In a blog reported story last week, we reported on the disappointing decision to force students at Roger Williams University to watch An Inconvenient Truth to pass the Science core and graduate.

In a contrasting example of the right approach, Mark Harper, Science reporter with the Daytona Beach news-journal online, reported that Embry-Riddle professor James Wanliss, a space physicist showed students both An Inconvenient Truth and The Great Global Warming Swindle in an honors course titled “The Politics and Science of Fear” because he said more and more the public is being sold one side of an issue with many dimensions. “I fear that attempts are being made to purposefully subvert the public understanding of the nature of science in order to achieve political goals,” he wrote in an e-mail. “Science is not about consensus, and to invoke this raises the hackles of scientists such as myself.

The lure of politics and publicity is no doubt seductive, but it nevertheless amazes me that so many scientists have jumped on the bandwagon of consensus science, apparently forgetting or ignoring the sad history of consensus science.” John Olivero, professor and chairman of the department of physical science—allowed that skepticism is an essential tool of the scientific method.

Wanliss’ students at Embry-Riddle leaned toward the skeptical. The professor said that is an important lesson about science. “You want certainty, but it’s hard to get that,” he said. “Science isn’t about certainty”.  See full story here