As a biologist whose publications live or die by scientific rules of evidence, and who's also had to deal with more than my share of departmental politics, I'd like to talk about those two things a bit.

Papers are sent out for external review before publication. If you're writing drivel, they won't pass review no matter what your department's politics are. The politics involve people being snooty about how significant your work is, not how true it is. The scientific rules of evidence set the bar so high that it's possible to miss some truths, but next-to-impossible for most scientists in the field to show a finding is valid and yet have it be false.

So the real kicker is that 97% of CLIMATOLOGISTS are in agreement about anthropogenic climate change. At those levels of consensus, there's no hope that it's all just departmental politics. We're knackering the planet, and if you're younger than 40, you're probably guaranteed to suffer some serious effects.

What scientists in general have to say is less important. I've known physicists who are creationists. (And as a biologist and science fiction fan, I'm convinced we'll have faster than light travel some day :) .)

Source: Clean Technica (http://s.tt/12tD9)