This is something I’ve been meaning to say for some time, but Gareth has said it instead. I agree with Gareth, but it goes a little further: it isn’t just the interface to policy, it is that a whole group of people (possibly large) are being actively encouraged to undermine science, to fail to understand how it works; to think that their own opinions really are as valid as published research; and so on. Science is a whole thing, a state of mind; you can’t just cut off one area of “climate science”; everything links together.
This is beginning to sound like the traditional complaint about modern-day parents: they don’t back up respect-for-teachers, and as a consequence the teachers can’t teach, and so the children can’t learn.
[Update: As Eli says Looking back at many of the attacks on science from our dear friends, they are wails that climate, and tobacco, and ozone scientists are not doing textbook science, and, of course, since most people only have learned textbook science, this can look like a pretty convincing argument. It is also why demands for regulatory science can be deadly to real science and why "auditing" is a distraction and a fraud. ">Looking back at many of the attacks on science from our dear friends, they are wails that climate, and tobacco, and ozone scientists are not doing textbook science, and, of course, since most people only have learned textbook science, this can look like a pretty convincing argument. It is also why demands for regulatory science can be deadly to real science and why "auditing" is a distraction and a fraud. ]
