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Science/Tech See other Science/Tech Articles Title: Nature: red in tooth & politics Peter Foster, Financial Post The journal Nature is one of the most-cited scientific publications in the world, but a recent editorial attacking Canada's Conservative government is outrageously biased. Indeed, it could easily have been written by David "Off with their heads" Suzuki. Maybe it was. Nature's attack, published last week, suggests that while Canada's scientific researchers rank among the best in the world, "their government's track record is dismal by comparison." The editorial goes on to claim that "Science has long faced an uphill battle for recognition in Canada, but the slope became steeper when the Conservative government was elected in 2006." As evidence, the magazine cites the closing down of the office of science advisor Arthur Carty. Who knew it existed? Mr. Carty was in fact appointed by Paul Martin, and Nature admits that his mission was doomed from the start by inadequate funding. But the notion that one man, or a single bureau, can give "objective" advice on the whole field of science is pure fantasy. Moreover, if one wants to look at the blatant bias of supposedly independent chief scientific advisors, the place to start would be the U.K., where the recently retired Sir David King was outrageous in his rejection of any skepticism on climate change, and downright barmy in some of his recommendations (He suggested that young women had to stop admiring men in carbon-emitting sports cars!). Climate change is in fact the real focus for Nature's attack, which also castigates Prime Minister Stephen Harper for backing away from Kyoto. But climate science is an enormously complex area of study whose interpretation and promotion is a political minefield. Nature's implication that the Harper government is somehow resisting "settled" science is nonsensical. This suggestion is given the lie by the simple fact that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's projections feature large margins of error. Moreover, the IPCC's conclusions have been grossly and selectively simplified for political reasons, primarily via the "summaries" that its highly politicized bureaucracy releases. The IPCC's chairman, Dr. Rajendra Pachauri, has a record of launching ad hominem attacks on skeptics. He likened Bjorn Lomborg, author of The Skeptical Environmentalist, to Adolf Hitler. Indeed, Nature's own reviewers compared Mr. Lomborg to the moral equivalent of a Holocaust denier. So much for science. When it comes to Kyoto, Nature is not being the least scientific. It was the previous Liberal government that failed to act on the commitments so rashly made by Jean Chretien. The Harper government merely acknowledged the obvious: that Canada could not meet those targets without decimating its economy and introducing a police state. Meanwhile, let Nature try to explain how Canada's meeting its Kyoto targets would have made the slightest difference to the world's climate. Nature's loaded charge sheet continues by suggesting that the Harper government conspicuously failed to attend a recent ceremony in Ottawa to "honour the Canadian scientists who contributed to the international climate-change report that won a share of the 2007 Nobel Prize." But the 2007 Nobel Prize, which was awarded to the IPCC and Al Gore, had -- yet again -- very little to do with science and a great deal to do with politics. Mr. Gore has comprehensively doctored and/or manufactured "facts," as detailed in a damning court judgment in Britain last year. Moreover, the Ottawa reception which the Harper government has been castigated for missing (not least by the Post's own Don Martin) looked far more like a political ambush than a celebration of science. It was organized by opposition parties to embarrass the government. One of the "honorees," climate scientist Andrew Weaver, conspicuously boycotted the occasion because of the Tories' unsurprising no show. Sounding suspiciously like Nature, he suggested: "It's almost like a war on science is going on in government, which is very sad." Mr. Weaver, we might remember, is the level-headed scientist who declared that the IPCC's Fourth Assessment Report wasn't "a smoking gun." Rather, climate was "a battalion of intergalactic smoking missiles." He also unleashed a diatribe against the research of Ross McKitrick and Stephen McIntyre, who inconveniently exploded the IPCC's alarmist "hockey stick" graph of temperatures soaring in the past century after a millennium of stability. Mr. Weaver has even suggested that it is dangerous to allow skeptics a voice in scientific debate. That isn't science. And neither is Nature's editorial. In casting about for any cudgel with which to bash the Harper government, Nature alights on the oilsands, as if they are Stephen Harper's fault. It concludes that the fall of the Harper government could "lead to a change for the better." Whatever the shortcomings of the Harper government on science, they pale into insignificance beside Nature's blatantly biased ideological take. That bias was confirmed when the Toronto Star produced an abbreviated version of Nature's editorial under its own editorial banner. Or was it that Nature had presented an expanded version of a Star editorial?
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#1. To: farmfriend (#0)
"To capture the public imagination... we have to... make simplified dramatic statements, and little mention of any doubts one might have.... Each of us has to decide the right balance between being effective and being honest." -- Dr. Stephen Schneider
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