GIVEN their recent activity, described here Discovery Institute: ClimateGate Crescendo!, we didn’t think it could get worse. But it seems that the neo-theocrats at the Discovery Institute’s Center for Science and Culture (a/k/a the Discoveroids) are only now shifting into high gear.
All of their recent blogging activity is in pursuit of the “vindication of all kooks” doctrine — which holds that if the legitimate views of global warming skeptics have been wrongly suppressed, then all science dissent has been similarly mistreated, and therefore the science-denial of creationism is now respectable.
There’s a new cluster of Discoveroid blog posts today, all written by Michael Egnor. For each article we discuss, the specific item being writing about isn’t all that important. What we want to show you is the attitude that underlies the Discoveroid postings, and for that we’ll be excerpting some telling remarks that are irrelevant to the trivial substance of these articles.
We’ll begin with Note to Sheril Kirshenbaum: “Scientists staying on message” is the problem, not the solution. For this, and for the other Discoveroid blog articles we discuss here, the bold font was added by us.
This fraud will unravel the global warming hoax in short order (public opinion was moving against it even before ClimateGate), and it will likely lead to a civil war within science, pitting scientists who adhere to high standards of integrity against opportunists and ideologues who use science for their own purposes.
One can see the Discoveroid author eagerly rubbing his hands, thinking: “When global warming collapses, can the triumph of creationism be far behind?”
After quoting a defender of global warming who says: “It’s up to us in the scientific community to figure out how to stay on message,” the Discoveroid says:
[That’s] exactly wrong. Real scientists don’t “stay on message.” Real scientists don’t have a “message.” Politicians and ideologues and science journalists have “messages,” and they have seduced many scientists to betray their science and “speak up in a united voice.” Science is the study of nature — science follows the evidence, wherever is leads. Real scientists are inveterate skeptics. Unanimity and “messages” are the antithesis of science.
Does this Discoveroid read what he’s writing? Does he know how to apply it to his mission of promoting intelligent design? The only appropriate comment we can make, especially considering that Egnor is a neurosurgeon, is this: “Physician, heal thyself.” Let’s read on:
Science-journalists-with-an-agenda are toxic to science, because agenda-driven polemics are the antithesis of science. Within the scientific community only fools and opportunists collaborate with polemicists.
That’s certainly true in the case of creationism — oops! — we meant to say “intelligent design.”
Okay, enough from that blog article. Now we turn to Houston, They Have a Problem. Here, Egnor claims that all of NASA’s data is dubious. He says:
NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies is directed by global warming nut Dr. James Hansen. Hansen recently had to retract his ‘scientific conclusions’ regarding temperature trends in the 20th century when his analysis was shown to be grossly in error, and the ‘error’ (sit down for this) exaggerated… warming! Why would his organization be unwilling to release raw data and other documents regarding the research despite Freedom of Information Act requests for two years? They must be busy.
Similarly, the Discoveroids must be too busy to release their data — all that “research” they’re doing which convinces them that a magical mystery designer has been running around tinkering with our DNA. Continuing:
NASA, an organization that can hit Neptune with a rocket, can’t read thermometers. Why is it that the warmists’ “minor processing errors” never seem to exaggerate cooling? Warmists’ “error bars” only go in one direction. Odd.
Isn’t it also odd that Discoveroids never see any evidence that supports the theory of evolution? All their “research” somehow convinces them that hundreds of thousands of scientists have been wrong for 150 years.
Now let’s look at Global Warming Nut: “True information, if it is true, doesn’t necessarily mean truthful.”. Here it comes:
Post modernism is creeping into science. The bizarre rationalizations for the self-admitted scientific fraud perpetrated in the ClimateGate scandal are a radical departure from traditional scientific standards. Scientists are rushing to defend the indefensible: manipulating data, faking data, destroying data to prevent examination by other scientists, and conspiring to take control of peer review to advance a particular scientific theory. All of these acts constitute gross scientific misconduct, and several decades ago commission of any of these transgressions would have ended a scientific career.
