Corollary to Sowell
This statement by Dr. Fred Singer is a companion piece to the Thomas Sowell squib that we posted earlier:
I think climate science is on its way to becoming pathological, to becoming abnormal in the sense that it is being guided by the money that’s being made available to people. I don’t blame people for accepting money. And the people who take the money and do research, by and large, are doing very competent research.
[But] you’ll find them very careful not to speak out against the global warming “threat” — I’m putting “threat” in quotes, of course. And you’ll find also that when they do speak out, as many of them do, they suffer consequences.
They lose support. And I can give you examples of that. Or they have other consequences that are equally disagreeable. And if you’re a young professor at a university and want to get tenure, or if you want to get a permanent academic position, you must do published research. And to do published research, you must write proposals to get money to do the research. So you’re locked into a vicious spiral here. You have to go along with the current wisdom that global warming is a threat. Otherwise, you’re not going to get the job that you want.
Nasty places, universities.
March 12th, 2007 at 4:08 pm
This is fascinating, totally fascinating. Dr. Singer is trying (without being very convincing, I should add) to adapt the argument that has been used against him so many times to ‘take down’ scientists who present findings that support the human-induced global warming theory. The Union of Concerned Scientists found that Singer was associated with 11 oil-industry funded think tanks. http://www.desmogblog.com/node/1478 Now, he is actually suggesting that university-based faculty hoping to move ahead would not be able to freely present findings that question climate change. Well, Dr. Singer would therefore think that oil-industry funding would skew the findings of researchers receiving ExxonMobil money. Yes? Ummm, apparently not.