[Osx-nutters] Denial

[David Cake]

At 11:43 AM +0100 15/8/07, Stefano Mori wrote:
>On 2007-Aug-15, at 10:47, David Cake wrote:
>
>>>  If not then you're assuming that every criticism was from liars and
>>>  cheats.
>>
>>	I've never assumed that all contributions are from liars and
>>  cheats - even at my most dismissive, I've said that there are shills
>>  AND cranks. And crank isn't always as dismissive as it sounds. Plenty
>>  of people can be respected researchers in their primary field, and
>>  cranks in another [1], or just get old and out of touch, or have deep
>>  and personal, but ultimately subjective and not rationally
>>  justifiable, reasons for holding the position they do (religion being
>>  the most common, obviously, but ideology and commitment to a cause
>>  play their part).
>
>
>Curious. You accept that individuals can be severely biased by such a 
>strong ideology that their their scientific opinion is rendered
>worthless, and meanwhile a large group of people are immune to ideology?

	Immune? No, just somewhat biased against it *as a group* by 
social mechanisms.
	I don't think individual scientists are biased against 
ideological bias, though they aren't biased *for* it in the same ways 
as, say, politicians are. But I think the social mechanisms of 
science do not reward decision making for ideological reasons - in 
fact, they reward making a supportable statement that challenges the 
orthodoxy.
	The distinction between individuals and social mechanisms 
that act on a group is a straight forward one.
	Do I believe that all soldiers are nationalistic? No, there 
are plenty that aren't. Do I believe the social mechanisms of the 
military strongly encourage them to be so, and make it unlikely that 
military groups will be otherwise? Sure. And so on.

	I don't object to you claiming that SOME scientists are 
driven by an ideological bias. Of course some are, and while we'd 
probably pick out different examples, we both agree on that. I 
disagree with you that the vast majority of climate scientists are 
driven more by ideology than science, or that the social mechanisms 
of science ridigly enforce adherence to an orthodoxy - and that is a 
untested hypothesis of dubious methodology about science that I find 
unconvincing.
	Regards
		David