[…]
Peer review is the jury that decides what counts as valid science. Manipulation of peer-review is to science what jury tampering is to justice; it’s a crime, it is perhaps the most dishonest thing a practitioner can do, and it invalidates verdicts, scientific or judicial, arrived at through the corrupt process.
Egnor apparently thinks that such misconduct should result in a scientist’s being “Expelled.” How amusing, considering what we never tire of mentioning — Stephen Meyer, one of the Discoveroids’ own “senior fellows,” was involved in the infamous peer review scandal.
All the alleged misconduct by global warming scientists has been practiced by the Discoveroids — except for the loss of data. Discoveroids never had any data to lose. Otherwise, it’s exceedingly ironic to see them leaping to condemn those who — were the allegations true — have been behaving pretty much the way Discoveroids have always behaved.
What’s your Curmudgeon’s position on ClimateGage? We don’t have the expertise needed to evaluate global warming science. It is what it is. Our objection has always been to the proffered solutions. In our humble opinion, there isn’t any crisis that justifies a political takeover of the world’s economy.
We’re defenders of individual liberty, and that includes the right to private property, freedom of contract, competition, entrepreneurship — the whole free enterprise system. That will see us through our climate problems a whole lot better than the governmental manipulations of global bureaucrats.
All those grand schemes of the planet-saving globalists remind us too much of intelligent design. Evolution doesn’t need a designer, and neither does the economy — regardless of the climate. If the Discoveroids think that life on earth needs a designer, then why don’t they support the political proposals of the global warming movement? Oh, they’re creationists, and they’re not required to be consistent.
Copyright © 2009. The Sensuous Curmudgeon. All rights reserved.
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
The Sensuous Curmudgeon 
These guys have really lost it. A reading of even the most damning of these emails doesn’t give a sense of global conspiracy. Hey, can we apply this principle to them? One turns out to have a slight hint of fraud (not hard to find), and we can say every one of them have been outed as frauds.
Albanaeon says: “These guys have really lost it.”
Wait ’til the news breaks about the Illuminati connection.
Sweet! Those guys are always a heck of a lot of fun!
Actually, Dr. Egnor, we’re already united against opportunists and ideologues like you!
And it’s not the Illuminati, it’s the Pentaverate.
H’mmmmm
Irony alert… I’m wondering if the Discoveroids would be including (Professor) Ian Plimer in their list of reputable scientists… Afterall he wrote “Heaven & Earth, the missing science”.. A quite good read after all.
Of course, he also wrote “Telling Lies for God” about 10 or so years ago, about his fight with creationists here in Aus. Great book, I got him to sign my copy when I met him a few months ago.
I’d recomend it to our Curmudgeonly host if he doesn’t already have a copy.
I’d actually rank it with Demon Haunted world by Carl Sagan as one of my favourite books defending the scientific method…..
Just for the sake of argument…. if it were determined we had 6 months to work together as a planet to avert a very clear danger such as large incoming asteroid, would you stick with that? 90% odds of success if we all pull together.
As I see it, we come down to the “tragedy of the commons” vs game theory. Competition only works so well for so long. We get monopolies without government intervention, and that almost never produces the best product at the lowest price. If I wanted to really get sidetracked I’d start harping on the “loss leader” concept.
In the spirit of the things you defend, I’d like to plug Rocky Mountain Institute because they are focused on the business case for sustainability.
I’m fortunate to live in a region where alternative energy is booming. A few years ago there was a ballot initiative to force “the” local energy utility to produce 10% of their electricity from renewable resources by 2015. The utility fought it and lost. Then they discovered it wasn’t so hard after all, and have met their targets early and are considering ways to raise them.
Why raise them? Well, back to the quotes around “the” and their monopoly regulated by the PUC. The power company recognizes the potential for renewables to offset the need for new coal fired plants (*if* we can get the Smart Garage concept working to provide a way to store some power here and there which I really like).
