Is That "Science"?
Imagine: Someone makes a claim about how things work and assigns to that clam a 90% or greater probability of it being true. The sole evidence for the assertion is a copy of a nine year old popular science magazine in which a telephone interview of someone making the claim was reported. No data. No calculations. No experiments. Nothing.
Would you think that was "science"? Most people wouldn't.
But what if you didn't know the facts. What if all you knew was that the scientists making the claim all had fine educational pedigrees and had won prestigious awards and that their report was supported by the U.S. government, the UN and most of the rest of the world? Well in that case, figuring that someone else had already done his or her job of fact checking, you'd assume the science was sound and you'd get back to doing your own job after updating your understanding of the world with this new knowledge.
The New York Times is reporting today that the scientific claim that Himalayan glaciers will disappear within 25 years leaving hundreds of millions of people without water is based on just that sort of "science".
The revelation that one claim in the 1000+ page IPCC 2007 report is without foundation does not of course mean that the rest of the report is faulty. Nevertheless, the fact that such a profoundly important claim made its way into the final report, based on nothing more than one person's nine year old hunch, will undoubtedly make many people wonder whether the scientists who wrote it were doing the sort of critical thinking that unshackles minds or rather were, as most people, merely seeking confirmation of their beliefs - blinded to whatever flaws or errors that come with it.
