How can people believe that thousands of scientists would lie about the facts to get money (see details)?

Question

A few scientists have tried this in the past. They've gotten exposed, and been kicked out of science.

A particularly educational case is where a university professor was exposed BY HER GRADUATE STUDENTS.

Why is this a big deal? They talked about going to the administration among themselves. Their consensus was that doing this would wreck their careers. They did it - and they were right. Everything they'd worked for for years was gone. Most left science. The few that stayed had to start all over with someone else. But, knowing the result, they still blew the whistle. They were scientists - they couldn't let this slide.

Science is outstandingly good at exposing mistakes or frauds, more so than business or politics. In today's scientific world, people don't get away with it for long.

This is what happens when people try this:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/4554704.stm

And scientists know it.

This accusation is crazy.

JELLO - A reasonable argument. The answer is they couldn't gather good data because they didn't have the tools - telescopes. Once Galileo got one, and saw phases on Venus and the moons of Jupiter, the jig was up. Global warming scientists have pretty good tools. They don't need to be perfect. The effects of greenhouse gases are so powerful that the statistical "signal" from them in the data is far greater than any uncertainties in the data. It's undeniable.

That is the reason WHY the vast majority of scientists know this is real. No because anyone else says so (much less Al Gore), but because the data screams it out. (Which is why I use the Truly quote, not because you should trust him, but because it speaks directly to this point).

But, once again, this is reasonable skepticism, which advances the discussion.

MARC G - Please read my answer to Jello. The statistical methods aren't perfect (and Mann's statistical methods were downright poor, at first), but they don't have to be to get an answer on this one. The effects of man made greenhouse gases in the last 20 years are not subtle.

http://www.globalwarmingart.com/wiki/Image:Climate_Change_Attribution.png

Galileos telescope was truly pitiful (basically about as good as $10 binoculars), but it answered the question raised by Copernicus.

TATEREATER - Einstein didn't blow Newton out of the water. For the vast majority of practical tasks (like aiming guns) Newton works just fine. Einstein showed things were different when they moved real fast or were very big. It amounts to a minor correction.

The Big Bang theory is proven. It's not JUST the microwave background, it's the tiny ripples in that background measured only recently. That's pretty much laid that issue to rest. See:

http://www.amazon.com/Afterglow-Creation-Fireball-Discovery-Ripples/dp/product-description/0935702407

RATIONALITY PERSONIFIED - Check out my answers to Jello and Mark G. You actually don't need to be a great scientist to see that global warming is real, and mostly caused by us. The evidence is simply overwhelming. The vast majority of scientists see it, and the vast majority are not superstars (although the superstars agree, too).

Mikira - It's not hard to see a few scientists doing it. It's IMPOSSIBLE to see thousands of scientists doing it, and then be supported by the National Academy of Sciences, the American Association for the Advancement of Science (check those guys out on Google - they're impressive), the American Meteorological Society, and EVERY other major scientific organization. Or that world leaders wouldn't check this out thoroughly.

Impossible. The data is undeniable, and the database is huge. It's been checked many times, by many many people. Fudging would have been caught.

JELLO - Still being reasonable. But not getting the point. The early heliocentric model was just words, not data. Galileo provided the data.

Science doesn't go by who argues pretty. It goes by data.

If you need to respond, there's "Comments". I'll check for it. Best discussion I've ever had with you.

Answer 1

Simply put, it's one of the few arguments you cannot definitively prove to be specious. All the others rely on attacking the science, and those can be shown to be false with objective evidence. Even objections like "climate change can't be known because we can't do experiments" can be shown to be false because, while the climate system in total cannot be tested systematically, the individual pieces can be studied and tested in the sense of observing how they behave under natural variability. This measured variability, when understood and parameterized, can be incorporated into physical models, which can be used to predict the behavior of the global climate. The match between model output and measurements provides a very good measure that in fact climate physicists do understand what is going on, and in that sense we are doing an experiment on climate. The unfortunate part of this is that we are not totally in control of the experiment and are not completely sure of the outcome.

In contrast to science-based objections, the existence of a conspiracy can't be disproven. It is the perfect fallback position for skeptics. The logic goes like this: Facts and evidence piling up against you? The *only* explanation for this is that the IPCC is corrupt and scientists are conspiring together.

Answer 2

I don't really know, I have the same question, but I'll give it a shot.

A combination of lack of understanding of science and fear.

I have one brother-in-law who deflects every discussion by saying something to the effect of "The research is bogus, the scientists work at liberal colleges and the whole thing is a liberal-scientist-grant money boondoggle". He is an avowed ditto-head raised in a strong social conservative family.

My other brother-in-law, otherwise very intelligent, once said to me "Oh, those scientists, you can't trust em'. First they say one thing, then never mind, they change it. I don't listen to them anymore."

Most people, I think, don't understand how science works. They can't conceptualize science as a series of steps, a chain, a pyramid. The base, built on centuries of work, is broad and strong. The top, the current science, is less certain, might get knocked off and replaced with a more accurate description. And nothing is ever more than 99% true, never absolute in a mathematical limit sense. Maybe the whole thing will get knocked down and replaced with a new paradigm. But it doesn't invalidate science. The new paradigm can only come because the old one was built first and deconstructed.

People need the certainty of absolutism, the kind provided by religion. This may be instinctive.

When you combine this lack of understanding with the idea that science is a challenge to dogmatic absolutism, that science can overturn, by verifiable reproducible experimental results, the dogma on which you entire life is based, you get the ingredients for a powerful - fearful - reaction.

Einstein said "Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds." I say "When you confront the beliefs of the ignorant the first reaction is violent denial."

