The Manhattan Contrarian writes on Consensus Science And Orthodoxy Enforcement
This is an old problem with the left, where everything – and I mean everything – is politicized and put into service to the Agenda of The Party. For those on the ground, they are almost unaware that there are serious alternatives to The Party Line. Every question or criticism is dismissed out of hand as propaganda from entrenched interests or misinformation or so obviously and laughably wrong only an idiot could believe it because everybody knows that’s not true! For those in the middle of The Party hierarchy, there are big payoffs to being a loyal Party Apparatchik. Marcia McNutt is advancing nicely along that road. She will be well rewarded for her willingness to crush all dissent while presenting her smiling and attractive to face to the public. For those at the top, the only purpose of anything is to advance the power and control of The Party with themselves at the helm. And everything can be sacrificed to that end. And will be.
There is that saying that “the best trick the devil ever did was to convince people he didn’t exist”.
Well, the best con the progressive/collectivist ideologues ever pulled off was to convince people that they actually had a high moral purpose in all their moves to expand state power, and, as part of it, that they actually cared about the people and issues they chose to exploit.
Of course, there are lower level foot soldiers in the various prog movements that truly do care passionately about hunger or racism or the environment or whatever the cause of the moment happens to be. The leading power brokers depend on that emotional commitment for two important elements of the progressive campaign:
First, the intense belief in the cause will allow the soldier to do things, and accept as necessary, all manner of tactics they would otherwise reject;
And secondly, this same commitment will allow the true believer to excuse, endlessly, repeated failures of progressive policies to ever accomplish any of their purported objectives, and, indeed, to continue to believe and support those policies, even when it has become crystal clear that they are worsening the very problems they were supposed to help solve.
Such a commitment requires a level of faith normally associated with a religious conversion, and a fervor able to withstand the constant reminders that few, if any, of the proclaimed good intentions behind it all ever materialized into a positive result.
This is, by the way, the true source of the progressive camp’s visceral hatred for “born again” Christians, who are their antagonists for political power and influence in the U.S., and, conversely, for the seemingly bizarre alliance between progressives and fascist islamism. For both of these allies, the true enemy is western liberal culture and its Christian foundations.
In order to justify the continuous acquisition of state power by the prog elites, one fundamental proposition has to be sold at all times and in all situations—that the actions of free individuals are a deadly threat to society, and especially its most vulnerable members, while the intentions and actions of the elites, as expressed in ever more expansive state action, is virtuous and compassionate.
At this point in the progressive policy cycle, it is becoming increasingly obvious that the entire edifice of programs, regulations, and central control of major elements of the economy, and society in general, is tottering toward bankruptcy and collapse, and not in any one country, but around the globe.
Expect the hysterical claims of crises only the state can handle to increase, and the shrieking against any alternative to progressive state action to become louder and more frantic.
We are approaching the end game of the greatest con that has ever been foisted on a gullible humanity.
It won’t be pretty.
Science has undergone two transformations in a couple of centuries. First it moved from being a hobby for a few obsessives to a professional activity pursued largely on a financial shoestring by modest numbers of academics. Then it became a mass production industry, funded by a huge flow of taxpayers’ money. It was the second transition that led to the misbehaviour and fraud that the link complains about. Perhaps the adage should be “I’m from the government, and I’m here to corrupt you”.
Anyone who, like I have, studies the history of science learns that most science was done by individuals right up until the Manhattan Project, which was government science since it was a matter of war. I’m trying to think of an example from the period before the Manhattan Project. The German chemistry industry in the 19th century was largely private and focused on useful developments.
Roentgen was a solitary worker who supported himself teaching and was never a political person. I have the story of his discovery of x-ray in my book.
Heinrich Hertz was a professor but enjoyed no government support beyond his salary.
During Hertz’s studies in 1879 Helmholtz suggested that Hertz’s doctoral dissertation be on testing Maxwell’s theory of electromagnetism, published in 1865, which predicted the existence of electromagnetic waves moving at the speed of light, and predicted that light itself was just such a wave.
Faraday and Maxwell were also individuals who made huge advances in science, especially physics.
Government science, I’m convinced, began with the Manhattan Project. The Human Genome Project was just such a government boondoggle with James Watson as titular head. They were, of course, beaten to the genome decryption by Craig Venter with private money and talent. The Wikipedia does not inform threader that Venter won the race.
In 1998, a similar, privately funded quest was launched by the American researcher Craig Venter, and his firm Celera Genomics. Venter was a scientist at the NIH during the early 1990s when the project was initiated. The $300,000,000 Celera effort was intended to proceed at a faster pace and at a fraction of the cost of the roughly $3 billion publicly funded project. The Celera approach was able to proceed at a much more rapid rate, and at a lower cost than the public project because it relied upon data made available by the publicly funded project.
The claim is misleading. My review of Venter’s biography.
>>The Celera approach was able to proceed at a much more rapid rate, and at a lower cost than the public project because it relied upon data made available by the publicly funded project.
To a certain degree, science was always made public so that others could test it themselves, challenge it, and simply know about. It’s how science progressed. One of the purposes of things like the Royal Society of London was to provide a venue for the sharing and discussion of scientific work. Scientific journals provided another method for disseminating information to a widely scattered group.
The motto of the Royal Society is especially appropriate as a reminder for today’s climate science debate; Nullius in verba (Take nobody’s word for it).
“science was always made public so that others could test it themselves”
This, of course, is the key to understanding the corruption of the climate arguments.
My Facebook post today.
My first real doubts about the climate matter came when I read about heat island effect, especially in China, and then read about how one of the chief Chinese participants had not visited his temperature stations in China in years and has no idea what had happened. The area around them had become an urban zone.
I assume you’ve seen this?
Climate and Human Civilization over the last 18,000 years, updated
http://andymaypetrophysicist.com/2015/11/26/climate-and-human-civilization-over-the-last-18000-years-updated/
I thought that this was the link you had.
The Tubo eruption was probably a near thing for humans. Yellowstone may be as large.
Dogs followed human ancestors from China after recovery. The theory of dog descent from wolves is probably not true.
So for not going along with: Radiation is misunderstood and maybe good for you, Particulate Matter is not so bad, and Global Warming is not real, she is a bad person.
ROTFLMFAO.
Pengun – Thank you for the example of how orthodoxy enforcement is done.
So far as I understand it, the controversy is that atomic bomb survivors on the fringes of the affected area who received very small doses aren’t getting cancer at the rates predicted by the standard theory. For normal people that’s great news and the subject of legitimate scientific exploration. To be an orthodoxy enforcer is to wish for the proper number to die and bring those numbers back into line with theory, which I find to be a disgusting disposition. The truth is the truth and the scientists, by the nature of their discipline, should squabble over it. That the upcoming head of one of their premier organizations is comfortable suppressing such dissent is a danger sign for science.