I got an email ad over the weekend, inviting me to join the American Association for the Advancement of Science—AAAS, which used to be a respectable organization. The ad said in part,
Organizations that have propelled us forward—NIH, NOAA, and the EPA, just to name a few—are facing major funding cuts.
Because fraud, waste, and abuse are important only when it’s the other guy’s FWA. We wouldn’t been involved with any of that. Not us.
No, even were these organizations sound, their spending can be tightened, and they can absorb budget cuts. They can do the same amount of work, or more, did they only spend with efficiency rather than profligacy.
On the other hand, not all of these organizations are sound. NOAA, for instance, has been caught more than once falsifying climate data and altering its climate data bases. NOAA does not even follow its own protocols, as one ex-NOAA scientist put it, in the way its data are handled, documented, and stored. EPA’s abuse of its authority and its dependence on false science (plant food is atmospheric pollution? Ignoring the fact that atmospheric CO2 lags planetary warming by 800-1,800 years? Really?) are widely documented.
Of course the men and women managing the AAAS know this. And their knowledge makes their claims all the more disingenuous.
And this in that ad:
President Trump has begun the process of pulling the United States out of the Paris Climate Accord, putting us in the company of only two other nations to reject this planet-saving agreement.
Science by political consensus. Sure.
Too, the men and women minding the AAAS store know full well that the “Accord” bound no one to any performance whatsoever. Further, the non-binding “bindings” left the People’s Republic of China free to continue to expand its emissions into the 2030s, and only from that peak to start reducing. If it felt like it. In addition, the Accord’s non-binding “binding” left India free to refuse to do anything at all until it was paid the $3 trillion or more vig that it is demanding.
Such pseudo-science is most assuredly to be done away with.
My personal interest area, nutrition science, is, if possible even more corrupt than NOAA. Industry-funded research sees publication only if it advances the funder’s financial interest. Fair enough. But government funded research – from NIH, et al, – is just as loaded with poor design, poor execution, and confirmation bias.
So a reset is not only welcome, but sorely needed.