My confessed lack of scientific expertise seems to have been taken as carte blanche to patronise me!

I am very aware that trying to defend science/enlighenment in the abstract inevitably appears a bit artificial - even messianic.  And I don't think that the solution lies in involved debates about the merits of the science itself. For me, this debate is a way of challenging what I see as an alienated understanding of society, which sees human techniques of interacting with nature as dangerous and out of control.  Partly, that's because they are not controlled as consciously as we would like.  But in these debates I see a strong tendency of rejecting the consequences of human development.  And that's no basis for building a better society.  I know that no one is putting it in these terms - there is a spectrum of opinion.  But I think that the left should take a firm and extreme position in defence of science, technology and development.

To answer my educators:

Jon says, "So the scientists who are speaking about climate change now are as phony as the ones that promoted eugenics and racism way back when?", which is not what I was implying at all.  I was just explaining that scientific research agendas and scientific consensus can be forged around political prejudice.  That is not to say that science stands discredited.  There is ultimately always the appeal to experimental data, and science constantly develops. Wrong ideas will eventually be resolved. I just don't happen to believe that the climate change question has been resolved by science yet (but I've promised to say no more about this for now...).

And Wojtek says: "If you are looking for certainty in science, you are looking in a wrong place.  Science has been and will always be probabilistic and never certain. If you want certainty, try religion or ideology."

This raises several really interesting points.  

Whilst the certainty of science is provisional and subject to revision in the light of additional data or from re-interpreting the data in a different context, I am reluctant to conclude from this there science is not 'certain'.  If we can't use the word 'certainty' in the context of science, I'm not sure that we can use it at all.

Second, Wojtek continues with a discussion of statistics in science.  It seems to me that his discussion is one sided, in saying that any element of uncertainty is held up by pundits to show that there is no certainty.  All to often the reverse happens - very uncertain data are used to 'prove' a real problem, especially in health.  

I don't want to through the baby out with the bathwater, but while a statistical correlation may be a good indication of causation, and should certainly prompt further investigation, it is often a very provisional form of evidence. 

--James
James Greenstein