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Originally Posted by MuseChaser
Citation? Not even 97% of the scientist I know personally fit that description, and I've spent my entire adult life employed in public through post-graduate academia.
That was the funniest thing I've read in a long time. Seriously....it caused me to enjoy nasal coffee. Scientists are no more or less susceptible to outside biases than any other profession. I dare say, since quite a bit of (the bulk of?) the funding of their research comes from government grants and gifts from corportations with definite vested interests in ..shall we say...desired findings.... that perhaps research scientists may be bit MORE susceptible to outside pressures. You were kidding, right? Please tell me you were kidding....please.
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On the first part, some clarification please. Do the scientists you know dispute that Earth is warming? If not, do they dispute that the direct cause for Earth warming is an increase in various greenhouse gasses? If not, do they dispute the primary source of the increase in greenhouse gasses being related to human activity? I assume these scientists have published some data to back their opinions, so would you mind sharing that data?
On the second matter, I agree with you to a point. No scientists as people are not saints, nor are they ego-less, nor are they apolitical, and yes they have a number of pressures put on them due to monetary concerns. But, science as a profession has limits as to how far one might stray from the ideal before an individual is criticized, ostracized, and/or condemned. How many scientists that you know would straight up lie about objective data? It would be a really bad idea, considering someone else can run the same experiment and show it to be false, or at least that it is an anomaly. And if subjective conclusions do not follow a logical pattern leading back to some largely accepted theory or relationship, it is likely to be subject to quite a bit of criticism from peers. So in that way, science is ethically regulated.