Modern science was born from the Enlightenment’s emphasis on reason and individualism; it began as a branch of philosophy. Today, philosophy has become a mere pretense, and science has effectively become a branch of government. For these governmental-scientists, science is not true or false, it is strategic; the objective branch of philosophy which sought science for science’s sake, gave way to the subjective branch of politics, namely collectivism, which employed science for society’s sake---as conceived by an institutionalized elite. Thus, science came to service the same greater good as politics---if the truth (objective reality) contradicts that greater good, it isn’t true.
Religion once served this purpose for the elites; concepts such as the “divine right of kings” resulted from their co-opting of religion so as to create societal truths that justified their power. The collectivists of the mid-18th century sought to replace what they viewed as the intellectually discredited concept of religion with a new justification for the confiscation of individual liberty by an institutionalized (government-sanctioned) class of elites---science served this need. While science was only made possible by the Enlightenment’s philosophical fidelity to reason and the concept of objective reality (the immutable laws of nature), the collectivists saw science in the context of the dimly-lit dungeons that they wished to relegate man. The value of science to the collectivist was its ability to create truth out of agreement---the ability of an elite faction of society---the “scientists”---to agree upon certain truths, which the rest of society comes to accept without ever understanding, or questioning---so long as enough influential scientists agree, it is true.
The concept of “climate change” is the result of such scientific agreement. These scientists have seized upon a completely natural phenomenon, the “greenhouse effect,” in order to cynically and dishonestly perpetrate an insidious con. The greenhouse effect does not need man in order to occur, and the very concept of man would not even be possible without it. The heat from the sun streaks toward Earth in the form of solar radiation, and reflects off the Earth in a thermal infrared form. A “greenhouse gas” is in effect any gas that 1) is transparent to solar radiation, but 2) absorbs and emits radiation within the thermal infrared range. This means that greenhouse gases allow the heat from the sun to reach the Earth’s surface, but prevent that heat from completely escaping, which results in a warmer average surface temperature than would be the case in their absence. Without greenhouse gases the Earth’s surface would be about 60-degrees colder, and life on Earth would not be possible.
Governmental-scientists identified in the 1970’s that the Earth’s temperature is prone to natural fluctuation, and that it was highly likely that the temperature would begin to change by the end of the century. Accordingly, they devised two separate, contradictory theories regarding the future temperature of the Earth: 1) the first theory held that human activity was causing the Earth to cool, and that, in the absence of government intervention, catastrophic consequences would ensue; 2) the second theory held that human activity was causing the Earth to warm, and that, in the absence of government intervention, catastrophic consequences would ensue. These scientists played-upon the ignorant view that anything that wouldn’t exist in its present form in the absence of man adversely affects the Earth's natural balance.
This concept of a natural balance is the darling of ecology---the scientific study of the interactions of living things within the context of a specific environment. Concepts such as an immutable food-chain are the corollaries of such thinking, and result in such irrational government actions as causing a man-made drought in the San Joaquin Valley in order to save smelt. Of course, as we are constantly reminded by high-minded collectivists, God couldn’t have created the Earth in its present form because evolution proves that the Earth is always changing, and the organisms currently existing on Earth evolved from earlier organisms over the course of millions of years---God did not create man, we are told, because man evolved most recently from the ape, and more fundamentally from a primordial soup.
The theory of evolution thus contradicts the ecological assumption of a natural order of living things within their environment. How and why would evolution occur if this perfect natural balance existed? Remember, nearly all of the “evolution” that is said to have occurred over Earth’s history took place before the rise of modern man---and certainly before the rise of industrial man. If every single instance of such change which is believed to have occurred took place before man, why the sudden panic regarding man’s impact on that system of change? It would be one thing if evolution didn’t exist; if everything on Earth were exactly as it always was, and that change was the sole result of man’s manipulation of nature. But this obviously is not the case---just ask the “scientific community,” as it is they who formed the “scientific consensus” on this issue. But in regard to the temperature, the concept of “evolution” seems not apply; while living organisms are constantly subject to a process of adaptation and change, the temperature, we are led to believe, is an immutable constant in the absence of man.
