The Difference between ‘True Science’ and ‘Cargo-Cult Science’
“Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts” is how the great Nobel Prize-winning physicist Richard Feynman defined science in his article “What is Science?” Feynman emphasized this definition by repeating it in a stand-alone sentence in extra large typeface in his article. (Feynman’s essay is available online, but behind a subscription wall: The Physics Teacher (1969) volume 7, starting page 313.)
Immediately after his definition of science, Feynman wrote: “When someone says, ‘Science teaches such and such,’ he is using the word incorrectly. Science doesn’t teach anything; experience teaches it. If they say to you, ‘Science has shown such and such,’ you should ask, ‘How does science show it? How did the scientists find out? How? What? Where?’ It should not be ‘science has shown.’ And you have as much right as anyone else, upon hearing about the experiments (but be patient and listen to all the evidence) to judge whether a sensible conclusion has been arrived at.”
And I say, Amen. Notice that “you” is the average person. You have the right to hear the evidence, and you have the right to judge whether the evidence supports the conclusion. We now use the phrase “scientific consensus,” or “peer review,” rather than “science has shown.” By whatever name, the idea is balderdash. Feynman was absolutely correct.
When the attorney general of Virginia sued to force Michael Mann of “hockey stick” fame to provide the raw data he used, and the complete computer program used to analyze the data, so that “you” could decide, the Faculty Senate of the University of Virginia (where Mann was a professor at the time he defended the hockey stick) declared this request — Feynman’s request — to be an outrage. You peons, the Faculty Senate decreed, must simply accept the conclusions of any “scientific endeavor that has satisfied peer review standards.” Feynman’s — and the attorney general’s and my own and other scientists’ — request for the raw data, so we can “judge whether a sensible conclusion has been arrived at,” would, according to the Faculty Senate, “send a chilling message to scientists … and indeed scholars in any discipline.”
According the Faculty Senate of the University of Virginia, “science,” and indeed “scholarship” in general, is no longer an attempt to establish truth by replicable experiment, or by looking at evidence that can be checked by anyone. “Truth” is now to be established by the decree of powerful authority, by “peer review.” Wasn’t the whole point of the Enlightenment to avoid exactly this?
to that. If only Mr. F. could have been here to obliterate this nonsense in a flit of his mind.
Mr. F is not required. The ‘hockey stick’ graph is disproved by the historical record. The Medieval Climatic Optimum, from 1000 – 1350(?) A.D. is recorded in numerous chronicles from all over Europe. Note that the warm (perhaps warmer than now) period was optimum for food production. Not only have the weasels failed to prove that unusual warming is occurring; but they haven’t shown that it would be harmful if it is. One person you can bet isn’t a scientist is one who attempts to prove that something you are observing cannot be happening.
It’s also been documented throughout the rest of the world as well.
As well as the Roman Warm Period, the Minoan Warm Perior, and the Holocene Optimum.
This planet has a long history of warm periods, most much warmer than the recent warm spell.
Climatology is an interdisciplinary field of study. It is not as mathematically rigorus as meteorology, in fact it is usually in the Geography department at most universities.If you take a couple of courses in statistics you are ready to go to graduate school in this field.In other words it is not a hard science as many people believe it to be.
Pedro,
You’ve put your finger on a significant weakness in climatology as practiced – and climatology is not unique in this regard. Whatever else can be said the UK reports, the last one noted with surprise the lack of professional statisticians as regular parts of the research teams. But this should not be surprising at all. This is what I mean.
It’s been my observation that most research projects conducted by engineers and physical scientists do not include trained statisticians as part of their work when the projects involve the analysis of large data sets. Oh, they will seek their advice – or a more to the point their blessings – after the fact, if needs be. But, most assume that the few basic courses in statistics they take as part of their degree training give them enough knowledge for the design of experiments and the analysis of data. They are wrong. I’ve had some formal training in statistics, long ago, and have heard enough from my professional statistician colleagues to know this. And it was precisely this that was at the heart of the whole “hockey stick” controversy with Mann and his colleagues were guilty more of ignorance than maliciousness.
We’re talking about differences in research cultures. What I described above stands in stark contrast with, for example, the biomedical sciences, or the agricultural sciences where statisticians are typically involved in the design of experiments and in the analysis of data. This has been a matter of the historical development of the ag sciences in tandem with statistics on the hand and on the requirements of funding agencies like NIH with regard to the biomedical sciences on the other. With respect to the later point, to my knowledge, no similar requirements obtain for agencies funding data intensive fields like the climatological sciences.
When the authors of the UK reports express surprise at the lack of involvement by statisticians in the work of Mann, Jones and others, ask yourself how that could have come to be. East Anglia and others depend on the “soft money” they receive from funding agencies for projects these agencies reviewed and approved. The journals in which publications were reviewed and published knew who the authors were and their backgrounds and could easily read the basic descriptions of methodology before getting into any of the details. No eyebrows were raised at any point in the process.
I wish more people would grasp this fact about climate science. It’s not anywhere near as daunting as advanced calculus or playing the piano. The idea that only experts with PhDs in the field of Climatology are qualified to even look at the data is just an insult. The thing is, there is no indication of any unusual climate changes in human history. It goes up, it goes down. Without ignoring the Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age, they’ve got nothing. Bupkis!
