Diamond or not, that's a cool discovery. The author though is making a mistake when he says that "The scientific method is universal. If we selectively ignore i

Diamond or not, that's a cool discovery. The author though is making a mistake when he says that "The scientific method is universal. If we selectively ignore it in certain disciplines, we do so at our peril." Science is broader than those disciplines where the hypothetico-deductive method is appropriate ("the natural sciences"). Science is the quest for knowledge, and epistemology, or the "science of knowledge", informs us of another particular method, the axiomatic-deductive, appropriate for "the social sciences". The first rule of "the scientific method" is there is no scientific methoD. There are scientific methodS. The author has fallen victim to the all-too-common "scientism" that has swept the globe from the 19th century onward. Should it be enough that there is wide agreement in peer reviewed journals to really make something so? In a similar situation, there's wide agreement from economists on what makes the world tick, yet these folks with little job prospects outside of government or academia manage to repeatedly fail to create models which display predictive power. In the case of economics, the 'scientific method' chosen, that of mathematical economics, is inappropriate since human action "plays by different rules" than pulsars. Climate scientists similarly have the ability to influence politics. At least they are using the correct type of method, but to say that X number of peer reviewed journals establishes the anthropocentric warming hypothesis as true is a logical error. Climate scientists need to exhibit predictive power and the fact is they haven't been able to do that. Historical evidence also doesn't lend itself to the idea that small amounts of warming will lead to disaster. It's a great story to put people into a panic and manipulate them but there is just not the necessary proof. For more details see Howard Hayden's one-letter disproof of global warming claims: http://www.stephankinsella.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/HaydenToJackson.pdf http://www.stephankinsella.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/Ha...