To the Editor:
“Scientists
Becoming Active in Defending Climate Data” (news article, March 3)
rightly categorizes the debate between climate scientists and climate
skeptics as “asymmetric, in the sense that scientists feel compelled to
support their findings with careful observation and replicable analysis,
while their critics are free to make sweeping statements condemning
their work as fraudulent.”
If this unfair application of different
rules and standards is true, doesn’t the fault lie more with the media
and the practice of journalism than with the scientists?
The
scientists, of course, are practicing science according to the
scientific method, while their critics in the blogosphere and media,
virtually none of whom are climate scientists, are left free to practice
the one-sided arguments and methods of the propagandist.
In the
battle for the sound bite and controversial quote, propaganda has the
clear advantage unless journalism does its job.
In the apparent
interest of balanced reporting, equal voice is too often given to those
whose opinions have no demonstrable basis in fact. Journalists owe it to
their readers to subject the claims of climate skeptics to the same
scrutiny that they apply to mainstream science.
William Scott
Norwalk, Conn., March 4, 2010
To the Editor:
You
bemoan that “scientists feel compelled to support their findings with
careful observation and replicable analysis, while their critics are
free to make sweeping statements condemning their work as fraudulent.”
Had
these besieged climate scientists scrupulously adhered to the
scientific method in the first place, they wouldn’t be the easy prey to
critics they’ve made themselves. As you sow, so shall you reap.
Murray
Orbuch
New York, March 3, 2010
The writer, a doctor,
is an assistant clinical professor at the Mount Sinai School of
Medicine.
Note from KBJ: The medical credentials of the second letter writer have nothing to do with the content of his letter. They should have been omitted by the editor.
Keith Burgess-Jackson, J.D., Ph.D. 