Around eleven this morning, Gretchen let me know that my nephew, Henry Palikowski, Junior, wished to arrange for a telephone consultation today whenever I had the free time in my schedule. I certainly had no problem with that – because while Congress sometimes stages a circus this time of year, as it is doing at the moment about the health care bill – generally speaking, nothing much gets done in Washington between Halloween and the Super Bowl. That, of course, creates a few free spots in my otherwise packed consultation schedule. Consequently, I was able to accommodate Hank Jr. at three o’clock. That’s a time a lot of federal bureaucrats like to book meetings with me, because they know I don’t care if they come in and take a nap on the couch in my office instead of obtaining advice about the burning issues of today’s desperate world. It’s a really nice couch, if I do say so myself; just over nine feet long, and exquisitely upholstered with the softest, most scrumptiously comfy, butter-soft lamb’s leather. It was a gift from a grateful Middle Eastern potentate, whom I assisted in a rather thorny problem involving a couple of his wives. I don’t mind confessing that I’ve spent quite a few blissful afternoon hours sacked out on it myself. But there was no GS-15 deadwood or SES bozo snoozing on it today at that time in the afternoon when everybody, let’s face it, gets a bit drowsy. No, they were all taking annual leave or attending the second rounds of holiday parties, the first round of which, as I mentioned earlier, started here in early November. I’m sure all the unemployed Americans out there, most of whom will be lucky if they don’t celebrate Thanksgiving with their families at the Salvation Army, will all be absolutely delighted to know that here in Washington, where the money they can’t earn anymore is printed, the civil servants who live off the taxes they paid when they had jobs (and next year will live off money we borrow from the Chinese) are doing just fine, thank you. They’re presently at various holiday fêtes, snarfing expensive food and swilling top-shelf drinks, all provided by appropriately obsequious federal contractors anxious to curry the favor of those whom the law allows to treat the taxpayers’ wealth as their own. Anyway, round about ten minutes after three, Hank Jr. called.
Hank Jr.: Hi, Tom! Thanks for taking the time to talk with me.
Tom: No problem, Hank Junior. How are things at Brown?
Hank Jr.: Pretty much awesome. I’m learning a lot about art.
Tom: Glad to hear it. So what can I do for you?
Hank Jr.: Well, it’s not me who needs advice at the moment, actually, it’s my friend here, Sandy.
Tom: And what’s her problem?
Hank Jr.: She’s an environmental science major.
Tom: Excellent! That’s a fine scientific discipline to work in, and these days, there are lots of opportunities to do good things for humanity…
Hank Jr.: That’s just it, Tom, Sandy’s thinking about changing her major. That’s why I suggested she talk to you.
Tom: Sure! I consider it my civic duty to advise the young and clueless. Put her on.
Hank Jr.: Uh, to tell the truth, I’m almost out of minutes for this month.
Tom: On the twenty-third? What, have you been gabbing on it with your… new friend Sandy all month, perhaps?
Hank Jr.: Yeah, as a matter of fact, I have. So she’s going to call you from the land line at the biology lab where she’s doing work study as soon as her shift ends. It should only take a couple of minutes.
Tom: Okay, I’ll wait.
I spent about ten minutes surfing the Web, then Gretchen put Sandy through on Line One.
Sandy: Hello? Mr. Collins?
Tom: Hi, Sandy. My nephew Henry tells me you would like some advice about switching majors.
Sandy: Not exactly, Mr. Collins. I just need to talk to somebody who’s knowledgeable and has an objective viewpoint, and Hank said you’re the smartest person inside the Beltway…
Tom: Which is a lot like being the tallest building in Baltimore.
Sandy: Baltimore? Does that include the Bromo-Seltzer tower?
Tom: I suppose it would. You know Baltimore?
Sandy: My brother’s studying embryology at Johns Hopkins. I visited him there last summer for a week.
Tom: How’d you like it?
