Because so many universities and popular media outlets choose to only show one side of the “Global Warming” issue, and even propose it to be a settled matter, and because Thinker Education is about encouraging more careful consideration of popular group think, this last session focuses on some people who have been all but pushed out of their positions in the Academy because they have dared to criticize politically correct opinion.

This first is a video about Roy Spencer, a former NASA climatologist:

The second is an article about Richard Lindzen of MIT.  It also demonstrates the leverage sometimes exerted against views that don’t line up with what the scientific community wishes to assert at the “only view.”

What Catastrophe Richard Lindzen piece

Science should follow the evidence where it leads.  Consider all sides of this issue, and examine the basis for the data.  Especially if very credible and intelligent people are making the case for an opposing point of view, we ought not to seek to suppress it.  Science, like entrepreneurship, advances in some ways based on a manifesto of dissent.  We suppress that dissent to our own detriment, and to the detriment of the scientific enterprise.

So let’s be very careful to embrace theories as facts, and remember the advice of Aristotle: “It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.” Even if “four out of five dentists surveyed” say something, it might not stand up under balanced scrutiny.  The dentists, after all, might be paid endorsers.