[Delk]

When has the scientific community really been crying wolf on environmental matters, on a large scale?

It can certainly feel like it has, with warnings about climate change and other ecological issues getting near-constant and having more and more visibility over the last couple of decades. But that's not really the scientific community calling wolf unless they were wrong. That's just people getting jaded. That doesn't mean the warnings have been wrong, it just means things have been going on for a long time with no solution.

[forcry]

>When has the scientific community really been crying wolf on environmental matters, on a large scale?

Obviously I meant the scientific community in general. What is special about the "environmental matters", that make the community around it resistant to various politicisation or frauds?

[Delk]

I was assuming it would be about environmental questions based on the context, but that may have been a poor assumption on my part.

Nothing of course makes environmental research immune to problems.

The question then becomes the same about the scientific community in general. When and about what has it been crying wolf?

You mention fraud, but is it really as prevalent a problem in academic research as it might seem from the headlines? Fraud or other instances of gross misconduct deservedly make the headlines but all the research staff toiling away and trying to do their best don't. (The occasional sexy enough result does, but those are few and far between.) From what little I've seen of academic research, the people in there haven't seemed to be dishonest or intending to defraud. I'm sure outright fraud does happen, but is it really such a widespread problem that it counts as the entire community becoming suspect?

Questionable methodology is of course a problem, and probably a much more widespread one, although it's probably not any worse than what people generally base their opinions and views on.

I really still fail to see how the scientific community has cried wolf. I can easily see how it would seem and feel like it has, but that would be more due to poor journalism and reporting than due to the actions of most of the community itself.

Of course I may be grossly underestimating the prevalence of scientific misconduct, but this has been my impression.

[forcry]

> When and about what has it been crying wolf?

I can give you instances, but that would not be very efficient. Because you can then be apologetic of the examples I provide..

The real question is "can the scientific community be made to have a consensus based on politics rather than science?". I think the answer is a resounding "YES", simply because it is made up of human beings who are not less susceptible to ways of coercion, than the human beings in actual politics or other fields that we can agree that corruption exists.

>From what little I've seen of academic research, the people in there haven't seemed to be dishonest or intending to defraud.

Politicians at a high level being corrupt does not imply, or require, that every government official is corrupt. So I am not sure why you mention it.

> but is it really such a widespread problem that it counts as the entire community becoming suspect?

https://blogs.bmj.com/bmj/2021/07/05/time-to-assume-that-hea...

This is not a justification or proof (as I said earlier, it would not be a very efficient use of my time), but something you can start with if you are genuinely interested and if you really have no idea how bad things are in this regard (Jeez, i wonder how can that be the case!)