One of the remarkable fallacies that haunts science is the dichotomy between the so-called “hard” and “soft” sciences. The real distinction is between concrete sciences such as physics and the difficult or complex sciences including climatology, economics and such. The problem with “difficult” science is that shear complexity tends to cow the practitioner in to submission. Rather than really address the complexity of the field, many “soft” scientists resort to hand waving and just-so stories supported by minimal snippets of physics and laboratory fact instead.
Climatology is remarkable in this since it leans very heavily on “models” for any explanatory success it might claim, thus appearing more concrete than it is. A course of research on the internet reveals that most believers and skeptics trained in climatology and meteorology alike agree on what they all believe are the basic principles, and tend to accept that “there is a greenhouse effect.” As you move away from this field though you encounter geologists, physicists, chemists and others, easily as familiar with the basics who dispute whether the “greenhouse effect” as described in climatology really could work as claimed by either camp.
Excellent article.
“Junk Science” is another definition that should be included. This definition arose from the civil litigation world in the 1970s. Generally it is used to indicate that the advocate’s claim is spurious respecting: Generation of presented data, the research interpretation and analysis, or claims of cause and effect relationships from flawed data and/or analysis.
The important part is that there are clear implications of a motive on the part of the claimant that may be ideological, financial, religious, political, regulatory, legal churning, academic advancement, self aggrandizement or even mental illness.
In the case of Global Warming, for many of the “scientists” it is all of the above in addition to becoming cargo cult which is used to protect the fraud perpetrators.
Whether Climatology is hard science or not – practitioners in the field are responsible to ensure the data sources are free of biasing error. In my mind, 2 of the most damning practices of the alarmist group include:
The denial of the existence of the Urban Heat Island effect and related but even more significantly,
Ignoring the fact that 90% (that is not a typo) of the US surface stations providing official temperature data are influenced by artificial biasing factors – cause higher than normal readings. see http://www.surfacestation.org
These would seem to be such foundational issues to the beginning of this study and yet they blithely ignore them.
I know that my local ‘official’ weather station is located in a sorry spot. It is about 50′ from an airport runway with the prevailing winds blowing across a few thousand feet of runway before reaching the weather station. Because it is near the flight path of aircraft it is also very low to the ground – about 3′.
As a comparison I have 2 very accurate thermometers carefully placed around my property away from undue influence as much as that is possible. What I’ve noticed is my temps usually run a degree or two cooler and sometimes 4 or more – than the ‘official’ airport weather station. I live about 1 mile from the airport.
Surfacestation.org lists this station as ‘OK’.
Corrected URL http://www.surfacestations.org
They don’t have these problems in the hard sciences, physics and chemistry. And they don’t put much credit in peer review, either. Their work is checked by Engineers, who build stuff with the science. If you can build stuff with it, it’s hard science.
The rest is soft science. Most descriptive science is soft science. They put beetles into columns and rows. Or they try to explain, with computer models and statistics, what the Earth’s climate is doing. It’s not much different from Phrenology.
Now, when you mix politics and money with it, it all goes to hell. Scientists are just as political, just as crooked, as the rest of us. Science that attempts to drive a political goal, whether it’s global climate or “for the children,” can never be trusted. peer reviews by cherry picked cronies can never be trusted. It can only be trusted if it has been subject to rigorous, adversarial review. It must be able to withstand an attack by the naysayers.
So called climate science has failed that test. It is not science, it is quackery.
Manny, physics suffers from the same problem as the AGW crowd. Try to get a peer-reviewed paper published extending Heim Theory, or Sir Fred Hoyle’s “Continuous Creation” model, for instance.
Both are heretical to the Consensus view, both would be difficult to have published in Physics A.
It is not just that. Fundamental research on the nature of inertia (Feynman pointed out the question in his “Lectures” books) would cost a few hundred thousand per experiment. And yet absolutely no money is available for it. A guy named Woodward is doing work on this out of his own pocket.
It is a disgrace.
Manny,
You’re exactly right. Very few people understand the difference from real science and quakery. That’s why “climatologists” refuse to publish their raw data…because none of their conclusions can be replicated…which is the very basis of science.
Sorry Mannie but you are incorrect. Peer reviewed journals are valuable tools in both chemistry and physics.
He didn’t say that the journals are of no use, he said that the peer review process is broken. And he is right.
Thank you for an excellent article. I’ll be using it.
I thought you, and perhaps others, might like a “free” link (you may have to copy & paste to your browser) to “Cargo Cult Science,” a commencement address at Caltech in 1974. I believe it contains the entire text.
http://www.lhup.edu/~DSIMANEK/cargocul.htm
Also, if you found this of value, you may find this to be useful as well as it is more recent (2003).
Aliens Cause Global Warming: A Caltech Lecture by Michael Crichton
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/07/09/aliens-cause-global-warming-a-caltech-lecture-by-michael-crichton/#more-21629
An excellent evisceration, Dr. T.
The great Robert Conquest, as the first of his Three Laws of Politics, posited that “Everyone is conservative about what he knows best.” This was not an endorsement of conservatism nearly so much as a slap at intellectual arrogance and laziness. One is “conservative about what he knows” if and only if he fears to have it disproved.
