The Scientific Method

When I was teaching high school and middle school science we would introduce again and again the Scientific Method. This is the Bible of How To for anyone who would be a scientist. It consists of six steps:

1-Start with an observation that evokes a question.
2-Using logic and previous knowledge, state a possible answer, an “educated guess,” called a Hypothesis.
3-Perform an experiment or Test.
4-Then publish your findings in a peer-reviewed journal. Publication/sharing.
5-Other scientists read about your experiment and try to duplicate it. Verification or falsification.
6-In time, and if experiments continue to support your hypothesis, it becomes a Theory.

We drilled this into our students year after year.

What is so disturbing in the leaked emails and data of the AGW crowd working out of the Climate Research Unit at University of East Anglia is that they have ignored or subverted several of these basic steps.

They subverted step #3 with faked and cherry-picked data. They ignored data that didn’t fit their predetermined desired outcome.

While they published their results in peer-reviewed publications (#4), they worked to control who their peers were and actively worked to squash any editor who had the temerity to disagree with them or even publish opposing, critical works. They violated the law (Freedom of Information Act) by stonewalling those who wanted to examine the original data and methods.

Further, it has become impossible to duplicate the work of the CRU crowd because they now say they have “lost” or discarded the original data they used. (Steps #4 and #5.) Without these crucial steps, the premise of Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) remains an untested Hypothesis, that is, an educated guess, at best.

With these flaws in their methodology, we are asked to believe “the science is settled” and we “must act now.” We are asked to wreck an already staggering economy. We are asked by these jerks to just “trust us.”

Follow the money. Millions of dollars in grant money went down this wormhole. Much of it from organizations or governments that want to don the mantle of power and control. Saying AGW doesn't exist was not an option of these "scientists" want to keep raking in the dough. They sold their souls.


UPDATE 1: "...the worst scientific scandal of our generation"



UPDATE 2: Leaked e-mails suggest climate experts rigged data
"[Professor Phil] Jones, according to the disclosures, has collected about $22.6 million in research grants since 1990, a money pit that could -- and should -- dry up with the disclosure of the deception by him and his co-conspirators."

UPDATE 3: Why I think that Michael Mann, Phil Jones and Stefan Rahmstorf should be barred from the IPCC process
Eduardo Zorita, November 2009 "Short answer: because the scientific assessments in which they may take part are not credible anymore."