Skeptics not heretics

As a student at Cal Tech, I sat across the table from the late professor Richard Feynman at dinner one evening. He talked about many things. Feynman, a Nobel-laureate theoretical physicist, was one of the greatest scientific minds of the 20th century. He considered skepticism to be a cardinal principle of science.

The notion that one should believe something merely because a whole bunch of smart people believe it was completely alien to him.

Today, bona fide scientists who express skepticism about the theory of catastrophic man-made global warming are branded as "heretics" or "deniers" by politicians and editorialists and even fellow scientists. Feynman would probably have been appalled to hear the word "skeptic" being used as an insult rather than a compliment. I can envision him being upset to see religious constructs creeping into science, as evidenced by the use of the term "heretic" to describe scientists who express healthy skepticism about the current global-warming hysteria.

N. William Clayton

Sandy