Einstein once said that he didn’t expect relativity theory ever to become acceptable to his contemporaries; that would have to wait for the emergence of a new generation of physicists, who would be open to theses that challenge the wisdom of previous generations. He was proved correct. I wonder what he’d have to say about contemporary “scientists” whose arrogance is so great that they refuse to allow others access to their data? The Second Coming of Rene Blondlot, perhaps?
This debate has been going on for years, and not just within the “scientific” community…
“One can judge from experiment, or one can blindly accept authority. To the scientific mind, experimental proof is all important and theory is merely a convenience in description, to be junked when it no longer fits. To the academic mind, authority is everything and facts are junked when they do not fit theory laid down by authority.” (1939)
“Everything is theoretically impossible, until it is done. One could write a history of science in reverse by assembling the solemn pronouncements of highest authority about what could not be done and could never happen.” (1952)
“Always listen to experts. They’ll tell you what can’t be done, and why. Then do it.” (1973)
“Expertise in one field does not carry over into other fields. But experts often think so. The narrower their field of knowledge the more likely they are to think so.” (1973)
“The hardest part about gaining any new idea is sweeping out the false idea occupying that niche. As long as that niche is occupied, evidence and proof and logical demonstration get nowhere. But once the niche is emptied of the wrong idea that has been filling it — once you can honestly say, “I don’t know”, then it becomes possible to get at the truth.” (1985)
All quotes from Robert A. Heinlein, “The Dean of American Science Fiction”
available online at WikiQuote: http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Robert_A._Heinlein
Real knowledge is to know the extent of one’s ignorance.
Confucius
Of course the real danger is when pseudoscience is combined with political expediency. The last time that happened on anything approaching this scale, it involved measuring skull dimensions to see who would be next into the ovens.
The real goal of science is to discover the truth. The method by which it does this is indirect. For the most part the scientific method is used to identity that which is demonstrably false, and eliminate such notions. Positive and negative charged particles attract one another. We do not know that this is always the case, but we currently have no evidence to show that they will not.
Its a never ending process. We can never fully identify the truth, but we can identify that which is not.
In defense of the Cargo Cult: Their _honest_ mistake was a false analogy;
They built the equivalent of a Duck Blind, complete with Decoys, hoping
to lure an aircraft onto their landing field.
As to publishing data, even that notion is hazardous in the hands of the many scientists and professors who wish to make a name and achieve renoun. Data can be “fudged”. This means that instances which would not support the conclusion may be deleted and events which do support the conclusion can be created in the hands of unscrupulous experimenters. As one Poster (Mannie) pointed out, where the theoretical conclusion must lead to a practical engineering feat, there is a natural check on the science. This may take a number of years before the scientific principle is either accepted or rejected. This hiatus occurred with Einstein’s Theory of Relativity until the Michaelson-Morley experiment on the speed of light proved him right. As to the softer sciences (social sciences) which do not result in the creations of an engineering feat to prove or disprove their validity, it’s easy enough to be left with “junk science” or even science whose applications can potentially endanger the well-being of the environment, of animals or people. We are held in thrall by scientists whose mantra is “honesty and objectivity”. Given the current pressures to publish in order to achieve tenure and and bring in research grants in universities, for instance, this “mantra of honesty and objectivity” is too often discarded in the normal course of the scientific effort.
Robert:
Michelson-Morley PRECEDED Special Relativity. Einstein’s contribution – among others – was to explain the null results of M-M.
Also, the use of the Lorentz transformation was key to Special relativity. In fact, special Relativity also confirmed some speculations about Maxwell’s Equations.
Are you sure the Michaelson-Moreley experiment proved anything? As I recall, they *began* with a laundry list of nearly a hundred things that “must” be properties of the aether – a thing they were trying to detect for the first time and the nature of which they couldn’t possibly know. That’s a bad start to any kind of experiment.
Also, I remember something about the math of the particular angles of the contraption magnifying its ability to detect differences. But still, what if the effect happened on a larger scale than the size of their device, so that the magnified sensitivity wouldn’t matter?
I’ve never been convinced by the Michaelson-Moreley experiment and I’m still puzzled why it’s held up as one of the archetypes of brilliant experimentation.
Well, in a word, yes. It showed that the model of the “luminiferous aether” couldn’t be made consistent with the results of the experiment.
Later, Einstein proposed Special (and later General) Relativity, which turned out to be more consistent with the results of the MM experiment — and lots of later experiments.
Excellent article, thank you !
What we are witnessing is the spread of totalitarianism, and we know from the history of the USSR what that means for science.
The totalitarians will transform science into ideology, as they have done in our universities with all other disciplines and fields of knowledge (philosophy, history…and even theology if you care to read the deliriums of the leftist “churches”).
They don’t care about any truth, because their superior “truth” is absolute nihilism, and in absolute nihilism there is no space for any truth. Everything is a “construct”, a “narrative” for them.
Ultimately, this is a regression to brute force, to the pseudo-logic of the Neanderthals. The “truth” is what the power will impose it to be.
Man caused global warming will help the revolution…therefore it MUST be true.
