Re: [Phys-L] just for fun

[Ze'ev Wurman <zeev@ieee.org>]

I think you are underballing those events. They were not "just 
mistakes," which do happen all the time. These were not accepted truths 
at a fringe as you claim, but at the mainstream of medical and 
governmental rule making, with huge impacts for school nutrition and 
promoting medical interventions on a large segment of the population. 
These were cases of very strong consensus heavily promoted by the 
Surgeon General and major national medical associations.

Today's AGW consensus is not any stronger. It just has so much more 
money behind it to paint its critics as "deniers" rather than critics. 
And the AGW "consensus" does not need to be "flatly wrong" to be wrong. 
If there is some warming but it is not anthropogenic, there is less need 
to investigate it to death and no need to impose onerous economic 
sanctions on large segments of the economy to pretend to minimize it. If 
the global warming itself is simply temporary and caused by natural 
fluctuations of something, constraining economic growth might be 
actually destructive in that it eliminates funds that could be dedicated 
to alleviating its effects rather than constrain its putative (albeit 
politically correct) cause.

A year ago I mentioned the radiation LNT model (as opposed to radiation 
hormesis) as another one lacking strong scientific substantiation yet 
promoted by politically-correct attitude that burdens nuclear energy 
construction and cleanup with huge developmental and regulatory costs. 
That has been with us for more than half a century.

Ze'ev

On 1/1/2014 11:54 AM, John Mallinckrodt wrote:
> I didn't say scientists don't make mistakes, I said that it is exceedingly rare for a scientific consensus as overwhelming as that on anthropogenic global warming to turn out to be flatly wrong.  I don't see how any of the proffered examples challenge that statement for one or more of the following reasons:
>
> 1) they exist at the fringe of what I would call "the scientific community," even more so the "physical science community,"
> 2) there was nothing like an overwhelming scientific consensus, and/or
> 3) they weren't in any clear sense flatly wrong.
>
> John Mallinckrodt
> Cal Poly Pomona
>
> On Dec 31, 2013, at 10:38 PM, Ze'ev Wurman wrote:
>
> > Here are a few basic links in response to John Mallinckrodt's request for more information about cases
> > of recent failed scientific consensus. Primary sources can be followed from there as needed.
> >
> > http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/09/science/09tier.html?_r=1&oref=slogin&pagewanted=print
> >
> > http://www.csicop.org/si/show/science_and_pseudoscience_in_adult_nutrition_research_and_practice/
> >
> > http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/16/magazine/16epidemiology-t.html?_r=2&sq=Taubes%20health%20September%2016&st=cse&scp=1&pagewanted=print
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