In 1975, Newsweek ran a cover-story titled, “The Ravaged Environment,” in which the author reported on a survey of ecologists: “[Scientists] like to play with the notion that global disaster may result if environmental pollution continues unchecked. According to one scenario, the planet is already well advanced toward a phenomenon called the ‘greenhouse effect.’ Concentrations of carbon dioxide are building up in the atmosphere, it is said, as the world’s vegetation, which feeds on CO2, is progressively chopped down. Hanging in the atmosphere, it forms a barrier trapping the planet’s heat. As a result, the greenhouse theorists contend, the world is threatened with a rise in average temperature which, if it reached 4 or 5 degrees, could melt the polar ice caps, raise the sea level by as much as 300 feet and cause a worldwide flood. Other scientists see an opposite peril: that the polar ice will expand, sending glaciers down to the temperate zone once again. This theory assumes that the earth’s cloud cover will continue to thicken as more dust, fumes and water vapor are belched into the atmosphere by industrial smokestacks and jet planes. Screened from the sun’s heat, the planet will cool, the water vapor will fall and freeze, and a new Ice Age will be born.”
Behold the adaptable nature of governmental-science. Their view of man, as a scourge upon the Earth doesn’t change in accordance with the facts of reality; rather, the facts of reality are adapted as necessary---as the plausibility of their argument requires---in order to portray man as a scourge upon the Earth. If it gets colder, man is to blame and catastrophe will follow; if it gets warmer, man is to blame and catastrophe will follow---all with the critical caveat: unless you turn over your freedoms and your mind to an ever-more-powerful government so that it may regulate and eradicate the manifestations of your evil nature---then, and only then, may you be saved. Once again, science is not true or false to these people, it is a strategic pretense for the expansion of government in the name of some greater good.
It was never about accurately determining the true nature of the climate, it was about strategically covering all the bases to ensure that once the climate underwent the process that we know for certain is always occurring---change---their collectivist allies in the media, their collectivist bosses in government, and their collectivist comrades at the Ivy League education camps would be able to point to the governmental-scientists who had predicted it somewhat correctly---thus giving those scientists a stamp of legitimacy and authenticity---giving them a blank-check to hypothesize on the future effects of the trend that they had only very vaguely predicted in the first place---a check which the collectivists in government would then cash, emptying what’s left in the once flush accounts of economic freedom and individual liberty in this country.
What about the scientists who had predicted the next Ice Age? The thing about the "scientific community" is that that term seems only to apply to their analysis of the present and predictions for the future---to things which are open to their subjective interpretation of arbitrary or limited data, rather than the objective results of objective reality---it ceases to be a community when it comes time to answer for the demonstrably incorrect, false, and fabricated reports, which all received that same awe-inspiring stamp of "science" when they were first published.
Abstractions, like “science” or “the scientist,” did not discover (identify) a single fact of reality---individuals did. The collectivists cynically and dishonestly attempted to attribute the discoveries made by individuals (in addition to concealing the actual means through which they made them) to an abstract aggregate---the “scientific community.” Isaac Newton once attributed his success to “standing on the shoulders of giants”---meaning that he built on previous discoveries, and would not have been able to do what he did had not that previous knowledge been synthesized for him. Whereas men like Newton may have stood on the shoulders of giants, the collectivists devised a way to ride their coat-tales. Knowing full-well that any explicit attempt to censor or otherwise co-opt science would be met with stiff resistance, the American collectivists (namely the progressives) devised a different scheme---use the power of the purse, and the legalized use of force that only the federal government may wield in order to dominate the market of scientific ideas.
In 1972, Ayn Rand wrote an essay on this scheme titled, “The Establishing of an Establishment,” in which she identified the peculiar phenomenon of a free society that appeared to be censoring itself---in which the cultural atmosphere bore all the hallmarks of a society living under government censorship, where no such censorship existed. She wrote of this strange occurrence: “If you find it puzzling, the premise to check is the idea that governmental repression is the only way a government can destroy the intellectual life of a country. It is not. There is another way: governmental encouragement.” Such encouragement, writes Rand, “does not order men to believe that the false is true: it merely makes them indifferent to the issue of truth or falsehood.”
In “The Road to Socialism,” F.A. Hayek has a chapter titled, “The End of Truth,” in which he writes that, under a collectivist moral code, “Every activity must derive its justification from a conscious social purpose.” Hayek continues: “(This view) is the direct result of (the) desire to see everything directed by a ‘unitary conception of the whole,’ of the need to uphold at all costs the views in the service of which people are asked to make constant sacrifices, and of the general idea that the knowledge and beliefs of the people are an instrument to be used for a single purpose. Once science has to serve, not truth, but the interests of a class, community, or a state, the sole task of argument and discussion is to vindicate and to spread still further the beliefs by which the whole life of the community is directed. As a Nazi minister of justice has explained, the question which every new scientific theory must ask itself is: ‘Do I serve National Socialism for the greatest benefit of all?”