That is the “culture” of the nihilist subversives.
I have just finished rereading George Orwell’s “1984.” The parallels between Orwell’s concepts and what is happening today, including this Global Warming mess, are sufficiently compelling as to be just a little bit scary. One other comment, responding to “Laws are for the peasants to follow.” It has been pointed out that Al Gore has made a fortune riding the Global Warming bandwagon while living in a very large and fully air-conditioned mansion requiring huge amounts of energy — and attendant contributions to the perceived global warming problem. I have tremendous respect for Dr. Feynman. He’s one of the people I wish I could have met and talked to.
My background is physics.
I used to be of the opinion that the split between science and balderdash was between the ‘mathematical sciences’ (which were real sciences) and the ‘philosophical sciences’ (which were balderdash).
I know believe that split to be the wrong cut. In my mind, the real split is between ‘predictive sciences’ and ‘narrative sciences’. ‘Predictive sciences’ make actual, falsifiable predictions, and judge their correctness on the accuracy of those predictions. ‘Narrative sciences’ tell stories about what happened, and occasionally what might happen, but do not judge their correctness based upon the accuracy of falsifiable predictions, but rather on the quality of their narrative (in the best case, how well it matches the existing body of todays data). The problem with narrative science is that in the best case, matching past events tells you that your theory isn’t false, but not that it is true.
I think you’re right on with the Predictive vs. Descriptive divide. It’s the difference between science that Engineers can use and slotting beetles into rows and columns. The latter may be fascinating, but it’s not really useful until you can do something with it.
The current Climate Science fiasco can be explained by bastardizing an old Legal maxim:
If your data is weak, pound on the theory.
If your theory is weak, pound on the data.
If your data and theory are weak, pound on the table.
My dad was in atmospheric physics. He had models of particle distribution over the ocean that were very predictive. Given temperature and humidity soundings at various altitudes (via model rocket), and an existing particle size distribution measured on ship, the model can calculate what size distribution of particles (introduced by burning selected materials in calculated proportion) is needed to create a fog with a desired frequency response (e.g. to block enemy radar but not friendly radar).
That was real climate science in my (biased) opinion. Oh, and he has nothing but scorn for AGW, mainly because there is no way to test their models.
A man’s just gotta know his limitations.
Harry Callahan
What I can’t stand about this is all the smug declarations that non-CRU, non-climatologists are just too *dumb* to understand any of the stuff they do.
But, y’know, they kind of have a point. Maybe we *are* too dumb to understand why it’s okay to throw out data that doesn’t support your conclusion. Maybe we *are* too dumb to understand how studies funded by energy companies are known to be invalid without even a cursory reading. Maybe we *are* too dumb to understand that the truth of the AGW hypothesis is so vitally necessary that shading your conclusions to support it–or, in layman’s terms, lying through your teeth–is a virtuous act.
Or maybe it’s even simpler than that. Most of these people spend their time hanging around other academics, other intellectuals. And part of the modern intellectual scene is to affect an inability to comprehend mathematics. So the reason they think we’re too dumb to understand the math is that THEY’RE too dumb to understand the math!
“send a chilling message to scientists … and indeed scholars in any discipline.”
That means try to get it right – not politically correct – how chilling!
For a more elaborate take on what sort of animal climate science is, it may help to read
“The Big-Science Poker Game”
at
http://climaterealists.com/index.php?id=5221
Climate Science is not real science–it’s model building. It’s the same thing with mortgage securities construction — it’s not finance, it’s model building. And we all know how that turned out.
There’s another word for model-building — “sooothsaying.” Grab your crystal ball and give it a shake.
Real science is based on replicable experiments, where conclusions reached have a relentless logic. Real science does not predict the future; real science predicts that a specific effect follows a specific cause and that it is testable and repeatable. Climate “science” is non-testable, aside from the facts that is claims are extraordinary. And even if you GOT the data — which our climate “science” pals are so reluctant to provide — and your came out with the same answer, it STILL wouldn’t be science. It is model building.
I’m sure noone wants to hear my little talk on the 5 spheres (hydrosphere, atmosphere, lithosphere, cryosphere, and biosphere) and how the interactions between these spheres are poorly understood at best.
Modeling requires that at a minimum, the modeler understand the system being modeled. We are at least 100 years away from understanding climate well enough to begin building accurate models.
Karl,
You are very correct about model building. I spent over 10+ years with a high-end military simulation system. I was a SME for certain models.
To make this assertion short:
When we have computer models exact enough (correct input data, combined with correct assumptions about the earth–fluid dynamics, solar activity, cloud formation, etc.) and necessary computing power, to make correct weather predictions. We (as the human race) will also have the power to change and control the weather. Either way, it’s a long way off.
Not all models are created equally.
The good ones are constructed from the ‘bottom up’, based on sound physics-based models of each of the system’s components, and the overall integration is confirmed by matching it against reality.
Crap models like AGW have major components essentially faked with fudge factors,mystery constants (which hide/dismiss the true complexity) that get filled in, reverse-engineered from datasets.