Sandy: I think that if I had six months to live, I’d move to Baltimore.
Tom: Really? Why?
Sandy: Because every day there seems like a year.
Tom: So I’ve heard. Be that as it may, however, what can I do for you?
Sandy: Well, Mr. Collins, speaking of what you have heard, have you heard about what happened at the University of East Anglia?
Tom: Widespread student rioting after a bad call at a cricket match, perhaps?
Sandy: No..
Tom: Acute tea shortage?
Sandy: Ah, not that I…
Tom: Bawdy, cannabis-fueled midnight revels at Sutton Hoo?
Sandy: Sutton who? Uh, no, Mr. Collins, I’m afraid I don’t even know anybody named Sutton. What happened at the University of East Anglia is, some hackers broke into the Climate Research Unit e-mail server and downloaded over a thousand e-mails – nearly one hundred and seventy megabytes of text.
Tom: Sounds to me like some people have way too much time on their hands.
Sandy: But it wasn’t like most computer hacking, Mr. Collins; just a meaningless, stupid act of immature, juvenile rebellion, perpetrated by sallow, maladjusted, virgin teenage boys with no social skills. This was a strictly professional job!
Tom: Oh, you mean, it was perpetrated by juvenile, immature guys who decided to make a career out of being sallow, maladjusted virgins with no social skills?
Sandy: Something like that, I guess. They hacked into the East Anglia e-mail system and copied one thousand and sixty-nine e-mails sent by various environmental scientists. Then they posted all those e-mails on the Internet so anybody can read them. I heard it covers a time period of over ten years.
Tom: Hey, wait a minute here. That’s only about one hundred e-mails per year, then.
Sandy: Uh, yeah, I guess it is.
Tom: That doesn’t seem right…
Sandy: Now that you mention it, yeah, that definitely seems strange. I guess the hackers must have only posted some of them.
Tom: So it would appear. Did the hackers have, ah… shall we say, a point of view, which might be evident from the e-mails they selected?
Sandy: Yeah, they did – that global warming is a scientific fraud.
Tom: Well, certainly, you don’t believe that, do you?
Sandy: No, no, of course not! But the stuff in those e-mails, Mr. Collins! There’s this one where the Center’s director, Phil Jones, writes about another scientist who doesn’t think the evidence proves global warming is anthropogenic. Dr. Jones says his colleague and he will keep that person’s work out of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Report, even if that means redefining what peer-reviewed literature is!
Tom: And that bothers you?
Sandy: Yes, Mr. Collins, it sure does! What if I become an environmental scientist and submit something to a peer-reviewed journal for publication, and somebody like Dr. Jones decides that, no matter what my research says, it’s not going to be published? Does that sound like an attitude of dispassionate inquiry to you?
Tom: Not exactly, I suppose.
Sandy: And then, there’s another e-mail where Dr. Jones says that he and the other scientists who agree with his research should stop submitting papers to that journal until that journal fires the editor who keeps accepting papers that disagree with them. What kind of objectivity is that?
Tom: Undoubtedly a highly Byzantine version at the very least.
Sandy: It’s just shallow, nasty, tawdry politics, isn’t it?
Tom: All politics is shallow, nasty and tawdry.
Sandy: They call other scientists who don’t agree with them “idiots.” Is that proper professional conduct?
Tom: Well, actually, some scientists are idiots. I know – I’ve met them; you’d be surprised how many work for the United States government.
Sandy: One of Jones’ colleagues – or perhaps I should say, cronies – actually admits that their current theories can’t explain why the earth isn’t getting warmer faster than it is and says it’s a travesty that they don’t. Is that any way to characterize a disagreement between theory and observation – “a travesty?”
Tom: At the very least, I would say that was definitely a poor choice of words.
Sandy: Plus, there’s another e-mail from last year, where Dr. Jones asks another scientist, one in the United States, to collude with him by deleting e-mails that had been requested under the US Freedom of Information Act. Is that intellectual honesty?