Consider the collectivist moral code for a moment; it holds self-interest to be evil, and rejects the validity of any end pursued for its own sake apart from the greater good of society. How then does a collectivist conduct science? How does his moral code bide its time while he’s out in the field in a disinterested pursuit of the truth, the results of which may or may not be beneficial to society? Science for science’s sake is an alien concept to these men---to them, it is science for society’s sake---with, of course, the elite being the ones who get to determine what “for society’s sake” means. That determination is put into practice by Congress, through the appropriations process, which allocates over $100 billion every year in “governmental encouragement” to the sciences.
Setting aside the issue of content---i.e., what the government chooses to fund---for a moment, consider the effect of such “governmental encouragement.” Rand writes: “...any intrusion of government into the field of ideas, for or against anyone, withers intellectual freedom and creates an official orthodoxy, a privileged elite. Today, it is called an ‘Establishment.” Over forty-years later and it is still called that by its more honest observers; the only difference is that it is over forty-years more-established. In regard to the actual content of the funding, Rand poses a critical question: “How would Washington bureaucrats---or Congressmen, for that matter---know which scientist to encourage?” A question which she then answers: “The safest method is to choose men who have achieved some sort of reputation. Whether their reputation is deserved or not, whether their achievements are valid or not, whether they rose by merit, pull, publicity or accident, are questions which the awarders do not and cannot consider. When personal judgment is inoperative (or forbidden), men’s first concern is not how to choose, but how to justify their choice. This will necessarily prompt committee members, bureaucrats and politicians to gravitate toward ‘prestigious names.’ The result is to help establish those already established---i.e., to entrench the status quo.”
Just as both government-imposed burdens (taxes, regulations, and the like) and government hand-outs (subsidies) have an effect on the free-market in an economic context---the effect being, at a minimum, a less-free-market---so too does government encouragement in the intellectual fields---most notably science---in the form of government grants, contracts, and other forms of legalized favoritism.
The Department of Energy (DOE) oversees the Office of Science (SC), which boasts on its website: “The Office of science is the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States.” In addition to its 17 laboratories, SC awards research grants every year to academic institutions across the country. One program in particular, Workforce Development for Teachers and Scientists (WDTS), “Leverages the expertise of its six research program offices and the unique capabilities at DOE’s laboratories to sponsor workforce training programs designed to motivate students and educators to pursue careers that will contribute to the Office of Science’s mission in discovery science and science for the national need.” Such a thing as “the national need” is of course not self-evident---if this mission statement were revised for logical accuracy it would read: “science for the national need as determined by the federal government.” In practice, this results in a “national need” that far too often just happens to coincide with the government’s preferences for certain people---like campaign contributors (see Solyndra)---or for certain findings---like a scientific consensus that results in the urgent need for more taxes and more government (see “global warming”). It also leads to certain research and data being suppressed when it contradicts that “need.”
In 2012, when the federal government was supposedly experiencing “political gridlock,” and “not getting things done,” it spent over $135 billion on “science.” This money is spread through a multitude of governmental, quasi-governmental, and non-governmental entities (referred to as intramural and extramural). Within the federal government, this includes the likes of NASA, NOAA, NIST, NIH, USGS, S&T, NSF, DARPA, ONR, NIFA, and others. The 2012 number was down from its all-time high of nearly $147 billion in 2010, but still represents a near-doubling of the less than $70 billion spent in 1996. Bottom line: The federal government is the robber baron of the science industry.
This is one of the most insidious collectivist cons in regard to science---they use government financing and control of academic institutions (which is to a large degree itself a product of that financing) in order to "establish an establishment"---the "scientific community" becomes a quasi-governmental entity with a mission to promote what it perceives to be the greater interests of (collectivist) society and of the (non-human) Earth. The nasty truth about these "scientists" who clumsily trip-over one another as they attempt to "agree" without "colluding," is that they would support every single proposed governmental response to "global warming," whether such a thing as "global warming" existed or not---far from being an "inconvenient truth," a changing climate created an extremely convenient excuse for these collectivists---who openly advocate vastly more government regulation of industry, vast reductions in economic activity and output, eliminating "inefficient and individualized" modes of transportation, more "green technology," a global power structure with an ever-less-sovereign United States playing an ever-less important role, higher taxes on consumption, and on and on--they are, first and foremost, advocates of the socialist variant of collectivism. The true political nature of what they call "science" was revealed by Bill Clinton's undersecretary of state, Timothy Wirth, who said: "We've got to ride the global warming issue. Even if the global warming theory is wrong, we will be doing the right thing, in terms of economic policy and environmental policy."
