A surprising gesture

Working through the discourse that accumulated while I was reading and listening to what my students had to say, I found a fine post from none other than Steve McIntyre on the Virginia’s ‘fraud investigation’ against Michael Mann, one of his leading adversaries in the Hockey Stick Wars.  McIntyre calls out the publicity stunt for what it is–a “repugnant piece of over-zealousness”:

To the extent that Virginia citizens are concerned about public money being misappropriated, Cuccinelli’s own expenditures on this adventure should be under equal scrutiny. There will be no value for dollar in this enterprise….

To the extent that there are issues with Mann or Jones or any of these guys, they are at most academic misconduct and should be dealt with under those regimes. It is unfortunate that the inquiries at Penn State and UEA have not been even minimally diligent, but complaints on that account rest with the universities or their supervising institutions and the substitution of inappropriate investigations by zealots like Cuccinelli are not an alternative….

I intend to write Cuccinelli expressing my disdain for his actions.

Read on to learn how this relates to the previous post.

Science and religion–and politics

Having survived the end of the semester–and being close to surviving two deadlines and a conference–I hope to get back to blogging again in the next two weeks.  Here’s a small start.

The New York Times is only one recent source for speculations on the intersection of religion and the climate science controversies. To me, analogies along the lines of “belief in climate change is like a religious faith” are unlikely to enlighten.  Both science and religion are sprawling enterprises–putting them together is just sprawl squared.

Science and religion do share one characteristic, though:  they both stand athwart politics.  So people interested in the relationship between science and politics might learn something from those who have written about the religion/politics interface.  Richard John Neuhaus, for example.