Back in the day, scientists used to concern themselves with finding things out, and then disseminating their findings. Of course, there once was a time when journalists simply presented the facts of a story, and let the chips fall where they may. That's not the case any longer; both fields have become so politicized as to have rendered themselves irrelevant.
While many of us have long harbored suspicion of these two "professions", the smoking gun showed up with the document dump of the former "Journolist" emails and, in the case of atmospheric and climate "science", the previous release of CRU emails. In both dumps, what is immediately clear is the level of contempt that these "professionals" have for others, as well as the urgency of their respective political agendas.
Both "professions" began losing credibility in the minds of many, however, a few decades before the smoking guns appeared on the scene. Science began to lose it when, rather than simply disseminating findings, they took it upon themselves to demand societal change based upon their "findings". Increasingly, they transformed themselves from scientists into activists. In the case of climate change, they demanded that human activity which generates carbon dioxide be halted, because the planet was about to freeze and it was All Your Fault.
It was silly, and most people knew it. But it provided politicians with additional levers, and garnered the "scientists" a lot of grant money. When Global Cooling didn't pan out, they reversed course and went with Global Warming: same cause, still All Your Fault.
Most people knew that was silly, as well - but it gave politicians yet more leverage, and "scientists" who jumped onto the Global Warming bandwagon got oodles more grant cash. The CRU email dump afforded more people a degree of insight into what was really going on. But even that is small potatoes in comparison to the sea change that has occurred in the past couple of decades.
Around that time, science "reporting" - and in many cases, scientists themselves - took on an approach entirely at odds with the tradition and history of science itself. An authoritarian tone developed, and long-time readers here and elsewhere need look no further than the comments provided by "science writer" David Appel for evidence of that trend.
These developments were presaged by at least a decade, during which time "journalists" became increasingly activistic and moved virtually uniformly to the Left. Rather than actually reporting all sides of a story, they took sides. As former Oregonian plagiarist, columnist, and eventual editorial board member Jonathan Nicholas famously noted, when asked why he'd chosen journalism as a profession: "I wanted to make a difference."
He didn't want to report; he didn't find actual news all that interesting. He just wanted to make a difference. And ideally, a Leftist difference. He now works for ODS, the insurance folks.
Buy anywhere but there.