When minimizing and negating the accomplishments of private industry and individuals---"you didn’t build that”---the federal government’s involvement in the field of science is proudly acknowledged, but when the opinions of “the scientific community” are needed to justify further expansions of government, that same involvement gives-way to the objective nature of the field and the impartiality of the men operating within it. The elites would have us believe that, rather than trust funds, the scientists have truth funds---that the paychecks for scientists come from heaven, delivered by angels and signed by God himself. It is not about truth, though, its about strategy---for which “truth” serves as the legitimizing agent, tasked with validating the con.
These governmental-scientists would have us believe that man must be controlled so that nature may be free. The government may intrude-upon, control, regulate or otherwise manipulative every facet and sphere of human activity, but man’s pursuit of happiness---of a better life---must be halted in its tracks because of its reliance upon the manipulation of the natural order. Financial and economic markets must be placed within the sphere of governmental-power, we are told, because of man’s greed and the inefficiencies and instability created by ignorance and self-interest---the chaos created by the divergent and conflicting purposes and needs of free individuals engaging in commerce. No matter the context, the song remains the same: the fate of society rests upon its willingness to abandon individual liberty and economic freedom in favor of some variant of collectivism, which places the ability to decide what interests are valid and conducive to a greater good, and which are not, in the hands of an enlightened class of intellectual elites---men who can see the forest through the trees. Science is quickly becoming one of the most prevalent and insidious tools for this purpose, because it replaces rational discourse with reverence for the "findings" of those "qualified" to determine the truth.
Governmental-science ends the conversation, and decides the debate before it ever can take place. Just remember: truth is not their goal, and a legitimate concern for humanity is not their motivation---if you doubt this fact, observe the pride that overtakes environmentalists as you talk about the banning of DDT; observe how the fact that millions of humans have died as a result of that ban has no effect whatsoever on that feeling of pride. As was openly admitted at the recent climate conference in Copenhagen, the crusade to end “global warming” cannot be separated from the crusade to end capitalism---neither will occur unless both do. It is your freedom that they want, and they will use any pretense whatsoever to take it.
Religion once served this purpose for the elites; concepts such as the “divine right of kings” resulted from their co-opting of religion so as to create societal truths that justified their power. The collectivists of the mid-18th century sought to replace what they viewed as the intellectually discredited concept of religion with a new justification for the confiscation of individual liberty by an institutionalized (government-sanctioned) class of elites---science served this need. While science was only made possible by the Enlightenment’s philosophical fidelity to reason and the concept of objective reality (the immutable laws of nature), the collectivists saw science in the context of the dimly-lit dungeons that they wished to relegate man. The value of science to the collectivist was its ability to create truth out of agreement---the ability of an elite faction of society---the “scientists”---to agree upon certain truths, which the rest of society comes to accept without ever understanding, or questioning---so long as enough influential scientists agree, it is true.
The concept of “climate change” is the result of such scientific agreement. These scientists have seized upon a completely natural phenomenon, the “greenhouse effect,” in order to cynically and dishonestly perpetrate an insidious con. The greenhouse effect does not need man in order to occur, and the very concept of man would not even be possible without it. The heat from the sun streaks toward Earth in the form of solar radiation, and reflects off the Earth in a thermal infrared form. A “greenhouse gas” is in effect any gas that 1) is transparent to solar radiation, but 2) absorbs and emits radiation within the thermal infrared range. This means that greenhouse gases allow the heat from the sun to reach the Earth’s surface, but prevent that heat from completely escaping, which results in a warmer average surface temperature than would be the case in their absence. Without greenhouse gases the Earth’s surface would be about 60-degrees colder, and life on Earth would not be possible.
Governmental-scientists identified in the 1970’s that the Earth’s temperature is prone to natural fluctuation, and that it was highly likely that the temperature would begin to change by the end of the century. Accordingly, they devised two separate, contradictory theories regarding the future temperature of the Earth: 1) the first theory held that human activity was causing the Earth to cool, and that, in the absence of government intervention, catastrophic consequences would ensue; 2) the second theory held that human activity was causing the Earth to warm, and that, in the absence of government intervention, catastrophic consequences would ensue. These scientists played-upon the ignorant view that anything that wouldn’t exist in its present form in the absence of man adversely affects the Earth's natural balance.
