Proverbial

From an op-ed in the Seattle P.I.:

Their search included Herman’s 1988 Seattle-Vancouver study. Given that Herman is vociferously anti-gun, what are the chances that his study was scientifically sound and unbiased? That’s right, and virtually every anti-gun study ever done was created by the same kind of people and funded by openly anti-gun foundations. Their built-in bias makes them useless for public policy debate.

Pretty much standard reasoning among conservatives, and anyone who thinks gun control is a stupid idea. Now, from a piece in The Guardian:

Scientists and economists have been offered $10,000 each by a lobby group funded by one of the world’s largest oil companies to undermine a major climate change report due to be published today.

And all of a sudden, conservatives like Andrew Sullivan are saying “there is nothing inherently wrong with a think-tank using its corporate dollars to finance research projects whose results might benefit such companies”. To which I’d surely agree.

But while it is not “inherently wrong”, it still is not good science either. If the AEI was offering money for scientists in whom it trusted, to produce their own studies in global warming, it would be one thing. But to offer money for anyone who can disprove the IPCC’s report is just plain silly, because it’s not really fostering good science, only asking people to spin statistics for their own purpose. Something that, of course, Sullivan et al understand very well when it comes to studies purporting to show that gun control is a good way of preventing violence.

UPDATE: Sullivan posts a rebuttal that says the wording on the Guardian piece is misleading, and the AEI wasn’t trying to bribe people into producing inaccurate and biased research, only paying scientists of all backgrounds to analyze the IPCC’s report. That being the case, I’d have to retract my criticism (of the AEI, not of conservatives) and agree that what they’re doing is standard practice among several respected research institutions.

UPDATE 2: Glenn Reynolds proves my point in his usual roundabout way.

Is the AEI buying climate scholars? Doesn’t sound any worse than what the Joyce Foundation does on gun studies. I eagerly await Big Media outrage on that topic .

So, since there’s no “Big Media outrage” when it comes to gun studies, then there should be no “conservative blogosphere outrage” when it comes to global warming studies. Talk about leading by example.