Damage Control and Climategate

NAS President in damage control over climategate [Excerpts]

BBC reports, 20 February 2010, the President of the US National Academy of Sciences saying that the recent controversies surrounding climate research have damaged the image of science as a whole.

“There is some evidence that the distrust has spread,” Dr Cicerone told BBC News. “There is a feeling that scientists are suppressing dissent, stifling their competitors through conspiracies.”

It has been endemic for a long time and not just with climate research. The public have only now become aware of how corrupted the scientific establishment has become.

Those who have been following the creation-evolution controversy would already know about the problem. That is what the movie Expelled is all about, but it was mocked and denied by the likes of Oxford Professor Dawkins, the public face of the scientific establishment….The Geological Society of London, as does the Geological Society of Australia, aggressively censor views they do not like, as Earth Science Ireland also tried to do.

“People expect us to do things more in the public light and we just have to get used to that,” he said. “Just as science itself improves and self-corrects, I think our processes have to improve and self-correct.”

I don’t hold out much hope that the changes he has in mind are anything more than cosmetic. I may be wrong. But I will be prepared to acknowledge that there has been a substantive change when Science and Nature regularly publish papers critical of evolution and supportive of Intelligent Design. I will change my mind when the Smithsonian includes creationist interpretations of their fossil displays. I’ll admit I was wrong when the Geological Society of America, Australia and London allow creationist geologists to present ideas about Flood geology at their meetings.

I won’t hold my breath.

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