Since they can’t raise rates, one way to make more money is to reduce costs and renewable energy provides a path to increased profitability. In the end, we all get cleaner air and potentially cheaper power (since the Smart Garage would let you buy power when it is cheap and sell when it is expensive).
Oroboros the Omphaloskeptic says: “We get monopolies without government intervention, and that almost never produces the best product at the lowest price.”
Except in Al Capone situations where competitors are killed, I think that most monopolies — maybe all — are maintained only with government help. How else could competition be prevented? It’s difficult to think of a single case, other than natural resources, where a government controlled economy has produced — in your phrase — the best product at the lowest price.
Not really – monopolies are a natural outcome of a truly free market. It’s a simple feedback cycle. Money leads to more expansion; more expansion leads to more money. Once you’ve expanded as far as you can in a business, well, that’s a monopoly.
Once you have a lot of money, you can start pulling neat tricks – for instance, you can pay retail companies money to not sell your competitor’s product; you can hire off your competitor’s best people for more money than your competitor can afford to pay; you can sell products at a loss to muscle your competitor out of a market (and then of course raise prices through the roof once you have no more competition).
Seriously, all of this has happened before and continues to happen now (how do you think Dell can sell you a $400 laptop, when Windows costs $200 on its own?). I don’t understand how people can’t see it.
And anyway, Ouroboros didn’t say that government controlled economies ever produce the best product at the lowest price; he said that unregulated monopolies never do (which is trivially true; if you’re the only person selling widgets, why should you ever spend money to improve your widget factories?).
Tacroy says: “Not really …”
Yes, really. There’s lots of misinformation out there. Check out coercive monopoly. It’s basic economics, and not something I bother to debate about.
Not to mention that “renewable energy” is supplied with massive government subsidies.
You get to pay for the power twice: first by paying for what is more expensive power to begin with, and again by paying the additional taxes for the subsidies.
Of course the government-enforced monopoly of your local utility ends up happy with it, when they get fat checks from the government for doing so.
In Washington, where we’ve been building windmills just about everywhere, there are so many now BPA is talking about taking one dam offline to balance the load, since you can’t tell from 15 minutes to the next what they’ll be putting out. So all those shiny new windmills built with government subsidies are providing us with no new net power. Since the bulk of our power is nuclear or hydroelectric, what did that do for carbon dioxide emissions? Nothing. It just transferred money from the Federal government’s pocket to the utilities. That’s why General Electric and other large energy companies support “alternative energy”–they’re getting the big government checks.
Seriously, all of this has happened before and continues to happen now (how do you think Dell can sell you a $400 laptop, when Windows costs $200 on its own?). I don’t understand how people can’t see it.
Because it’s not true. Nobody is forced to use Windows. There are any number of alternatives. I paid $0 for my operating system of choice. I pay a price in convenience; that is my free choice–the money I don’t pay for the operating system is worth, to me, the additional trouble of not using Windows-compatible software.
There is no monopoly on computers, software or hardware. Windows has a monopoly on Windows only; they don’t have a monopoly on operating systems or computers. If you want an operating system, pay the $200 for Windows or learn enough about computers to get a REAL operating system (says the Linux snob) and grow a neckbeard.
If what you said was true, would Apple be in business? Not only are their operating systems proprietary but their are computers much more expensive. They stay in business because free people freely allocate their money to them.
Sorry to have dragged us off topic from ClimateGate. Thanks for the wiki link to coercive capitalism.
Tacroy describes what I consider more broadly predatory capitalism and perhaps that would have been a better phrase to use in my first post than monopoly. There is a lot of bad behavior by companies that are very dominant but don’t have a true monopoly.
I’d include Microsoft’s embrace, extend and extinguish as another example. Gabriel is right in noting the alternatives- Microsoft doesn’t have a monopoly, but they do have a pretty captive audience because most users aren’t inclined to find alternatives. In the past it also required a lot more technical skill to install and use Linux or BSD. At a certain point people become resistant to change because the familiarity is comforting.
