Discerning Fake Science

Unfortunately, I have to keep gnawing on this bone: scientists are people, too. They make mistakes and have biases. As such, they are not the impartial arbiters of truth and science that many people believe. Many want to do science, others manipulate data for their own agendas.

Since nobody is a blank slate and everyone has some kind of bias, it follows that nobody is completely impartial. Try to present creation science materials to atheists and other evolutionists, they often cry, "But that's biased! Those liars for Jesus are trying to convince us of their views!" Brilliant, Sherlock! Doesn't everyone want to present an argument to convince others of their point of view? Also, the ad hominem is entirely irrational — not only from it being a logical fallacy, but also because biblical creationists serve a holy God who requires righteousness and hates lying. To say that we are lying to get others to believe in God is utterly vacuous.

As mentioned several times before, we have seen that certain sidewinders within the secular science industry have used incomplete research and circular reasoning, built arguments from presuppositions instead of facts, and more. While there are scientists who want to do science stuff, many in the secular science industry (and the industry as a whole) have a leftist agenda. This makes extremely difficult to use scientific findings to support biblical and conservative material.

We have seen in the 2020 American presidential election season that fake news can be foisted on gullible people who want their biases confirmed; that is my conclusion based on observations and evidence. Indeed, I wrote an article emphasizing the need for (and practical applications of) critical thinking. Naturalists also confirm their own biases. Today we examine how secularists can manufacture fake science news and deceive people.

I was hesitant to present this because it spooks the horses. That is, some things in the following article are written with a bit of an edge. As you have seen with my own articles and posts, I get a mite agitated at times and let my biases show. Other times, logical errors slip in. 

Also, it is important to watch for unprovable assumptions upon which arguments are built. If the foundation is faulty, the rest of the research or study is doubtful — or even worthless.

One of the first details can appear to be the genetic fallacy (rejecting something because of the source). However, when sources are shown to be biased, unreliable, bigoted, and so forth, it is reasonable to reject them — or at least examine them carefully before accepting their content. We can take that a step further and "follow the money" — that is, determine if the well-heeled individual or organization who is bankrolling the research may be contaminating the writer's objectivity. Also, the writer of the article below shows his own feelings with some blunt terminology. He's not fully objective and may be tainting his own article, but thoughtful readers can work around those and even determine if they think his outrage is justified. A science news article is reproduced and then broken down. That is something we should all consider instead of swallowing it whole.

We are all too familiar with the term Fake News. Sometimes it is hard to tell the difference at first, but facts are stubborn and immutable things. Therefore, news is often corrected, at least by honest brokers. This is not the case with science so-called.

I want to share a recent "scientific" article with you. Then show you how to discern Fake Science. The article, "Estimation of Methane Emissions From the U.S. Ammonia Fertilizer Industry Using a Mobile Sensing Approach," published May 28, 2019 in Elementa. The work, funded in part by a grant from the Atkinson Center for a Sustainable Future stated:

To read the rest, head on over to "Fake News Yields Fake Science!"