The New Criterion for Good Science
30 Jun 2006
The Associated Press (AP) reported this week that Al Gore’s documentary film on global warming, “An Inconvenient Truth,” is good science. How did the AP arrive at this conclusion? It simply surveyed some scientists who said so.
Apparently, the new criterion for good science is simply something said by a scientist. If a scientist says it, then it must be science. Never mind that some of the same scientists that are now talking about global warming were talking about global cooling just a few years ago. In spite of such contradiction, what scientists are saying today, just like their conflicting statements yesterday, is science. It makes no difference if it’s contradictory and untrue; it’s still science as long as a scientist says it.
Some other “good” science reported by the AP this week is the growing assertion among some scientists that sexuality is based on biology. According to the AP, Anthony Bogaret, a professor at Brock University in St. Catharines, Canada, conducted a study of 944 Canadian men. In his research, Bogaret discovered that those who were homosexual were more likely to have older brothers from the same mother. Never mind that 95% of the 944 Canadian men with older brothers from the same mother were heterosexual, the fact that the slight majority of the small percentage of homosexuals in the study had older brothers from the same mother is proof enough for the AP to declare that Bogaret had proven homosexuality to be biological.
I dare say that many other so-called biological similarities could have been found among the majority of the small percentage of homosexuals in Bogaret’s research. For instance, maybe most of the homosexuals had right-handed dads and blue-eyed mothers. But does this prove that homosexuality is biological? Of course not, any more than General Motors is proven to be a contributing cause of homosexuality because most of the homosexuals Bogaret studied drive Chevies. Still, Bogaret’s cherry picking of data in order to support his preconceived ideas is passed off today by the AP as “good” science; after all, it has to be because some scientists say so.
Don Walton
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