The method as process, not authority
Guests on The Bob Zadek Show describe the scientific method as a procedure rather than a settled body of conclusions. Robert C. Wright, discussing a presidential candidate’s pledge to listen to scientists, objected to the definite article: there is no “the scientist,” only a process of learning in which evidence must bear a logical relationship to observed results that other researchers can replicate. He characterized science as a mechanism for discovering the nature of reality, which he called always nuanced, complex and sometimes counter-intuitive The Decline of American Independence (2020).
A practicing physician made a similar distinction in the context of pandemic guidance, arguing that the word “the” should be dropped so that one says one follows science, because science is a method and a constant process of learning in which fellow scientists are expected to try to replicate a result. The same guest noted that public health experts initially knew very little and that their views adapted as information arrived, and that the press tended to hang on their every word Vaccines & the Totalitarian Principle (2021).
Jeff Deist framed the contrast between social and physical science, saying that in the physical sciences the scientific method involves observing something, developing a hypothesis and testing it repeatedly, and that even the theory of relativity or gravity could in theory be disproven Austrian Economics Triumphs (2021).
Climate models and the testability problem
The most extended treatment came in a 2018 episode with Sterling Burnett, who laid out what he called the way the scientific method is supposed to work: propose a hypothesis to explain phenomena, gather data, and test the data against the hypothesis, with conformity increasing the likelihood the theory is true and confounding data decreasing it. He said climate change does not work that way, because no matter what the data says it is asserted as more proof of climate change, and because thirty or more models using the same physics predict completely different phenomena How to Spot Tabloid Climate Science (2018).
Burnett offered specific illustrations. He said one model might predict the Great Lakes will be lower in a hundred years and another that they will be higher, and that one model might predict a more arid desert Southwest while another predicts more rain — outcomes he described as flipping a coin rather than science. He said the most basic prediction, temperature, has been wrong: according to the models and the physics of how the climate should respond to added carbon dioxide, the globe should be more than a degree warmer than it is and warming faster. He also said Antarctica should be losing ice but is gaining tens of thousands of tons a year, that before a recent year with a couple of powerful hurricanes the United States had its longest sustained period without a Class 3 or above hurricane making landfall, and that sea level rise, droughts and floods have not matched projections. In his account, climate scientists respond by questioning the data rather than the theory, tuning models until they match the past temperature record How to Spot Tabloid Climate Science (2018).
Bob Zadek’s framing in the same episode separated two questions: whether humans affect the climate, which he proposed to stipulate, and whether the effect is for the better or the worse, which he said is staggeringly complex and is where the discussion stops. He argued that a change of one or two degrees over a thousand years is too abstract to capture public attention, whereas the word “catastrophe” does How to Spot Tabloid Climate Science (2018).
”Follow the science” in pandemic policy
Wright’s objection to the phrase was that it presumes a consensus that does not exist, and he asked which scientists one should follow and why, if the choice were easy, a president would be needed at all. He raised the possibility that the science being followed could be phrenology or eugenics The Decline of American Independence (2020). Zadek took up the eugenics example directly, recalling that it was mainstream science in the 1920s and citing a Supreme Court decision by Oliver Wendell Holmes upholding compulsory sterilization, in which Holmes wrote that three generations of imbeciles are enough The Decline of American Independence (2020).
Zadek also argued that if the science being followed were economics, the evening news would display job losses, damage to GNP and first-time unemployment claims rather than case counts, and economists rather than people in white lab coats would stand behind the president The Decline of American Independence (2020).
Wright introduced the Peltzman effect into the discussion, describing it as concerning how policy choices affect how people act, illustrated by mandatory seatbelt laws versus a spike in the middle of the steering wheel: the spike, he said, is more effective at making people drive slowly and carefully, because seatbelt laws led people to drive faster and more recklessly. He applied the same logic to masks, suggesting that if masks induce people to take more risks there might be no real-world benefit The Decline of American Independence (2020).
The physician guest described the institutional channel through which guidance reaches practice: hospitals have a Chief Medical Officer who receives daily memos from the CDC and passes recommendations downstream to clinicians. He said public health officials work in a narrow silo focused on controlling or eradicating a particular threat and do not take tradeoffs into consideration, whereas clinicians deal daily with patients weighing individual risks and benefits. He added that once a recommendation has been publicly announced as the official position of the government’s medical experts, there is pressure not to deviate openly, partly because of malpractice risk Vaccines & the Totalitarian Principle (2021).
Free speech and the scientific priesthood
A 2022 episode with Dr. Jeffrey Singer, identified as a senior fellow at the Cato Institute and a practicing surgeon, is described as a discussion of free speech, medical science and government control. The episode summary states that the two critique the rise of a scientific priesthood that suppresses dissenting views, focusing on the treatment of the Great Barrington Declaration and on California’s AB 2098, which the summary says threatens to penalize doctors for providing information that contradicts official government narratives Free Speech & the Scientific Method (2022).
Across episodes: the same argument, extended
The same question — whether an institution claiming scientific authority can be tested or contradicted — is argued in the 2018 climate episode, the 2020 episode on independence, the 2021 episode on vaccines and the 2022 episode on free speech. What changes is the domain rather than the argument: Burnett applies it to climate models and their failed predictions, Wright and Zadek to a candidate’s pledge to listen to scientists and to the Peltzman effect, the physician guest to CDC guidance and the pressure on clinicians, and Singer to the treatment of dissenting physicians and to AB 2098. The 2021 Austrian economics episode touches the topic only in passing, through Deist’s contrast between social and physical science and his account of hypothesis testing.
What the sources do not cover
The excerpts do not state the outcome of any litigation over AB 2098, nor the text of the statute, nor which amendment any challenge turned on. They do not identify the case in which Holmes wrote the sterilization opinion, the state involved, or the year beyond the 1920s. They give no account of how the Great Barrington Declaration was received beyond the summary’s reference to its treatment, and they do not describe the contents of the climate models or the data sets Burnett cites beyond his characterizations.