Pro Science means Pro Life, Mr. Mulcair

Vincent J. Curtis

1 Oct 15

While campaigning in northern Canada, NDP leader Thomas Mulcair launched another hectoring session against Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper.  This time it was about climate change, and the canard that Harper is creating a climate of fear, if you will, within the scientific community.  "We will remove the muzzle from Canadian scientists.  We will end the climate of fear in the public service," he was quoted as saying by the Canadian Press.  "I never thought that, as an elected official, I would ever one day have to say that I actually believed in science."  He called for the creation of an office of Parliamentary science officer in order to allow for 'evidence based decision making.'

Of course, all this commentary is so much fatuous nonsense.  But in making certain statements, one can lay a trap for oneself and then fall into it.

My comments are below.

NDP leader Thomas Mulcair demonstrated that, as an elected official, he is yet another Arts major who thinks he knows science better than real scientists do.  In the course of his remarks in which he pledged to create a new office of Parliamentary Science Officer, he said that he never thought he would have to say that he “believed in science.”

Science is not up for belief.  In the first place, science is an organized body of knowledge.  One does not believe in knowledge, one knows knowledge.  One believes what one does not know, or understand, or cannot prove.  If one possesses knowledge, you know the truth and there is no “believing” to it.  There is a considerable emotional gap between believing and knowing.

Secondly, his criticisms of Stephen Harper concerning science stem from the politicization of scientific inquiry, and particularly the politicization of inquiry into global warming.  Harper is evidently opposed to the politicization of scientific inquiry, while Mulcair doesn’t mind it at all because the political winds concerning global warming he happens to like.  There is much political commitment in the cause of global warming, and for years funding was granted to scientists who favored the global warming theory.

But what is Mulcair going to do, or say, when science begins to say things he does not like?  For example, the science of biology says that a new life is created at the moment of conception.  Since Mr. Mulcair is committed to believing this, will he admit that a life is extinguished by an abortion? Will he go so far as to say that aborting a fetus kills a human being?  What decision will he make on the basis of this evidence?

Is Mulcair going to selectively fund scientists who can be sure to say things he happens to like?  Scientists can be manipulated too, What science appears to say to the public at large can also be manipulated.  The funding is the means by which scientists can be made to appear to say what the funding authority wants to have said.

Canadian journalist Mark Steyn has published a new book of nothing but criticisms of the hockey stick graph that were said by climate scientists not named Michael Mann.  But you don’t hear much about it in media committed to the belief in global warming.

There is nothing to do but oppose the politicization of science, and let the facts fall where they may.

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