Exactly Scaedwian. Nail on the Head. It is just like Electromagnetic science in electronics. It wouldn't be usable if it "sometimes worked". Could you imagine trying to build an oscillator if you couldn't get two capacitors of the same reactance value to charge and discharge at the same rate? Or if two coils of the exact same demensions and applied voltages always radiated different shape and strength magnetic fields? Electronics would be a useless science if it wasn't valid 100% predictably.
One other point. Why is it that such infallable faith is being put behind scientists in this instance? Let me explain my question.
Every person I know at some time or another comments on how out culture is changing, becoming more and more corrupt in some fashion or another. Some find the changes more disturbing than others. Things you see on TV today that would never have been accepted 40 years ago, people not taking time to know their neighbors, children being raised by daycare workers instead of their mothers, divorce rates sky high, drug and alcohol addiction worse than ever before...etc etc. While I wouldn't say the world is falling apart, it is plain to see that our values are changing and becoming more and more self serving as a whole.
The effects of it can be seen everywhere. People in every walk of life have things to hide, personal demons, ambitions. People are a lot less mindful of the repercussions of their actions. If they are benefited in the here and now by doing something "wrong", sometimes the reward of doing the wrong thing is outweighed by the risk. Previous generations of people had a stricter moral compass and were more dilligent in doing the right thing no matter the cost. While there have always been bad people doing bad things, this is true of older generations "by and large" to borrow Brownout's term.
What does this have to do with scientists? Well, 100 years ago the world was still very much in the middle of the scientific revolution. Many laws and theories of science that serve us well even today were still being explored and defined. Electromagnetism, again for example, was just finding useful applications for the every day person outside of laboratories. Telephones, radio, power distribution to power appliances and lights were infant technologies. Physicists were busy working on sub-atomic theories that eventually became the nuclear revolution. Space exploration was a dream that was only a few short years from being a realistic plausibility. The list goes on and on.
Well, technology and advancement have certainly not halted...and without a doubt some major breakthroughs occur in science every day that we just don't hear about. The human genome being mapped, medical research...etc etc.
However, what was the last revolutionary discovery, I mean really earth shattering, that took science in a completely new direction? Most breakthroughs you hear about are just blips on the news or in magazine articles because they are not really "new" but rather they are deeper understandings or explanations for things we already know and understand. For instance, mapping human DNA, while important, isn't as earth shattering as "the discovery of dna". Or...faster, smaller microprocessors aren't as amazing or important as "the discovery of the semiconductor".
See where I'm going? I have a book called, "The trouble with Physics", a great book to read until it started getting over my head toward the end. It talks about the different sub-atomic theories like the standard model and "string theory". The author is very critical of "String Theory" because it really is a pile of BS that almost can't even be called a theory. The thrust of the book is not to criticize string theory though. He is more critical of the Physics community for putting all their eggs in one basket with "String Theory", because it is "sexier" and more exciting than other Physics concepts...whereas there is a whole lot more to work with in the Standard Model. He laments that Physics has reached this point where everyone just seems to be sitting around waiting for the next big discovery, yet nothing big has happened since the 1970s.
OK, the point of all of this? Science is kind of at a crossroads. Funding for science is a dwindling part of our tax dollars because the returns keep getting less and less. It is becoming more and more advantageous to fund projects that apply known science on an engineering level and improve upon technology that already exists. It is less and less worthwhile to pay some egg-head theorists to sit around, lost in their own little world, dreaming up explanations for all the world's problems. The Einsteins and Teslas of the 19th, 20th centuries are no longer needed in our current times.
EXCEPT in climate science. Isn't that the neatest thing? Almost overnight this little, insignificant branch of science that was barely funded in the 1950s is one of the largest hogs of grant money in our modern time. But this isn't by accident. It took a lot of hand-waving and dooms-day predicting to get the world to start writing the checks. This little nook of science found a way to make ITSELF the big story, where physics and medicine were the big players in the last century.
And going back to our culture of dwindling ethics...back in those heydays of scientific discovery, there was a lot of problems that were ripe for the picking, real world problems with real world answers. Science was competitive back then just as it is now, but the ETHICS of those days, for the most part, kept people on track and the work that sprung from it was useful, relevant, and trustworthy.
Today, the very same people who are in their private lives cheating on their wives, cheating on their income taxes, neglecting their families, using and abusing drugs and alcohol, etc etc are the same people working for these reseatch institutions and frauding the global taxpayer to pay for their grant money. Yes, I'm making assumptions about their character, but I've been in and around research universities plenty enough to have a feel for the typical old hippie professor who never grew up and decided to make a career out of school. In other words, the same ethical dilemmas that face society at large are found in the character of these scientists and the Climategate e-mails verify it for me.
