Tom,

I woke up this morning realizing that your analysis here is the most accurate and cogent description of the process by which the left has taken over the academic community that I have ever read. You applied it specifically to the climate field, but I experienced this exact same process as a film teacher in New York, and later as a freelance science journalist. In both cases I rarely faced outright blackballing, but was repeatedly faced with either compromising my personal opinions and beliefs in order to survive under the increasing leftwing social peer pressure, or find myself pushed out of the field.

I refused to do it, and so the best job offers and book contracts and teaching assignments increasingly went to others.

Anyway, I would like to promote your comment here, plus my additional comments, to the main page, as I did with Edward a few weeks ago. May I?

It may be simply the political version of natural selection. For 25 years, till Al Gore came close to riding Global Warming to the White House, “Atari Democrats” were hip to shaping “scientific consensus” by shaping funding. It had happened in the “Social Sciences” for decades. You do not tell a researcher outright that he will get money to draw conclusion X from his work. You wait and see whether his conclusions from his work are favorable to getting more power. Then, you fund him for future work if it does, and don’t fund him if it doesn’t.

Eventually, given the monopsony the Federal government has on buying research, and your control of that money, will winnow from the discipline those who do not come to the conclusions you need as a lever to create more political power. The majority of the people remaining will either be believers themselves, or cynical enough to give you what you want, as long as they can keep their jobs.

In no single year will there be a flip-flop from one opinion to the other, …just a slow drift for a decade or more, in this case 25 years. Those who do not agree with the funded conclusions have to face the majority in their field, in addition to their own university administration who are all too well aware of what gets the university funding and what does not. The university administrative offices that “help” scientists write and get grants are exquisitely aware of what will and will not be acceptable.

The scientific method developed an excellent reputation between 1650 and 1950, for eventually getting closer to the truth. Meanwhile, from at least 1534, when Henry VIII bought the opinions of universities around Europe to declare his divorce from Catherine of Aragon legitimate, academia in general has developed a reputation as the whores of whatever government waves the most money at them. That reputation is deserved, and the university administrators, in all their progressive glory, have heavy pressure that can bear on even tenured professors, and overwhelming influence on those without tenure.

Ultimately, the only way to keep this from happening is to break the monopsony. *Many* sources of funding science are needed, or we will continue to see long-term “shaping” of fields in ways that increase political control over civil society.

http://www.climatedepot.com/2015/11/24/obama-says-paris-climate-conference-a-powerful-rebuke-to-isis/

How are these connected?

Is “climate change” driving the insanity in the Middle East? ISIS is pissed over Climate change and this has sent them on their murderous path? What am I missing?

I hope this blows up in the media, but I see little chance.