October 16th, 2015 The proposed federal investigation into those who question man-made climate change is more dangerous to science than the Inquisition. In a remarkable letter to President Obama, twenty climate scientists have called for a RICO (Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act) investigation into “corporations and other organizations that have knowingly deceived the American people about the risks of climate change.” They support their position by claiming that “an overwhelming majority of climate scientists are convinced about the potentially serious adverse effects of human-induced climate change on human health, agriculture, and biodiversity.” The RICO letter has drawn the interest of Walter Olson of the Cato Institute, who is concerned about “the continuing freedom to pursue lines of inquiry in public debate that the government may find unwelcome or unreasonable,” and Walter Williams of George Mason University, which is home to six signatories of the letter, who has derided it as part of “a desperate effort to gain greater control over our lives.” In this essay, I discuss another problem with the letter: it aims to subvert the integrity of science. In this way, it is similar to—but, in an important way, worse than—the famous and often misunderstood case involving Galileo. Science and the State The notion that a criminal investigation should be used to arbitrate a scientific dispute is antithetical to the proper norms of scientific inquiry. Whether or not there is intended deception is irrelevant, because the validity of a scientific theory is independent of one’s motivation for affirming the theory. Moreover, an overwhelming majority of scientists favoring a particular position does not provide scientific support for that position. There was universal support for Newton’s laws for over two centuries, but it only took one dissenter to supersede them.
