Glenn Reynolds linked to a very interesting article about vitamin D and exposure to the sun. I won’t summarize the article, as it is a summary itself of the process by which the past 40 years of scientific consensus regarding exposure to sunlight been overturned. It’s worth a read.
I’m commenting on it because it seems to me that the pattern described here is a familiar one. A lone individual decides not to take conventional wisdom on faith. That person basically spends a lifetime carefully researching and documenting a new train of thought. He is rigorous, because he has to be, and his research is better, because it has to be, than what has come before. Combined with some other fortuitous events, he is able to finally break through and demonstrate that the conventional line of thinking is, if not compeletly wrong, then at the very least not right.
In the wake of climategate, I’m thinking it will take a similar effort by some individual, or uncoordinated but related efforts by multiple individuals, out there to develop a better picture regarding climate change and the impact of man-made carbon dioxide on it. I wonder if that individual is out there now, or if climategate has spurred him to action? I also wonder what irreversible damage will be done before it happens.