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A scientist's job is to study the world as it is. If a scientist decides that the information must be filtered to represent only one side so that I will reach

A scientist's job is to study the world as it is. If a scientist decides that the information must be filtered to represent only one side so that I will reach the "right" conclusions, I will distrust what the scientist tells me, and look further to get the full picture.

yongjik 10y ago
That's an awful way of describing the current state. A scientist discussing the public health effect of Zika virus has no obligation to discuss potential benefit to competing tourist locations: it's simply not pertinent to the research they are doing. If any hotel manager in Rome thinks they may get more reservations, they're free to research and make predictions using their resources. If you want to learn about potential benefits of global warming, you're free to search for it, and it's not like scientists are suppressing the information: here we have a nice chart with a dozen potential benefits [1]. It's just that most scientists think "Greenland may make more money catching cods" is just not worth mentioning, in a press release where you get a few sentences to discuss ecological collapse in the oceans, never mind an individual paragraph for Arctic North Atlantic. Also keep in mind that there's a multi-billion-dollar industry very interested in everyone knowing how global warming may benefit themselves... and so far all they've dug up were lame platitudes like "Don't you like warm weather?" [1] https://www.skepticalscience.com/global-warming-positives-negatives-intermediate.htm https://www.skepticalscience.com/global-warming-positives-ne...
- haberman 10y ago
  > A scientist discussing the public health effect of Zika virus has no obligation to discuss potential benefit to competing tourist locations: it's simply not pertinent to the research they are doing. A better analogy would be if some small percentage of people infected with Zika gained some benefit, like resistance to HIV. That would absolutely be pertinent information that the scientist should report.

yongjik 10y ago

That's an awful way of describing the current state. A scientist discussing the public health effect of Zika virus has no obligation to discuss potential benefit to competing tourist locations: it's simply not pertinent to the research they are doing. If any hotel manager in Rome thinks they may get more reservations, they're free to research and make predictions using their resources. If you want to learn about potential benefits of global warming, you're free to search for it, and it's not like scientists are suppressing the information: here we have a nice chart with a dozen potential benefits [1]. It's just that most scientists think "Greenland may make more money catching cods" is just not worth mentioning, in a press release where you get a few sentences to discuss ecological collapse in the oceans, never mind an individual paragraph for Arctic North Atlantic. Also keep in mind that there's a multi-billion-dollar industry very interested in everyone knowing how global warming may benefit themselves... and so far all they've dug up were lame platitudes like "Don't you like warm weather?" [1] https://www.skepticalscience.com/global-warming-positives-negatives-intermediate.htm https://www.skepticalscience.com/global-warming-positives-ne...

haberman 10y ago
> A scientist discussing the public health effect of Zika virus has no obligation to discuss potential benefit to competing tourist locations: it's simply not pertinent to the research they are doing. A better analogy would be if some small percentage of people infected with Zika gained some benefit, like resistance to HIV. That would absolutely be pertinent information that the scientist should report.