Do Atheists Care One Whit About Real Science?

Perhaps not the most outspoken ones:

At Least The ClimateGate Scientists Didn’t Admit Going to Church

The silence of the ‘pro-science’ blogsphere on the ClimateGate scandal is remarkable.

For years, readers of Pharyngula, Panda’s Thumb, Neurologica, WhyEvolutionIsTrue, Denialism, Respectful Insolence, and other militantly ‘pro-science’ blogs have been treated to rants about the need to protect the integrity of science from frauds and ideologically motivated practitioners. Of course, ‘protection of the integrity of science’ in the faux 'pro-science' blogsphere has generally meant suppression of skeptics who question so-called 'consensus science' on Darwinism and on Anthropogenic Global Warming. ‘Protection of science’ has more often that not entailed personal invective, recourse to ‘consensus’, advocacy of professional destruction of skeptics, deference to scientific authorities, censorship, and judicial coercion.

The ClimateGate e-mails and data sets obtained from the Climate Research Unit in England reveal scientific misconduct and criminal fraud on a massive scale. This documented pervasive scientific fraud suggests a darker meaning of 'consensus' in 'consensus science'. The Brahmins of climate science are, by their own words, frauds. Data on global temperatures was faked, withheld, and, if sought by skeptics with sufficient vigor, deleted. Climate scientists conspired to undermine peer review and to destroy the careers of other scientists who attempted to replicate their results. Exhortation to integrity and transparency was utterly absent from the communications. The e-mail conversations, had they been those of business executives, would invoke R.I.C.O. statutes. Trillions of dollars, and the economies and even governmental structure of many nations, depend on the integrity of this science. And there is no integrity.

Yet the militant pro-science blogsphere has been silent about this enormous scientific scandal.

Compare the pro-science blogosphere’s silence about fraud and scientific misconduct in climate science to another recent controversy in science: the appointment of Francis Collins as Director of the National Institutes of Health. Collins is a scientist of the highest professional and personal reputation. His scandal, according to the science blogsphere, is this:

He’s a Christian who publicly talks about his belief in God.

The ‘pro-science’ blogsphere… exploded.

[examples follow]

None of these blogs, at the time my writing of this post, has any discussion about the massive scandal in Climate Science. What duplicity. A Christian is appointed to a government science post, and the ‘pro-science’ blogsphere explodes. When a movie- a freakin’ movie (Expelled)- is released, the pro-science blogsphere descends into a vortex of angst that persists to this day. Yet when the integrity of a major field of global science is destroyed- not threatened, but destroyed- by smoking-gun evidence of massive systematic scientific misconduct and fraud, the ‘pro-science’ blogsphere gets writer's cramp. Dead silence.

Note to the investigators pouring over the thousands of ClimateGate e-mails, computer code, and data: Keep up the scrutiny. The integrity of science must be protected. If you find any evidence that any of these scientists went to church or were planning to make a movie, contact the science blogs immediately.

For a lot of people, "Science" is the cover, atheism is the real point.