How government corrupts science
Submitted by climaterealists on Tue, 16/03/2010 - 21:49
3 March 2010
by Arthur Robinson, PhD
Isaac Newton was the greatest scientist who has ever lived, or in
> Albert Einstein's words, the most "privileged" of all scientists
> because of the discoveries that Newton was permitted to make. Einstein
> describes Newton as "this brilliant genius, who determined the course
> of Western thought, research and practice to an extent that nobody
> before or since his time can touch."[1]
>
> Yet, near the end of his life, Newton said of himself:
>
> I do not know what I may appear to the world; but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, while the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.
>
> In the second edition of the "Principia," in which he published most of his discoveries in physics, Newton writes:
>
> The true God is a living, intelligent, and powerful being. His duration reaches from eternity to eternity; His presence from infinity to infinity. He governs all things.
>
> Newton wrote only three books – the "Optics," the "Principia," and "Observations upon the Prophecies of Daniel and the Apocalypse of St. John."[2] Averaged over the course of his life, he divided his time equally between his physics and his Bible, believing that his physics was a biblical ministry. To Dr. Bently he wrote, "When I wrote my Treatise about our System [the "Principia"], I had an Eye upon such Principles as might work with considering Men, for the belief of a Deity, and nothing can rejoice me more than to find it useful for that Purpose."
>
> Science is a search for truth among the things that man can see. The Bible teaches that there are things that man can see and those that he cannot see – "faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen" and "we see through a glass darkly." It teaches that "the truth shall make you free" – the truth about both things seen and things not seen.
>
> During most of its history, when it housed and sponsored the work of many of the greatest scientists of the 20th century, the California Institute of Technology proudly displayed its motto:
>
> The Truth Shall Make You Free.
>
> Today, Caltech's bureaucrats furtively hide this motto, if they have not canceled it altogether – both its origins and its emphasis on the "truth" being counterproductive to the "business" of "science" in which they are now engaged.
>
> Today, the "truth" seems surrounded by "lies," and those whom we have depended upon to tell the truth appear no longer to be reliable. Worst of all, many of our scientists whom we depend upon to know the truth are … silent.
>
> As the alternative media fill with news of "Climategate" and other scientific scandals, people ask: "What has happened to science? Has it been corrupted as have the Congress, the presidency, the media, and many of our other institutions? Can we no longer depend upon even our scientists to tell the truth?"
>
> As the mainstream media fill our eyes and ears with strange claims about scientific "discoveries" – claims that seem to constantly serve the interests of a government that is clearly bent on enslaving us, why are most of our scientists not heard? Why do they and their institutions remain at best silent and at worst supportive of our enemies?
>
> Every day the media carry stories with headlines like "Scientists say sea level rising catastrophically," "Scientists say hurricanes increasing because of human hydrocarbon use" and "Scientists say polar bears near extinction" – claims that we learn elsewhere are just not true. Who are these "scientists," and why do they say these things?
>
> First, who is a "scientist?" A scientist – in our vernacular often categorized as a scientist, engineer or physician, depending upon his predilection to extend knowledge or to apply it – is a person who seeks the truth about the world we can see by means of direct observations of that world. He often originates hypotheses about how the things in the world work and then tests those hypotheses with experiments and observations. Entirely on the basis of experiments or observations, he refines or rejects hypotheses and extends his knowledge.
>
> Scientists are usually quiet, somewhat reclusive individuals. Confronted, as is reflected in Newton's statement, with the awesome phenomena that comprise "things seen" and the very tiny part of these phenomena they are able to manipulate and understand, scientists tend naturally toward humility. Most true scientists are completely truthful and honest as their profession absolutely requires, although there have been exceptions. One scientist friend of mine was so impeccably honest that he actually wrote in his autobiography that his wife was the second smartest woman he had ever met.
>
> At Caltech, in the 1950s and 1960s, intellectual honesty was rigorously taught – by example. There were no courses in this. The student was simply surrounded by people who always approached their work with complete honesty. Dishonesty in any action meant immediate expulsion from the campus by one's peers. Sadly, this is no longer the case at Caltech today.
