Re: religion help

In article <h0lpu3$dlu$1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
Remus Shepherd <remus@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

David Friedman <ddfr@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Note that you are talking (I think) about articles either written by
government employees or being published by government agencies getting
censored for political reasons--which indeed strikes me as quite likely
under the Bush administration--or other administrations. James is
talking about scientists suffering "persecution and punishment," which
isn't the same thing.

Ah, maybe we're talking across each other, then. If so, then I owe
James an apology.

You guys have gotten under my skin with this topic, whether by
attacking the scientific method or by discounting my actual experiences,
or by my perception that you've done either of those things. I'm sorry,
I should not have taken either of those personally.

James attempts to get under people's skins--and since he didn't give
examples, I don't know if he can support his point or not.

For what it's worth, I've been corresponding by email with someone at
NASA as the result of my emailing them to point out that a JPL/NASA web
page makes an assertion about arctic sea ice that appears to be very
nearly the opposite of the truth. After several rounds of exchanges in
which he simply ignored the point I was making, which was about their
description of the data, in order to assure me that their conclusion was
correct--and during which, so far as I could tell, he never bothered to
look at the webbed information I had provided links to which
contradicted what the web page claimed--he finally said that he was a
media person not a scientist, and offered to put me in touch with
someone who could respond.

He was a pleasant, polite fellow. What struck me about the conversation
was that he was sure he understood the truth on the subject and I just
wasn't following it--and then eventually conceded that he had no
expertise at all. He didn't seem to understand the difference between a
claim about a level (arctic sea ice area is below its past average over
the time for which we have good data) and a claim about a rate of change
(current data show it going up for the past year and a half, after about
a decade going down).

If anyone's curious, this is coming out of two posts on my blog about a
month ago. The main thing I learned--from the comments section--was the
resistance of people supporting the currently orthodox account to even
the plainest evidence that someone on their side was misrepresenting the
facts.

Also the willingness of people on both sides (one of each) to argue with
each other for ever on the comments section of my blog.

--
http://www.daviddfriedman.com/ http://daviddfriedman.blogspot.com/
Author of
_Future Imperfect: Technology and Freedom in an Uncertain World_,
Cambridge University Press.
.

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