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Monday, May 19, 2014

DENNIS M. PATRICK: JUNK SCIENCE AND GULLIBLE AMERICANS

America has fallen to 17th among nations whose student graduates have a fundamental understanding of the scientific method. This situation didn’t just happen. It has been percolating a long time. The net effect renders too many citizens gullible to political charlatans citing “science” as their authority. Two instances this month made the plague of bogus “science” painfully clear.

The first instance involves the suppression of evidence opposing manmade global warming. This is the biggest scandal since the November 2009 East Anglia Climategate e-mails revealed evidence tampering. Conventional wisdom holds that humanity is destroying the planet. It is not just any humanity, but capitalism and America with its carbon-fuel burning cars, trucks and airplanes that is the culprit. So say climate change activists. There is a way of redemption, however. Vote Democrat, support liberalism, grow government, raise taxes, submit to authoritarian bureaucrats and America will be absolved of its sin.

True to form, this month President Obama conducted television interviews at the White House introducing the National Climate Assessment released on May 6. Despite the flawed science, the Assessment concludes that manmade global warming is already having an impact on climate. Obama was interviewed May 7 on the “Today” show. “We’ve got to have the public understand this is an issue that is going to impact our kids and our grandkids, unless we do something about it.” Obama is laying the groundwork for an aggressive stand on climate change. On June 2 he will personally announce, together with the EPA, stringent carbon emission rules for power plants resulting in increased heating and electricity costs.

The second instance involves the sacred chalice of nutrition. A very large nutrition study – a review of research conducted on saturated fats over decades – concluded that saturated fat does not contribute to heart disease. The study was published in the March journal of Annals of Internal Medicine. Nina Teicholz, dietary fat researcher, reported the story on May 6 in The Wall Street Journal. “The very cornerstone of dietary advice for generations has been that the saturated fats in butter, cheese and red meat should be avoided because they clog our arteries….The fact is, there has never been solid evidence for the idea that these fats cause disease.”

In each of these two instances a legitimate challenge to the research of climate change and saturated fats give ample evidence that research conclusions resulted from a damning mixture of personal ambition, bad science, politics and bias. In other words, the “science” was fraudulent. In the first instance a recent story in the UK Times revealed the fact that the supposed climate change “consensus” was built in part by suppressing research which challenged global fear mongering. The article reveals that research completed by five climate experts was rejected by a top academic journal after a reviewer indicated that the study was harmful to the promotion of climate change theory. Lennart Bengtsson, a research fellow at the University of Reading (UK) was one of the authors. He stated, “The problem we now have is that some scientists are mixing up their scientific role with that of a climate activist.”

The second instance offers a similar story. Quoting Teicholz, “Our distrust of saturated fat can be traced back to the 1950s, to a man named Ancel Benjamin Keys, a scientist at the University of Minnesota. Dr. Keys was formidably persuasive and, through sheer force of will, rose to the top of the nutrition world – even gracing the cover of Time magazine – for relentlessly championing the idea that saturated fats raise cholesterol and, as a result, cause heart attacks….Critics have pointed out that Dr. Keys violated several basic scientific norms in his study. For one, he didn’t choose countries [for population studies] randomly but instead selected only those likely to prove his beliefs.”

In each instance “science activism” starts with a premise (not a testable hypothesis) that is the desired outcome, proceeds to make it “true,” then calls it “science.” This is how fascists, totalitarians and assorted liberals operate.

The scientific method always encourages the utmost possible doubt. What is left after such doubt is supported by the best available evidence. As new evidence or new doubts arises it is the essence of the scientific method to incorporate them to make them an integral part of the body of knowledge. The scientific method distinguishes between possible alternatives to the propositions that may or may not be true. The process of formal logic helps to devise ways for formulating propositions explicitly so that alternative propositions become clear.

This is just the beginning of the scientific method. Science is hard work unlike grade school stuff where children are led to believe they “do science.” That said, there is no such thing as “settled science” as President Obama states. Science is an ongoing methodology in search of truth. By suppressing research that disagrees with a favorite proposition, the reputation of science as a search for truth is damaged.

Nor does science produce consensus. Hypotheses are devised, tested, revised and re-tested as often as necessary. They are confirmed as either correct or incorrect but are always open to question. They must be subject to peer review with the intent of finding flaws in research, methodology and conclusions.

If more Americans grasped real science, they would be less gullible to junk science.

 

Dennis M. Patrick can be contacted at P. O. Box 337, Stanley, ND 58784 or (JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)

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