Poll: Public Trust Rising in ‘Open Access’ Science

Written by John O'Sullivan on August 7, 2019. Posted in Current News

A new Pew poll shows public trust is highest for scientists who openly release their data to public examination and lowest for fields like government climate research, notoriously reliant on ‘secret science.’

An NPR article, ‘Trust In Scientists Is Rising, Poll Finds,’  (August 02, 2019) reports:

“The survey by the Pew Research Center finds 86{154653b9ea5f83bbbf00f55de12e21cba2da5b4b158a426ee0e27ae0c1b44117} of those surveyed say they have a fair amount or a great deal of faith that scientists act in our best interests. And that’s been trending higher — it was 76{154653b9ea5f83bbbf00f55de12e21cba2da5b4b158a426ee0e27ae0c1b44117} in 2016.”

The survey of 4,464 adults was conducted in January 2019 using Pew Research Center’s American Trends Panel, a nationally representative panel of randomly selected U.S. adults.

But the overall picture is a mixed one. “It tends to be kind of a soft support,” says Cary Funk, director of science and society research at the Pew Research Center and co-author of the report. “When you look at issues of scientific integrity, we see widespread skepticism,” she says.

Polling for public opinion across a range of disciplines, the fields least trusted are vaccine and climate science.

“One thing I think is striking,” Funk says, “is that when we ask people what factors move their trust, when they hear about scientific research where the data is openly available, they say that increases their trust.”

The author of the article, Richard Harris, reveals:

 Fewer than 20{154653b9ea5f83bbbf00f55de12e21cba2da5b4b158a426ee0e27ae0c1b44117} of those surveyed believe scientists are transparent about potential conflicts of interest with industry all or most of the time. The public is also skeptical that scientists regularly admit their mistakes.”

In essence, the harbingers of ‘secret science’, where there exists most fear of profiteering and/or political ideology, are fields such as medicine and climate research.

It is recognized among scientists that the key event that precipitated the loss of public confidence in climate science was the Climategate scandal (2009).

Thousands of leaked emails had revealed that a clique of government climate researchers were conspiring to subvert freedom of information laws (FOIL) to prevent independent scientists from examining and exposing errors and intentional bias.

In 2018 a US Federal Court finally ruled that climate scientists do not measure properly. Honest mistakes and willful data abuse was exposed – plainly intended to commit science fraud.

In that case, Judge Alsup (a trained engineer) in court exposed shameless Oxford Professor, Myles Allen. Allen tried to lie to the court using a misleading graph that made the atmosphere appear to have 10,000 part per million when it has only around 400 parts per million of CO2.

Justice Alsup: “It’s 400 parts per million but you make it look like it’s 10,000 part per million” 

Professor Allen: “Your honor is quite right,” he agreed

Skeptics say Professor Allen and his fellow climate conspirators systematically lie and keep hidden the fact that carbon dioxide (CO2) has little to no impact on climate change. In recent years independent and openly-available empirical data has proven CO2 is innocent.

A well-known climate scientist notorious for hiding key data is Dr Michael ‘hockey stick’ Mann. It was Mann’s iconic graph (see below) that became world famous when trumpeted in by the UN IPCC in their 2001 report.

The graph incorrectly depicted recent temperatures as warmer than those of the Medieval Warm Period (MWP), contrary to well-established historical records. A whole junk science industry was built on this deception.

Contrast and compare the 2001 Mann graph (above) with the graph (below) relied on by the UN IPCC in 1995, before the rot set in:

Feted with international accolades, Dr Mann has always kept hidden the graph’s disputed R2 regression numbers, despite that work being funded by U.S. tax dollars.

Mann was later famously exposed as a cheat by Dr Tim Ball

NPR, long-serving defenders of alarmist government climate policies, have failed to condemn this kind of ‘secret science.’ In fact, their article appears to mitigate against the widespread public mistrust of climate scientists by adding the caveat that:

“Trust issues are by no means unique to science. John Besley, a professor of public relations at Michigan State University who studies public opinion about science, says there’s a trend in the United States toward lower public trust in general.”

Critics of climate alarm and vaccine safety – spurred by this new poll – will no doubt redouble their demands for ever-greater data transparency.

John O’Sullivan is CEO of PRINCIPIA SCIENTIFIC INTERNATIONAL, legally registered in the UK as a company incorporated for charitable purposes. Head Office: 27 Old Gloucester Street, London WC1N 3AX. 

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