Well-informed non-scientists might understand, or at least appreciate, that process, but few people outside the sciences have even the remotest clue about what a real pack of bastards we can be to one another.

In the environmental sciences, one could argue that there is no such thing as a law. A theory is not, as many non-scientists think, merely an untested model of how something works - it is instead a massive body of tested evidence.В Some theories even make it to become the hallowed law, but that is very rare indeed. So if many tests of the hypotheses come up with the same (general) conclusion, and theВ rule of thumb might eventually become a theory. Stating that the noise of the boats causes the fish stock to decline is not an hypothesis in this case because itвЂ™s not easilyВ testable (i.e., we would have to measure changes in noise with fishing rate, we would have to establish how noise affects fish physiology and subsequent survival probability, and weвЂ™d haveВ be able to rule out all other effects, such as direct mortality of fishing itself). However, it gives you good idea of how itвЂ™s done. This is the Popperian concept of falsifiability, but itвЂ™sВ a pretty basic description of hypothesis testing, and sort of ignores the multiple working-hypotheses framework. If we then find that fishing rate xВ leads to a measurableВ (i.e., within the error of the measurement itself) decline in the fish stock, we can reject the (null) hypothesis. ItвЂ™s important here that both replicates (different populations of fishes) and controls (places that receive no fishing) are included in the experimental design otherwise, confounding effects that might not have anything to do with fishing per se might lead us to the wrong conclusion. The way to test this is to measure the fish stock before fishing occurs, and then afterwards. For example, an hypothesis might be that there is no change in the biomass of a fish stock with a certain fishing rate. An hypothesis is not merely a belief вЂ“ it is phenomenon that can be isolated and measured experimentally (or mensuratively in the case of so-called вЂnaturalвЂ™ experiments). When I write вЂtestedвЂ™, I am referring to the testing of an hypothesis. IвЂ™ve never met a scientist who would be capable of doing this, let alone who would want to.Д«ut this doesnвЂ™t necessarily prove my claim that it is вЂimpossibleвЂ™.В Most importantly, the idea that a conspiracy could form among scientists ignores one of the most fundamental components of scientific progress - dissension and bloody hell, can we dissent! The scientific approach is one where successive lines of evidence testing hypotheses are eventually amassed into a concept, then perhaps a rule of thumb. We can barely keep our own shit together than try to construct a water-tight conspiracy.

First,В most scientists are just not that organised, nor do they have the time to get together to plan such elaborate practical jokes on the public. There are three main reasons why conspiracies among scientists are impossible. Whether itвЂ™s about climate change, pharmacology, genetically modified organisms or down-to-earth environmentalism, people who donвЂ™t want to agree with a particular scientific finding often invoke the conspiracy argument. WeвЂ™ve all heard it somewhere before: вЂњItвЂ™s all just a big conspiracy and those bloody scientists are just trying to protect their funding sources.вЂќ

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