4 ms·

You would not be using the internet were it not for research done by scientists on government grants, moron. Nor would your or your loved ones' lives be saved

You would not be using the internet were it not for research done by scientists on government grants, moron. Nor would your or your loved ones' lives be saved next time you're in the hospital.

imjustsaying 10y ago
There's nothing wrong with government grants. I only point out that there is an incentive to agree with the hand that feeds you. This goes for labs employed by industry as well.
- pjc50 10y ago
  If there was any incentive, it would be to deny the problem - after all, discovering global warming leads to the prospect of having to do expensive and unpopular things about it.
  - imjustsaying 10y ago
    If a climatologist "denies" that climate change is a problem, there will be less government spending on researching that problem. Furthermore, he won't get a job from the purse that thinks it's a problem - generating data that shows that it isn't a problem would take away the purse's job too. You seem to be conflating the benefits of society with the benefits of a living, breathing academic who has kids to feed and bills to pay. There is no conscious "government" - there are only conscious individual actors.
    - aliakhtar 10y ago
      What do you think 'researching that problem' actually involves? Do you think scientists are just paid to sit there and type out bullshit reports? No, they have to produce real, scientific studies which are peer reviewed by other scientists all over the world. If there's a bullshit study, that's usually quickly discredited and the scientist's reputation damaged. (See: Andrew Wakefield) You're also living in a delusional world where scientists are not in high demand and can't find a much higher paying job at a private corporation, if they wanted to. Doing science for a government contract is a step down for most scientists. These are highly trained, skilled, educated, and intelligent people you're talking about.
    - mannykannot 10y ago
      In other posts, you make a big deal of evidence, so where is your evidence here?
    - redler 10y ago
      While scientists will express their opinions of the data and findings of a study, the scientific method is not an op-ed piece. The great thing about science is that a study comes with a thesis, a description of assumptions, a discussion of the experimental design, data, analysis of data, and a discussion of the conclusions. Other scientists can check the work, both via peer review at the publishing stage, and by judging and reproducing the work after publication. If they believe there's a problem with the experimental design, they can describe the problem. If they believe there's something wrong with the data, or the analysis of the data, they can explain what's wrong. Or run new experiments that demonstrate what's wrong, and publish those studies in turn. This process does create a bias of sorts, but it's the right kind: a bias toward wanting to be shown to be thorough, professional, neutral, and logical in the drawing of conclusions -- and have one's work hold up to attempts at refutation by other scientists, including those with a strong desire to prove the conclusion is wrong. If a scientist is biased by having an employer with an agenda, and that bias manifests in a study, then that study can be exposed as faulty by other scientists. That's how science works. So unless you believe a global cabal of thousands of scientists and their many different employers are all somehow coordinated in their unwillingness to judge each other's studies as flawed, you must give credence to the overwhelming support among scientists for the idea of anthropogenic climate change. Likewise, if you believe the multitude of studies is flawed, then go ahead and show how. Pick any couple of dozen and have at it. There are plenty of employers with a strong and admitted bias against global warming (e.g. the oil and gas industry), and they employ scientists. If those scientists produce irrefutable studies disproving anthropogenic climate change, then that would become the accepted science, and those scientists would be viewed as luminaries in the field. As for the cabal: unfortunately, many believe in exactly that -- including, nominally, President-elect Trump, who has stated climate change is a "hoax". I doubt he believes it's literally a hoax, but I don't doubt he understands that acceptance of the science threatens the bank accounts of those making money from the implicated processes. The same people driving the regulatory capture process, plowing money into congressional elections, etc. The real cabal is the force against the science. There are so few studies leaning in the other direction that it should be easy to choose an "unfairly" discredited one and expose its field-wide refutations as illogical and biased.
sctb 10y ago
You can't call other users morons here.

You would not be using the internet were it not for research done by scientists on government grants, moron. Nor would your or your loved ones' lives be saved next time you're in the hospital.

imjustsaying 10y ago

There's nothing wrong with government grants. I only point out that there is an incentive to agree with the hand that feeds you. This goes for labs employed by industry as well.

pjc50 10y ago
If there was any incentive, it would be to deny the problem - after all, discovering global warming leads to the prospect of having to do expensive and unpopular things about it.
- imjustsaying 10y ago
  If a climatologist "denies" that climate change is a problem, there will be less government spending on researching that problem. Furthermore, he won't get a job from the purse that thinks it's a problem - generating data that shows that it isn't a problem would take away the purse's job too. You seem to be conflating the benefits of society with the benefits of a living, breathing academic who has kids to feed and bills to pay. There is no conscious "government" - there are only conscious individual actors.
  - aliakhtar 10y ago
    What do you think 'researching that problem' actually involves? Do you think scientists are just paid to sit there and type out bullshit reports? No, they have to produce real, scientific studies which are peer reviewed by other scientists all over the world. If there's a bullshit study, that's usually quickly discredited and the scientist's reputation damaged. (See: Andrew Wakefield) You're also living in a delusional world where scientists are not in high demand and can't find a much higher paying job at a private corporation, if they wanted to. Doing science for a government contract is a step down for most scientists. These are highly trained, skilled, educated, and intelligent people you're talking about.
  - mannykannot 10y ago
    In other posts, you make a big deal of evidence, so where is your evidence here?
  - redler 10y ago
    While scientists will express their opinions of the data and findings of a study, the scientific method is not an op-ed piece. The great thing about science is that a study comes with a thesis, a description of assumptions, a discussion of the experimental design, data, analysis of data, and a discussion of the conclusions. Other scientists can check the work, both via peer review at the publishing stage, and by judging and reproducing the work after publication. If they believe there's a problem with the experimental design, they can describe the problem. If they believe there's something wrong with the data, or the analysis of the data, they can explain what's wrong. Or run new experiments that demonstrate what's wrong, and publish those studies in turn. This process does create a bias of sorts, but it's the right kind: a bias toward wanting to be shown to be thorough, professional, neutral, and logical in the drawing of conclusions -- and have one's work hold up to attempts at refutation by other scientists, including those with a strong desire to prove the conclusion is wrong. If a scientist is biased by having an employer with an agenda, and that bias manifests in a study, then that study can be exposed as faulty by other scientists. That's how science works. So unless you believe a global cabal of thousands of scientists and their many different employers are all somehow coordinated in their unwillingness to judge each other's studies as flawed, you must give credence to the overwhelming support among scientists for the idea of anthropogenic climate change. Likewise, if you believe the multitude of studies is flawed, then go ahead and show how. Pick any couple of dozen and have at it. There are plenty of employers with a strong and admitted bias against global warming (e.g. the oil and gas industry), and they employ scientists. If those scientists produce irrefutable studies disproving anthropogenic climate change, then that would become the accepted science, and those scientists would be viewed as luminaries in the field. As for the cabal: unfortunately, many believe in exactly that -- including, nominally, President-elect Trump, who has stated climate change is a "hoax". I doubt he believes it's literally a hoax, but I don't doubt he understands that acceptance of the science threatens the bank accounts of those making money from the implicated processes. The same people driving the regulatory capture process, plowing money into congressional elections, etc. The real cabal is the force against the science. There are so few studies leaning in the other direction that it should be easy to choose an "unfairly" discredited one and expose its field-wide refutations as illogical and biased.

sctb 10y ago

You can't call other users morons here.