On October 31, 1517, Martin Luther vandalized a church door with a nail; also, he hung his treatise on indulgences on that nail and changed the world. While selling indulgences is clearly an act of chicanery to modern minds, our critical ability to differentiate God’s authority from church authority is largely accredited to Luther and this moment. Luther pulled the curtain away from the wizard, encouraging people to know God by reading the Bible in German, rather than a dead language spoken only by the clergy. Luther charged people to take responsibility for their own spiritual lives through direct study, bypassing a flawed papal hierarchy. Today, with raging debates over global warming, we badly need a scientific reformation.

Today, science is akin to medieval Catholicism; science is largely regarded as pronouncements from cloistered men in white robes. If ‘scientists’ say that salt is unhealthy, it must be so. If ‘scientists’ say that silicone breast implants, Saccharine, Alar, DDT, or tuna are harmful, then it must be so. Reporters, the traditional gatekeepers of public knowledge, rarely mention the names or qualifications of the scientists who propose such implausible, and often ultimately false, ideas. In their eyes, if scientists proclaim a new truth, nobody is qualified to challenge it.

Science is not the pontification of scientists; science is a process whereby hypotheses are presented, scrutinized, rejected, or modified. Science is not the truth, but a means by which one can pursue the truth. Likewise, there is no license to being a scientist. When someone proclaims himself a scientist, that simply means he doesn’t have a regular job. Anyone who thinks skeptically, values objective evidence, and allows that he may be wrong is a scientist (with or without a white robe). Indeed, in this modern world, everyone should be a scientist. The Protestant Reformation gave laypeople the power of the priests, and the scientific reformation should give laypeople the power of the scientists.

Nowhere is the need for a scientific reformation greater than in the field of climate studies. The recent Climate Gate scandal exposed how a powerful few scientists have bullied and excluded competing theories and evidence from challenging the dogma that global warming is an emergency with only one solution: the extermination of prosperity.

The laypeople of Germany before Luther viewed the mysteries of the Church as beyond their grasp. They weren’t qualified to understand the Bible and the Church’s rituals. Learning to read and criticize such things was too hard, and frowned upon as well. Today, most anyone can read the Bible when he chooses, and when he sees a charlatan, he can call him out.

The scientific laypeople of today largely view science as too hard, and the scientific publications as too mysterious for them to fathom. Science is best left to those odd nerds who, like monks, give up sex to pursue the deep mysteries of life. Climate Gate, however, demonstrates that as Christianity could not be trusted to priests, science cannot be trusted to the scientists.

Further, there is nobody to blame but ourselves. Much of the US is willing to turn over the very future of capitalism to a mob of self-interested scientists without doing any homework. Everyone should know that we cannot trust the leftist media or socialist politicians to fairly examine the facts; there is nobody left but ourselves to do some heavy lifting. So, the next time someone starts a sentence with “I’m not a scientist, but,” stop him short and ask why not.