'Yeah, Right' of the Day

In an article about the clash of the scientific method and the adversarial system of law when issues of science arise in the courtroom, Times writer Cornelia Dean seeks to sharpen the distinction thusly: [W]hen scientists confront a problem, they collect all the information they can about it and then draw conclusions. That does happen, surely, but since the context of this article is the recent case argued before the Supreme Court about global warming, that statement is disingenuous in the extreme. Does she really expect us to believe climatologists who publish studies on temperatures over the last 1,000 years are just naively sifting through piles of data and then at the end of their analysis are shocked, shocked to find that it says that the earth is warming? I don't think so. I'm pretty sure most scientists have an idea in their mind about what the answer is, and then look for the data and the methodology to prove their point. You don't need to know anything about science to know that - you just need to know a little about people.