This concept of a natural balance is the darling of ecology---the scientific study of the interactions of living things within the context of a specific environment. Concepts such as an immutable food-chain are the corollaries of such thinking, and result in such irrational government actions as causing a man-made drought in the San Joaquin Valley in order to save smelt. Of course, as we are constantly reminded by high-minded collectivists, God couldn’t have created the Earth in its present form because evolution proves that the Earth is always changing, and the organisms currently existing on Earth evolved from earlier organisms over the course of millions of years---God did not create man, we are told, because man evolved most recently from the ape, and more fundamentally from a primordial soup.
The theory of evolution thus contradicts the ecological assumption of a natural order of living things within their environment. How and why would evolution occur if this perfect natural balance existed? Remember, nearly all of the “evolution” that is said to have occurred over Earth’s history took place before the rise of modern man---and certainly before the rise of industrial man. If every single instance of such change which is believed to have occurred took place before man, why the sudden panic regarding man’s impact on that system of change? It would be one thing if evolution didn’t exist; if everything on Earth were exactly as it always was, and that change was the sole result of man’s manipulation of nature. But this obviously is not the case---just ask the “scientific community,” as it is they who formed the “scientific consensus” on this issue. But in regard to the temperature, the concept of “evolution” seems not apply; while living organisms are constantly subject to a process of adaptation and change, the temperature, we are led to believe, is an immutable constant in the absence of man.
In 1975, Newsweek ran a cover-story titled, “The Ravaged Environment,” in which the author reported on a survey of ecologists: “[Scientists] like to play with the notion that global disaster may result if environmental pollution continues unchecked. According to one scenario, the planet is already well advanced toward a phenomenon called the ‘greenhouse effect.’ Concentrations of carbon dioxide are building up in the atmosphere, it is said, as the world’s vegetation, which feeds on CO2, is progressively chopped down. Hanging in the atmosphere, it forms a barrier trapping the planet’s heat. As a result, the greenhouse theorists contend, the world is threatened with a rise in average temperature which, if it reached 4 or 5 degrees, could melt the polar ice caps, raise the sea level by as much as 300 feet and cause a worldwide flood. Other scientists see an opposite peril: that the polar ice will expand, sending glaciers down to the temperate zone once again. This theory assumes that the earth’s cloud cover will continue to thicken as more dust, fumes and water vapor are belched into the atmosphere by industrial smokestacks and jet planes. Screened from the sun’s heat, the planet will cool, the water vapor will fall and freeze, and a new Ice Age will be born.”
Behold the adaptable nature of governmental-science. Their view of man, as a scourge upon the Earth doesn’t change in accordance with the facts of reality; rather, the facts of reality are adapted as necessary---as the plausibility of their argument requires---in order to portray man as a scourge upon the Earth. If it gets colder, man is to blame and catastrophe will follow; if it gets warmer, man is to blame and catastrophe will follow---all with the critical caveat: unless you turn over your freedoms and your mind to an ever-more-powerful government so that it may regulate and eradicate the manifestations of your evil nature---then, and only then, may you be saved. Once again, science is not true or false to these people, it is a strategic pretense for the expansion of government in the name of some greater good.
It was never about accurately determining the true nature of the climate, it was about strategically covering all the bases to ensure that once the climate underwent the process that we know for certain is always occurring---change---their collectivist allies in the media, their collectivist bosses in government, and their collectivist comrades at the Ivy League education camps would be able to point to the governmental-scientists who had predicted it somewhat correctly---thus giving those scientists a stamp of legitimacy and authenticity---giving them a blank-check to hypothesize on the future effects of the trend that they had only very vaguely predicted in the first place---a check which the collectivists in government would then cash, emptying what’s left in the once flush accounts of economic freedom and individual liberty in this country.
What about the scientists who had predicted the next Ice Age? The thing about the "scientific community" is that that term seems only to apply to their analysis of the present and predictions for the future---to things which are open to their subjective interpretation of arbitrary or limited data, rather than the objective results of objective reality---it ceases to be a community when it comes time to answer for the demonstrably incorrect, false, and fabricated reports, which all received that same awe-inspiring stamp of "science" when they were first published.
