeyed to get along.

That is why it is so fascinating when scientists are willing to go against the prevailing winds -- because that is when scientific revolutions and paradigm changes tend to happen.

Most scientists willing to publicly go against the climate orthodoxy of doom, are retired from active grant-seeking and publication in journals. With nothing to lose, they are free to speak out. But a few active and outspoken climate researchers are beginning to speak out against the closed and closed-minded nature of the orthodoxy. As the influence of these brave persons grows, the ability to restore the scientific method to climate studies at large also grows.

Can you think of some other areas where political correctness prevents or obstructs the open examination and discussion of scientific issues? These are the things that one rarely sees in the media. They are things that most persons have been conditioned not to mention or discuss. They are those things and ideas which must not be named.

But ideas do tend to get around in the era of tweets, social media, and new technologies.

Always focus on falsifiability, when looking at a scientific theory or idea. How could you prove it wrong? What near-term predictions can you make based upon the theory? If your predictions are set to fall on the year 2100, how can that "science" be called falsifiable in the year 2011?

Fake science avoids the risk of being tested. Fake science tries to shut down debate, using underhanded tactics and means. Fake science hides in a faux consensus, ignoring the fact that true science is not about taking votes to reach a final conclusion, or reaching a final, beyond-debate agreement in committee.