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Politics : The Castle
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To: tejek who wrote (4433)2/11/2005 10:24:39 AM
From: TimF  Read Replies (1) of 7936
 
Political influence (both outside politics, and politics internal to science and academia) is nothing new. It isn't limited to environmental causes (or to the so called "anti-environmental" side). The internal politics within science often result in pressure to not move awy from accepted scientific ideas. The politics from academia in general often push support to liberal ideas, most particularly in the "soft sciences" (Conservative and Liberal in terms of the general political debate don't mean much in particle physics). External politics push at science from all directions. Science projected in to the political realm, science used as the basis for political decisions does get particularly opened up to political pressures. But the pressure should not be to alter data directly for political reasons, rexamining or overturning the conclusions either in light of differening scientific opinion or for other reasons outside of the specific area the scientists study or experiment was concerned with is one thing, as is challenging the data if there is any reason to suspect it, but the raw data from the older studies shouldn't be hidden or altered even if it does turn out to be wrong. (and of course in the opinion of the people the writer of the Times article interviewed the data isn't wrong)

Of course science should be subject to revision and reinterpretations and challenge. That's the nature of science we don't have a perfect undersating of the universe and probably never will. But new studies or rexamining old conclusions are the same as repressing old studies or censoring conclusions. The article only presents one side of the story but if it is 100% correct than what it portrays isn't a good thing.

Tim
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