On Sun, 06 Dec 2009 10:42:22 EST, Stephen Mullins said: > Deliberately lying to the public in order to push a political and > ideological agenda that is unsupported by the scientific data is quite > unscientific of them. They are not scientists and have lost all their > credibility as such. They should be unable to continue performing > scientific work and barred from ever doing so again. Watching these > people go into damage control and spin mode is the epitome of > hilarity. If you *really* wanted to do the world a service, you'd apply that sort of ban not to scientists, but to pundits and their media enablers. Wander over to factcheck.org or politifact.com and look at the usual suspects there. Why are the lying pundits a bigger disservice to the public discourse than lying scientists? Because they created the environment where lying was considered acceptable. Why should a scientist tell the truth to the public instead of spinning it for their agenda, when they know that whatever they say will be intentionally misquoted and misconstrued *anyhow*? "You know what the science really is, and I know what it really is, but those guys at Fox are going to make a hash out of our report, so let's make the 8x11 color glossy handouts and press releases say what's most likely to get us more grants". This of course presupposes that "deliberate lying" was even going on - which is *far* from conclusively proven. Speaking of which - do you personally promise to retire from punditry if it turns out your claim of "deliberate lying" was itself a deliberate lie that's not supported by the facts? No? If so, why should you get a pass but not the scientists?
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