In contemplating the purloined University of East Anglia emails (L. Gordon Crovitz's "The Web Discloses Inconvenient Climate Truths," Information Age, Nov. 30), an illuminating and contrasting backdrop is this description of scientific conduct, given in 1974 by that scientist's scientist, Nobel laureate physicist Richard P. Feynman:
"There is one feature I notice that is generally missing in "cargo cult science." . . . It's a kind of scientific integrity, a principle of scientific thought that corresponds to a kind of utter honesty—a kind of leaning over backwards.
For example, if you're doing an experiment, you should report everything that you think might make it invalid—not only what you think is right about it: other causes that could possibly explain your results; and things you thought of that you've eliminated by some other experiment, and how they worked . . . Details that could throw doubt on your interpretation must be given, if you know them. . . . If you make a theory, for example, and advertise it, or put it out, then you must also put down all the facts that disagree with it, as well as those that agree with it."
Turns out too many 21st Century "scientists" are nothing more than "high priests" of some sort of primitive Apocalyptic Nature Religion whose gods are bent on destroying the world unless they get sufficient human sacrifice.
Can't we just throw Al Gore into some heaving volcano and call it good?
wtp
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