>
> When a true scientist makes a statement to his nonscientist fellow citizens, he speaks only the truth as he perceives it and as it has been verified – not by hypothesis or by computer simulations, but by actual experiments and observations. Moreover, he strives to simultaneously express all of the weaknesses his statement may have as a result of the always limited data available and the ever present chance that his hypothetical interpretation of that data may be in error.
>
> While, of course, few scientists stand in the ranks of Newton or Einstein, we have many thousands of fine scientists in our midst today. Their numbers have not diminished; their honesty has not faded; their humility is still evident; and they are completely dedicated to the truth. As they work to expand their knowledge of things they can see, it never occurs to them to hide inconvenient observations or to mislead their fellow men about their work. Direct falsehoods or falsehoods of omission are alien to their being and simply not a part of their lives. I have been privileged to know many very fine scientists – even one or two who struggled with dishonesty in themselves and seriously harmed their professional work as a result. Scientists are people, and people are imperfect.
>
> The corruption that is pervasively evident in science today is not resident in our true scientists. It is resident in people who pretend to be scientists – but are "scientists" in title only. Many of these people have received university degrees in science, but they use these titles in a corrupt, nonscientific way.
>
> How did these dishonest people invade the scientific community?
>
> The government steps in
>
> During World War II, scientists and engineers who had been trained in the United States and Europe combined their efforts in the huge Manhattan Project that resulted in the creation of nuclear weapons, the end of the war, and, temporarily, the acquisition of overwhelming military power by the United States.
>
> Many of the outstanding scientists who worked on the Manhattan Project noticed that this huge, government-funded project had succeeded in solving a very difficult science and engineering problem, and they thought other difficult problems such as the finding of a cure for cancer might be solved in a similar way. They forgot, however, that the scientific and industrial people and infrastructure that made this success possible had come almost entirely from independent, free-enterprise, academic institutions and industries. Government had merely bent these institutions to its own purposes during the war effort.
>
> Most American scientists of that era held to strong Judeo-Christian principles. The majority were dedicated Christians and Jews, with the remainder largely following the custom and culture of those principles. Most were politically conservative. They had just fought and won a great war against government tyranny and did not think tyranny could ever come to their country.
>
> Since their admiration for this government-funded success found sympathetic listeners among big government advocates in the Roosevelt-Truman administration and the administrations that followed, large sums of money for the support of science began to flow from the federal government, primarily in the form of government grants and contracts. While such expenditures for national defense were fully justified under the constitutional mandate that the federal government should "provide for the common defense," this tax money was increasingly used for nondefense scientific purposes.
>
> Gradually, over the next two generations, the private capital that had heretofore funded science, endowed scientific institutions and provided the intellectual freedom that is crucially important to successful scientific enquiry was seized through taxation and part of it was then passed to scientists in government "grants" and contracts.
>
> Some private support of science continued. Caltech is today half funded by tax funds and half by private contributions. Government funding has now become so pervasive that scientific institutions and the scientists who work in them are wary of offending government. Competition for government grants is fierce, and a competing scientist strives to offend no one – and to see that other scientists on his campus are similarly cautious.
>
> Moreover, this infusion of capital from an increasingly rich United States caused a large expansion in scientific work. Virtually all academic institutions that sponsor scientific research have built new buildings – usually several – intended to be filled by government-funded scientists. The Caltech campus, for example, doubled in size during this era. Work in the buildings that housed the legendary scientists of Caltech's past could still be funded entirely by the Caltech endowment, but the doubled campus requires huge sums of tax funds. Caltech is not, however, economically half free. It is entirely enslaved, since the loss of half of the salaries and operating funds of the campus is politically unthinkable.
>
> Simultaneously, an even more corrupting process took place. Only a small percentage of people are personally and intellectually inclined to be scientists. Science is an unusual occupation. An outstanding scientist is usually driven by an overwhelming sense of inquiry into the unknown. He thinks about his work 24 hours per day – even while asleep – and works very long hours with few diversions. Learning new things about the physical world is difficult, and generally requires total immersion in the endeavor.
>
> Moreover, discoveries, even the small ones that keep a scientist going – just as the small payments from a slot machine that keep the addicted gambler hoping – are few and far between. Most of the time, a research scientist appears to be working very hard and accomplishing very little. In fact, if he were actually just loafing and not realistically engaged in scientific work, his superficially apparent work output might be little different.
