Patrick Brennan reproduces a letter from a scientist pressured to resign from a climate skeptic group.
I had not expect[ed] such an enormous world-wide pressure put at me from a community that I have been close to all my active life. Colleagues are withdrawing their support, other colleagues are withdrawing from joint authorship etc.
I see no limit and end to what will happen. It is a situation that reminds me about the time of McCarthy. I would never have expecting anything similar in such an original peaceful community as meteorology. Apparently it has been transformed in recent years.
I do not know the full background. Perhaps there is a charitable interpretation. However, unless there are particulars that justify this instance, I am inclined to think that shunning of a former colleague for joining a climate skeptic group is a sign of intellectual weakness, not strength.
The list of speakers dis-invited or withdrawn from commencement addresses because of a purge mentality is also a source of concern. I wish that there were stronger voices on the left denouncing this phenomenon.
Academia is not a center for free speech, and from what I can tell, never has been. It’s not even surprising to see this in a scientific discipline, considering that it’s highly politicized and academia has chosen its side.
Colleagues are not supporting him for doing bad science. Poor guy…
@Morgan Price. You really could not have summed up the problem better. Though you probably didn’t intend it to be perfectly ironic.
Always terrible to hear about a distinguished professor being hounded by the illiterate public and the unthinking upholders of the status quo in his academic discipline. And I’m sure that when a Swedish academic can only compare his situation to McCarthyism that things must be dire indeed!
And I have to remember that even closer than Scandinavia, we have prominent intellectuals being criticized in our own midst. But overall, we’re a kinder and gentler community in the US than the ruffians associated with global warming . Should we assume that the abuse. the hatred, the death threats, the hostile graffiti Professor Bengtsson must deal with daily are only ten times as bad as the ill treatment that Paul Krugman faces? Or one hundred times as bad? Or even worse?
Of course, no true comparison can be drawn. Climate science matters to each of us, and we all reflect on its importance every day, if not every single hour. Whereas economics is of no importance to anyone.
All you need to do is read the comments on Tyler’s post to feel that the Left is not inclined to take a sane view, let alone a charitable view, of those with whom they disagree. Even amidst the moderating influence of a centrist MR platform, a great number of (I must assume progressive) readers seemed unfazed by these deveopments. As far as they are concerned, it’s the speakers’ fault for being so “extreme”, it’s the agitators’ right to disrupt events, and (back to ) it’s the speakers’ fault for bailing out under pressure.
It is hard to prove as one of the features of academia is to shun scientists. Hard to prove, but I think we know.
There are not nearly enough specifics provided here or in the link to evaluate the claims made by the climate skeptic in question here.
The withdrawal of “support” and “joint authorship” do not add up to McCarthyism in my view. Perhaps more information on the “etc.” would have been more impressive.
Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?
It’s academia, in a subject that relies on retaining favor with a limited number of peer for positions, prestige, and grants; what did you expect it to look like?
Yes, this is what you would expect it to look like. Regardless of the college or the issue people of all points of view tend to want to collaborate with and support others with similar views.
And so left wing economists do not advance or find support at universities known for a free market orientation. Believers in evolution do not advance or find support at religious schools that teach creationism. Same as it ever was.
In science as in other fields human nature prevails. But there are big rewards in science if you can produce new evidence that upsets the prevailing paradigm.
It would indeed be better if everyone was more open minded but they are not and they never have been. Calling this McCarthyism is wild hyperbole. McCarthy was accusing people of treason which is orders of magnitude more threatening than anything that has been alleged here.
According to Greg G, McCarthyism wasn’t really McCarthyism either – although McCarthy waved around a list of supposed spies, and stupidly accused Gen. Marshall of being a Soviet stooge, the people who went to jail were people who were duly convicted of crimes such as spying for the Soviets (perhaps the contemporary Left doesn’t think that’s as bad as spying for Israel) or, as in the case of Hiss, perjury about spying. If anyone went to jail during the McCarthy era just for advocating Communist principles in the abstract, or rhetorically supporting the Soviet Union, I’d be interested to learn of it.
