Honestly, I know very little about logical argument, and I've never even heard of the "True Scotsman fallacy" before now. I was just trying to say that the link you provided to the news story about scientists possibly using unethical peer-review practices to perpetuate the alarmism of global warming didn't strike me as a valid counter-argument. All it said was that sometimes scientists are immoral, and to that my only reply is "Scientists are human, and not infallible. Sometimes they do unethical things to further their own goals. This does not mean that all scientists everywhere are immoral, nor that a majority nor a significant percentage are. All it means is that [i]that team[/i] is possibly immoral." Like I said, there is no monolith. They're just people.

[quote=mdk]
how dare you challenge the assumption?! It's almost like you're questioning perceptions, and we can't have that in an enlightened scientific community. I brand you a heretic and categorically reject your argument.
[/quote]

[quote=mdk]
I'm mocking the 'scientific community' for its flagrantly contradictory attitudes in the debate. Seems I've struck a chord.
[/quote]

These are what I am taking issue with. You see the "scientific community" as a callous and contradictory group (maybe one that manufactures controversy and false beliefs, based on what you said and linked to about global warming), when in fact they are none of those things, nor is there even a single group. There are a vast number of different sciences, each with their own experts and each with their own failings, but I contend that they're all doing the best they can, technology is expanding, and we're on the path towards full understanding of the cosmos.

EDIT: The difference between religious belief and trust in the scientific method is that the former relies on faith, which I have in abundance, and the latter relies on careful reason and understanding of history, which I also have in abundance. I'm a very spiritual person, but my trust that science is on the right path has nothing to do with faith; it has to do with my own logical analysis of the scientific process, something that is very concrete and can be observed.