If you knowingly present false data and that is proven to cause harm why would you not be prosecuted for your actions?
Arguing they have a right to say what they want is a defence that you can never be prosecuted for deliberately misleading people, so if I sell you rat poison and claim it will cure a common cold, then I am off the hook when someone dies frm taking my "cold cure".
I've tweaked the title slightly; can we keep things on-topic, folks?
That isn't how reality works, no.
John Cook isn't the guy who came up with the consensus, and his paper on it was never "debunked". This has been demonstrated to you multiple times. Refusing to admit the truth isn't an argument. You are not the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal, Vyxn. Refusing to see something doesn't make it not exist.
Oh, I completely agree that the real targets should be the private interests who pay "experts" in order to push a false agenda.
However, just as with journalism, there should be ethics reviews and a standard of integrity that is punishable by - at the least - fines, if not outright jail time, dependent on the scope of damage their lies or misinformation has caused. The problem with peer sanctions is that these paid-off scientists no longer need the support of the scientific community if they're making millions of dollars from private interests, and in reality, any form of monetary punishment can be easily mitigated as a "cost of business" by the industries they're paid to represent.
So really, the only answer we immediately have is to persecute these people as criminals, and take away their freedoms. Just like with the banking industry, if these people came to realize that there was an actual punishment that affects them and doesn't involve paying a fine, there might be significantly far less malfeasance or willingness to commit fraud if their own personal liberties were put in jeopardy.
Even so, this is playing with fire.
I prefer to have people lie about this than to create a precedent where politics will influence science to the point where only the dogma is allowed to be researched. If 99% say it's happening and 1% lie about it, I pretty much doubt that they will be taken seriously.
I don't see how people can be in favor of jailing people for this reason. If they lie, they should lose their credibility, university degree or whatever happens to scientists that lie in their papers (it has happened many times and they suffered the consequences).
Now putting people in prison is madness and delusion.
What he said is as delusional as the article.
You can't possibly be in favor of jailing people that lie in their papers, there are other ways that are already used to punish these scientists.
Remember those Hungarian or Bulgarian twins that also lied about their research? Were they put in jail? Nope, but they were punished to the point of not being able to join the scientific community anymore.
No, not anything can be a fact. You can't go "1+1=3, and it's a fact because i say so and i'm going to keep repeating it till enough people buy it!"
People are free to believe and say what they want, however when you intentionally mislead people for a paycheck and do so on such a large scale using media of all forms, you should be held accountable.
Yes it used to be called global warming Greenpeace made a big deal out of it decades ago and since then we found out the earth is warming up, there is a natural cycle of cooling and warming, the additional gasses we produce do have long term effect on this natural cycle in a negative way. So the theory was actually constantly build on, those that question it are people like Patrick Moore, people who used to be Green peace till he noticed Big oil pays better.
You're essentially saying it's okay to use false data to challenge something.The problem is not that these people want to question it, they go one step further they are so convinced that humanity and it's industries have no effect on it what so ever. That doesn't seem a very "scientific" stance to take.