You know, I wish I shared your optimism. In my current field of environmental politics, I have seen a MASSIVE increase in bogus "science" and no sign that it is abating, indeed there is a building culture around self-justified scientific distortion:
"Gaian perception connects us with the seamless nature of existence, and opens up a new approach to scientific research based on scientific institutions arising from scientists' personal, deeply subjective ecological experience. When the young scientist in training has sat on a mountain top, and has completed her first major assignment to 'think like a mountain', that is, to dwell and deeply identify with a mountain, mechanistic thinking will never take root in her mind. When she eventually goes out to practise her science in the world, she will be fully aware that every interconnected aspect of it has its own intrinsic value, irrespective of its usefulness to the economic activities of human beings."These monsters are taking over the universities, as you know. They are turning subjectivity into a religion. It is deliberate. Such people are easy to use and wealth can thus be redirected by democratic means. Note how we seem to be moving in the direction of regulating carbon dioxide, notwithstanding the growing scientific indication that anthropogenic warming is miniscule or that atmospheric carbon dioxide levels are niether unpredented nor destructive. It's mere political force intended to enrich the politically dominant.- STEPHAN HARDING
No, I am not so optimistic.
Another element of this phenomena is gender-based -- namely, that the thinking process championed above is feminine, subjective, intuitive.
Reminded me of my thoughts a few days ago, on hearing a NASA press conference and hearing a high NASA official weeping and talking about his feelings.
I remarked to my wife that if, twenty years ago, a man in a highly responsible mgmt position acted this way in public, we would all judge him mentally ill. Now to blubber in public is a badge of honor, showing you're in touch with your feminine side.
All of that 'emotional justification" over rational thought has begun its inevitable pollution of the sciences -- and that's when we'll really see that all bad ideas have (bad) consequences.
All true, but I think the beginnings of the backlash are becoming evident. According to several articles, the current college generation is more conservative than the one before it. These things oscillate on pretty much a "generational" basis. The "green agenda" has had an open run as "mainstream" opinion for just about such a "generational" period. Stories in the media about the "lynx hair incident" and the like, and the brouhaha about Lomborg indicate to me that such a backlash is starting.
And in fact the popularity of Free Republic is another such indicator (compared to, for instance, Salon).