Unsettling Science

“Settled Science”.

That’s what they tell us about Global Cooling / Global Warming / Climate Change, etc. But there have been enough fraudulent incidents that have tarnished the reputation the vaunted “scientific method” that it’s hard to think of any science as “settled”.

Never mind the instances where scientific theories have been totally upended by new discoveries, the desire for accolades, the pursuit of funding and the desire to confirm theories even if the evidence has to be “helped” have resulted in several incidents of scientific fraud.

A big one was the “Piltdown Man” deception, where human and orangutan bones were mingled. It was accepted as fact from 1912 until it was proved a forgery in 1953. Then there’s an Israeli archaeologist who faked biblical archaeological finds. Also, specific to the Global Warming debate, the researchers at the British university that created the first “hockey-stick” graph showing temperatures rising at an alarming rate fudged the data by including just three trees in their study of tree rings to determine past average temperatures. They didn’t include three TYPES of trees or three REGIONS of trees; just three trees. That was the only way they could get the data to come out they way they wanted.

I’m not saying this kind of thing is common. Most scientists are principled and conduct their research rigorously, but fraud does happen. Now a new one has come to light (read here). German rock-star-anthropologist and Professor Reiner Protsch von Zieten has been drummed out of his university in Frankfurt for falsifying the carbon dating of multiple human bones. He had been feted for his ground-breaking discoveries that now have been shown to be false. This had been going on for decades, so some say the entire history of the evolution of mankind may have to be revised. 

Some scientists tell us that science is solid, reliable and based entirely on unbiased evidence, unlike religion, but scientists are people too and the pressures of reputation with peers, the need to justify research dollars and sometimes just the desire to see a theory vindicated can lead the people who do science to do what people sometimes do in any field; cheat.

But these cheaters, along with the periodic changes in paradigm brought about by new discoveries, make it pretty clear that the term “settled science” is an oxymoron.