Hmmmm. I thought Mikk was joking with this thread. That scientists commit fraud is unexceptionable. Try googling "Scientific fraud". Wikipedia has an interesting article on it http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_misconduct.

I can think of a couple of instances in recent times off the top of my head. There was the William McBride case in Australia, which is discussed in this article which also discusses other cases of Australian scientific fraud http://www.bmartin.cc/pubs/89ta.html.

So, scientists are no different from any other profession - there are bad apples, and they are often very eminent people in their field.

Then in climate science, the area he appears to be specifically aiming at, we have the Climategate emails which clearly show a number of scientists involved in fraud concerning their work. These have only just recently surfaced, but in some respects they already confirm what we knew about some of the participants.

I don't know of any reputable critic of the IPCC who claims that all scientists are involved in a plot. What has been evident for a long time is that the number of scientists who are directly involved in the science of global warming, as distinct from those who are involved in fields that might be impacted by global warming, is quite small, and is dominated by climate modellers. It is the work of those scientists which is often criticised, and which is impacted by the corruption evident in the Climategate emails.

If Mikk is looking for reasons why scientists may be corrupted, then the wiki article gives a number of non-monetary reasons. Public choice theory also provides some explanations. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_choice_theory

I see a lot of the nonsense that passes for global warming debate as being a systemic failure involving scientists, politicians, journalists and teachers.

Sorry Graham after looking at your links I think scientific fraud IS exceptional. In all of scientific endeavor there has only been a very small number of frauds AND they have all been discovered fairly easily and stopped. What I would say IS exceptional is getting away with scientific fraud. All of the famous frauds have been exposed by the same peer review/reproducibility doctrine all science is subject to.

I could show many many more instances of fraud and dishonesty in the business world. Does that mean business is illegitimate? Public choice theory is just another economic con trick designed to give preordained answers that while they fit the proponents world view, they show no resemblance to reality as we know it and experience it every day. Just like all the rest of right wing capitalist economic theories.

Mikk, nothing anyone does, in any other sphere, justifies what the global warming shonks have done.

A business may rip of a few people. What this lot were doing is ripping off half the people or the globe, just to satisfy their egos.

Slander them! No one could do that. There is nothing left, that you could call them, that would be bad enough to do that.

Scientific fraud is rather self-limiting.

Why do it? to get funding.

Why is it limited? Everyone else in the field will either depend on your result and later find it wanting, or actively take the position that you are wrong. A scientist demonstrated to be fraudulent will have torched their career, will not get grants approved, will not get any contracts renewed.

Contrast this with creationist pseudo-scientists who keep getting money from religious suckers just to keep generating saleable magazine articles for religious rags and you start to see who is really honest.

Rusty