IOW, window dressing aside, you have a glorified curve-fit, not a true model. Worse, even with *good* data (which we sure as hell don’t have here) a curve fit ‘model’ is only relatively reliable over the interval over which it was derived, and not for extrapolation beyond it. To dust off a few terms from my long ago differential equations — it is a mistake to think you can solve what is really an initial value problem and try to tret it like a boundary value problem.
What the AGWers did is cherry pick data for that hockey stick, do a curve fit ‘model’ with a CO2 bias built due to the CO2-temp-industrialization correlation baked into the ‘data’, then claim AGW hypothesis is ‘proven’. It is crap, as proven by their inability to use the models to predict what temps have done in the last decade..
I would add my agreement that the model building distinction is an important one. Just to claim that the “science is settled” based on the predictions from someone’s model of a complex system is ludicrous. In real science this may be just a beginning step toward understanding, not the end.
Also, when modeling something it is nearly impossible to exclude your biases and much too easy to guide the hypothetical outcomes by all manner of subtle manipulation – sometimes not even intentional.
A good example of this is the common business plan. These can be pretty complex models that project future revenue and profit based on a large number of assumptions and action plans. Most of them are professionally done by very knowledgeable people. They all predict success. 90% or more of them fail. And the ones that succeed rarely do so based on the model that spawned them.
As someone who has personally spent a year at the bench proving that someone ELSE’s published peer-reviewed results were either unintentionally or (more likely) intentionally falsified, I sympathize here. (For anyone who cares, the field was molecular biology).
I’ve seen big name scientists up close and personal cherry pick data to create more interesting papers, and some design experiments with fundamental flaws so bad they rendered the entire exercise worthless before even beginning. These were individuals who personally controlled multi-million dollar gov’t research grants.
The problem with “Science” (with a big “S”) is that practitioners of career “science” (ie Feynmann’s non-cargo cult science) have strong personal incentives to create “results”. . .not necessarily correct results.
Results that don’t earn the support of peers potentially lead to lack of publication, or even worse, lack of grant approval.
No publication. . .no grants. . .science career is over. Not a very nice place to be if you’re (say) been working in a highly specialized field for 1+ decades with effectively no other marketable skills. The temptation to bend the truth can be very strong, when your livelihood, and indirectly that of all the individuals working in your lab depends on quality publication. Its part of what might be termed “grant gamesmanship”.
Of course there are plenty of scientists with integrity who don’t do these sorts of things, but there are enough marginal players that I have to take a pretty jaundiced view of “peer reviewed” science in many cases.
This is an excellent article, and any invocation of Feynman’s definition of science needs to be broadcast as widely and broadly as possible. I think even most conservatives under-estimate the group-think in “scientific” circles around Global Warming. At first Global Warming was a trend, then it was a consensus, but now it has become a tenet in the faith of “Scienceism”. It has become a way for a person to declare their solidarity with others who belive in the infallibility and superiority of the elite academic class. It is invoked in every field, in every discipline, in every journal or magazine as a rite of passage to show one’s solidarity with the “knowledge class” against the “unwashed, ignorant masses.”
I am an avid stargazer, and so I frequently purchase magazines about amateur astronomy, or science in general. I am also an avid fly fisherman, so I frequently purchase magazines on that subject. There are as many articles in the fly fishing magazines invoking “Global Warming” as there are in the astronomy magazines, which is to say virtually all of the articles invoke the need to combat Global Warming as a means of establishing the writer’s credentials as a member of the “knowledge class.”
This is what skeptics are trying to fight, and it’s going to be a long, hard haul to restore true science where “scienceism” reigns today. It is literal career suicide for anyone even obliquely involved in something that invokes climate change as a bogeyman for them to challenge the sacred dogma of “climate change.”
Much as Einstein said, it has come to the point in my opinion that the current generation of fully indoctrinated “scientists” will have to be replaced by a new generation who have not invested their entire lives, fortunes and honor into their public embracing of “climate change” as an established “fact.” Those who have already drunk the climate change koolaid are almost certainly a lost cause. They won’t allow themselves to change their mind because to do so would, in their mind, make them “anti-science.” As with most expressions of ideology, they are oblivious to the irony of their own truly anti-science behavior.
Agreed! I have seen this same thing pop up numerous times over the last few years in motorcycle, hunting, nutrition, and financial magaziness and even in church publications. The planet doesn’t have a fever. It is NOT sick. However, many of its ignorant human inhabitants are, and the illness is called Scienceism. Great term, by the way.
Thanks for the many good thoughts in all these posts. I believe our most important asset is, “I don’t know.” Why else would we need science to seek out the answers?
First the earth was stationary so man had to devise a way for the sun to move across the sky.
Next the earth was flat so man had to devise theories about the other side of the oceans.
When it was suggested that the earth was a sphere and had an orbit arout the sun while spinning at one revolution per day, that was not acceptable to those who had knowledge.
Today we look deep into the universe and see no end. What lies beyond the stars? I don’t know ….. And neither does anyone else. Its best just to accept that we don’t know.
What is time? At this point there is no answer. Why should we rely on opinion when there is no answer?
The truth can be counted on to have at least two different witnesses that testify to its truth. Theory does not so we look for those witnesses.
