Nature, German Politics and Science
By Paul Homewood
Euan Mearns has been looking at some recent Nature editorials, which have raised his ire!
Last week I received links to three Nature editorials that were published on 6 September. The first strongly endorsed Angela Merkel in the German election to be held on 24 September, extolling the virtues of German science while accusing the USA and the UK of being anti-science. Merkel deserves another term as German chancellor is a must read.
The second extols the virtues of Germany’s failing Energiewende. Germany must go back to its low-carbon future.
Pro-Germany, pro-Merkel, pro-Energiewende, pro-renewables and anti-USA, anti-UK and anti-fossil fuels. So much for political neutrality and objectivity in science publishing!
Read the full post here.
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NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
Euan Mearns writes: ‘Greenthinking begins with knowing the answer to the problem.’
The problem it has itself invented, that is.
So when people say part of science is not being done well enough and is full of problems, fraud and corruption, that is being “anti-science”?
A strange world we live in.
How many papers providing “proper scientific method” have Nature publications rejected because they tell a different story from greenthink?
Nature has always fancied itself as an editorial authority on politics and has always run “editorials” on general current affairs, always with a nose-in-the air “new labour/bbc” type spin (started in the days of John Maddox as Editor). The only item I have had published in Nature was a Letter to the Editor on a political oped, over 20 yrs ago. To their credit, they actually printed it (when “balance” still counted). Nature has expanded hugely since then, and no doubt has a staff recruitment just like the BBC’s – main criterion will be having politically correct views. Politics, not science.
Euan’s article and the replies are terrific. The debate about the politics of the owners of Nature (Germans who support Merkel), throws up the issue of control of the Western media being in the hands of a small number of very rich people. I read somewhere that all of the major US meja are owned by 5 billionaires: no idea if that is true tho’.
Listen to the first 25 minutes of this RadioLab production and consider what kind of effect social pressure can have when applied to people when they believe what they do is good for science, or the environment, or ‘saving the planet’ …
http://www.radiolab.org/story/180092-the-bad-show/
Now consider are German scientists truly doing some good science, or are they just anomalously “just following orders”, or maybe the social pressure from the ‘save the planet’ brigade has warped their thinking?
It’s really sad that Nature which used to be the exemplar of good science and the journal that all good scientists aspire to be published in has become corrupt. It began with Climategate when it backed Michael Mann’s travesty and went downhill from there. And of course Scientific American and our own little socialist New Scientist. Sad.
I think that you will find that the vast majority of the western “Free-press” is controlled by a few extreme right wingers: Graunaid excepted I guess!