Science and the Media
Michael Fumento has a great article in the NY Post about science reporting in the media. He points to--among other things--obvious bias on the part of scientific journals:

Last September, after Hurricane Katrina, activists in lab coats saw a grand opportunity to tie the exceptionally violent hurricane season to global warming. A study in Science declared, "A large increase was seen in the number and proportion of hurricanes reaching categories 4 and 5."

But the researchers simply cut off their data at 1970, though public statistics go back to 1850. Using the full data set would have reversed the conclusion. Why did the editors and peer-reviewers at both JAMA and Science not insist on use of the full data set? Because slicing off inconvenient data is a time-honored tool of advocacy science.

Editors can even ignore papers in their own publication if it serves their purpose. A report in a recent (Feb. 17) issue of Science uses a computer model to show that glaciers along the coast of Greenland are rapidly melting and leading to rapid sea level rise; the study (naturally) blames global warming. Yet, just three months earlier, Science published a study based on actual data that showed increasing snowfall in Greenland was leading to greater ice accumulations than previously measured, slowing Greenland's contribution to sea-level rise.

It's no surprise that scientific journals have a political agenda, bhe media should be our watchdog and report on it rather than blindly passing on partisanly manipulated data as "fact."
- posted by Base10 @ 9:01 AM