I really appreciate Scott Adams' temperate perspectives on controversial issues. He's usually able to legitimately grasp the underpinnings of issues that most p

I really appreciate Scott Adams' temperate perspectives on controversial issues. He's usually able to legitimately grasp the underpinnings of issues that most people in tech circles don't even want to countenance. I have to agree that the overzealous apostles of Scientific Consensus that run around condemning people all the time often look very silly not-too-many-years-later. In their self-righteousness, they fail to see that they're just the same as the conservative grannies and aunts and uncles they look down upon with disdain: repeating a cherry-picked data point that they don't possibly have the professional background or academic context to actually understand, but which they fervently believe and adopt because it confirms their worldview and the people around them expect them to. People are all fundamentally the same, and most people of any affiliation will propagate anything if they accept the authority of its source. This applies to conservative and liberal persons equally -- very few of them are even capable of deciding if an analysis of a complex topic is valid or not, let alone putting forth the effort to actually vet it. The world runs on trust. Never trust a statistic you haven't faked yourself. Visit Retraction Watch for a frequently-updated sampling of things "science got wrong".