Capitalism doesn’t have to be predatory of course and I can give examples that don’t require government intervention to enforce that either. I have a customer who is both vendor and competitor. We actually compete with quite a few of our customers and also many of our suppliers. The ISP business is somewhat unique and includes the concept of “peering” where the largest ISPs get to stop paying for bandwidth completely as everyone else wants to interconnect with them in a settlement-free way.
So that is by way of saying I appreciate being able to both compete and cooperate with the same entities and have everyone aware of the competing interests. We’re fortunate that the market is large and for various reasons we don’t compete too directly. I suspect those are the real reasons it works.
The old electric and bell utilities made some sense as government-regulated monopolies during the build-out periods. They needed to use public rights-of-way. In a purely unregulated world, there may never be business justification to provide services to remote locations. While I’d love to have more choices for where to buy electricity, in this area one company owns the infrastructure and it would be very prohibitive for another to get into the game. There is value in universal service beyond what the homeowner gets (911 services in case of forest fire etc).
But back to the question I really set out to answer:
Sadly, the consumer often fails to act in his or her rational self-interests when making purchasing decisions. People are too often sheep following trends. I mentioned “loss leader”- give away a product below cost to hook people by padding your margin elsewhere. GoDaddy is a perfect example. The last I looked, they sold domains at a $0.05 loss per transaction. Unless they sell the customer another service, they lose money. Their other services are not worth what they charge IMHO, but they are still hugely popular. Every time I see their Super Bowl ads, it reminds me what I detest about them. That money really needs to go back to providing better customer service and technical resources, not attracting more customers.
In a purely unregulated world, there may never be business justification to provide services to remote locations.
Of course, but not necessarily–cell phone companies don’t have local monopolies.
There are of course things the free market is not good at providing; every real libertarian, as opposed to a caricature of one, understands this. We have government-provided police, firemen, libraries, currency, courts, armed forces, etc.
Sadly, the consumer often fails to act in his or her rational self-interests when making purchasing decisions. People are too often sheep following trends. I mentioned “loss leader”- give away a product below cost to hook people by padding your margin elsewhere.
Even if that is true, that’s the price of freedom–freedom to be stupid. This is not even taking into account that THEY might know THEIR self-interest better than YOU do.
For a lot of people, following the trend is easier in terms of invested time, then carefully considering all possible alternatives. Because time, fundamentally, is the only currency people have.
Reckoned by my earning power, the time I wouldn’t spend mucking around with Linux would be far better compensated by spending the money on Windows products. Likewise, the time I spend changing my own oil is probably worth more than the $30 or whatever is they charge at Jiffy Lube.
But I LIKE doing those things, and that is part of how I CHOOSE to spend my time. I don’t appreciate paternal benevolence making decisions for my own good.
Gabriel, I think we agree on a lot of things, including about caricatures of Libertarians.
On the matter of paternalism I also don’t want the government dictating my choices. In the end, people need to be free to make their own mistakes because that is the only way a person really learns. It doesn’t matter how many times you tell the kid to keep his hand away from the stove, he’ll figure it out when he gets burned right?
I still do see the need for reigning in companies like Microsoft, even as I disagree with how that has been done and also regret that the exact same behavior by Apple has gone unchallenged.
In an ideal world the consumer would recognize and punish predatory behaviors that are designed to stifle competition. My acknowledgment of this problem isn’t meant to suggest a governmental solution (except possibly in the form of improved education).
Oroboros the Omphaloskeptic says: “I still do see the need for reigning in companies like Microsoft …”
Why? They can’t coerce you into doing anything. As Gabe points out, you have alternatives. In many cases, sentiments such as yours (I don’t know about your case) arise because people want to help those who are so dumb they can’t fend for themselves, so you (figuratively speaking) and the government operatives you’d like to empower, will use the tax system and the threat of prison to force your own enlightened thinking on those too stupid to appreciate it. For their own good, of course. It’s always for our own good.
