In January 2012, sixteen scientists signed-off on a Wall Street Journal op-ed titled “No Need to Panic About Global Warming.” The authors articulated climate change skeptics’ major criticisms of the alleged effects of CO2 emissions, addressed the American Physical Society’s claim that global warming is “incontrovertible,” and expressed concern that dissenting scientists are being quashed by the global warming establishment. “Although the number of publicly dissenting scientists is growing, many young scientists furtively say that while they also have serious doubts about the global warming message, they are afraid to speak up for fear of not being promoted – or worse,” the scientists wrote.

Two months later, economist William Nordhaus, whose work was cited in the scientists’ WSJ op-ed to show that immediate implementation of emission controls would be detrimental economically, wrote a piece for The New York Review of Books arguing, among other things, that the scientists’ contentions regarding academic suppression were misguided. “I believe the opposite of what the sixteen claim to be true: dissident voices and new theories are encouraged because they are critical to sharpening our analysis,” Nordhaus wrote.

In a blog post written last week by professor David Friedman, the legal theorist, economist, and author of the anarcho-capitalist classic The Machinery of Freedom takes issue with Nordhaus’s depiction of an accepting-of-unorthodox-views academic world. “He is describing how it should work but now how it does work,” Friedman writes.

“Academics have three ways of gaining income and status in their profession. One is by being hired by a university, preferably a top university, preferably with tenure. A second is by publishing articles in journals, preferably top journals. A third is by publishing original work that the rest of their profession finds convincing,” notes Friedman. The Santa Clara University professor thinks the third path to income and status in academia provides dissidents with a tactical advantage, but he thinks the hurdles are nonetheless substantial. “In order to achieve that sort of success . . . you have to get your work published. It also helps if you are offering your arguments from the pulpit provided by a tenured position at a top university. Those are conditions that the dissident may have trouble satisfying.”

Professor Friedman concludes with an anecdote involving Leo Rosten, a former friend of his late father, Milton Friedman:

On one occasion, Leo asked an MIT economist about minimum wage laws and got the conventional answer – that they reduce employment opportunities for unskilled workers by pushing up the cost of hiring them. He asked if that was the view of most economists and was told that it was. He asked why, in that case, economists did not make an effort to inform the public of the problem.
The answer:
“I guess we’re afraid of sounding as if we agree with Milton Friedman.”