Tuesday, 28 August 2007

James Hansen to join list of history's scientific fraudsters?

Here's something to think about. Will NASA's head of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies, James Hansen, be viewed positively by history or join the list of famous scientific fraudsters, some of which are listed below.

Charles Dawson - Piltdown Man Fraudster

Charles Dawson (1864 – August 1916) was an amateur British archeologist who is credited and blamed with discoveries that turned out to be imaginative frauds, including that of the Piltdown Man (Eoanthropus dawsoni), which he presented in 1912. Dawson was often present at finds in the archeological digs, or was the finder himself.

Trofim Lysenko - Genetics Fraudster

Trofim Denisovich Lysenko (September 29, 1898–November 20, 1976) was a biologist and agronomist who was director of Soviet biology under Joseph Stalin. Lysenko rejected Mendelian genetics in favor of the hybridization theories of Russian horticulturist Ivan Vladimirovich Michurin, and adopted them into a powerful political scientific movement termed Lysenkoism. His unorthodox experimental research in improved crop yields earned the support of Soviet leadership, especially following the famine and loss of productivity resulting from forced collectivization in several regions of the Soviet Union in the early 1930s. In 1940 he became director of the Institute of Genetics within the USSR's Academy of Sciences, and Lysenko's anti-Mendelian doctrines were further secured in Soviet science and education by the exercise of political influence and power. Scientific dissent from Lysenko's theories of environmentally acquired inheritance was formally outlawed in 1948, and for the next several years opponents were purged from held positions, and many imprisoned. Lysenko's work was officially discredited in the Soviet Union in 1964, leading to a renewed emphasis there to re-institute Mendelian genetics and orthodox science...Today much of Lysenko's agricultural experimentation and research is largely viewed as fraudulent.

Woo-Suk Hwang - Stem Cell Fraudster

Hwang Woo-Suk (born 29 January 1953) is a South Korean biomedical scientist. He was a professor of theriogenology and biotechnology at Seoul National University (dismissed on March 20, 2006) who rose to fame after claiming a series of remarkable breakthroughs in the field of stem cell research. Until November 2005, he was considered one of the pioneering experts in the field of stem cell research, best known for two articles published in the journal Science in 2004 and 2005 where he fraudulently reported to have succeeded in creating human embryonic stem cells by cloning. Both papers have been editorially retracted after being found to contain a large amount of fabricated data. He has admitted to various lies and frauds.

James Hansen - Climate Change Fraudster?

James E. Hansen (born March 29, 1941 in Denison, Iowa), heads the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies[1] in New York City, a part of the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, Earth Sciences Division. He is currently an adjunct professor in the Earth and Environmental Sciences department at Columbia University. Hansen is best known for his testimony on climate change to congressional committees in the 1980s that helped raise broad awareness of the global warming issue. He is a vocal critic of the Bush Administration's stance on climate change.

There are few figures held in such high esteem by proponents of man made global warming as is James Hansen. Al Gore is perhaps better known globally but Hansen's scientific credentials give weight to his global warming pronouncements.

Hansen's claims of global warming are based on the data from the global temperature data set. Of this data set the most reliable has been that in the US itself, as it has had the least disruption due to external influences and has the most naturally scientifically inquisitive, data-rational society on earth.

The recent discovery that Hansen had made an error in the surface temperature record that changed the warmest year in the US from 1998 to 1934 and resulted in five of the ten warmest years of the 20th century occurring before 1940 (and before a large rise in CO2 emissions) was a discovery of significant proportions. When much smaller errors have been made by those opposed to the man made global warming thesis are discovered the pro-AGW crowd, supported by a scientifically ignorant but politically compliant media, make a huge song and dance and use it to discredit the Deniers' arguments. Yet when this error was discovered it was met with barely a yawn from the media and accusations by Hansen that his opponents were 'Climate Jesters'.

If that was the only error that had been made then a correction would be all that is needed. However, upon further discovery it transpires that significant doctoring of the US surface temperature record has been taking place resulting in a clear warming bias when the underlying data does not support that conclusion.

Will James Hansen join this rogues' gallery of scientific fraudsters? It seems more likely than not when the false science of global warming is done and dusted.

1 comment:

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