The main effect of what we call “McCarthyism” (of which McCarthy was only one proponent, another being Harry Truman) was that people who had been members of the Communist Party or had publicly advocated Communist principles and support for Soviet Communism (as opposed to cooperating with the Soviets in the war) had trouble finding jobs in government, media, entertainment, business and the professions for a number of years. This seems remarkably similar to the consequences that people opposing the Left on a number of hot-button issues (Islamism, immigration, racial issues, climate change, heritability of intelligence) are beginning to face. It seems that the Left today believes that supporting Stalin in the 40s and 50s was not as bad as taking non-P.C. positions on today’s hot-button issues, since they persist in paying homage to the “victims” of McCarthyism while they seek to visit equivalent penalties on the Left’s present-day opponents.
Incidentally, if you know of any universities with a free-market orientation (assuming any exist these days) that do not have Keynsian or further-left economists on their faculties, that would be interesting to hear about.
djf
Accusing someone of committing treason is a lot different from accusing them of believing in the wrong scientific theory.
McCarthyism was called McCarthyism because of, well…McCarthy himself. And it was despite McCarthy’s efforts, not because of them, that many people’s rights were protected.
As the official spokesman for “the ” Left and my fellow Stalinist sympathizers can I ask you one thing? Do they really have Keynesian economists at GMU?
I don’t where you got the idea I was defending McCarthy. I certainly never suggested that he protected anyone’s rights. But he was not the cause of anyone going to jail. Other than George Marshall, there were not many specific individuals McCarthy accused of treason. I don’t think the names on the list McCarthy brandished were publicized. Again, what went on in the 40s and 50s was that people with certain opinions (in my opinion, morally despicable opinions) had trouble obtaining and keeping employment in their fields.
This is exactly what is starting to happen to people who hold certain non-P.C. opinions. If you’re on the right (as I am), you learn to keep your mouth shut about your opinions at work. In my office, at least, Leftists feel no such reticence; a friend of mine, I’m sorry to say, keeps a poster of Che on display in her office (a government office, btw); nobody objects.
I have no idea if they have Keynesians on the faculty at GMU; I was asking you. I assume you’re not suggesting that Keynesians have more trouble than free-marketeers finding positions in academic economics in the US.
I was not suggesting that you are a Stalinist sympathizer. I do, however, find it puzzling and troubling how much lamentation still comes from some sectors of the Left (not you personally) over the “plight” of actual Stalinist sympathizers of the 40s and 50s (when Stalin was in still in business) who lost jobs as a result of their pro-Stalin views. I don’t think any sensible person would feel sympathy for someone who lost his job (at least in the private sector) because he wrote a letter to the newspaper denying the Holocaust or led Klan rallies on weekends.
djf
Fair enough for most of what you wrote there. I didn’t say you were “defending McCarthy” just failing to acknowledge that he tried to violate a lot more people’s rights than he succeeded in violating.
I really must insist that being investigated by Congress for treason, which is a capital crime, is a lot more threatening than not finding the position you want in academia.
The leftish version of this episode is that any and all kinds of AGW skepticism at this point (even arguing that sensitivity to CO2 is at the low end of the range which Bengsston has done) is a crackpot position (equivalent to creationism or Holocaust denial) and is quite likely motivated by secret funding from fossil fuel interests. So, just as evolutionary biologists would naturally refuse to continue collaborating with a colleague who joined a creationist organization, Bengsston was rightly and understandably ostracized. I think that would pass the ideological Turing test.
This is an interesting (if ugly) process. Can all ‘respectable’ dissent ultimately be stamped out by making life very visibly miserable for those few remaining scientist skeptics (Curry, Pielke)? And note that these folks are not even skeptics of global warming in general, but it doesn’t take much heresy. Pielke, for example, has publicly challenged the idea that extreme weather events are increasing in frequency and severity and is in the midst of a dust-up with Obama presidential science advisor John Holdren:
http://rogerpielkejr.blogspot.com/2014/03/john-holdrens-epic-fail.html
When somebody with Hodren’s presumed political influence (especially over federal research monies) goes after a scientist hammer-and-tongs, how much does it really matter if the attack is well or badly founded?