When politics masquerades as science

George Reisman has two related guest posts currently up at his blog, the first by Mark Humphreys on the politics of much climate 'science':

The global warming crusade is politics masquerading as "science". One indication of this bait and switch tactic is the argument, continually promoted by left-wing Greens, that a "consensus" of climate scientists supports this officially sanctioned thesis. Aside from the questionable truth of this claim (more on this below), consensus has nothing to do with the process of identifying evidence, facts, and the logical integrations that lead to new scientific breakthroughs. So scientists properly ought not to be concerned with consensus. Consensus is the obsession of politicians maneuvering to impose their will by force on other people.

Another example of "the deceit that emerges when science is distorted by a regime of coercion" is offered by another guest post at Reisman's blog on the grand old lady of much of today's environmental activism: the campaign based on Rachel Carson's book 'Silent Spring' that led to the ban of DDT, and the subsequent deaths of 800,000 African children a year to the malaria that DDT had been curing. The war on malaria, once being won, was lost due to politicised 'science':

So why has the war on malaria failed? Because governments banned the cure. Now they claim to wonder why people are sick and dying. DDT was discovered during World War II to be a great means of stopping infection from typhus and malaria. Its inventor, Paul Hermann Mueller, won the Nobel Prize in 1948. It was used throughout the 1950s and '60s and was on the verge of wiping out mosquito-borne diseases from the planet. Then something very peculiar came along. A book called Silent Spring by Rachel Carson was published in 1962, and it eventually created a fantastic backlash against progress. The spring was silent supposedly because of the lack of birds, all killed off by DDT. The only problem is that Carson's claims were never scientifically validated. Indeed, it was a hoax... Even so, governments acted.

"Even so, governments acted." The message -- the dangers of government action in the face of politicised science -- is one today's politicians and activists might ponder. And while pondering, you might find it worthwhile to reconsider George Reisman's classic arguments from his 'Toxicity of Environmentalism,' available online at his Capitalism site, that such an outcome is no surprise given the philosophical roots of the anti-human strand of environmentalism.

LINKS: Politics masquerading as science, by Mark Humphreys - George Reisman's blog
The spring is silent on DDT, by Llewellyn Rockwell, Jr. - George Reisman's blog
The Toxicity of Environmentalism - George Reisman

TAGS: Environment, Science, Global Warming