Politics can be anything from avarice to theory. Few politicians are as serious about the truth as the dedicated scientist but they both are working with the same set of laws. The politician cannot change the laws of nature, and as has been pointed out by these posts, cannot understand why their models do not work. We can work with these laws and get wonderful results or we can work against them and get annihilated. If we and our politicians truly understood these laws we would have a wonderful government.
Global Warming has made a good fulcrum for prying false theories in support of unrelated agendas to satisfy their political ends at our expense. The witnesses to the veracity of their agenda have probably gone off somewhere fishing. Again, I don’t know if this was deliberate or just hijacked by selfish natures.
As Dr. Richard Feynman says–whose words form the basis of this article–listen to ALL the evidence. How many of you have heard and understood ALL the evidence.
How can we examine all the evidence? The AGW crowd refuses to release it, even in the face of legal action.
Until they have conformed to the “scientific method”, AGW claims, and “climate change” claims, have to be regarded as undemonstrated and unsupported. It’s up to those making claims, the AGW crowd, to prove their claims.
I’ve examined enough of the evidence to know that the conclusions claimed are not supported by the evidence.
How much of the evidence have you examined?
Have you, sir, examined all the evidence? Every last page, every last chart, every last file?
I am willing to bet that you fail your own test. Therefore, you’re not worthy of being listened to.
I declare Do Not Feed The Troll on this one.
Specious argument, Conservative. It is usually impossible to have all the facts but two good witnesses go a long way. I agree with Mark, there are enough of these good witnesses to know that global warming is specious.
Thanks for noticing the weakness of the argument. That was the point.
This person, who says that one should listen to all the evidence, has probably not done so himself. So, I just applied his own stated rules to himself, and found him wanting.
In short, he can’t even pass his own test, so why should we pay any attention to him? At best, he’s just promulgating another double standard (skeptics need to examine all the evidence, but believers don’t).
I guess “cargo cult science” is a pretty good description though I think I still prefer Lysenkoism. The only difference is that politically incorrect results will only get you a rhetorical bullet to the back of the head instead of a real one. For now….
No, I think your name for it is far more accurate.
Yes. Lysenkoism is a more descriptive term but how many living now have any idea what it means? As you say, the rhetorical bullet to the back of the head can easily morph into the real bullet. It really is frightening that so many ‘reputable’ people climbed onto this shabby bandwagon.
About peer reviews: Because the measure of academic worth is based on the number of publications that a professor has produced, the number of paper that are out for review exceeds the number of good reviewers. Add to that the fact that even the reviewers have no time to really get into the meat of the papers and diligently check everything, a lot of poorly written papers with significant errors manage to get published.
Peer review as used by the Faculty Senate of the University of Virginia is a shibboleth: a magic phrase that is intended to make you stop your inquiry about the solidity of the science being put forth.
Oh, and Mannie, if you think the “hard sciences” are above this sort of thing, you should definitely go read up on the history of “String Theory.” String Theory is an unfalsifiable hypothesis, it’s not even accurate to call it a “theory” in spite of its name. In modern physics if you don’t toe the “String Theory” line, you are just as much of an outcast as if you were a geologist who challenges global warming. You won’t get tenure, you won’t get research grants, you won’t get your papers published. Physics is now, and has been for decades, completely enslaved to the String Theory colossus. And that is in spite of the fact that String Theory has not once produced a “provable theory” much less been proven to be correct itself. In fact it is my belief that this blind adherence to String Theory as the solution to everything has stifled true scientific enquiry in the realm of physics for most of my adult life.
So the hard sciences are just as susceptible to this as any other area of human endeavor. Someone should write a book called “The Closing of the Physics Mind”…
See “The Trouble with Physics” by Lee Smolin.
http://www.amazon.com/Trouble-Physics-String-Theory-Science/dp/0618551050
It goes into great detail about this problem.
I don’t think anyone considers Theoretical Physics to be a hard science in that sense. Precisely because it is impossible to do experiments in it.
You try to come up with a theory that explains the available evidence better than the existing theories do. The fact that you can do so doesn’t mean your theory is right, just that it is less wrong than the alternatives.
For what it’s worth, my gut says that the current cosmological theories underestimate the strength of the Compton effect.
String theory will be “Hard Science” when we can build something with it.
Mannie, your definition of “hard science” is at best ignorant.
Your definition is good, as long as “build something with it” includes experiments to verify some prediction. It is not necessary to build practically useful devices to be a “hard science”. QM is behind so many useful devices it is “hard” in spades. But QM is extremely messy and inconsistent, and most physicists are convinced that there is a more elegant logic behind QM.
String “theory” is attractive because it was elegant and unifying. It is not yet a real theory because it has yet to make any verifiable predictions different than QM. It is not even “shortcut” QM like Copernicus’ theory greatly simplified epicycle calculations. String theory calculations are actually much harder to do than QM.
However, the time and money spent on String theory is not by any means wasted. The mathematics of String theory is hard, and many mathematical breakthroughs have been made in its pursuit. And mathematical breakthroughs always tend to turn up in practical applications *somewhere*. So the mathematics of String is actually “hard science”. It is only the question of whether the Physics it models has any basis in reality that is “soft”. That is more than I can say for the time and money spent on AGW.
Check the definitions of theory: one of them is “an unproven conjecture”, another is “a sequence for statements in a formal language”. String theory may or may not be verifiable, but it is a theory.
