Science says? Or Activists say?
Science says? Or Activists say?
Millions of Britons are struggling with record inflation and sky high energy prices yet their "scientists" are demanding what?
Perhaps the most pernicious effect of the fiatization of the modern university is the destruction of the scientific method. What passes for science now is a mix of government propaganda, corporate advertising, make-work welfare programs for nerds, and research papers that amount to meaning-free irrelevant gibberish. This sad state of affairs persists and survives because government intervention has removed the market test for success.
With funding for research primarily coming from government bureaucrats, academics don’t need to worry about real-world, profitable applications of their work. Irrelevant research bears no cost for the researcher or his institution. And with universities afforded an effective subsidy through subsidized loans for their consumers, the market test for success is removed, and universities, and the geeks populating their offices, are free to drift into a world of insignificance and corruption – a world with little regard for truth. The most obvious manifestation of this is the mushrooming of entire fields and departments specialized in producing completely inconsequential and incoherent noises and marketing them as scholarship.
- Saifedean H.Ammous in The Fiat Standard
Recalling the piece, The Knowledge System and its Discontents, there are four parts that compose of what Alex Epstein in his book Fossil Future refers to as the Knowledge System.
Researchers
Synthesizers
Disseminators
Evaluators
Keeping this in mind, let’s turn to The Guardian’s Damian Gayle who published an article puff piece entitled, Scientists call on colleagues to protest climate crisis with civil disobedience.
In it he covers an article recently published in the journal Nature Climate Change supposedly written by five scientists and one political scientist.
The article was jointly written by five climate scientists: Stuart Capstick, Aaron Thierry, Emily Cox, Steve Westlake and Julia K. Steinberger. A sixth byline was taken by Oscar Berglund, a political scientist at the University of Bristol who studies civil disobedience and social movements.
In it, he quotes some mindboggling things the authors allegedly said.
I write allegedly because Gayle didn’t even link to the article itself so readers are unable to verify. Not that it matters anyways because the article is paywalled.
Gayle’s entire puff piece is mostly a copy pasta of quotes from the scientists’ article itself anyways.
Consider:
“Civil disobedience by scientists has the potential to cut through the myriad complexities and confusion surrounding the climate crisis. When those with expertise and knowledge are willing to convey their concerns in a more uncompromising manner … this affords them particular effectiveness as a communicative act. This is the insight of Greta Thunberg when she calls on us to ‘act as you would in a crisis’.”
They continue:
“We have a kind of what we call epistemic authority here: people listen to what we are saying, as scientists, and it becomes a way of showing how serious the situation is, that we see ourselves forced to go to these lengths.”
Well okay, this begs some questions- are any of these people really scientists?
Or are they just activists who fell through the cracks by playing the academia game?
Where exactly in the Knowledge System do these individuals belong?
I’m using two criteria here - their Google Scholar and Twitter Profiles because as you’ll see, it’s all we need.
Stuart Capstick is listed as a “Research Fellow” at Cardiff University. The label under his profile in Google Scholar is “Psychology and climate change” Among his works are the following:
Aaron Thierry doesn’t have a listed position on Google Scholar but is noted on his Twitter profile as a graduate student at Cardiff (University’s) School of Social Science. He’s neither written nor co-authored a single paper related to climate change.
Emily Cox has no dedicated Google Scholar or Twitter profile and from what I can see she’s only cited in one article which was published in, well Nature Climate Change called, Public perceptions of carbon dioxide removal in the United States and the United Kingdom. She’s a Research Assistant at Cardiff University in their Department of Psychology.
Reading her profile on the Cardiff University page is telling. Notice every single sentence starts with “I.1”
I am a researcher in environmental policy and social psychology. I am an expert on technologies to remove CO2 from the atmosphere, focusing on social science dimensions such as public perceptions, policy, and ethics. I am currently working on a Leverhulme Trust project on the public acceptability of negative emissions technologies, working to embed principles of public engagement and responsible innovation in technology development. I am also an expert on energy security, with a PhD in the security of low-carbon electricity systems from SPRU at the University of Sussex. I currently work for the UK Energy Research Centre, researching the social science dimensions of resilience in energy systems. I am interested in the psychology of disruptive events such as blackouts, and I work with energy system engineers to incorporate ideas of social resilience into low-carbon infrastructure development.
Steve Westlake also has no dedicated Google Scholar profile however is listed as the primary author on one paper, A counter-narrative to carbon supremacy: do leaders who give up flying because of climate change influence the attitudes and behaviour of others? He’s a PhD. student in the School of Psychology at the University of Cardiff.
Julia K. Steinberger, excuse me, Professor Julia K. Steinberger has a more impressive Google Scholar profile.
Lastly is, Oscar Berglund, listed as a Lecturer in International Public and Social Policy at the University of Bristol. We can’t give him too much of a hard time, after all the Guardian puff piece did admit he was a political scientist. Among his outstanding academic achievements are
Word of advice perhaps Gayle and these so-called “scientists,” the glue is not intended for sniffing.
And you’d never guess what it’s made from.
At least those of us here in the US aren’t bailing them out.
It doesn’t take fifteen years of studying psychology to reveal this person has narcissism issues.
Holy crap and these are the people they are calling Scientists?? Have they lost their minds??
This type of bare-faced boldness is the result of rampant one-sided activism. Relentless COUNTER activism is what’s needed. And yet astonishingly there is none. Zero.
This strange absence of counter activism is so puzzling and such an obvious cause of the current state of affairs why does no one ever mention it? Is it because people don’t see how ridiculously easy it would be to fix? Is it a conspiracy of silence to avoid organizing an obvious solution??
I felt the urgent need to take shower after reading this. There's an infestation in academia and it smells.