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What is a
Scientist?
Some people have suggested that non-scientists should
keep out of the climate change debate.
Others have gone even further and said that only climate scientists
should be involved.
I totally
disagree.
A group of climate scientists in England have been accused of faking
their results and using tricks. Some
climate sceptics have even suggested that the debate is now over because of the
one group using tricks. Apart from the
fact that these scientists completely deny doing anything misleading, there are
millions of other people studying the data.
This includes me. We do not all
look at the same sets of data. There are
many possible things to look at.
But What is
a Scientist?
I do not have a good answer to this, but some people would
say that to be a scientist you have to be researching at a University or
similar research institution.
I worked as a research technician at Adelaide University
for over 17 years. I am well aware of
the important work that such places do.
But looking at major scientific advances, most of them were not done at
University.
Sir Isaac Newton was Lucasian Professor of
Mathematics at Cambridge
University later in
life. But when he made most of his
advances he was not at university. He
had been attending Cambridge
as a rather undistinguished scholar, but it was only during the plague years of
1665 and 1666 when he was living in a country town away from the university
that he laid the foundations of his discoveries.
Albert Einstein was a patent clerk when he formulated
the special theory of relativity.
Charles Darwin was a country gentleman, very active in
charity work with his church. He was a Member of the Royal Society, but was not at a university.
I could list many more.
Now
However, it could be objected that science has become
so difficult that only people with access to the resources of a university can
do useful research.
I reject this argument.
Another definition I have seen is that a scientist is someone who has published a paper in a peer reviewed journal or other scientific publication. This is a better definition but one that I can still see things wrong with. If a person were studying a subject that is new, or is frowned on by the general scientific community he or she would find it much more difficult to get his or her work published by a scientific publication. It also excludes people doing valuable scientific work who have not yet published.
Another problem with this definition is that at universities, an academic will often have his or her name on a scientific paper when they have only contributed to the research in a periferal way while a technician who has done most of the work as well as contributing valuable ideas to the work may not have his of her name on the papers. I was luckier than some in this regard and my name was included in the publication of some of the research I did.
Some so called “scientific” journals even attempt to
restrict access to people who are not in their field. I cannot take seriously a journal that does
this.
Similarly, the important decisions about how we act
have to be made by everyone, not by an elite group. The “Power of the People is
Paramount”. We need to know the facts to use this
paramount power.
The Debate is Over
This is often said, but it is nonsense. The debate will, and should, continue. However, the debate is mainly important in deciding what we are going to do. The climate will continue to do what it is going to do.
We can only affect the climate by action, not by debate.
Sources
Isaac Newton
http://www.clas.ufl.edu/users/ufhatch/pages/01-Courses/current-courses/08sr-newton.htm
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