Unquestioningly ‘Following The Science’ Is a Dead End

Surely one of the more embarrassing moments in Anderson Cooper’s career as the host of his CNN nightly show was the night back in May when he brought in 17-year-old Greta Thunberg as a star interview for a CNN Town Hall — not on the climate crisis, for which Thunberg has been famously treated as an expert of sorts, but on the COVID-19 crisis.

The link between COVID-19 and climate change is a little unclear, so presumably Cooper and Town Hall co-host Dr. Sanjay Gupta, CNN’s medical expert, thought Thunberg would bring some special wisdom and insight to the virus crisis.

The only advice from Thunberg, however, was to urge everyone to “follow the science” as suggested by Cooper, who seemed to be appealing to the 17-year-old for confirmation of his views:

“This is a time, it seems, that the global scientific community is so critically important and we’re really seeing how important it is to follow the science.”

Thunberg took that soft handoff from Cooper as one might expect — as confirmation of her claim that we should also be following the science on climate change.

“People are starting to realize that we are actually depending on science and that we need to listen to scientists and experts. And I really hope that stays,” she said, adding that she also hoped it will apply to other crises “such as the climate crisis and the environmental crisis.”

When it comes to COVID-19, however, Thunberg seemed to have missed some of the science she said we should all be following.

She suggested it was misinformation to believe initial reports that COVID-19 affected only the elderly. “During any crisis, it is always the most vulnerable people who are hit the hardest, and that is children,” she proclaimed.

“Yes, this does affect elderly people a lot, but we also have to remember that this is also a children’s rights crisis because children are the most vulnerable in societies. Children do get the virus and they also spread it.”

The actual science shows, as we all now know, that children are not the hardest hit, nor are they the most vulnerable.

Children are in “extremely low risk” of getting the disease and when they do get it they are more likely to be asymptomatic. Few have died.

Welcome to FP Comment’s 22nd annual Junk Science Week, guided by our standard definition: Junk science occurs when scientific facts are distorted, the risk is exaggerated and the science adapted and warped by politics and ideology to serve another agenda.

Both CNN and Thunberg are manifestations thereof.

Whether the politicization of science is more widespread today is unanswerable, but it seems fair to conclude that there have been few signs of retreat.

As we shall explore later this week, peer-review regimes continue to fail, correlations are propelled into causation, health risks converted into draconian legislation.

Calls to follow the science are heard almost daily from politicians and activists — and many scientists. But what are they advocating?

When a politician declares “I believe in the science” (as per U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren), it’s akin to admitting a lack of knowledge about the science behind whatever policy is being promulgated.

And what if, as is too often the case, the science politicians are following is tainted and falls into the great science world where deliberate distortions and exaggerations — even fabrications — are common?

Lest anyone believe that doesn’t happen, it’s worth recalling the famous words of Stephen Schneider, the late Stanford University climate scientist who — along with many others over the years — saw fudging and fakery as the proper role of scientists.

“On the one hand,” said Schneider, “as scientists we are ethically bound to the scientific method. On the other hand, we are not just scientists but human beings as well. To do that we need to get some broad-based support, to capture the public’s imagination. That, of course, means getting loads of media coverage. So we have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements and make little mention of any doubts we might have. Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest.”

There is one area of science where a small blow — or maybe it will prove to be large — has been dealt to the “scary scenarios” that have driven climate policy over much of the past two decades.

That scenario is the work of the UN climate agency — the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) — which produced a so-called “business-as-usual” scenario implying that without drastic action to curb carbon emissions the world would plunge into economic and environmental hell.

Guelph University’s Ross McKitrick outlines on this page today that the official UN climate scenario known as RCP8.5 — cited by media and others to describe climate change risk — is a form of junk science based on assorted wrong-headed assumptions, including impossible projections of carbon emissions increases.

McKitrick concludes: “If we want to avoid the RCP8.5 future scenario all we have to do is stop feeding it into climate models because that’s the only place it exists.”

If we just unquestioningly “follow the science,” that’s where it seems to be leading, to places that don’t exist, to nowhere.

Read more at Financial Post


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Comments (3)

  • Avatar

    Nikola Milovic

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    When everything is viewed on the basis of levels of awareness, it seems that many do not know what science is.
    Science is the activity of people to find out the true causes of phenomena in the universe.
    If there are those who falsify it and want to impose their unproven understanding of the phenomenon on those interested, then it is not science, but a false science that becomes politics.
    And politics, in general, is the effort of individuals to force people, in various ways, to obey their laws, orders, forces, such as the police, to listen to what politics dictates, or they will be punished at the request of the commander.
    In our country, in socialism, in the very beginning, both the army and the police had “educational weapons”, and these are verbal orders, with the possible use of weapons, such as:
    “in the name of the people, hands up,” and for safety, holds a weapon in his hand.
    Today’s politics has forced both science and religion to do whatever their law requires, and the law was passed by those who do not want the majority to benefit from the application of that law, but only those who need majority obedience.
    Now laws replace force and weapons, and “modern science” is included.

    Reply

  • Avatar

    James McGinn

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    Terence Corcoran: Quoting the late Stephen Schneider: “So we have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements and make little mention of any doubts we might have.”

    JMcG: Us humans are very good at believing we understand what we really don’t understand. And once we start pretending that we understand we form deep emotional attachments to the pretense itself and the status it engenders. Consequently, for many researchers maintaining the confusion is their only goal. Anomalies are no longer problematic in their eyes. Instead anomalies become quirks or even features. The more they lie to their selves the deeper they believe they understand what they actually do not understand. Acting upon these deeply felt emotions, their approach thereafter is often committed to obfuscation and other intellectually dishonest tactics to maintain the confusion and the social status engendered by the group delusion that they possess an expert understanding that they really do not possess.

    When Everybody is Pretending to Understand
    https://anchor.fm/james-mcginn/episodes/When-Everybody-is-Pretending-to-Understand-eeifp7

    James McGinn / Genius

    Reply

  • Avatar

    Tom0Mason

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    ‘Science’ is not a thing it is a process — the scientific method.
    A process invented by humans to try and make sense of the entire universe about us, including the Earth and all human conditions. Useually the scientific method involves taking MEASUREMENTS and observations so that theories are concocted to try explain the observation and measurement. These measurement and observations are verified by others and the basics of the theory are subjected to validation.
    As such ‘Science’ is NOT a catalog of irrefutable facts but an partial list of some thing we believe we know but understand it has errors (and if these errors are allowed to remain not corrected will cause further errors to propagate through any particular science topic. )
    Thankfully science insists that all past knowledge is subjected reanalysis and scrutiny to ensure that theories conform to the latest measurements. Regardless of the fame or influence of initial proposer and their advocates of a theory, if later measurements tell a different story then the theory is wrong!
    What is scientifically known is never settled, it is always in flux.
    As the late great Professor Jacob Bronowski said …

    Science is a very human form of knowledge. We are always at the brink of the known;
    we always feel forward for what is to be hoped. Every judgment in science stands on the edge of error and is personal.
    Science is a tribute to what we can know although we are fallible.

    Reply

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