This day in history: Author Michael Crichton died on this day in 2008

This day in history: Author Michael Crichton died on this day in 2008. Many of his books were made into movies, like Jurassic Park. In one of his last books, State of Fear, he was very critical of global warming and the scientific community: “Right now, scientists are in exactly the same position as Renaissance painters, commissioned to make the portrait the patron wants done. And if they are smart, they’ll make sure their work subtly flatters the patron. Not overtly. Subtly. This is not a good system for research into those areas of science that affect policy. Even worse, the system works against problem solving. Because if you solve a problem, your funding ends. All that’s got to change."

“the work of science has nothing whatever to do with consensus. Consensus is the business of politics. Science, on the contrary, requires only one investigator who happens to be right, which means that he or she has results that are verifiable by reference to the real world. In science, consensus is irrelevant. What is relevant is reproducible results. The greatest scientists in history are great precisely because they broke with the consensus....Consensus is invoked only in situations where the science is not solid enough.”

“And of course we know that social control is best managed through fear.”