Scientific declarations best left to scientists

Prestigious scientific societies, I have believed since my undergraduate days, exist to serve and promote science. But pronouncements concerning global warming issued by the Royal Society and the American Physical Society in 2007 indicate that some societies appear set on usurping science. To quote Thomas Huxley, “Belief, in the scientific sense of the word, is a serious matter, and needs strong foundation.” That strong foundation can be provided only by the profound examination of nature by individual scientists and peer assessment of those examinations. For a committee, however distinguished its membership, to pontificate on scientific matters is not only hubris, it is dangerous. Let individual scientists speak and let committees be silent.

The Royal Society and the American Physical Society published endorsements in 2007 of the belief that there is global warming and that it is caused by human-generated carbon dioxide. Those pronouncements were made despite the scientific difficulties of obtaining a reliable quantitative measurement of global warming and of establishing a rigorous causal connection to manmade CO₂ in the atmosphere.

The media does not involve itself directly with scientific literature; it relies on the popular expositions of scientists and, mistakenly but understandably, on pronouncements of scientific societies. But those societies have no authority concerning scientific truth or falsehood. That is the business of individual scientists. It was not the Royal Society that gave the world its first account of gravity, it was Isaac Newton.