Friday, February 5, 2010

ClimateGate and Credibility

The Washington Post reported in mid-December that Obama and scientists had taken a hit in a recent poll:
There's also rising public doubt and growing political polarization about what scientists have to say on the environment, and a widespread perception that there is a lot of disagreement among scientists about whether global warming is happening.
In early January, Eric S. Raymond identified this phenomenon as the collapse of elite authority:



One shakes one’s head in disbelief. Is there anything our “educated classes” can’t f*ck up, any reality they won’t deny? Will Collier fails, however to ask the next question: why did they fail?
The short answer is that they fail because they commit what Friedrich von Hayek called the fatal conceit:

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