A fascinating speech by New Zealand chemist Nicola Gaston on the subject of scientists relationship to the public reveals someone who is thinking deeply about the trials and tribulations of publically funded scientists and the role that power plays. I don't think she is quite there, but this certainly represents a step forward.
Gaston notes firstly that politicians have power over scientists in a way that often prevents the latter from speaking freely, but then moves on to consider the power that scientists have over the public:
[T]he use of expertise — or rather, the misuse of academic status as a proxy for expertise on a particular question of public interest, is an exercise of power. The exercise of such power is at its most blatant when it happens along the lines of ‘trust me, I’m a scientist’ and at its most useful when the scientist involved is willing to explain the science. But there is always a power dynamic in any form of science communication, and understanding that has to be a prerequisite to doing it well.
Of course this is precisely the dynamic that the Manns and the Maslins and their "supporters in higher places" have been seeking to exploit since the very beginning.
The use of science as a battering ram to achieve political ends is a worrying development, but not really one than Gaston's talk touches on. This is a pity because she expresses concern about scientists receiving unwelcome attention from politicians:
Climate scientists have previously been subject to interference from the right of the political spectrum (e.g. the Attorney General of Virginia’s 2010 investigation of the research behind the Hockey Stick, under the Virginia Fraud Against Taxpayers Act); it is a relatively recent development that now sees democratic senators digging into the funding of scientists who have published work critical of some work on climate change, among them, Roger Pielke himself.
Such tactics, she says, "hollow out the reasonable middle ground". But the problem is that if political action is going to be demanded on the basis of scientific findings then the standards of openness that science has previously accepted are no longer going to be adequate. If public policy measures are going to be demanded then the public have a right to have these demands examined in forensic detail. The argument that FOI should not apply to scientists' data and correspondence in the way it applies to other civil servants is, to put it bluntly, risible. Does anyone seriously expect Republican and Conservative politicians to roll over and accept that science demands the widespread adoption of socialism without being able to examine or question the alleged evidence? Are we really arguing that science should become a way of sidestepping the democratic process and that scientists should not be accountable to the public that pays their salaries?
Make no mistake, that is what the scientivists want.