ORTHODOXY

"At any given moment there is an orthodoxy, a body of ideas which it is assumed all right-thinking people will accept without question. It is not exactly forbidden to state this or that or the other, but it is 'not done'... Anyone who challenges the prevailing orthodoxy finds himself silenced with surprising effectiveness."
--- —George Orwell

A present day example of this is global warming. It is hyped so much by the left (with an ever so obliging media) and accusing man (George Bush in particular) for its' presence, complete with forecasts of a multitude of doomsday scenarios, that if you are a non-believer in man-made global warming, you are painted as some kind of freakazoid.

This post from earlier today "Global Warming Research Fears: Galileo Would Have Recognized the ..." tells us that University of Ottawa Science Professor Jan Veizer's is challenging today's conventional wisdom of "man-made" global warming. He says "what we know about global warming is wrong -- that stars, not greenhouse gases, are changing Earth's climate."

However:

The recently retired professor (he still holds a research chair and supervises grad students and postdoctoral fellows) knows that to challenge the accepted climate change theory can lead to a nasty fight.

It's a politically and economically loaded topic, and as polarized as an election campaign.

Yet he is speaking out -- a bit nervously -- about his published research.

The left is particularly adept at silencing its' critics.