Early Withdrawl
Did I just write that I was hopeful that real science will eventually win out over junk science when it comes forming public opinion and policy? I was tempted to rethink that today... but instead I am choosing to make an early withdrawl from the optimism bank. I just hope I have enough left to last until science wins out.
From Real Climate:
Today we witnessed a rather curious event in the US Senate. Possibly for the first time ever, a chair of a Senate committee, one Senator James Inhofe (R-Oklahoma), invited a science fiction writer to advise the committee (Environment and Public Works), on science facts--in this case, the facts behind climate change. The author in question? None other than our old friend, Michael Crichton[.]
It's amazing to me that anyone would even suggest that a fictional novel, written by an entertainer (even if he is a medical doctor, which is very different than a climate scientist), should be used to aid decision making in any way instead of peer reviewed scientific research. Now, technically, Chriton's novel has been "peer reviewed", but c'mon, his peers are fiction writers! and this kind of review don't even show up in scientific journals, they show up on the back cover of the novel!
It's not as if this is a new issue for which there are no scientists specializing in researching the issue to testify, or no scientific, peer-reviewed articles to base decisions on. Were they invited? Did they decline to testify? Was Chriton all that was available? Why would anyone even suggest that policy decision making be informed by a work of fiction?
It makes me embarrassed to be an American.
On the other hand, for all the senators that giddily expressed how great they thought the novel was, and how helpful it was in helping them understand the real-life issue of climate change, there were senators who recognized the folly of using a novel and the testimony of an entertainer for decision making, and I am relieved that they did not cite The Day After Tomorrow in rebuttal to Chriton's book.