Voodoo Science

There is a good book by Robert Park "Voodoo Science" that talks about the stuff that media reports as science but isn't really. Classic examples include cold fusion and the energy machine of Joseph Newman. I'll let you read the book for yourself but I wanted to take the definitions for science out of it.

"Science is the systematic enterprise of gathering knowledge about the world and organizing and condensing that knowledge into testable laws and theories." (pp 39) Science must also obey two rules:

Is it testable (repeatable) and does it make the world more predictable?

Then you need some form of control to promote credibility. Any new scientific ideas need to be independently tested and be repeatable to other scientists. A scientist will also abandon or modify their facts and theories in light of more complete or more reliable evidence. I.e. it must fit the facts.

Let's consider the last 15 years of climate modeling as an example. They have not been able to model the differences in the poles; they have not been able to model the current drop in average global temperatures over the past 10 years or so; and a whole range of other things that do not match the predictions of the models.

Science tells us that the models or the modeling is wrong, or at the very least incomplete. The same scientists tell us that as CO2 increases so does temperature. The reality is that this is not happening as predicted and did not happen during the post WW II period as industrial production ramped up, spewing out CO2, the temperatures dropped. Again science tells us that the model should be abandoned, instead it continues to be used.

This is then Voodoo or Junk science and the so called scientists who continue to say and use it cannot continue to call themselves scientists because they are not following the basic fundamentals of what the definition of science is. The IPCC will not provide the materials used in their summaries violating the testability and repeatability clause of what science is. Other examples abound.

So whenever you hear a scientist say something, particularly if it is to the press or being reported by the press, do the following. Can you get hold of the research paper, has it been peer reviewed and published? Has anyone duplicated or verified the results? Is there any evidence whatsoever that what they are saying is based on any observable facts?

You get the idea, voodoo or real science?