A closed mind seems to be the normal state of affairs with each succeeding generation. It seems to make little difference whether it is ancient history, Middle Ages or contemporary, each generation has it pioneers and its mossy backs that “know” and when you know, how can you cange such knowledge. Its our nature and not without a smidgen of merit.
Pedro,
You could fail a few statistics courses and still be qualified to do climatology research. You only need to know enough to give the appearance of being competent in statistics. Such is the case for Michael Mann, who misused statistical techniques (intentionally or otherwise) to generate the hockey stick curve.
Don’t forget misusing data. In order to get the hockey stick shape he had to include the bristelcone pine series. The problem with that was the fact that the person who generated the series stated specifically that this data set was not a proxy for temperature. It is a much stronger proxy for precipitation. For a large number of reasons, tree rings can not be used a proxies for temperature. They are a proxy for the quality of the growing season, which includes many factors, only one of which is temperature. Additionally, trees do not have a linear response to changes in temperature, they have an inverted U shape curve. As temperature increases, all other things being constant (which they never are) growth will increase, up to a point, then as temperature gets above that point, growth decreases.
To get the hockey stick Mann had to both use bad statistics and bad data.
And a professional statistician would have noted that in a second. As I’ve noted above, this is a significant weakness in the research culture of this field. The absence of a well-trained statistician as a co-PI in a proposal submitted to the National Institute of Health in most subject areas that principally involving data analysis and modeling would result in rejection or a firm request to revise. But in fact, this would never arise because it just wouldn’t happen. Now do NSF or similar funding agencies take a similar stand? I’m not aware of it and Mann and the “hockey stick” example is evidence they don’t. If this doesn’t change at the level of the funding agencies and, further on, among the editorial requirements for publication in the field, there will be more examples just as you’ve cited.
I certainly agree that Michael Mann is a charlatan and not a scientist. And I definitely concur that the “peer review” process has outlived its usefulness. But at the same time there is a difference between a charlatan and a criminal. I strongly object to Attorney General Cuccinelli’s efforts to criminalize science. The problem is not that Professor Mann misspent money or defrauded people. The real problem is that the government officials who awarded him the money in the first place are idiots. And it is our duty to vote them out of office.
Attorney General Cuccinelli should not be filing charges against Jon Stewart, Keith Olbermann, Bozo the Clown, or any other comedian. Likewise, no charges against “Professor” Mann should be forthcoming either.
Pretty much by definition, a charlatan is a criminal, if his deceptions are used to fraudulently obtain money from others. We cannot know how big a charlatan Mann is until we can see his data. He has a legal obligation to provide that data. If it takes a criminal investigation to force him to cough it up, so be it.
If Michael Mann committed fraud, he certainly should be prosecuted. Proving such would be exceptionally difficult, though, and I cannot see how a prosecutor could get an indictment.
Science is not advanced by FOIA requests and demands to see spreadsheets and programs.
If climate skeptics dispute the validity of climate records, let them use the publicly available raw data–available at universities everywhere for decades–to show that the mean global temperature is not rising. Surely if you can get totally different answers using even half the publicly available data, then the climate record is not robust enough to demonstrate warming. What climate skeptic has bothered to do this?
If climate skeptics dispute the validity of climate models, let them write their own models which show different effects when the concentration of carbon dioxide has increased. What climate skeptic has bothered to do this?
Cold fusions, for example, was not debunked by FOIA requests. It was debunked when other groups attempted to replicate Pons and Fleischmann’s experiments and could not.
Dr Tipler used to know this at one time.
The Clear Climate Code project, for example, doesn’t show significantly different results. They took the trouble to write their own code. Why do “skeptics” not do the same?
http://clearclimatecode.org/
They also show what happens when you subtract out, say, urban data or data from airports. You don’t get no warming, or significantly less warming. Their code is open and well documented.
http://clearclimatecode.org/the-1990s-station-dropout-does-not-have-a-warming-effect/
So, no it doesn’t sound like Cargo Cult Science to me. Rather, global warming skepticism of the Tipler variety sounds like creationism or intelligent design–movements to which Dr Tipler is not entirely a stranger.
If the skeptics were serious, they would be doing their own science and not filing FOIA requests.
Totally wrong. The scientific method is the first “open source” philosophy. If you want to make a claim, you have to present everything you started with, describe what you did with it, and the results. “Do your own experiment” does not hack it. The mere need for an FOIA request demonstrates that the experiment is “secret” and, therefore, “not science”.
If you want to make a claim, you have to present everything you started with, describe what you did with it, and the results.
Exactly, and that’s what journals are for. You are not scientifically entitled to files off someone’s hard drive, though you might be legally obligated. You are scientifically entitled to know where the data came from and what was done with it, and that is what is published in journals–which are accessible by anyone who has access to a university library.
Making endless FOIA requests is called “burying in discovery”, and it’s a lawyerly tactic, not a scientific one. Science is about replication.
If you took the publicly available data and got a significantly different warming trend, you would disprove climate science. No climate skeptic has done this, and I predict they will never attempt it.
Gabriel, you are overlooking the fact that the climate models are computer programs which have assumptions built into them. It’s not enough to just have the data, the data does not predict the future. The computer models do. And those computer models are not publicly available.
