[jarenmf]

> if a scientist questions climate science, he becomes a pariah

As a climate scientist myself, I can tell you this is untrue and a harmful legend. As climate science is mostly atmospheric physics, biology and chemistry, it's pretty much very easy to disagree with anyone if you have a good argument supported by data. If you have strong scientific arguments, it does not matter even if the whole world is against you. On the contrary, this will likely make you famous and secure your career. Scientists (at least the curios ones) love to be proven wrong.

EDIT: spelling

[fooker]

> If you have strong scientific arguments, it does not matter even if the whole world is against you.

That’s a nice idealistic thing to say.

Academia has shown this to be false again and again.

Most groundbreaking ideas or arguments which go against the current wisdom get buried in the best case, and the proponents scorned and driven out of research in the worst case.

It has been like this since the beginning of organized scientific communities, which is understandable. Scientists are humans with the usual shortcomings like ego and pride.

[adammarples]

According to your logic then, science should not have been able to advance at all from the very beginning

[slibhb]

The idealistic view of scientists as unbiased arbiters is just not true. Science advances because:

1. Some of the time, scientists behave in an objective manner

2. Theories that are correct have predictive power and are therefore useful (i.e. get results, enable new technologies) and therefore tend to win out

3. "Science advances one funeral at a time" -Max Planck

[fooker]

There’s a cynical notion that science advances one funeral at a time, attributed to Max Planck.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planck%27s_principle

[revelio]

>> As a climate scientist myself, I can tell you this is untrue and a harmful legend

Other climatologists say otherwise:

https://reason.com/2017/01/04/georgia-tech-climatologist-jud...

There's also a long list of people who were listed as IPCC reviewers, who claim they pointed out serious flaws in the research, were ignored, and whose names were then put on the final report anyway.

[polygamous_bat]

I hope you do know that reason.com is a right wing think tank funded by David Koch foundation, and thus have serious conflict of interest?

https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/reason/

[revelio]

1. The article is simply a summary and repetition of Judith Curry's announcement, and Curry is/was an academic climatologist.

2. Given (1) I don't really care what reason.com is, but at any rate, I think right wing think tanks are far less biased and far more reliable than universities, government agencies and left wing think tanks, so that's not a useful or convincing response. Climatology is flooded with money due to their claims of doom, so they're as biased by money and profit as it is possible to be. My experience was that their opponents are barely funded at all and object due to a belief that things labelled as scientific should actually be so.