One other point. Why is it that such infallable faith is being put behind scientists in this instance? Let me explain my question.
Every person I know at some time or another comments on how out culture is changing, becoming more and more corrupt in some fashion or another. Some find the changes more disturbing than others. Things you see on TV today that would never have been accepted 40 years ago, people not taking time to know their neighbors, children being raised by daycare workers instead of their mothers, divorce rates sky high, drug and alcohol addiction worse than ever before...etc etc. While I wouldn't say the world is falling apart, it is plain to see that our values are changing and becoming more and more self serving as a whole.
The effects of it can be seen everywhere. People in every walk of life have things to hide, personal demons, ambitions. People are a lot less mindful of the repercussions of their actions. If they are benefited in the here and now by doing something "wrong", sometimes the reward of doing the wrong thing is outweighed by the risk. Previous generations of people had a stricter moral compass and were more dilligent in doing the right thing no matter the cost. While there have always been bad people doing bad things, this is true of older generations "by and large" to borrow Brownout's term.
What does this have to do with scientists? Well, 100 years ago the world was still very much in the middle of the scientific revolution. Many laws and theories of science that serve us well even today were still being explored and defined. Electromagnetism, again for example, was just finding useful applications for the every day person outside of laboratories. Telephones, radio, power distribution to power appliances and lights were infant technologies. Physicists were busy working on sub-atomic theories that eventually became the nuclear revolution. Space exploration was a dream that was only a few short years from being a realistic plausibility. The list goes on and on.
Well, technology and advancement have certainly not halted...and without a doubt some major breakthroughs occur in science every day that we just don't hear about. The human genome being mapped, medical research...etc etc.
However, what was the last revolutionary discovery, I mean really earth shattering, that took science in a completely new direction? Most breakthroughs you hear about are just blips on the news or in magazine articles because they are not really "new" but rather they are deeper understandings or explanations for things we already know and understand. For instance, mapping human DNA, while important, isn't as earth shattering as "the discovery of dna". Or...faster, smaller microprocessors aren't as amazing or important as "the discovery of the semiconductor".
See where I'm going? I have a book called, "The trouble with Physics", a great book to read until it started getting over my head toward the end. It talks about the different sub-atomic theories like the standard model and "string theory". The author is very critical of "String Theory" because it really is a pile of BS that almost can't even be called a theory. The thrust of the book is not to criticize string theory though. He is more critical of the Physics community for putting all their eggs in one basket with "String Theory", because it is "sexier" and more exciting than other Physics concepts...whereas there is a whole lot more to work with in the Standard Model. He laments that Physics has reached this point where everyone just seems to be sitting around waiting for the next big discovery, yet nothing big has happened since the 1970s.
OK, the point of all of this? Science is kind of at a crossroads. Funding for science is a dwindling part of our tax dollars because the returns keep getting less and less. It is becoming more and more advantageous to fund projects that apply known science on an engineering level and improve upon technology that already exists. It is less and less worthwhile to pay some egg-head theorists to sit around, lost in their own little world, dreaming up explanations for all the world's problems. The Einsteins and Teslas of the 19th, 20th centuries are no longer needed in our current times.
EXCEPT in climate science. Isn't that the neatest thing? Almost overnight this little, insignificant branch of science that was barely funded in the 1950s is one of the largest hogs of grant money in our modern time. But this isn't by accident. It took a lot of hand-waving and dooms-day predicting to get the world to start writing the checks. This little nook of science found a way to make ITSELF the big story, where physics and medicine were the big players in the last century.
And going back to our culture of dwindling ethics...back in those heydays of scientific discovery, there was a lot of problems that were ripe for the picking, real world problems with real world answers. Science was competitive back then just as it is now, but the ETHICS of those days, for the most part, kept people on track and the work that sprung from it was useful, relevant, and trustworthy.
Today, the very same people who are in their private lives cheating on their wives, cheating on their income taxes, neglecting their families, using and abusing drugs and alcohol, etc etc are the same people working for these reseatch institutions and frauding the global taxpayer to pay for their grant money. Yes, I'm making assumptions about their character, but I've been in and around research universities plenty enough to have a feel for the typical old hippie professor who never grew up and decided to make a career out of school. In other words, the same ethical dilemmas that face society at large are found in the character of these scientists and the Climategate e-mails verify it for me.
