Running a poll on the matter for those interested – http://www.pickinglosers.co.uk/

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What that sort of pointless behaviour must’ve done for Athens’ GDP, I dare not imagine.” (idlex)

In my entire professional career I’ve designed three things that have made a load of money (for other people, he added, bitterly) and in each case I came up with the concept when I was in the pub, three sheets to the wind.

The defense rests.

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No, it was far worse than that. He engaged in ‘dialogues’. Y’know, people talking to each other, putting different points of view. And what’s worse is that they’d amble around outside holding these ‘dialogues’. Worse still, I think they even drank wine.

What that sort of pointless behaviour must’ve done for Athens’ GDP, I dare not imagine. Thankfully, they sentenced him to death in the end, for ‘corrupting the youth’. Quite right too. Hemlock was too good for him. Shoulda got a proper job, and made something of himself.

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It would seem that serious researchers and quite a few academics realised the problem Idlex, the date on the publication is 1989 and some of these were presented in slightly different forms as conference papers prior to that date. There’s a fair bit to be said in favour of industrial involvement in certain quarters in higher education, but nothing in favour of its domination and control. But university managements have become authoritarian, which shatters the myth of ‘liberal education’, and governments, both Tory and NuLab, have pandered to commercial interests to the detriment of higher education.

If I remember correctly J. S. Mill stated that there was every reason for the state to fund education, but no reason at all for it to have any say in curriculum. I suspect he would have been even more critical of our present funding situation.

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I was working in university in 1980 when I learned that universities would have to get in step with industry, and contribute to the economy, and generally shape up to meet the dynamic modern world. Shortly afterwards, entire departments started being closed down. I’m surprised that universities aren’t now part of the “education industry”. Perhaps they are. Everything else is an ‘industry’. But has it really taken 25 years for them to discover the moral and intellectual problems of this new relation with industry?

If Einstein had proposed the theory of relativity in the current climate (no pun intended) he’d probably have been laughed out of the room. (Ed W)

I’m sure you’re right. There would also be no place for the kind of professors who sat dreaming all day in their untidy, paper-strewn college rooms, fiddling around with prisms and obscure bits of mathematics, and barely ever giving any lectures.

No. Isaac Newton would have to learn to shape up or ship out in our dynamic modern world. He’d have to learn to do something useful and profitable. Like open a dynamic, thrusting, new, heritage nail bar.

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Under present constraints we tend to have a conditioning to conformity via training institutes, rather than an educational system that inculcates cognitive development from critical analysis. Yes, Einstein probably would be laughed off campus and polymers most certainly would never have been developed under present funding and management.

Could someone please remind me just which political party decided to abandon the German model that had served us so well since instigated by Prince Albert and to adopt this US style university structure? Perhaps Boris, as higher education spokesperson, could inform us all just what he intends to do to rectify it.

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Not necessarily (according to Richard Milton et al). Senior scientists, these days, are allegedly more conservative (small c) than arch-bishops and seem to rely on dogma almost as much as parish priests. Also, if you can’t get a paper published in Nature magazine, the general view is that it must be too silly to publish.

What this means is that the editorial board of Nature really define what is or isn’t a legitimate scientific theory or avenue of study (I think this board is made up of about five guys).

If Einstein had proposed the theory of relativity in the current climate (no pun intended) he’d probably have been laughed out of the room. “Hahaha, you mean things get shorter when they go faster!?!! Get out of town.” (literally)

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My point is that our government, along with a number of western democracies, is showing ever increasing signs of slipping towards a system of control by central (and supernational) diktat. This is not democracy.

To give you an example, a government-quoted poll showed that around 68 per cent of the population want smoking banned in pubs. Forgetting the lack of choice in this question (a very different picture emerges when people are offered a range of options), the democratic solution would be to make two-thirds of pubs smoke free. Instead, our control-by-diktat leaders have decreed that anyone caught lighting up anywhere indoors will be fined £50 and the owner £2,500.

An even more preposterous situation – but very real nonetheless – is a tractor driver being prosecuted for having a roll-up in the middle of a field (his workplace/company vehicle), with the farmer also punished. This is neither good law nor democracy; no-one in their right mind would consider it to be either necessary or just.

In the same way (this actually happened) a Scottish taxi driver at the end of his shift gave his daughter a lift from the station in his own cab in his own time, yet each was fined £50 for smoking a cigarette. Most people would agree that it goes against all natural justice. And whenever something like this happens, the democratic system loses another plank of credibility and we lurch another step towards total state control.

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If there’s a consensus, it’s no longer science. In real science, the debate is never over. In real science, it’s always possible for somebody to come along and show that everyone’s got it wrong.

I didn’t feel very strongly about global warming one way or the other until January this year, when I watched John Snow on Channel 4 News declare: “The debate is over! Climate warming is happening! Humans are to blame!” As soon as he said, “The debate is over,” I became a complete sceptic in 10 seconds flat. For what he was really saying – if he had understood what he was saying (which he didn’t) – was that this was no longer science, but politics or something else.

And to say that ‘the computer models are only as good as the program’ doesn’t really mean anything: a computer model is a program. I’ve written dozens and dozens of computer simulation models, mostly of physical processes far simpler than the entire global climatic system. And I was working with well-known, long-established laws of physics. And yet I could still get things badly wrong, just by changing a few parameters slightly. But these climate modellers don’t even know what the laws of physics are in respect of quite a few things that happen in the atmosphere. And so they make assumptions, or guesses. Or they just leave things out. But in simulation models, getting anything wrong can – and almost always does – lead to wildly inaccurate results.

Back in about 1972, a bunch of scientists at the Club of Rome came out with a computer simulation model that showed the world running out of oil by 1990. It was published as The Limits to Growth. It caused a great storm. Pretty much everyone believed it. Myself included, because at that time I’d yet to write a simulation model. But a student friend of mine took the book, and duplicated the model, and showed how you could get completely different results just by changing the assumptions very slightly. I didn’t believe him: he wasn’t a big name scientist. But he was right, and they were wrong. He got a First at university for his efforts. And he deserved it thrice over.

The truth of the matter, almost certainly, is that nobody really knows how the climate works. There a bunch of rival theories. But one thing we can know for sure is that we’re no longer dealing with real science, but with politics and big business and money.

And those essays aren’t by me, but by a sceptical investigative journalist.

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