The outstanding article “Climate Change and the Death of Science,” by British blogger Kevin McGrane, explains brilliantly how science got hijacked by “post-normal science” along the way to the “overwhelming scientific consensus” on manmade global warming. Along the way it points out that one of the world’s leading global warming alarmists--Mike Hulme, founding director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research at the University of East Anglia (home of the now infamous Climatic Research Centre, epicenter of Climategate) and author of the book Why We Disagree About Climate Change--is himself a devotee of post-normal science and therefore a traitor to real science.

The article quotes post-normalist (and therefore not to be suspected of presenting post-normal science in a bad light) Eva Kunseler distinguishing normal and post-normal science thus:

Normal science
[Normal] Science is a logic inductive process leading to theory formulation, while all the way put through critical tests that have been deductively derived from the theory; Popper’s critical rationalist concept of science is an objective progression toward the truth. . . . The term normal science refers to the routine work of scientists within a paradigm; slowly accumulating knowledge in accord with established theoretical assumptions. . . . The paradigm is enlarged and frontiers of knowledge and techniques pushed forward.

The exercise of scholarly activities is defined by the dominance of the Mertonian CUDOS norms of science. They include:

• (C)ommunalism – the common ownership of scientific discoveries, according to which scientists give up intellectual property rights in exchange for recognition and esteem;
• (U)niversalism – according to which claims to truth are evaluated in terms of universal or value-free criteria;
• (D)isinterestedness – according to which scientists are rewarded for acting in ways that appear to be selfless;
• (O)rganized (S)kepticism – all ideas must be tested and are subject to structured community scrutiny.

Post-normal science
A new concept of science was introduced by Funtowicz and Ravetz during the 1990s…The concept of post-normal science goes beyond the traditional assumptions that science is both certain and value-free…The exercise of scholarly activities is defined by the dominance of goal orientation where scientific goals are controlled by political or societal actors…Scientists’ integrity lies not in disinterestedness but in their behaviour as stakeholders. Normal science made the world believe that scientists should and could provide certain, objective factual information…The guiding principle of normal science – the goal of achievement of factual knowledge - must be modified to fit the post-normal principle…For this purpose, post-normal scientists should be capable of establishing extended peer communities and allow for ‘extended facts’ from non-scientific experts…In post-normal science, the maintenance and enhancement of quality, rather than the establishment of factual knowledge, is the key task of scientists… Involved social actors must agree on the definition of perceptions, narratives, interpretation of models, data and indicators…scientists have to contribute to society by learning as quickly as possible about different perceptions…instead of seeking deep ultimate knowledge.

If real scientists don’t rise up and point out that this emperor--"post-normal science"--has no clothes, the whole scientific enterprise will die. And the world will be a much poorer place for its demise.

This issue is important not just in the debate over “climate change” (see The REAL Climate Change Deniers) but in all kinds of issues in which science interfaces with policy. Like the pseudo-Christian cults that borrow vocabulary from Christianity but redefine all the terms, post-normal science is simply the application of rhetoric borrowed from the sciences to policy debates, cloaking one particular policy preference with the authority of “science,” and successful at doing so only to the extent that policy makers and the public are ignorant of the fact that post-normal science isn’t science at all.

McGrane’s whole article is must reading for anyone who wants truly to understand how the once respectable discipline of science got hijacked and made the slave of environmental alarmism. One of the most amazing things about it is that it was written before Climategate broke. The fallout of that shows all the more clearly how right on target McGrane was.