>Should a scientist be barred from studying greenhouse gas emissions if he is a known advocate of curtailment of fossil fuels?
Probably.
>If not, why is that different?
It's not.
(Now, sure, they could do it. In fact, they do do it. It's not like my opinion is law. That said, historically, researchers with some personal bias had all kinds of problems related to that in their research -- many examples).
Clearly we're seeing some real-world issues with the actual practice of science, but the concept is that if researchers are carrying it out properly it doesn't matter what their personal beliefs are. You start out with a hypothesis, design an experiment, and it either proves you right or wrong. I don't think it's necessary or even desirable to start interrogating beliefs and only selecting scientists we somehow judge completely unbiased; if we followed that to extremes we'd end up with a case where the same scientist could not even continue studying the same subject.
>but the concept is that if researchers are carrying it out properly it doesn't matter what their personal beliefs are. You start out with a hypothesis, design an experiment, and it either proves you right or wrong.
Yeah, but note how this presupposes that its equally easy to "carry it out properly" in either case.
Whereas what I say is that
(a) it's less likely for biased researchers to carry their research out properly (I say less likely, not impossible).
(b) so for that, we should try to have less research from biased researchers
(That's because I don't think that "(c) biased researchers should try more to handle their research properly" is an option -- because of how bias works, biased researchers will always be more prone to not handling their research properly).
Probably.
>If not, why is that different?
It's not.
(Now, sure, they could do it. In fact, they do do it. It's not like my opinion is law. That said, historically, researchers with some personal bias had all kinds of problems related to that in their research -- many examples).