Abstractions, like “science” or “the scientist,” did not discover (identify) a single fact of reality---individuals did. The collectivists cynically and dishonestly attempted to attribute the discoveries made by individuals (in addition to concealing the actual means through which they made them) to an abstract aggregate---the “scientific community.” Isaac Newton once attributed his success to “standing on the shoulders of giants”---meaning that he built on previous discoveries, and would not have been able to do what he did had not that previous knowledge been synthesized for him. Whereas men like Newton may have stood on the shoulders of giants, the collectivists devised a way to ride their coat-tales. Knowing full-well that any explicit attempt to censor or otherwise co-opt science would be met with stiff resistance, the American collectivists (namely the progressives) devised a different scheme---use the power of the purse, and the legalized use of force that only the federal government may wield in order to dominate the market of scientific ideas.
In 1972, Ayn Rand wrote an essay on this scheme titled, “The Establishing of an Establishment,” in which she identified the peculiar phenomenon of a free society that appeared to be censoring itself---in which the cultural atmosphere bore all the hallmarks of a society living under government censorship, where no such censorship existed. She wrote of this strange occurrence: “If you find it puzzling, the premise to check is the idea that governmental repression is the only way a government can destroy the intellectual life of a country. It is not. There is another way: governmental encouragement.” Such encouragement, writes Rand, “does not order men to believe that the false is true: it merely makes them indifferent to the issue of truth or falsehood.”
In “The Road to Socialism,” F.A. Hayek has a chapter titled, “The End of Truth,” in which he writes that, under a collectivist moral code, “Every activity must derive its justification from a conscious social purpose.” Hayek continues: “(This view) is the direct result of (the) desire to see everything directed by a ‘unitary conception of the whole,’ of the need to uphold at all costs the views in the service of which people are asked to make constant sacrifices, and of the general idea that the knowledge and beliefs of the people are an instrument to be used for a single purpose. Once science has to serve, not truth, but the interests of a class, community, or a state, the sole task of argument and discussion is to vindicate and to spread still further the beliefs by which the whole life of the community is directed. As a Nazi minister of justice has explained, the question which every new scientific theory must ask itself is: ‘Do I serve National Socialism for the greatest benefit of all?”
Consider the collectivist moral code for a moment; it holds self-interest to be evil, and rejects the validity of any end pursued for its own sake apart from the greater good of society. How then does a collectivist conduct science? How does his moral code bide its time while he’s out in the field in a disinterested pursuit of the truth, the results of which may or may not be beneficial to society? Science for science’s sake is an alien concept to these men---to them, it is science for society’s sake---with, of course, the elite being the ones who get to determine what “for society’s sake” means. That determination is put into practice by Congress, through the appropriations process, which allocates over $100 billion every year in “governmental encouragement” to the sciences.
Setting aside the issue of content---i.e., what the government chooses to fund---for a moment, consider the effect of such “governmental encouragement.” Rand writes: “...any intrusion of government into the field of ideas, for or against anyone, withers intellectual freedom and creates an official orthodoxy, a privileged elite. Today, it is called an ‘Establishment.” Over forty-years later and it is still called that by its more honest observers; the only difference is that it is over forty-years more-established. In regard to the actual content of the funding, Rand poses a critical question: “How would Washington bureaucrats---or Congressmen, for that matter---know which scientist to encourage?” A question which she then answers: “The safest method is to choose men who have achieved some sort of reputation. Whether their reputation is deserved or not, whether their achievements are valid or not, whether they rose by merit, pull, publicity or accident, are questions which the awarders do not and cannot consider. When personal judgment is inoperative (or forbidden), men’s first concern is not how to choose, but how to justify their choice. This will necessarily prompt committee members, bureaucrats and politicians to gravitate toward ‘prestigious names.’ The result is to help establish those already established---i.e., to entrench the status quo.”
Just as both government-imposed burdens (taxes, regulations, and the like) and government hand-outs (subsidies) have an effect on the free-market in an economic context---the effect being, at a minimum, a less-free-market---so too does government encouragement in the intellectual fields---most notably science---in the form of government grants, contracts, and other forms of legalized favoritism.
