Case for due diligence in public policy

I won’t recount all their sto­ries: down­load the paper and decide for your­self. I think the evi­dence con­vinc­ing­ly sup­ports M&M’s con­clu­sion that 

“…[W]ithin an aca­d­e­m­ic milieu, there can be strong peer pres­sure not to ques­tion polit­i­cal­ly pop­u­lar results, even when they are pri­ma facie doubtful.”

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p>Among the most cel­e­brat­ed cas­es of such herd-men­tal­i­ty was the broad accep­tance of a mis­lead­ing recon­struc­tion of his­tor­i­cal cli­mate (Man­n’s ‘hock­ey-stick’ graph), as revealed by co-author Ross McK­itrick (an econ­o­mist at uni­ver­si­ty of Guelph) and Stephen McIn­tyre (a retired Toron­to sta­tis­ti­cian and pub­lish­er of the Cli­mate Audit web­site). That <a href=“http://bishophill.squarespace.com/blog/2008/8/11/caspar-and-the-jesus-paper.html” title=”- Bish­op Hill blog — Cas­par and the Jesus