[DanielBMarkham]

A plea for reasoned discourse and the end of the politicization of science by the left. Excellent article on the quality of the discussion of climate issues. The climate change debate itself, I know, has been done to death here. But I still think that the quality of the discussion, the role of politics in science and vice-versa, are important issues regardless of whether the topic is climate change or not.

[Adam503]

Because when a crisis strikes, it's the bankers and derivative traders we really need to here from. Now, you scientists, you need to go out and do something useful. Go shopping.

[DanielBMarkham]

How about just doing science? Seemed to work just fine for hundreds of years.

[gustavo_duarte]

But has this ever truly happened?

Even if we go back all the way to Archimedes, we'll find his science intertwined with warfare, ship building, public works and various other 'statist' concerns.

Or take Galileo - surely not just doing science. Darwin. Manhattan Project, and the subsequent roles of various people like Oppenheimer, von Neumann, and Edward Teller. Nazis eliminating 'Jew Science'. Or for example Carl Sagan's comments about sources of funding for physics (so heavily military and 'statist') and their effect on the science.

I think this idea of pure science in isolation is an idealization that does not happen in practice.

[DanielBMarkham]

I think you're mixing up several issues here.

First, nothing is truly black or white. Scientists are humans, and humans are political and involved in things outside their own field. This humanity, however, poses a conflict of interest from the mechanisms of how science operates: observe, hypothesize, test, reproduce. In other areas where human nature play a conflicting role with job goals, such as the therapist-patient relationship, doctor-patient relationship, or lawyer-client relationship, strict guidelines have been established to ensure that the human part of doing the job doesn't interfere with the job itself. Where's the line? That's outside my pay grade. When scientists start viewing themselves as activists first, scientists second, however, we've crossed it. Science is concerned with both normal science and paradigm-changing work. Whatever else you may be doing could be important, critical, wonderful, whatever -- but it ain't science.

Your second concept is statism. I'd take that up with the other commenter who mentioned the statist issues.

I think your observation that politics and science have always mixed it up is a great one. However, I think it actually proves my point instead of yours. During the time that these people lived, like Galileo, the word "science" could mean many different things. Indeed, science of the day was the church. And the church had a heavy hand in what was "allowed" to be discussed and what had "scientific consensus". It's only in looking back that we're able to say, gee, of course Galileo was the _real_ scientist here. At the time, common opinion was against him.

The A-bomb guys, as far as I know, did not publicly advocate some sort of scientific consensus in atomic policies. The old Soviets, however, had Lysenkoism -- another example of "science" being co-opted by the state and used to shut down discourse. (In many places even today, you'll end up in the insane asylum if you have the wrong political opinions). The Nazis were famous social darwinists. The list goes on. In each case, science and politics got mixed up to the point where politicians were using science as a foil to advance their ends and scientists were in politics to advance their own ends. You're absolutely right. This isn't anything new. We've seen where this ends up. Science ends up like the old church: with dogmas, consensus, political funding, ostracism, etc.

Let's not go there.

[carbon8]

Science has always been socially, culturally and politically disruptive.