The larger question I was trying to examine in my post is what can we do to ensure that scientists feel more comfortable having public debates about their work? My hypothesis was that teaching more people about the elements of the scientific method would help them be more comfortable with dissent within the scientific community. As it stands today, people hear of the slightest disagreements amongst scientists and they conclude that science (as a whole) doesn’t have its act together.

The truth is that debate is ingrained into scientific culture. No matter how compelling the evidence might be (e.g., evolution), there will always be some who dispute the consensus. It doesn’t mean science is broken. It means it is working. I just wish more people shared that understanding.

I have taken a LOT of science classes, but I have a number of issues with global warming science: it is not practical to reproduce the experiments; there is a huge bias towards results on the side supporting the consensus; systematic errors should be huge; it is based on models, especially models of human behavior. But most of all, politicians are involved, and this has become a moral issue. Good science is hard enough to do under the various pressures of egotism, obsessions, and job insecurity – how can there be any hope of doing it well when it is mixed up with politics?

Pointing to the consensus is not convincing, since argument by authority is exactly not the way that science works. Instead, global warming people should be pushing to open their data and code, have independent analyses done, make clear statements of their assumptions; basically do the modern equivalent of what Galileo did 400 years ago when he encouraged everyone to look through his telescope with their own eyes. The “Climategate” emails, among other things, sure make it look like that is not happening.