(Following on John’s installments, part <a href=https://crookedtimber.org/2010/05/03/the-oregon-petition-a-case-study-in-agnotology/> one</a>, part <a href=https://crookedtimber.org/2010/05/05/agnotology-followup/>two</a>, and part <a href=https://crookedtimber.org/2010/05/08/ignorance-is-strength/>three</a>.)
I’m not sure how I missed this — I think I was lost in the archives at the time. But last month, right around the time everyone on CT was discussing <a href=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agnotology>agnotology</a>, Peter Wood, president of the National Association of Scholars, came out “cautiously” in favor of Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli’s demand that the University of Virginia turn over (as the <i>Washington Post</i> <a href=http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/05/03/AR2010050304139.html>put it</a>) “all data and materials presented by former professor Michael Mann when he applied for five research grants from the university.” (That includes “all correspondence or e-mails between Mann and 39 other scientists since 1999” until Mann left Virginia for Penn State in 2005.) Wood <a href=http://www.nas.org/polArticles.cfm?Doc_Id=1315>writes</a>, citing renowned scientist and powerful logic machine operator John Hinderaker:
<blockquote>John Hinderaker’s point is well taken. No one has the right to take public funds just to make stuff up and pass it along as science. And “academic freedom” could well suffer a greater crisis of legitimacy from that kind of abuse than from the interference of meddling politicians.</blockquote>