It isn’t about coercing me per-se. It’s about recognizing harm to the marketplace and drawing a line on predatory behavior, especially that which the consumer isn’t aware of. Perhaps the right role is only education.
Mexico recently decriminalized possession of small amounts of drugs including cocaine. If they could use the law to do so (which is questionable) should Coca-Cola be allowed to return to their original formula and hook their market without warning?
The one with the most capital wins in an unfettered market. Why not buy up every single competitor if you can? Why not sell at a loss until your competition is driven under?
I don’t know that people realize just how much cash Microsoft has (or had a few years ago). As I recall, they could have purchased every single professional baseball, basketball and football team in the U.S. (and incidentally paid $0 in federal taxes).
Why even continue in the market once you’ve acquired that much capital? What else is there yet to do? I have a lot of admiration for the good works that the Gates Foundation does. But the end doesn’t justify the means.
Another example – Whole Foods recently acquired Wild Oats. It came out that the Whole Foods CEO had been trash-talking Wild Oats under a pseudonym on Yahoo stock forums prior to the acquisition. Did that actually affect the price he paid for the company? Probably not. I still liked having a choice and wish that merger hadn’t occurred. I felt like a dirty player won and try not to reward them for it. If he was willing to do that, what else would he do that might affect me as a consumer? It was a case where I felt the FTC was right to at least investigate, though I’m not sure I agreed with their decision to allow the merger for reasons unrelated to the Yahoo forums nonsense.
The one with the most capital wins in an unfettered market. Why not buy up every single competitor if you can? Why not sell at a loss until your competition is driven under?
How does this reasoning not apply to governments? Why not conquer the world if you can? In practice it is extremely rare for any business to be in the position to buy up all its competitors or have enough capital that it can sell at a loss until ALL of them are driven under.
Government provides a check on businesses might be able to do that-but what’s the check on government?
Oh that’s easy 🙂
2nd Amendment
P.S. Sorry to drag us off-topic. I really appreciate the thoughtful discussion. Back to real work for me!
Oroboros the Omphaloskeptic says:
The best example of this — if it actually worked in practice — would be John D. Rockefeller. He did buy up a lot of his competitors. The problem was that he was just creating a market for new competitors, and they kept popping up. But with the huge market share that he had, he was still competing with alternative energy sources. If he raised his prices too high, people would go back to using coal, or wood, or whale oil. (Rockefeller probably saved the whale, by the way.)
If he lowered his price to drive everyone else out of business, and finally raised them to take advantage of the situation, then his oil would become so expensive that it would be impractical to operate automobiles. He’d kill off a big part of his market — a stupid thing to do. People could always ride the trains. And unless he used force, which governments do, he couldn’t stop new competitors from appearing.
Rockefeller is the best example of the alleged “dangers” of monopoly, but he had no choice except to sell his product at what the market was willing to pay. And without government support (like radio stations have) he’d never be free from new competitors — foreign and domestic. In other words, the boogy-man of an abusive free-enterprise monopoly is largely fiction.
Wikipedia:
I reiterate my position: the presence of government is not really a prerequisite for the maintenance of a monopoly. Coercive monopolies only appear when monopolies misuse their power, be they government or corporate. Once a monopoly has formed, either in a free market system or by governmental fiat, it is self-perpetuating unless explicitly broken up by an external group with greater power. I challenge you to find a monopoly that broke up of its own accord.
I’m not sure how Rockefeller helps your case. Yes, he couldn’t raise his prices to arbitrary levels – but he owned the oil market until the government broke up Standard Oil. Who knows what innovation and economic growth was stifled due to that coercive blanket in the market’s early years?
Tacroy says: “I challenge you to find a monopoly that broke up of its own accord.”
Okay, name the two or three worst monopolies in US history. When I say “worst” I don’t mean merely big, but big, oppressive and verifiably harmful — clearly harming consumers, suppressing innovations, etc. Something like OPEC, but without government involvement. That means no AT&T, etc. Maybe IBM and mainframes? We’ll look at your examples.