Royal Society warmist Paul Nurse, a geneticist: "Galileo prevailed very rapidly, as did Newton, as did Einstein...The denialists have completely lost it”

Twitter / PeterGleick: A Redoubt of Learning Holds ...

A Redoubt of Learning Holds Firm. http://nyti.ms/NIhsGo The Royal Society and a finger in the eye of false Galileos.

Royal Society Holds Firm Amid Political Challenges to Science - NYTimes.com

“Policy debate these days involves trying to rubbish the science, and that is dangerous,” Dr. Nurse says. “Global warming denialists, those who oppose genetically modified crops and vaccinations, or the teaching of evolution: their trick is treat scientific argument as if it’s a political argument, and cherry-pick data.”
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Of late, too, conservative critics have attached themselves like barnacles to the society’s hull. The Global Warming Policy Foundation treated the society as a nest of alarmists in a recent report, “Nullius in Verba: The Royal Society and Climate Change.” (The Latin expression is the society’s motto; it translates roughly as “Take nobody’s word for it.”) James Delingpole, the waggishly influential conservative blogger for The Telegraph, lampoons Dr. Nurse as “easily my favorite Nobel Prize winner after Yasir Arafat, Al Gore and Barack Obama.”It’s fair to say his mortar shots have not rattled the windows of the Royal Society. Dr. Nurse hiked his eyebrows and shrugged: “We can’t sit by without exposing bunkum.”
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He wonders how it is that a nation that produces the wonders of Silicon Valley and great research centers in New York, Boston, Baltimore and Rochester, Minn., to name just a few, has large stretches where the theory of evolution is not taught.

“You don’t hear these debates in New York City, or indeed on either coast,” he says. “I wonder if American science would thrive if it were based in Kansas.”
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Some of those battles have started to jump the Atlantic with more vigor than in the past. Not long ago, it was rare to hear a political challenge in Europe to the scientific consensus around global warming. Not anymore.

Dr. Nurse is careful to emphasize that skepticism is the lifeblood of science; the verities of one age can become the superstitions of another. But he can’t hide his impatience with those who deny a strong human hand in global warming. You want to argue that the evidence points to only moderate warming? Brilliant; let’s examine the research. But to deny it altogether? The stakes are too high to play political games, he says.

“They say: ‘Well, no one believed Galileo.’ As if what? That’s an arrogant argument. Galileo prevailed very rapidly, as did Newton, as did Einstein,” he says. “The denialists have completely lost it.”