This fine blog post by physicist Frank Tipler of Tulane is nominally about global warming, but it really is about the credentialism that makes a mockery of sound judgment in many scientific fields.
I am warming to a theme: Money and ideological power increasingly threaten to warp scientific research, sometimes to the exclusion of integrity and responsibility. The argument from authority is being overdone.
Here is the tip-off. As you notice scientists demand conformity based mainly on their say-so, become alert.
When members of the scientific establishment want to pursue a controversial scientific enterprise--let's say, crossing the human-animal species line through lab attempts at creating chimeras, such as ape-men--the argument is made that science must rule and moral objections are antiquated, unreasonable and repressive.
Darwinism, similarly, is not just true, we're told, but a thorough-going explanation for practically everything, because men with doctorates declare it.
But when big money and ideological power collude to resist scientific consensus--for example, in the cause of asserting animal rights versus human medical advances, or in the advocacy for "adjusting" a U.S. Census with sampling and computer models (as I have described recently)--then all of a sudden the response of "scientific community" is rather quiescent. Make way for money and power.
For another example, how many public billions (in bankrupt California alone) are being squandered on the barren fetish of embryonic stem cell research, while almost all the noted medical advances are coming from other forms of stem cells? Few scientists want to talk about this in polite company for fear of losing friends or funding.
I am fearful that federal and foundation grants are corrupting the priorities and integrity of science. It is a little-examined ethical scandal.
