Latimer,
Gotta say that I’m not at all surprised you want to sell me a dodgy second-hand car. You make my point for me.
Okay, I’ll explain my point, since you clearly didn’t get it. Scientists aren’t politicians or car salespeople. They’re don’t care if you trust them or not – or, at least, they shouldn’t care. Science/physical reality doesn’t care if you trust the scientists or not. Why would we want scientists to learn how to seem more trustworthy? Why would we want scientists to avoid saying things that you think would damage your trust in them? It would be easy enough to do. If politicians and car salespeople can do it, I’m sure scientists could learn to behave in a more trustworthy way. Of course, the reality is that we wouldn’t suddenly trust them more, because it would be obvious that they were doing so in order to gain your trust, not because they are intrinsically trustworthy. We trust the method not the peolpe.
Now, given that you will almost certainly misinterpret what I’m saying, let me make clear that I’m not arguing that scientists should not behave in a suitable manner, or that we shouldn’t discourage bad behaviour. I’m also not excusing bad behaviour or those who have behaved unethically. I’m simply making the very obvious point that just because you trust/distrust some individuals is not a particularly good reason to trust/distrust a scientific result. In fact, it’s a very poor reason to do so.
And too often – especially in climatology – we find that the latter crew have forgotten the principles of the former ideal. See Climategate, (the gift that goes on giving) for many vibrant real-world examples of such amnesia.
No, what we really find (and this seems self-evidently true) are a tiny minority of vocal people with little actual experience in scientific research claiming that – especially in climatology – scientists have forgotten these ideals, and harping back to email exchanges that go back almost 20 years and which involve a tiny number of scientists. If this really is the best you can do, you’re scraping the bottom of the barrel. Also, if this is one of your main reasons for distrusting the results of climate science then you really should not call yourself a skeptic. That has a very specific scientific meaning. A better word would be “dubious” (actually there’s an even better word, but we’re not meant to use it, because then people like you get all upset about name calling and things).