What is the solution? Religion once answered all the questions. Science has encroached and can now answer many of the questions, but never all of them. Religion and Science answer two different questions. Let us all be raised with love and tolerance and open minds. Let each sphere exist and make its own contribution.

Start slow and be gentle. This is where our current environmental movement has failed. Even if the hour is late, we need to stop and help everyone come along at their own speed.

Edit:

I was thinking about this after answering your earlier, similar question. The “scientists don’t know enough” argument also fits under the conspiracy umbrella.

To say that scientists don't have a good enough understanding of climate change is another way of saying that scientists can't be trusted. If they do not truly understand, but publish the information anyway, if follows that one would believe the publishing is being done to intentionally mislead people. They are blinded by their environmental dogma and publish anyway.

Even if you believe the scientists are pure in their motives and only fooling themselves, they are still part of the conspiracy by providing the rationale.

Answer 3

true
but scientists can all be wrong or agree with each other on shotty work out of laziness
look at how many people that still consider the big bang theory and other such nonsense to be feasible
scientists do come together and just believe what one guy or a group of guys say sometimes because they are ahead of the curve
and though evidence can seem realistic sometimes, it might not be the exact truth
look at how long people believed in Newton's laws of physics when centuries later Einstein came and blew them out of the water
though they seem logical, they aren't necessarily correct
Scientists always disprove what groups of scientists from centuries, or even months ago thought to be right.
And science is not the discovery of fact, but the finding of evidence which may point to things you want to believe. Nothing is completely provable unless you were there. History is the greatest of mysteries and always will be.

Answer 4

He really put himself out there.. The man has some balls!!! Not the smartest person for being so smart. That's just blatantly lying and nothing more. Is it possible to not lie about something and just change your stats around just a little bit in GW scientific papers or just do the stats wrong. I feel most people in GW research are not lying they believe what they find, but could have gone about stats in the wrong way. Most of these climatologist don't know that much about stats and should use a statistician to do that part of the work for them. What this guy from Korea did is just insane!!! That's just complete and total BS science!! I don't feel any scientist in the GW debate will ever go this far. But poor stats can always be a culprit when doing these types of research.

Answer 5

The relationship between the question/linked story and global warming is tenuous. The linked story shows that a so-called scientist received a lot of money while faking his research, which contradicts the implausibility you imply in your question. It's like asking "How can people believe that thousands of taxpayers would lie on their tax returns to reduce their tax payments" and then giving an example of someone successfully prosecuted for tax evasion.

However, regardless of the rhetorical deficiencies of the question, the question is largely inapropos to global warming, as the example you provide relates to genetics, not global warming. Since the days of Gregor Mendel, scientists have been able to perform experiments in genetics and observe the results over huge numbers of generations of organisms. Any doubts or subsequent hypotheses could be resolved by additional experiments that yielded conclusive results. However, for global warming, scientists are trying to collect data from times in the past when scientific data was not collected in real time and preserved. They are then trying to extrapolate that data to the future with respect to a single specimen (i.e., the earth) for which there exists no control group. Any errors in the data, such as differences in rates of diffusion of substances in ice cores, could dramatically alter the extrapolations. Unlike breeding fruit flies, scientists cannot observe in real time dozens of global warming and global cooling cycles to obtain a thorough understanding of the processes at work. The real question isn't whether thousands of scientists are lying about facts to get money, but whether any scientist truly understands the phenomenon of climate change.

Answer 6

I think he was just so stupid for trying to do such things. Stuff like this is just not done in science because it's very unprofessional and you waste everybodies time on completely nothing. Plus you know for sure people are going to find out. That's the way it is, the accusation is completely right.

Answer 7

Why is it hard to believe that a human would do something or agree on something (that they don't believe in) to get grant money? The thing is they could even research and find their original theories were incorrect. I also feel it's healthy to question what someone is claiming to be facts, since throughout human history, we have scientists proving other scientists wrong, no matter how many of them were agreeing on an idea. It only takes one to disprove it, if that ones evidence is of course strong enough to do so.

Another thing it takes a lot of money to spend your time researching things and that money comes from other places. Private and Public. And depending on the mindset of the people handing out the money, so you can continue to do your research, a scientist has to keep those benefactors happy by putting a few small lies in their reports to them.

Edit: Impossible? Please, nothing is impossible.

Answer 8

People think all kinds of crazy things. Like the government is in contact with aliens from UFOs who are on Earth now and keeping it secret. Aliens built the pyramids, not the ancient Egyptians. The Apollo Moon landings were faked. All kinds of nonsense.

Answer 9

One time very intelligent people, leaders of their field believed that the Earth was at the center of the solar system.

This belief was held by great men like Aristotle and Ptolemy. Others followed them, after all, who would be able to stand up to men like these?

This idea was adopted by the governments of the time (the church) as being true and unarguable. Only skeptics would argue the Sun as the center of the universe.

Even the ides of retrograde motion of the planets was explained and agreed upon by the consensus of scientist at that time.

People do see problems according to their beliefs. This is why science needs to remain objective. Global warming isn't there yet. Maybe it will be someday, but not yet.

[Edit] Sorry Bob - I don't agree. Heliocentric model of the solar system was first described in 200BC by Aristarchus.

The tools were there. Science got distracted and on the wrong track.

Again, this is why objective science is critical. No one should use a "consensus" as their only proof that something is true.

The "consensus" is subjective, and all subjective science should be thrown in a pile and burned as the junk that it is.

Answer 10

Very good example of why it's completely insane and/or ignorant to claim that scientists are in on some giant global warming conspiracy.

That's simply completely contrary to the way science works.