The Thing Is

Everytime the MSM reports on something even remotely controversial that I know much about at all, they're either obviously mistaken, or blatantly lying.

I've caught it enough that I'm out of the Murray Gel-Mann amnesia phase.

Therefore, you cannot use any news outlet as a source for your supporting information.

It has gotten bad enough on some topics that you can nearly predict academic malfeasance from seeing a scientist repeatedly quoted in the mainstream media.

Arthur Kellerman is the oft cited, but completely discredited, "researcher" to support gun control.  I've seen his name often and encountered people citing his research who've no idea that his position had been fully refuted.  The press still quotes him as if his conclusions were found valid and without controversy.

Michael Mann is often cited for climate change.  I stopped paying attention to this one because he's been selling the same solution to disparate problems since the 1970's.  I remember the coming ice age.  The glaciers would be in Georgia by now if we hadn't ended our reliance on fossil fuels by 1980.  Oh wait...  Well, if we don't end our reliance on fossil fuels by 1990 global warming will have caused the sea levels to have risen to the point where Florida is an archipelago and all coastal cities would have to be abandoned by 2000.  Oh wait...

It's interesting to watch other controversial climate debates pan out.  People keep forgetting that it's Intergovernmental Panel On Climate Change.  Not multiscientific.  Government not science.  Politics not research.  Opinion not facts.

Every single solution suits government, and fascist style governments best.

Too many people don't pay any attention to what's going on at the time and then come in late, armed with what the media reports and what wikipedia now shows.  That the scientists who were caught lying, falsifying results and destroying data were exonerated by a panel of the government owned and operated university they worked for...  Well "whitewash" is a term you should look up.

The exoneration itself was controversial at the time!  Even if we accept there was no wrong-doing...  the data is still gone.  Without the data set used, the experiment cannot be recreated and repeated and the results cannot be confirmed.  Therefore their conclusions are invalid and cannot be cited by anyone claiming that science is settled.  Science is all about this sharing of data and confirming experiments by people who disagree with the findings.

The academic fraud committed was the refusal to share this data.  It was only when a court order was finally obtained to get the data released, ooops! it had been "inadvertently" deleted.  The exoneration was whether there was any maliciousness in the deletion, and none was found by a panel composed by academics from the very same university with a stake in the outcome.

Never mind that anyone claiming scientific consensus as proof...  Try to remember that epicycles and luminiferous aether were once valid by consensus.  Epicycles even has a parallel with anthropogenic climate change in that a large quasi-governmental organization stated a TRUTH and suppressed research that refuted it.