Dr. Matthew Wielicki: “There’s a disconnect between what the science says and what the narrative in the mainstream media is….and what certain ‘activist scientists’ have been pushing.” Other scientists share his concerns. //

Occasionally we are asked why Legal Insurrection features so much science among the articles featuring court cases, legal analysis, and updates on our push-back against Critical Race Theory and Diversity-Equity-Inclusion in education.

While there are many reasons, perhaps the chief one is that true science is being twisted to support political narratives that are destructive, both to our nation and to humanity. For example, the Twitter Files shed light on the degree to which good information from epidemiologists and physicians was suppressed during the covid pandemic. //

Wielicki was born in Poland while it was still under communist rule, so he has a deep appreciation for freedom of speech and personal liberty. His parents worked at California State University- Fresno at a time when professors and students were allowed to have different opinions about the issues of the day.

Another believer in freedom in science is Roger A. Pielke Jr., who recently prepared an exceptional column on ten principles for effective use of math in policy research.

It was his eighth entry on torturing data that caught my eye. https://rogerpielkejr.substack.com/p/against-mathiness-part-2

I don’t know who said it, but there is an old adage that says if you torture data enough, it will confess. Simple methods, shared data, easily replicable, with clear meaning are always going to be preferable in policy settings to complex methods, unavailable data, impossibility of replication with unclear meaning. //

The hard sciences are canaries in the coal mine. If their data-driven conclusions, which should be experimentally reproducible, can be manipulated and massaged to promote ideological and/or political narratives resulting in elite policy objectives that affect us all, then no science (especially, it goes without saying, the social sciences) can be trusted.

If our leaders and our media want us to trust The Science™, then The Science™ must be trustworthy. Results must be replicated, data should be offered freely, and methodology must make sense.

Ultimately, though, I will leave the final word on the leftist march through the institutions—here, of science—to climatologist Judith Curry who confirms the climate “crisis” is manufactured. https://nypost.com/2023/08/09/climate-scientist-admits-the-overwhelming-consensus-is-manufactured/amp/

We are told climate change is a crisis, and that there is an “overwhelming scientific consensus.”

“It’s a manufactured consensus,” climate scientist Judith Curry tells me.

She says scientists have an incentive to exaggerate risk to pursue “fame and fortune.”

…“The origins go back to the . . . UN environmental program,” says Curry.