Science a GoGo's Home Page Forums General Discussion General Science Discussion Forum Peer Review in Action

For those short-sighted people who believe that science is always somehow more objective and scientists more trustworthy than other areas of human activity, the following should prove informative:


Climate change emails between scientists reveal flaws in peer review
A close reading of the hacked emails exposes the real process of science, its jealousies and tribalism.


Scientists sometimes like to portray what they do as divorced from the everyday jealousies, rivalries and tribalism of human relationships. What makes science special is that data and results that can be replicated are what matters and the scientific truth will out in the end.

But a close reading of the emails hacked from the University of East Anglia in November exposes the real process of everyday science in lurid detail.

Many of the emails reveal strenuous efforts by the mainstream climate scientists to do what outside observers would regard as censoring their critics. And the correspondence raises awkward questions about the effectiveness of peer review – the supposed gold standard of scientific merit – and the operation of the UN's top climate body, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).


Article here:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/feb/02/hacked-climate-emails-flaws-peer-review

In fact, the concentration of egocentric asocials is much higher in scientific society due the positive correlation of Asperger's syndrome or bipolar disorder and intelligence. Whether does the Sheldon character from "Big Bang Theory" sitcom appear so improbable for you? It's in fact the stereotype of highly intelligent scientist!

For further reading: Philip Tetlock Any individual expert is likely to be wrong. This is because just the experts are trained to occupy specialized, i.e. biased view of reality. Even Albert Einstein, the relativist never accepted the concept of quantum mechanics. He spent whole rest of his life by finding of errors in quantum mechanics.

We can say, individual scientists are always wrong, because they're trained for it.