Lord Dorwin lives! [UPDATED]

…Look him up.

Anyway, in response to this:

Gravity exists. The Earth is round. Climate change is happening. #ScienceSaysSo

— Barack Obama (@BarackObama) August 12, 2013

…and this…

Consensus does not equal science. http://t.co/deNRoGMFOv

— Erick Erickson (@EWErickson) August 12, 2013

…I give you this (parody):

 “Then why rely on them?  Why not go to the raw data and study the results for yourself?”

Barack Obama raised his eyebrows and lit another cigarette hurriedly. “Why, whatever for, my dear fellow?”

“To get the information firsthand, of course.”

“But where’s the necessity? It seems an uncommonly roundabout and hopelessly rigamarolish method of getting anywhere.  Look here, now, I’ve got the works of all the best cronies – the top client-climatologists of the party.  I weigh them against each other – balance the faction fights – analyze the conflicting interests – decide which is probably most useful – and come to a conclusion.  That is the scientific method.  At least” – patronizingly – “as I see it.  How insufferably crude it would be to go to University, and take STEM classes, for instance, and blunder about, when the best cronies have presented the agitprop so much more effectually than even I could possibly hope to do.”

I should note, though: pre-Copernican astronomers were actually kind of aware that the Ptolemaic map of the universe had… something wrong with it. What happened was that they spent quite a bit of time trying to make the theory work, rather than accepting that there was something inherently mixed up about the whole thing, junking it, and starting over with the simplest theory that fit the observations. And that was falsifiable. All of which is, by the way, more quote-unquote “Science” than the President’s appeal-to-authority logical fallacy.

Ach, well, poly sci majors: they only exist because English majors need somebody to look down on…

Moe Lane

[UPDATE: Heck of a thing when a man cannot engage in the cheerful pastimes of his youth; still, it was perhaps unfair to libel poly sci majors by linking them to President Barack Obama.  As the SCA puts it: I smile and retract.]