Certeri, you write “Do you really trust James Inhofe or Newt Gingrich or Al Gore or Barack Obama to know more about science than scientists?”
No I dont, but you are missing the point. Doctors, lawyers and professionsal engineers, are by laws passed by politicians, self-regulating bodies. Scientists has no equivalent legal self-reguilatory authority. But this does not mean that dont have an obligation to practice some sort of self-regulatory function. And if they fail to carry out a reasonable amount of self-regulation, then the politicians will step in, and do it for them.
That is the issue. The scientific authorities have been lax in self-regulation. The politicians dont like it. My suggestion is that the scientific authorities need to take notice of what the politicians are doing, and make a better job of self-regulation in the future.