Tom: More likely, it is the thoughts of somebody who did not observe the dictum that one should never write in an e-mail, that which they would not like to later read on the front page of the New York Times.
Sandy: And then, there’s this e-mail where Dr. Jones writes about using a clever presentation method to prevent global warming detractors from using tree ring data to support their own theories of a worldwide cooling trend. When the tree ring data stops agreeing with the thermometer data, Jones and his buddies just quit using it. That’s not science! That’s not respect for the truth!
Tom: And Pilate said unto Jesus, “What is truth?” I take it that all this bothers you, then?
Sandy: Quite a bit. I thought that if I spent eight years getting a Ph.D. in environmental science, I’d be rewarded with a career in a field where an unbiased intellectual inquiry into Nature is pursued with honesty and integrity.
Tom: So – you’re a sophomore there at Brown, I take it?
Sandy: Um, ah… yes, as a matter of fact, I am. How did you guess?
Tom: Well, I was a sophomore myself once, you know. It’s a great time of life, that’s for sure. You’re old enough to understand the world and still young enough to be idealistic about it. On the other hand, however, your consternation is exactly typical.
Sandy: Huh?
Tom: Look, everything you’ve said about science is true, theoretically. But scientists are human, and, as humans go, they’re not exactly short on ego. Not as bad as musicians, or, God forbid, medical doctors, to be sure, but scientists are still pretty egotistical, no doubt about it. And what’s more, they have to publish their work, then write proposals to get grants, and all the while their work is constantly under the scrutiny of people who don’t always understand what it means to be a scientist.
Sandy: Which is?
Tom: Being a scientist means that you do science; and if you don’t make mistakes, you’re not doing it right. But the people who fund research don’t always understand that. On the contrary, those people think scientists have to be right all the time about everything, otherwise, they’re no good. In addition, if the science involved concerns vested economic interests, politics or religion, the process gets even more corrupted, because there are legions of evil, misguided or just plain stupid, ignorant people who have their own, preconceived notions of the truth. Those monsters hate anybody who disagrees with them about anything that will affect their wealth, their racial or cultural prejudices and privileges; or, whom they think will offend their great and powerful imaginary friend up in the sky. So here’s Dr. Jones, doing research, publishing in peer-reviewed scientific journals, trying to keep the grant money coming. Now, along comes some whore… no, I apologize to whores for comparing them to such a person… along comes this… warped, amoral individual who has some shreds of scientific credibility himself, but just happens to be receiving huge payments from petroleum and coal interests. That person starts making stuff up, trying to discredit Dr. Jones and his colleagues, and guess what, the coal and oil scumbags have plenty of money to recruit more intellectual criminals just like that guy – all of them with nothing else to do but bedevil Dr. Jones and his colleagues by bombarding all the relevant scientific journals with bogus papers, hoping that one or two will get published and legitimize their greed-driven campaign of lies. All that while poor Dr. Jones and his colleagues contend with everything else they would have to deal with anyway. So what do you expect? Here’s a bunch of hard working, legitimate scientists, all of them with big, tender egos, not only having to put up with the usual aggravation, but also having to deal with this cadre of hired charlatans who constantly harass them while they’re trying to get some serious scientific research done – and not just for months, not just for years, but for decades – for their entire careers! Now, tell me, really, wouldn’t that situation make you a little bit testy sometimes?
Sandy: Yeah, I suppose it would.
Tom: Okay, so here you are, writing e-mails about global climate science to your various colleagues. And in the course of all those messages, maybe once in a while you mention those pesky bugger-hats who are jerking you and all your colleagues around like dogs on a rope; and your frustration breaks through a little bit. Maybe you write some comments in haste, clicking on that Send control without stopping to consider what those words might look like on some corporate tool’s climate-change denial blog, or sound like shouted from the boob tube by some asinine half-wit like Bill O’Reilly, Glenn Beck or United States Senator James M. Inhofe of Oklahoma, some five or ten years hence, because you made the mistake of assuming you had something resembling privacy, and…
Sandy: Mr. Collins?
