Scientific Research Is Unreliable, Unreliable Scientists Report

[PanzerJaeger]

You are aware that medical research is one of the best examples of evidence suppression and distortion?

I'm sure that everyone understands the concept of trial against placebo. Yet in the pharmaceutical industry trial against placebo is often almost worthless. Because in most instances we already possess some treatment that is in some measure effective. So what a doctor, and by proxy society, really wants and needs to know is not, is this drug better than nothing but rather is this drug better than our current best treatment.

There is also the practice of rigging data, either by dosing the competing drug in either too high or low a dose during the trial. Too high and you've created the illusion of the side-effects of the current treatment being worse than they are. Too low and you've understated the value of the current or competing treatment. One of the best examples of this are the antipsychotic drugs Thioridazine vs. Haloperidol. In the trial process they dosed Haloperidol at 20mg, a drug which is prescribed and effective in the range of 0.5mg to 5mg. It's entirely predictable that if you dose a drug at 400% its recommended level that you'll observe more side-effects and the normally dosed Thioridazine will look better by comparison.

Medical research is also the poster child for publication bias, in this case where negative data is withheld resulting in misleadingly positive or significant findings. US law requires all FDA approved research be published and submitted to its ClinicalTrials.gov database. This is only the case 50% of the time, half either go unpublished or are delayed in publishing (by which time a drug may already be on the market).^t How can a doctor make an educated decision on the true efficacy of a drug if half of the trials are unavailable?

t Riveros, C. et al. PLoS Med. 10, e1001566 (2013).

I could not agree more. Indeed, please do not interpret my comparison as a ringing endorsement of medical research, quite the contrary. As objectively flawed as the medical sciences are, however, the academic standards and qualifications, peer review process, and quality control are even less rigorous in climate research. Needless to say, the climate sciences do not draw the world's best and brightest.

You are free to go through the list to spot all their errors. I will simply assume you don't have the qualifications to do it. Easier to just dismiss them all, I guess.

Maybe there are so few who reject it because the reality is the way it is. But it is of course easier to claim it is based on shady stuff, but how do you know that?

If I'm a zealot, then it would be for the scientific method. I'll drink to science and you can drink to...whatever you like.

That's all well and good, but you must understand that the scientific method of actually verifying new science and separating objective facts from narrative conforming results is fundamentally flawed. The points highlighted in the OP are hardly new; each year brings new articles that paint a picture of a scientific community less able to regulate itself than Wall Street, and filled with the same career driven ambition and the shortcuts that are associated with it.

You are correct. I am not qualified to interpret the data, although I have no doubt that getting qualified would have been far easier that what I did study in university. I believe the earth is warming and that humans are causing it because I have no choice. I have to trust this group of career driven, unregulated, and highly susceptible to peer pressure scientists in the same way I have to trust my financial adviser. But I am under no delusions as to the moral and/or intellectual integrity of the scientific community, and I certainly am not confident enough in it to muster the ugly mixture of hubris and derision so typically displayed against those who choose not to trust this very flawed institution.

My point very bluntly is that responding to any hint of skepticism by casting aspersions against the skeptics motivations on a religious, political, or conspiratorial level is uncalled for and counterproductive. Countering perceived skepticism with study counts is a lazy appeal to authority and does not really mean anything. Such antagonism creates the kind of self-reinforcing atmosphere which is discussed in the OP in which true skepticism is highly discouraged... the kind of skepticism on which real science depends.

As displayed in this thread, global warming zealots regularly mock the religious. While it is indeed more logical to put one's trust in science over religion, one must be careful not to elevate science and its practitioners to god-like status - attacking anyone who dares question the One True Word. The scientific community, made up of flawed human beings just like any other field, simply doesn't deserve it. You may think you are defending science by discouraging skepticism, but you are actually damaging it in the long run. IMHO, of course.