"They also don't address the allegation of whether some of these scientists have started with the conclusions and searched for data to show that it exists"
Isn't this sort of normal? Present a hypothesis and then set out to see if it is true.
No, you present a hypothesis and try prove it wrong. And best science is done when many people try to prove it wrong. Less scrutiny is not better science.
> Wild accusations by people with political agendas hardly counts as "scientific scrutiny".
Actually, it does.
More to the point, you're cherry-picking the skeptics. The skeptics found that all of the ocean-rising data is due to a single measurement station. The skeptics found that the "hottest year in the US" data was wrong. The skeptics found that the hockey stick wasn't. And so on.
And no, motivation doesn't actually matter. Only facts and interpretation do.
More to the point, you're cherry-picking the skeptics. The skeptics found that all of the ocean-rising data is due to a single measurement station. The skeptics found that the "hottest year in the US" data was wrong. The skeptics found that the hockey stick wasn't. And so on.
You don't have to be a "skeptic" to look for faults in scientific papers. That's how the process is supposed to work.
And no, motivation doesn't actually matter. Only facts and interpretation do.
Of course it matters. Ulterior motives in science have reliably blinded people from facts for hundreds of years. Just look at how long it took people to agree that tobacco was harmful--and how much money was being paid by the tobacco companies to try to avoid that conclusion.
Even if every single thing that someone says is factual, they may have committed dishonesty by omission of relevant information. Merely validating the words of someone with ulterior motives cannot ensure that you have not been misled. If you cannot trust someone's motivations, you cannot trust them at all.
>> And no, motivation doesn't actually matter. Only facts and interpretation do.
> Of course it matters. Ulterior motives in science have reliably blinded people from facts for hundreds of years.
The ulterior motives in question are not blinding people to data. They're exposing data.
"I want to see all the data to prove them wrong" is valid no matter why the person wants to prove them wrong. If they're wrong, they're wrong, regardless of why the person went to the effort.
Isn't this sort of normal? Present a hypothesis and then set out to see if it is true.