Be sure to let me know what scientific journal that is published in.
While I'm not necessarily dismissive of scholarly journals, I've read too many nonsensical articles in so-called peer reviewed journals to at least take what is said with a grain of salt (sometimes a bottle full of ipecac). Two examples:
1) In the nineteenth century, you were considered a complete fool for actually thinking that John's gospel was written in the first century. A man named F C Baur had PROVEN BEYOND ALL DOUBT that John's gospel COULD NOT have been written before 160 AD. Then something happened.....a copy of papyrus was found by a student in a library and examined. It contained part of John's gospel. It was paleographically dated to be as early as 125. Now I'm no genius, but even in my world, 125 was a good bit before 160. Thus, even though it appeared in a scholarly journal and "could not" have been written before 160, something called EVIDENCE overturned that notion.
2) I once read a series of articles from the New England Journal of Medicine. Embarrassing. One article was actually calling for the ban of children swinging on swings from trees because of "all the injuries" and another used ONE INSTANCE of lightning striking 44 Army soldiers to support the notion that there has been a massive increase in lightning strikes. Anyone with a brain should have seen that one strike created so many injuries that it could not possibly be considered the norm. But somehow it made it into the journal.
Now that, of course, does not mean ALL articles in journals are bad, but let's not exactly be kissing the backsides of people just because they have a lot of initials after their names.
Remember all those articles about the AIDS crisis? Remember how AIDS was going to WIPE OUT the USA?
And consider how even the more responsible articles went.
Article One:
Epidemiologists estimate that acquired immune deficiency syndrome will kill 1 million Americans by the year 2000. That means 1 million killed from the disease's first appearance until the year 2000.
Now let's see the ACTUAL numbers
from the CDC, and to make it better we will INCLUDE the year 2000:
As of December 31, 2000, 774,467 persons had been reported with AIDS in the United States; 448,060 of these had died; 3542 persons had unknown vital status.
So let's see, I give you an extra year and not even HALF of the alarmist total occurs. While every death is tragic, let's simply note that we were NEVER all at risk for AIDS (highest risk? Inner city IV drug users) and yet billions were made and thrown at research in a fear-mongering campaign. When anybody dared point out why this
was never going to happen, they were called names and told the science refuted them and how DARE they question it.
Sound familiar? Sure does to me. It works like this:
1) Find a cause and say science has found a "possible link" between X and a coming disaster that will kill millions
2) Find an up and coming Congressman/Senator who needs a cause to attach his name to and send him up to bang the drum for money
3) Submit a report that says things are WORSE than you ever imagined and we must ACT NOW and need more money
4) When the inevitable questions come, divert them with attacks upon the inquistor and telling everyone "the science is settled." It helps if you can paint the questioner as religious and you can bring in the old "they thought the earth was flat" straw man and Galileo.
5) Make sure you use the MEDIA because - to be blunt about it - they're clueless and stupid. Keep in mind the media told us that a bunch of lawyers who had lost about 80% of their trial cases were a Dream Team and "the best money could buy" when they defended OJ Simpson, told us Coach Bryant fixed a football game, and even told us Zimmerman killed a defenseless little kid. The media simply isn't smart enough to know which questions to ask. After all - how many journalists are climatologists? None that I know of.
Remember that hole in the ozone layer? You never hear about that anymore. Why not? Well, because when Mt Pinatubo erupted in 1991 and threw up more CFCs than the entire world had thrown up in decades, nobody believed it anymore.