>
> Into this culture suddenly flowed vast amounts of tax money. As a result, being designated as a scientist became almost as lucrative as actually being a scientist. Government bureaucrats increasingly controlled which experiments would be done, and writing government grant proposals and being seen and well liked at scientific meetings became the "scientist's" principal work. Very large numbers of people entered this new industry – the new business of science.
>
> Grantsmanship gradually became the most important "scientific" skill, and the amount of grant money a scientist commands is now, in most institutions, the most important parameter that determines his advancement. The new "scientist" rushes from meeting to meeting, furiously writes grant proposals, and strives to obtain news coverage of his latest "discoveries," while leaving the actual research to technicians and students.
>
> When the Obama administration took office in Washington in 2009, one of its first acts was to greatly increase the funds for "grants" to academic science – a reward for political support during the election. The immediate result was that research in these institutions slowed almost to a halt, as the "scientists" furiously wrote additional grant requests to compete for tickets on the new gravy train.
>
> In short, the federal government has used some of the earnings of the American people that it demands in taxes to build a giant welfare program for Ph.D.s – now known as "big-time science." As this welfare program has expanded, the conservative culture among American academic scientists has gradually been replaced by an ultraliberal, pro-big-government culture – in just the same way that large government welfare programs have induced this political change in many other national sectors.
>
> Even the true scientists – now a minority among this large population of welfare recipients – must apply for government grants, since the private capital that once funded them has been largely seized by government.
>
> Unsurprisingly, those in the "business" of "science" have much less use for the honesty, humility and dedicated search for the truth that motivates true scientists. The apparent perversion of science that results is distasteful indeed. The true scientists are still here, but the impostor scientists, in their constant clamor for government funds, political notice and publicity, drown them out – and suppress their voices by means of institutional pressures.
>
>
> When we circulated by mail a petition that rejects the hypothesis of human-caused global warming and urges the United States government to take no action to reduce hydrocarbon use, more than 31,000 Americans with formal university degrees in science, including more than 9,000 Ph.D.s, signed the petition. The signatories included many thousands of scientists in academic institutions. We found, however, that those outside of government-funded academic institutions were four times more likely to sign than those inside such institutions. Those inside academic institutions are under severe pressure not to offend the government.
>
> This petition, which was signed by many of America's most outstanding scientists, states:
>
> We urge the United States government to reject the global warming agreement that was written in Kyoto, Japan in December, 1997, and any other similar proposals. The proposed limits on greenhouse gases would harm the environment, hinder the advance of science and technology, and damage the health and welfare of mankind.
>
> There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gases is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth's atmosphere and disruption of the Earth's climate. Moreover, there is substantial scientific evidence that increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide produce many beneficial effects upon the natural plant and animal environments of the Earth.
>
> Are there, however, mitigating advantages to the change that has taken place? Perhaps this large infusion of government-funded people has increased the scientific progress upon which our nation and our civilization depend. The answer to this question is definitively no!
>
> The bureaucrats who now have detailed control over the experimental and observational work of our scientists are entirely unqualified for this work. Important areas of research stagnate while trendy areas are emphasized. Increasingly, good scientists are forced to lie about their work – pretending to do the work permitted, while actually (and illegally) using their laboratories and resources for "bootlegged" research in the areas that are important. Another common technique is to complete the work and then ask for funds to do it, thereby increasing the chance for a grant from bureaucrats anxious to fund "successful" research. These activities undermine the absolute honesty that science requires.
>
> Even when the goal is a good one, this welfare program for Ph.D.s is markedly inferior. For example, government grants funded billions of dollars of work in academia on the solution of the human genome, yet Dr. Craig Venter led a team of privately funded scientists and beat the academics to the goal – while spending less than 5 percent of the amount of money expended by the academics. His reward? So far, envious tax-funded academics have blocked his well-earned Nobel Prize.
>
> As tax-funded "scientist-nonscient
>
> The still excellent faculty at Caltech could completely destroy Gore's movie as a minor entertainment during lunch at the campus Athenaeum, but instead they are … silent. Yet, the administration'
>
> When, however, three Caltech alumni, including one very famous individual, asked to give a seminar at Caltech in response to Chu's claims, their offer was refused. Instead, Caltech asked its alumni to help fund a project wherein students install solar panels on Caltech buildings, using technology so expensive that, even in large industrial installations, it requires 50 years to generate the energy and other costs required to build it – longer than the expected lifetime of the equipment.
