Who are we? Part 9
How NOT to do Science!
Walter Cruttenden has a theory. He has devoted considerable time and effort into trying to disprove his theory. Instead the group he founded has been moving steadily in the direction of firmer ground, finding more corroboration of the theory and nailing down the details.
This is how Science is meant to work, but there are groups around who have corrupted the process and so many now don’t have the respect for Science that it (mostly) deserves.
An example of how NOT to do Science is to have an hypothesis, look around for data, discard all the data that contradicts the hypothesis, modify measurements that may falsify your hypothesis, then perform inappropriate analysis and use incorrect statistical methods to ‘prove’ your original claim. Add to that the suppression of any and all opinions and research that might count against the original claim, indulge in extensive propaganda to promote the idea and use standard propaganda techniques to convince the people who don’t know the Science of it all of how right you are about it.
In other words, be the IPCC (Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change) trying to convince the world that human carbon dioxide is responsible for sending Earth into a runaway warming that will bake us all and make life unlivable and that the only way to stop it all is to tax everyone for producing carbon dioxide.
Real Science is about having an idea, then going out to find what might make the idea wrong. If the data doesn’t fit, discard the idea, not the data. Walter Cruttenden has walked this path and his idea is rather startling, to say the least.
Leave a Reply