The Department of Energy (DOE) oversees the Office of Science (SC), which boasts on its website: “The Office of science is the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States.” In addition to its 17 laboratories, SC awards research grants every year to academic institutions across the country. One program in particular, Workforce Development for Teachers and Scientists (WDTS), “Leverages the expertise of its six research program offices and the unique capabilities at DOE’s laboratories to sponsor workforce training programs designed to motivate students and educators to pursue careers that will contribute to the Office of Science’s mission in discovery science and science for the national need.” Such a thing as “the national need” is of course not self-evident---if this mission statement were revised for logical accuracy it would read: “science for the national need as determined by the federal government.” In practice, this results in a “national need” that far too often just happens to coincide with the government’s preferences for certain people---like campaign contributors (see Solyndra)---or for certain findings---like a scientific consensus that results in the urgent need for more taxes and more government (see “global warming”). It also leads to certain research and data being suppressed when it contradicts that “need.”
In 2012, when the federal government was supposedly experiencing “political gridlock,” and “not getting things done,” it spent over $135 billion on “science.” This money is spread through a multitude of governmental, quasi-governmental, and non-governmental entities (referred to as intramural and extramural). Within the federal government, this includes the likes of NASA, NOAA, NIST, NIH, USGS, S&T, NSF, DARPA, ONR, NIFA, and others. The 2012 number was down from its all-time high of nearly $147 billion in 2010, but still represents a near-doubling of the less than $70 billion spent in 1996. Bottom line: The federal government is the robber baron of the science industry.
This is one of the most insidious collectivist cons in regard to science---they use government financing and control of academic institutions (which is to a large degree itself a product of that financing) in order to "establish an establishment"---the "scientific community" becomes a quasi-governmental entity with a mission to promote what it perceives to be the greater interests of (collectivist) society and of the (non-human) Earth. The nasty truth about these "scientists" who clumsily trip-over one another as they attempt to "agree" without "colluding," is that they would support every single proposed governmental response to "global warming," whether such a thing as "global warming" existed or not---far from being an "inconvenient truth," a changing climate created an extremely convenient excuse for these collectivists---who openly advocate vastly more government regulation of industry, vast reductions in economic activity and output, eliminating "inefficient and individualized" modes of transportation, more "green technology," a global power structure with an ever-less-sovereign United States playing an ever-less important role, higher taxes on consumption, and on and on--they are, first and foremost, advocates of the socialist variant of collectivism. The true political nature of what they call "science" was revealed by Bill Clinton's undersecretary of state, Timothy Wirth, who said: "We've got to ride the global warming issue. Even if the global warming theory is wrong, we will be doing the right thing, in terms of economic policy and environmental policy."
When minimizing and negating the accomplishments of private industry and individuals---"you didn’t build that”---the federal government’s involvement in the field of science is proudly acknowledged, but when the opinions of “the scientific community” are needed to justify further expansions of government, that same involvement gives-way to the objective nature of the field and the impartiality of the men operating within it. The elites would have us believe that, rather than trust funds, the scientists have truth funds---that the paychecks for scientists come from heaven, delivered by angels and signed by God himself. It is not about truth, though, its about strategy---for which “truth” serves as the legitimizing agent, tasked with validating the con.
These governmental-scientists would have us believe that man must be controlled so that nature may be free. The government may intrude-upon, control, regulate or otherwise manipulative every facet and sphere of human activity, but man’s pursuit of happiness---of a better life---must be halted in its tracks because of its reliance upon the manipulation of the natural order. Financial and economic markets must be placed within the sphere of governmental-power, we are told, because of man’s greed and the inefficiencies and instability created by ignorance and self-interest---the chaos created by the divergent and conflicting purposes and needs of free individuals engaging in commerce. No matter the context, the song remains the same: the fate of society rests upon its willingness to abandon individual liberty and economic freedom in favor of some variant of collectivism, which places the ability to decide what interests are valid and conducive to a greater good, and which are not, in the hands of an enlightened class of intellectual elites---men who can see the forest through the trees. Science is quickly becoming one of the most prevalent and insidious tools for this purpose, because it replaces rational discourse with reverence for the "findings" of those "qualified" to determine the truth.
Governmental-science ends the conversation, and decides the debate before it ever can take place. Just remember: truth is not their goal, and a legitimate concern for humanity is not their motivation---if you doubt this fact, observe the pride that overtakes environmentalists as you talk about the banning of DDT; observe how the fact that millions of humans have died as a result of that ban has no effect whatsoever on that feeling of pride. As was openly admitted at the recent climate conference in Copenhagen, the crusade to end “global warming” cannot be separated from the crusade to end capitalism---neither will occur unless both do. It is your freedom that they want, and they will use any pretense whatsoever to take it.
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