>
> Thirty-five years earlier, in 1974, physicist Richard Feynman delivered the Caltech commencement address. After delivering a speech in which he discussed integrity – both in science and in dealing with the public – Feynman concluded as follows:
>
> So I have just one wish for you – the good luck to be somewhere where you are free to maintain the kind of integrity I have described, and where you do not feel forced by a need to maintain your position in the organization, or financial support, or so on, to lose your integrity. May you have that freedom.
>
> Throughout American scientific institutions today, except for a small number that do not receive government funding, the freedom that Professor Feynman wished for the Caltech graduates of 1974 has been very seriously abridged, especially on the subjects of climate change, origin of life, and other matters of importance to their government masters.
>
> The Caltech faculty is surely not being paid directly for their silence, and the few faculty members receiving energy research funds are probably doing good work. The entire faculty knows, however, that it is not helpful to grant funding for them and their colleagues and not popular with campus administrators to enter the climate change debate, especially on the "wrong" side.
>
> Moreover, it is better that first-rate honest scientists who are knowledgeable about climate science – such as the three alumni who offered to give a seminar – not be permitted to speak. This would bring the attention of excellent Caltech scientists to the facts, facts that are uncomfortable and counterproductive to the fund-procuring processes of the campus.
>
> Caltech is, of course, not alone. Caltech and MIT are still high among our finest scientific institutions and still include among their faculties large numbers of excellent real scientists. The phenomena described here are pervasive throughout American academia, including the best universities.
>
> This same sort of thing has happened to several prominent professional societies and their publications, such as the American Physical Society and Chemical and Engineering News, where activist pseudo-scientists have wormed their way into administrative positions where they use the good names of these organizations to promote their radical agendas, while most of the members of the societies are … silent.
>
> Promoted by United Nations projects, primarily the Intergovernmental
> Panel on Climate Change and related activities, and funded by tens of
> billions of dollars in "research" funds, the "climate change" business
> is now in full swing. Astonishingly, there are no experimental or
> observational facts that support the hypothesis of catastrophic
> human-caused global warming – not even one. This hypothesis is
> supported entirely by computer models that do not conform to
> experiment. As Richard Feynman says on page 1-1 of his famous series
> of three books about fundamental physics,
>
> The principle of science, the definition, almost, is the
> following: The test of all knowledge is experiment. Experiment is the
> sole judge of scientific "truth." (Italics and quotation marks are
> Feynman's.)[
>
> A relatively small group of fourth-rate scientists, who would never be
> scientists at all under the standards that prevailed 50 years ago,
> have received huge grants of research funds and extensive mainstream
> media notoriety by – there is no polite way to put this – lying about
> climate science in order to provide political cover for the U.N.
> political agenda. By all objective standards of inquiry, the
> hypothesis they promote is not just unproved; it is definitively
> disproved by the experimental and observational research record.[4]
>
> There are government-funded scientists who carrying out honest climate research. The funding of a scientist does not determine his integrity – although global warmers apply this fact to themselves but not to their critics. Nevertheless, the river of billions of dollars in research funds – especially to those who parrot the government's pro-carbon-tax pro-energy-rationin
>
> Hence Climategate, which is just a small taste of the corruption actually present in the pro-human-caused global warming mania. By now, enormous business, political and financial interests have taken stakes in the tax-and-regulate, cap-and-trade legislation that is pending. Huge amounts of money and power are now at issue. The truth behind the climate hoax is irrelevant to most of these interests. These people seek, as a matter of expediency, to replace the truth with perceived truth, primarily to increase their own wealth and power.
>
> Recently it was revealed that one "scientific" effort involved the change of more than 5,000 articles and complete erasure of more than 500 in the Web-based encyclopedia Wikipedia. These articles were changed because they made mention of the Medieval Warm Period, a period about 1,000 years ago when Earth temperatures were much higher than they are today and of other research data that contradicted the human-caused global warming agenda. This erasure was done by prominent climate "scientists" who created a web site specifically for the purpose of smearing and suppressing any work that threatened their empire of lavishly government funded human-caused global warming "research," called www.Realclimate.
