Originally posted by: Deudalus
Really?
Please show me your credentials.
Show me what you have done.
Show me the grants you have written, given, applied for, and received.
Better yet, why don't you stop and do some very simple reasoning.
A scientist who is receiving money that is basically supporting him and his work based on grants has a vested interest in proving his case. That is why you rarely see a scientist come back and say "I appreciate all of this money that you gave me and appreciate that I could get more for research on this subject, but unfortunately its all bullshit."
The problem with your argument is that you're supporting the whole thing through inference rather than direct proof. You aren't saying that scientists ARE being influenced by grant funding, you're laying out a scenario where it COULD happen that way. Which is fine, but you're claiming that the existence of a possible scenario where they are biased proves such bias must exist and that their facts must be wrong. That seems a little thin to me.
While you have no proof of your claim, I also find it incredibly difficult to believe. In order for your scheme to work, it would require that virtually every scientist and virtually everyone who funds scientific research to be in on the plan. Otherwise the scientists who are just making stuff up to get grants from Al Gore (or whoever) would quickly be exposed by the scientists who aren't trying to get those specific grants. Writing a scientific paper isn't like writing an OP-ED in the Washington Post, you have to back up what you're saying with data and analysis, and if you CAN'T do those things, it's incredibly easy for other experts to call you on it. I could certainly imagine a scenario where a handful of individuals might be swayed by the promise of more grant money to do something unethical, but the rest of the community would quickly bring them to task. Your theory relies on EVERYONE getting on board with the ruse at the exact same time. Anything else simply wouldn't work.
I am not a climate scientist, but I am involved in scientific work in another field, and they all pretty much work the same way. There are a large number of people with a variety of funding sources and backgrounds, and really the only way for an idea to gain support is for someone to consistently back it up with well reasoned arguments and supporting data. Outsiders who don't know what they are doing often claim that the community has settled on a set of facts they refuse to move off of (sound familiar?) but new people with new ideas dramatically change the field every day, the difference is that they do so by making a good argument...nothing else works. My problem with your scenario is that it doesn't seem very plausible that the climate community would work that way, any more than my community would suddenly jump all over a new idea when the science doesn't support it.
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