Tom: Yes?
Sandy: Is all of environmental science like that?
Tom: Pretty much.
Sandy: What about the other sciences?
Tom: Well, I certainly wouldn’t recommend becoming an archeologist. No matter where you try to work, there are going to be people who want to interpret your findings to suit their own notions of where certain ethnic groups and cultures come from, who has an ancestral right to which pieces of land, whose favorite divinity blessed them, and so forth. Archeology has been used for sinister and misguided political purposes since the day it was invented. Then there’s anthropology, that’s another one. Don’t you dare suggest that modern Europeans are the least bit different from other groups of humans on this planet because their ancestors interbred with the Neanderthals, for example. You’ll have all kinds of folks out to hang you from the highest tree they can find, and not one of them motivated by the spirit of scientific inquiry, I guarantee. And biology, of course, Lord love a duck, you can just forget about that. The First Amendment gives every pathetic lunatic true believer of any conceivable religious persuasion an unlimited license to scream babbling nonsense at biologists while they try to work, any time, anywhere, on anything at all. And if your research involves rats, monkeys, guinea pigs and so forth, throw in kidnapping, arson, bombings, assault and death threats from animal-rights crackpots, too.
Sandy: Gee, Mr. Collins, like I said, that’s why I called, you see. This business with the e-mail hackers got me wondering if maybe I should change my major. When I first started talking to you, I thought maybe I should change to another science because it looked like the climate scientists were cheating or something, but now that I’ve talked to you about things, I want to change my major for an entirely different reason.
Tom: What’s that?
Sandy: From what you’ve described, it sounds like being a scientist is a tough, thankless, underpaid job that has the potential to really, really suck.
Tom: Now that you mention it, I definitely would not recommend a career in science to any young person, for exactly that reason. On the other hand, if they have already decided….
Sandy: Okay. I get the picture What alternative would you recommend?
Tom: Well, the situation at the University of East Anglia is a pretty good indication that the field of cyber-security sure could use some more bright young people working in it.
Sandy: But that’s computer science isn’t it?
Tom: My dear, so-called “computer science” is to real science as plumbing is to fluid dynamics.
Sandy: You mean it’s easy?
Tom: Any real scientist can do it if they want to. Piece of cake. Quite well paid, too.
Sandy: Come to think of it, I’m already writing software and doing systems development when I work on my climate models.
Tom: Of course you are. Who knows? In ten years, you could be in charge of keeping pimply, smelly, jerk-off hackers with bad teeth and ratty hair out of important private databases they have no business messing with.
Sandy: Yeah, that was pretty outrageous of them, breaking into the e-mail server. I think I’d enjoy frustrating slime balls like that.
Tom: But I’d advise you give it some thought – you know, sleep on it before you make up your mind to change your major. It’s a pretty big step, after all.
Sandy: Sure – good point… Thanks. But… what about those damn tree rings, anyway?
Tom: Like I said, when you do science, if you don’t make mistakes, you’re not doing it right. It’s part and parcel of the paradigm. If the tree rings stopped agreeing with the thermometers, then relying on tree ring data in the first place was a probably mistake – an understandable mistake, but a mistake nonetheless. The tree rings used to get thicker every year as the planet got warmer, but now they aren’t doing that anymore. Why? How about the trees are growing taller now, or maybe the rising carbon dioxide levels are causing increased foliage growth instead, or perhaps the carbon dioxide is dissolving in the oceans faster, so that…
Sandy: Omigod! That’s it! Mr. Collins, you’re a genius! Gotta go! Gotta go right now and run the simulations…
Tom: By all means, please do. Who am I to stand in the way of scientific progress?
Sandy: Oh, oh, thanks, thanks, thanks! Omigod! Goodbye!