>
> There are more than 100 different compilations in the research literature based on many different kinds of observations than confirm the Medieval Warm Period, including even extensive historical records of crops grown and weather experienced in various regions of the world. However, the existence of this period is fatal to the human-caused global warming hypothesis for several reasons, so these pseudoscientists – including especially some of those involved in Climategate – are simply erasing the records, while scientists in American universities are … silent.
>
> The dissembling by pseudoscientists to obtain money and notoriety is not restricted to climate issues. In their clamor for money and prestige, we are constantly treated to "scientists" who have, according to their claims, unlocked the secrets of the origin of the universe and the origin of life and have themselves become almost as gods. Their claims are presented as facts – not hypotheses. Scientists who question them are driven from the scientific institutions, and teachers who do not teach their claims to grade-school children as unassailable facts are ousted from their professions. There are even calls from "scientists" to deny scientific educations to those who do not subscribe to their hypotheses about the origin of life.
>
> It is remarkable that, after all the billions of years that some say we have been evolving, just at this time – in the few years that comprise our current lives – there have risen up among us men so brilliant that they have unlocked the important secrets of the universe, including the secrets of the origins of life itself. Consider how fortunate we all are to be present during this highly improbable event, considering the time intervals involved. What a long way we have traveled from the humility of Isaac Newton!
>
> Are American scientists corrupt? No, they are not!
>
> Are excellent American scientists still as numerous as they were in the past? Yes, they are!
>
> Is, however, the custom and culture within the American academic institutions in which they work conducive to the free flow of information between our best scientists and the public? No. These institutions have been co-opted by their dependence on government tax funds.
>
> Can we rely upon news reports that tell us the newly reported findings of American scientists? No! A very large group of pseudoscientists is now present among our scientists, and it is they who seek and receive most of the publicity brought to us by our print and television media.
>
> Are our best scientists blameless in this? Again, no. They have watched passively as their profession, which depends upon absolute honesty, is represented by dishonest people in public forums – and many have not spoken in opposition to these misrepresentations. If they permit this to continue, the inevitable backlash will eventually come. When that happens, the true scientists will suffer right along with the pseudoscientists – a reward they both will richly deserve.
>
> Reprinted from the February 2010 issue of Whistleblower, "HIJACKING SCIENCE: From 'global warming' to biology to psychology to sociology, blatant corruption of science is running rampant."
>
>
>
> Arthur Robinson, Ph.D., is a research professor of chemistry and co-founder of the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine. After graduating from the California Institute of Technology in 1963 and earning his Ph.D. from the University of California at San Diego, he served as a UCSD faculty member until co-founding the Linus Pauling Institute of Science and Medicine with Linus Pauling in 1973. Beginning with their initial work together on general anesthesia and the structure of water at Caltech in 1961, Pauling and Robinson carried out published research on a wide variety of topics from nuclear physics to nutrition until 1978. They ceased work together in 1978 because of a disagreement between them on the effects of ascorbic acid on the growth rate of cancer in mice. In 1981, Dr. Robinson, his wife, chemist Laurelee Robinson, physicist Martin Kamen, and later joined by Nobel-winning biochemist R. Bruce Merrifield, cofounded the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine.
>
> In recent years, Dr. Robinson has also directed the Petition Project, which has obtained the support and signatures of more than 31,000 American scientists for a petition opposed – entirely on scientific grounds published in peer reviewed journals – to the hypothesis of "human-caused global warming."
>
> [1]"Essays in Science" by Albert Einstein (1934), Philosophical Library, New York.
>
> [2]"Observations upon the Prophecies of Daniel and the Apocalypse of St. John" by Isaac Newton (1733). Darby and Browne, London. Reprinted by the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine (1991).
>
> [3]"Lectures on Physics: Volume 1" by R.P. Feynman, R. B. Leighton, and M. Sands (1963), Addison-Wesley, Massachusetts.
>
> [4]"Environmental Effects of Increased Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide" by A. B. Robinson, N. E. Robinson, and W. Soon (2007) J. Am. Phys. Surg. 12, 79-90, available from www.petitionproject
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