It's Time to Smell the Horsepucky

By Rich Kozlovich

I was an exterminator for 40 years, and for 30 of them I owned my own company serving on the Board of Directors of four trade associations in my state that represented the structural pest control industry, and I was the editor of our state association's newsletter, writing factually and truthfully about what was going on.  Which many didn't like.  In my articles I've often quoted Ben Franklin saying:

“Truth will very patiently wait for us”.

The President of my state association at that time took umbrage with that statement saying, what's truth?   Well, let's start with my definition of truth, which is irrefutable.

"Truth is the sublime convergence of history and reality.  Everything we're told has a historical context, and everything we're told should bear some resemblance to what we're seeing going on in reality. If what's presented to us fails in either category, it's wrong, and all that's left to do is to develop the intellectual response to explain why it's wrong."

Actually his real issue was with me being the one saying it. Why? He stated that it wasn’t for me to point out what was truth since I have no qualifications and hadn’t done any research. Then went on to imply that truth was in the eye of the beholder.  Well, time and truth are on the same side, and who is better qualified to tell what's true, an honest reader, or a dishonest scientist?  Let's explore this. 

I have seventeen questions that need to be explored.

1.  How qualified does someone have to be to point out “truth”? 
2.  How does one become qualified to be able to see that which is true? 
3.  What determines what the qualifications are? 
4.  Who determines who is qualified? 
5.  Are public officials automatically qualified? 
6.  If public officials are elected officials, are they now qualified by virtue of their election? 
7.  If public officials are found to be wrong are they now unqualified? 
8.  Are they unqualified forever? · 
9.  Is honesty a quality necessary to point out the “truth”? 
10.  Is an alphabet soup of letters behind your name necessary to be able to point out “truths”? 
11. Does education guarantee integrity, insight and understanding?
12. Is integrity more important that education or visa versa?
13. Is being over educated and under smart acceptable? 
14. Has a researcher ever been found to be lying? 
15. If so, is he disqualified forever? 
16. Is he only disqualified until the next government grant? 
17. If a researcher lies should his alphabet soup of letters behind his name be removed? 
18. If that happens is the one who was not formally educated now more qualified?

Well then, let’s try this. One and one are two.  Right? See, there are absolute truths. Then again, it didn’t take much brainpower to come to that conclusion.   Wow, perhaps it was far too bold for someone as unqualified as me to be the one who pointed this out?   This bodes well the question:  Is integrity and a legitimate concern for that which is right more important than formal education? Let's not be delusional, scientists are caught lying regularly.  Which is why there are so many retractions, and that was for the first six months of 2012.

The problem we have today is that we have the tendency to rely on “experts” entirely too much. Who says they’re “experts”? Scientists who are “experts” in their own field very often disagree, and do so vehemently.  If that's so, and it is, then how can they be experts?

Global Warming is one such issue. We also have the tendency to run to the middle of the road,  which is where the dead animals are.  

When Mann, Bradley and Hughes published their now infamous and discredited Hockey Stick chart to show global warming was an Earth threatening event that had to be addressed immediately, it was received by the greenies with utmost enthusiasm. When McIntyre, a consultant for mineral exploration, and McKitrick published their independent study (they received no funding so as to avoid being criticized as lackeys of big business) the greenies went almost apoplectic.

So what was the solution? Mann and his cohorts merely needed to turn over all their research and show how they arrived at their numbers, which is typically done to allow for peer review. They refused; demanding that everyone had to just accept their conclusions, and worked too hard to allow anyone to tear their work apart, and besides, there was “consensus” among all serious scientists regarding this matter, so further review was unneeded.  In fact they claimed 97% of scientists agreed with them.  

Well, that turned out to be a load of horsepucky, because when you broke down the figures we find out of the survey was sent out to 10,265 scientists, with only 3,146 responding.   It appears 7,119 scientists disagreed by simply not resounding.  And they must not have liked the responses of another 3,069, who we have to assume also disagreed,  because they settled for a mere 75 out of 77 scientists of unknown scientific discipline.   Think about this. Using their own base of 10,265 the actual percent who agreed is only approximately .075%. 

First off, that isn’t how peer review works, or supposed to work.  Secondly, part of the funding for their research came from the United States government which prompted a Senate committee to demand they turn over this information or else. They and their allies went into even further stages of purple apoplexy. Once released it was obvious to the scientific community why they didn’t want to turn it over.  Please review my