For more fodder for the discussion of cranks, consider Michael Crichton. Uncommon Descent has just linked this 2003 lecture of his entitled "aliens cause global warming", in which Crichton links more weakly-justified scientific endeavors like SETI, with the debate of global warming (I'm sure he'd mention the Mars canard if it hadn't been three years ago too). And just look at this statement:

I want to pause here and talk about this notion of consensus, and the rise of what has been called consensus science. I regard consensus science as an extremely pernicious development that ought to be stopped cold in its tracks. Historically, the claim of consensus has been the first refuge of scoundrels; it is a way to avoid debate by claiming that the matter is already settled. Whenever you hear the consensus of scientists agrees on something or other, reach for your wallet, because you're being had.

Let's be clear: the work of science has nothing whatever to do with consensus. Consensus is the business of politics. Science, on the contrary, requires only one investigator who happens to be right, which means that he or she has results that are verifiable by reference to the real world. In science consensus is irrelevant. What is relevant is reproducible results. The greatest scientists in history are great precisely because they broke with the consensus.

There is no such thing as consensus science. If it's consensus, it isn't science. If it's science, it isn't consensus. Period.

Now that's a hell of a statement. It's quite clear why UC likes this lecture and why they're linking it. After all, evolution represents consensus science, and Dave Scot in attacking global warming from an anti-consensus viewpoint is hitting two birds with one stone. But lets think about some other scientific consensuses (consensi?).

Relativity is certainly a scientific consensus, as is the theory of quantum mechanics. Gravity is most definitely a consensus theory. So is germ theory. The consensus among scientists is that the genetic code is responsible for gene transcription and translation. Does one really need to continue? Basically Crichton is saying that one should never believe settled science. And he's not just offering healthy skepticism about the completeness of theories, he's saying that if something becomes consensus it should be specifically disbelieved. Now that's something else. As proof he provides a bizarre reversal of the Thomas Kuhn argument (surely he's read Kuhn?) in which the past examples of paradigm shifts means that one should never believe anything! I think Orac would also call this the Galileo Gambit (Crichton then goes on to compare Lomborg to Galileo), which is the idea that anyone who believes something that contradicts the reigning "authority" is immediately correct, just like Galileo. The rest is a bunch of cherry-picked quotes, some insanely bad analogies, straw men and non sequiters. Easily dismissable as denialist garbage.

Crichton is clearly a smart guy. He understands some science quite well, well enough to write boiler-plate fiction with creative ideas about the implications of some science. But how did he get to this point about global warming? What made him lose it? This statement is almost completely insane, how did he get from there to here?

Labels: general discussion, global warming denialism, Michael Crichton