Know What You Believe

At a time when the results of science education in America cannot make the International Top 10 (see Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study 2007), some have noticed that certain scientific topics are hermetically-sealed specimens. According to Russell Nieli's article, "Global Warming: the Campus Non-Debate," such is the state of climate science when it comes to global warming. As Nieli points out, the reigning paradigm greeting many college students does not encourage the lively, ongoing debate that lies at the heart of genuine science--and the liberal arts that should rightfully subsume the scientific project (i.e., science is but one of the humanizing disciplines in the Tradition).

Unfortunately, lively debate is not often entertained in certain precincts, according to Nieli.

[Climate science questions] are rarely asked today on college campuses due to what can only be described as the stifling dominance of a smug orthodoxy that is so cocksure of itself -- and of the general ignorance and malevolence of its critics -- that genuine debate and interchange between divergent viewpoints rarely takes place. So dominant is this orthodoxy that many college students today have never heard the case made by a responsible scientist against what we might call the dominant Gore-Hansen Model of anthropogenic global warming.

Nieli amasses the evidence for a legitimate challenge to this “smug orthodoxy,” in hopes of correcting the political correctness that has metastasized to the natural sciences. And, inasmuch as scientists of goodwill are interested in keeping the scientific spirit alive, Nieli hopes for a revitalized debate that would restore the rational discourse of science.