Y'know what irritates me? What irritates me is when numerical reports on the status of informed opinion concerning external facts are mistaken for a democratic preferential vote.
It irritates me too, but that's exactly the way I hear it used on a regular basis.
If scientific research is worth anything at all, it's foolish to reject such an overwhelming conclusion.
I'm certainly not denying that 97% of climate change scientists do indeed think that. As a statistic, it's certainly an arresting one, and anyone who hears it might very reasonably want to know why that's so, and hopefully try to understand the conclusions that lie behind it, and the science that lie behind them. If they don't have the time or the resources to do that, they may well decide to take it on trust. But it's not itself a conclusion, nor is it an argument for the existence of climate change.
I chose Copernicus for reasons of fame, but I don't think it would be hard to find more recent cases of well-studied subjects where one could say that 97% of scientists were mistaken at a given point in time.
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Date: 2010-09-06 02:42 pm (UTC)It irritates me too, but that's exactly the way I hear it used on a regular basis.
If scientific research is worth anything at all, it's foolish to reject such an overwhelming conclusion.
I'm certainly not denying that 97% of climate change scientists do indeed think that. As a statistic, it's certainly an arresting one, and anyone who hears it might very reasonably want to know why that's so, and hopefully try to understand the conclusions that lie behind it, and the science that lie behind them. If they don't have the time or the resources to do that, they may well decide to take it on trust. But it's not itself a conclusion, nor is it an argument for the existence of climate change.
I chose Copernicus for reasons of fame, but I don't think it would be hard to find more recent cases of well-studied subjects where one could say that 97% of scientists were mistaken at a given point in time.