The Death of Science Based Policy -- Good Things Can Come of it

Climategate taught many of us that government-funded science is government funded corruption. It was true all along, check Michael Crichton's pre-climategate essay, but some of us were in blissful ignorance until now. Scientific research was once believed to be an unimpeachable source of truth. Now we know it's ripe for impeachment.

Government legislators need big leverage over the people to get their cooperation. God and Country lately doesn't have the authority over the masses it once had, science was the perfect replacement. And then it happened. By their influence over the scientists, they corrupted the science and thus showed themselves to be equally corrupt.

This looks like a bad day for science. If people no longer trust the science, what are we to base policy on, superstition and opinion? Ah, but isn't that what the corrupted science is based on already? The recognition of this is knowledge and knowledge is power. It takes the teeth out of the false-science tiger is to put it in its proper place. That's what we need to do.

I am an engineer and have worked with scientists. The relationship is this: The scientists study new technologies or natural phenomena or new components to take advantage of in future products. Think of any product, next cellphone frequency spectrum or a better paint coating on a car. It often starts with a scientist figuring out how to harness the new capability. Once they "simplify" the technology down to something manufacturable, they hand it off to engineering. That is called a reality check. What the engineers do at that handoff is combine the new technology with other parts, components to make a new working system. If the scientists got their part right, the product moves ahead smoothly. If they got it wrong, you may not have a product at all.

It isn't that way with government funded science, because there often is no practical application at the end of the process, no reality check. The longer you go without a reality check, the further from reality you eventually drift. A meteorologist forecasting hours to days ahead is constantly getting slapped by reality, every day in fact. They quickly learn how to reduce the errors and where the errors cannot easily be reduced, those are the uncertainties, the chaotic factors. By quickly, I mean several decades of daily lessons. A climatologist who forecasts decades to centuries ahead may not get slapped by reality in his lifetime. The closest thing is slapped on the errors in the work, if emails are leaked, or never, if they're not.

And everybody who has ever predicted an outcome, either by building models, or building a real world project, is slapped by the reality that things aren't just the way the calculations predicted. This is as true of building a bridge, a motor, a wind tunnel simulator, a light bulb as it is of a climate model.

The lack of verifiability through periodic reality checks in government funded science is the perfect breeding ground for both scientific and government corruption. We should not put so much faith in science based policies. Skepticism is good.

Footnote: Personal impact statement. This realization was a disappointment for me. I thought science could triumph over just about everything, objectively rising above partisan politics. I have recently learned two areas of weakness: Scientists do not make effective use of statistics and scientists do not work effectively in government funded unverifiable projects.