Wall Street Journal: Yellow Science

I came across an excellent article in the WSJ about how just as newspaper tycoons Hearst and Pulitzer traded in methods of journalistic integrity to generate greater revenue, so have many scientists today abandoned scientific integrity in order to create greater interest and cash flow--in the area of global warming, of course.

From the article,

...Over the past several decades an increasing number of scientists have shed the restraints imposed by the scientific method and begun to proclaim the truth of man-made global warming. This is a hypothesis that remains untested, makes no predictions that can be tested in the near future, and cannot offer a numerical explanation for the limited evidence to which it clings. No equations have been shown to explain the relationship between fossil-fuel emission and global temperature. The only predictions that have been made are apocalyptic, so the hypothesis has to be accepted before it can be tested.

If yellow science overcomes real science it will not only be on account of the greed, ambition, and cowardice of our scientists but also the sloth and cowardice of a public that is unwilling to stand up and demand professionalism. This is why, as the editors of the New York Press said in 1897, I "called them yellow because they are yellow."

Read the article in its entirety.