Kudos to our own John Fleck for responding to Michael Chrichton, the fiction writer.

ABQjournal: Anti-Greenhouse Argument Hot Air By John Fleck

I call it “the Galileo argument.”

It frequently pops up in defense of people whose ideas lie out of the scientific mainstream. When Galileo argued four centuries ago that the Earth circles the sun, the argument goes, he too was out of the mainstream.

It is an argument that has some currency this month, with the release of novelist Michael Crichton’s new anti-global warming thriller “State of Fear.”

I think people should be reminded that Galileo wasn’t “outside the scientific mainstream.” It is chillingly germane that Galileo’s science was viewed as threatening to the power of the Church. When those with power feel threatened, as the Church did, they will do anything to stop those who threaten them.

“The greatest scientists in history are great precisely because they broke with the consensus. There is no such thing as consensus science,” Crichton continued. “If it’s consensus, it isn’t science. If it’s science, it isn’t consensus. Period.”

It’s a rhetorically powerful line of argument [says Fleck]

Hold on. Look at Chrichton, who writes TV drama, claiming that “if it is consensus, it isn’t science.” Wow — if we agree, we’re wrong — an argument that definitely appeals to me. But this same argument is used to shoot down Darwin.

Science is under attack by people who believe there is one truth — a completely anti-Science ‘truth’ — and it belongs to them. There is no debate, no discussion, just The Truth as they see it.

Watch for Chrichton’s assertions to be taken up by the Republican Echo Chamber. Enjoy the irony of the Right Wing insisting that unanimity is bad and dissent leads to the truth. Ha! mjh

Fleck frequently blogs on global climate change at inkstain.net with copious links.