The Corruption of our National Academies -- as discovered by an environmentalist

Excerpt:

Up until a few months ago, I was a big supporter of our National Academies. No more.

A fact of life today is that the internet has facilitated the rapid and continuous dissemination of misinformation and disinformation by those promoting nothing more than self-serving interests. Lobbyists are full well aware of this power and have launched an unprecedented "marketing" assault on citizens and politicians. The motivations are simple: greed and power. Yes they have always been around, but today we have the perfect storm. We now toss around "Trillions of dollars" like these are some reasonable amounts! These staggering and unprecedented disbursements have (not surprisingly) spawned the most sophisticated and aggressive breed of profiteers that we have ever encountered.

As a physicist and longtime environmental advocate, I know that it is critically important that (to counter this onslaught) there be a source of competent, objective, scientific information on the technology issues (like energy) that we face today. I had looked to the National Academies to fill that essential role. No more. Here is the tale of woe that came about when I happened to peek under an innocent looking rock. It started by my looking over a report in one of my fields of expertise: "Electricity from Renewable Sources..."

Having read many hundreds of energy reports, it didn't take long to see that this document was nothing more than agenda propaganda, and that any connection with science was inadvertent and purely happenstance. I was surprised that such a PR piece had been released by the Academies, and decided to investigate whether this was an aberration, or a degradation of their standards. I was put in touch with a senior person at the Academies - we'll play Dear Abby here and (to protect the innocent) call him "Dr. D."

I had several lengthy correspondences with Dr. D, and the more I heard, the more concerned I became. In the beginning, after I objected to the lack of science and objectivity in this report, Dr. D tried to dismiss my contentions by stating that I simply didn't like it's conclusions. That, of course, was a disingenuous response, as I had said nothing about the report's conclusions, and had focused my comments on its methodology.

Unfortunately, this was a sign of similar foolishness to come. After receiving a barrage of excuses for the report's unscientific methods, I finally asked Dr. D outright: are you more a defender of the Academies' existing report system, or a person genuinely interested in improving it? He quickly assured me that he was both. Unfortunately that also has proved to be inaccurate, as in our entire 21 pages of correspondence there was not a single matter where he said anything remotely like: "That's a good idea - I will do everything I can to incorporate that into our report process."

My main message to him was: "I have been an ardent supporter of the National Academies. Due to their good standing in the scientific and political community, the Academies have been targeted by lobbyists to become another outlet for promotion of their financial interests." "Despite your belief that that the Academies' report system is robust, it HAS been compromised by the "Electricity from Renewable Resources" report."

I won't bore you with all the details of our communications, but what I eventually did was to boil down the many issues we covered, into four key ones. To make absolutely sure that I was not reading something into what Dr. D might have rashly said to me, I asked him to answer these four questions (regarding reports put out by the Academies):

1 - What's more important: the Process or the Result?

2 - What's more important: "consensus science" or scientific methodology?

3 - What's more important: Confidentiality or Transparency?

4 - Does a committee member whose employment is directly connected to the results of their report have a bias or a conflict of interest?

Please give these some thought, before reading about his answers. I made these particular queries as to me the core issue here is scientific integrity. If the Academies are not an objective bastion of scientific information, then who is? To simplify matters, I purposely phrased each question so that the second option was what I believe is the correct answer. Surprisingly (to me), despite some pontification, Dr. D said that the Academies chose the first option to each of the questions. And I found none of his responses to be satisfactory, or science-based.

My most disturbing observation is that Dr. D studiously avoided the Academies from taking the "scientific role" throughout this whole report process. For instance, his astounding answer to my first question (I'm paraphrasing) was: the less evidence there is available, the more the Academies deviate from scientific standards. (Huh?!) This flies in the face of ALL logic. It would seem to me that "where the available evidence is thin, or not definitive, or when deep ideological divisions exist" that all three of those circumstances would scream out: BE EXTRA CAREFUL, AND GET MORE EMPIRICAL EVIDENCE BEFORE PROCEEDING!

Yet Dr. D said no to that, and instead stated that it was the Academies' policy to let a select handful of biased people make a guess that suited their agenda. Furthermore, regarding the Renewable's Electricity report, there are some 100,000 turbines actively producing data throughout the world today. Exactly how and why can the data from 100,000 turbines be "thin" or "not definitive"? The only conceivable explanation for that would be that the keepers of such data know that the results do not promote their financial interests, and therefore prefer not to release it. ---------

In Dr. D's answer to my second question, he begrudgingly acknowledged that the result is "important." However, he then stated that results "need to be supported by the best evidence available" which is a good sound bite, but is precisely what did NOT happen with the Renewable's Electricity report - and he already made an excuse for it in his prior answer. Good evidence DOES exist in this case, and if the committee members made a formal, public complaint about it's "non-availability," it is extremely likely that it would then get released. The fact that they took no such action would indicate that the majority (along with their complicit "monitors") were willing to settle for speculation - even though they knew that hard data existed.

This exactly follows Dr. D's full script where he effectively said "the results need to be supported by the best evidence available, but if real evidence isn't easy to come by (or if it doesn't support the agenda of the majority of the committee) then the committee will forgo such evidence, and instead rely on a consensus adjudication."

Amazing. I can't say it any better than this: "The work of science has nothing whatever to do with consensus. Consensus is the business of politics. Science, on the contrary, requires only one investigator who happens to be right, which means that he or she has results that are verifiable by reference to the real world. In science consensus is irrelevant. What is relevant is reproducible results. The greatest scientists in history are great precisely because they broke with the consensus." -----------

Regarding my third question, he again made a token acknowledgment, saying "Transparency is, of course, essential to the results..." The problem is that (despite these good words) there is essentially zero transparency in this report (and evidently in the Academies' normal review process). Transparency is when ALL of the review comments provided are published (e.g. as an addendum and after the report is issued), and each of these are identified as to their source. That did NOT happen here. Based on his words, Dr. D believes that "transparency" simply means listing the names of the reviewers and the monitors.

Right after admitting that transparency was good, he then went about arguing against it. His first claim (unsupported) was that "transparency results in less quality reviews." I sent him a study that concluded otherwise. Despite providing no data that supports his contention, he persists with this illogical opinion. His second justification for doing an inferior job at transparency boiled down to his belief that other institutions do a worse job at transparency than the Academies do. I asked him if he was familiar with the adage "Two wrongs don't make a right?" No reply.

More HERE

Posted by John Ray. For a daily critique of Leftist activities, see DISSECTING LEFTISM. To keep up with attacks on free speech see TONGUE-TIED. Also, don't forget your daily roundup of pro-environment but anti-Greenie news and commentary at GREENIE WATCH . Email me (John Ray) here