Leaving Out Words

This is an interesting article that makes a useful point. I thought about posting it in News but then decided not to. The trouble is, there’s too much rhetoric and not enough evidence.

There is a crisis emerging in the scientific community. The ideals of science are being sacrificed to the god of political expediency. Environmental scientists are becoming so obsessed with the righteousness of their cause that they are damning those who wish to use science as an objective tool in public policy decisions.

But Iain Murray gives only two examples. One from 1989 and one new one. But that’s not ‘the scientific community’ or ‘environmental scientists’ as a group, obviously. So why write as if it were? In order to discredit all scientific as opposed to market-oriented discussion of environmental issues? That would seem to be a goal consistent with the outlook of the Competitive Enterprise Institute. Now, if someone from the CEI writes an article saying some scientists are unscrupulous about their public rhetoric, fine, we’ll put it in News. But if they leave out the ‘some’ then they are playing the same game they accuse ‘environmental scientists’ of playing, aren’t they.

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