Here is what science is supposed to look like. In 2011, CERN conducted an experiment during which physicists observed something seemingly impossible – neutrinos traveling faster than the speed of light. This observation, if true, would have invalidated Einstein’s theory of relativity. CERN checked and rechecked their experiment parameters and their data, then put all this information out in public, asking physicists to prove or disprove their finding. This whole process was lauded in the extreme by physicist Dr. Micho Kaku who wrote of the event in the WSJ:
. . . [I]n the end, this is a victory for science. No theory [not even Einstein’s Theory of Relativity, the foundation of modern physics] is carved in stone. Science is merciless when it comes to testing all theories over and over, at any time, in any place. Unlike religion or politics, science is ultimately decided by experiments, done repeatedly in every form. There are no sacred cows. In science, 100 authorities count for nothing. Experiment counts for everything.
...There are a few things that could easily be done to help restore integrity to science:
One, Congress needs to pass the secret science bill requiring that government agencies may rely only on studies that have been validated or reproduced, based upon the studies’ underlying data. This utterly corrupt practice of relying on studies that have not been validated or reproduced because key data is withheld must end.
Two, when taxpayer dollars are used to fund scientific studies, those studies must adhere to the scientific method – a requirement that must be ruthlessly enforced. Any scientist whose name appears on a study that does not contain all of the raw data, etc., necessary to allow for the validation and reproduction of the study should thereafter be ineligible to receive any government grants.
Three, everything about the way we manage our historic temperature records needs to be changed. It is difficult to know where to begin. At a minimum, we must get rid of the current employees handling those records who are, almost to a person, vocal proponents of global warming. Further, any proposed changes to any aspect of our temperature records must be subject to the scientific method. Finally, we must require that proposed changes to the temperature record be published in advance, as well as all of the underlying work and algorithms, so that they can be subject to comment and validation.
Four, blatant academic fraud needs to be criminally punished. We no longer live in a time when scientists police themselves and deal with academic fraud at the institutional level. When Michael Mann can be rewarded with a full professorship and experience no adverse action for fraud, the rot in our system must be addressed or the message will be that it is okay to promote academic fraud as a means to secure not merely employment, but the government taxpayer-funded grants that are part and parcel of professional success in many areas of academia.
Five, though this essay merely alludes to the role of publications, peer review, and gatekeepers, their importance in the world of “publish or perish” academia is very significant. The government should take comprehensive steps to lessen their role in all fields of science. I foresee some sort of publicly available, searchable government database that collects and collates the results and information necessary to validate or reproduce all government-funded studies as well as any and all private studies that scientists might submit for inclusion. I can see no other way to lessen the corrupt practices and biases that, as Climategate revealed, have irrevocably tainted the peer review and publication process, and that have played such a huge role in limiting voices that dissent from the approved “science.”
...Simply put, the progressive left sees in the regulatory bureaucracy, as they see in our Courts, a way of dispensing with the Constitution and democracy to impose their will in a way that they could never achieve through the ballot box.
...Obama’s aggressive use of the regulatory bureaucracy to pass into effective law that which could not be passed through Congress – indeed, which was, in the case of the EPA, disapproved of by Congress in 2009 – has placed us in a Constitutional crisis. We are no longer operating as a Republic and will not be until we reign in the systemic toxin of the regulatory bureaucracy as mini legislative agencies. Our system of government based on checks and balances no longer operates subject to those imperative Constitutional safeguards. Moreover, if the courts uphold it, the Clean Power Plan will set a precedent by extending regulatory power into the realm of legislation, thus making our Constitutional problems significantly worse.
If NOAA can ignore a Congressional subpoena with no legal basis for such act, than Congress, at least as far as oversight is concerned, has been effectively neutered. Things will be even worse if Obama somehow inks a Paris agreement along the lines currently proposed, then attempts to enforce it as a binding obligation without Congressional approval as a treaty. If that were to succeed, then Congress would be truly emasculated. Obama would be able to effectively govern this nation without substantive recourse to Congress.
...If the Progressives’ climate change push advances, America’s economy will be devastated in the service of an ideology that has given up any pretense of relying upon the scientific method to justify its demands. Politicians and complicit greenie scientists, as well as arch-polluter China, have been and will continue to be financially enriched thanks to the climate change hysteria, but America as a whole will suffer greatly.
In the pursuit of these climate change riches, the Obama administration has repeatedly flouted Congress’s refusal to “get with” the Obama agenda (even though Congress’s refusal reflects the will of the people as embodied in their elected representatives). The Obama administration has repeatedly usurped Congress’s constitutional authority when its agencies have ignored Congress’s refusal to pass certain laws and, instead, created rules based upon those same rejected legislative initiatives. Congress has responded by . . . doing nothing.
Unless ordinary citizens vociferously demand that Congress re-claim its constitutional powers by pushing back against Obama’s legislative takeover, those powers, once gone, may never return. Without the bulwark of its representative body, America will continue to follow fraudulent scientific methods and outcomes down an economically ruinous and constitutionally bankrupt path.
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