In fact the “hide the decline” comment in the CRU emails was describing an attempt to hide the fact that the very tree core samples that were being used to demonstrate historical temperature increases in the past somehow diverged from the computer model and showed a distinct decline in temperatures for the past fifty years or so. The reason the CRU had to “hide the decline” was because if the tree ring data was not reliable for the past 50 years, how could it be reliable for the past 5,000?
You can be a Climate Change apologist all you like, but don’t pretend that these guys weren’t involved in obvious data cherry picking and other shenanigans.
I think you’re trying to take this too far. As a scientist, I certainly don’t have to show anyone any data – until I publish. Once I publish, however, if I want to be taken seriously I have to offer up everything to anyone who asks for it. If I can’t answer every question fully, my work will be considered suspect. That’s science.
Again, you are wrong.
It may or may not be what journals are for, but it’s not what journals are being used for.
The person that makes the claim has to perform full disclosure. In today’s world, that may well mean gigabytes of data as well as the computer program used (if it is not a commercially availible program) availible for download by just anyone. There just is not enough room in a journal for that sort of full disclosure so it’s a moot point.
If legal demands enter into the question, then the person making the claim is not properly supporting his claim, and the claim should be discarded until the person making the claim backs it up by releasing everything.
Everything needs to be out where it can be seen without requiring any sort of legal demand.
Yes, I know that a lot of “science” is being done without full disclosure and release. The science community has been getting sloppy. Tough bannannas. The AGW crowd has been caught bypassing the scientific method, so they should be ignored until they do follow it.
Oh, one more thing: “Replication”
How can an experiment be properly replicated without the person trying to replicate it knowing /exactly/ what the first person did?
If the second person comes up with different results without knowing exactly what the first person did, how does he support his claim that his experiment disproved the first experiment?
If the second person comes up with the same results without knowing exactly what the first person did, how does he support his claim that his experiment replicated the results of the first experiment?
Sort of like the temperature of boiling water isn’t it. Can Denver replicate New Orleans using an open pot? I don’t think so. Surface pressure determines boiling temperature. Sometimes it takes keen observation to point in the right direction.
“You are scientifically entitled to know where the data came from and what was done with it,”
You are aware of what a good job you are doing contradicting yourself.
If the data was published in these journals, there would be no need for FOIA requests.
The fact is that the data has never been published. The methods used to massage the data has never been released. And therein lies the problem.
“No climate skeptic has done this, and I predict they will never attempt it.”
Hmmm . . . to bad I didn’t get you to make a bet because . . .
1. McIntyre and McKitrick (Energy and the Environment, 2003)
2. Chapman,Bartlett and Harris (Geophysical Research Letters, 2004)
3. Esper, Frank and Wilson (EOS Transactions of the American Geophysical Union, 2004)
4. Pollack, Smerdon (Journal of Geophysical Research, 2004)
led to the Mann’s retraction in
5. Mann, Rutherford (Journal of Geophysical Research, June 2004).
Already been done. Apparently, you aren’t aware that the stick was broken awhile back.
You are not scientifically entitled to files off someone’s hard drive,…
Gabriel, this is a core mistake. The fact is that other researchers are entitled to the “files off the hard drive”, or, less colloquially, to raw data and sufficient detail about an experiment to allow its replication. This is legally required in many cases — someone here has already pointed out that drug discovery data must be made available, under law and FDA regulations — but it’s central to the notion of repeatability in all cases.
Actually it’s the warmists who are most like creationists. They just make up their data to fit their hypothesis.
Climate science is little more then model manipulation. I wouldn’t dignify it by comparing it to macro-economic modeling. Economists have higher standards. Models of complex systems are not useful for making predictions. They are only good for identifying important drivers. However, the more complex the model the less likely you are to get insights. Complex dynamic models require too much manipulation to get a solution and in the end you don’t know if it’s a legitimate modeling result or an artifact. Economists figured this out 30 years ago when they found that simple models predicted a few variables more accurately then large models predicted the same small subset.
Just what data have creationists made up?
We see the same data as anyone else; we don’t wear the same blinkers while looking at it. That’s what this whole thread is about, isn’t it? Warmists don’t allow anyone to think differently from them, same as evolutionists.
The reason why the Pons and Fleischmann’s experiment could be debunked was that they provided all the information necessary to replicate their experiment. Had they not, they could still be sitting back declaring that all attempts to debunk are based on incorrect tests. Just like the climate quacks are doing.
As to your claim that it is up to the skeptics to write their own models and run their own statistical studies, that has got to be one of the stupidest statements I’ve heard this year.
What if they did. I could easily write 100 models and have those models output 100 wildly different results. Would that prove that the climate quacks models are wrong? Of course not.
The scientific method REQUIRES the release of all data and all methods so that those who are interested in debunking your work can attempt to do so. Only when debunkers fail can you say with any certainty that the science has any validity.
Those who refuse to release their data are confessing in advance that they know their work is without merit.
Gabriel,
You chime in every time the AGW fiasco is mentioned with the same old nonsense claiming the raw data is available in complete form and so on and it is incumbent on skeptics to use it to construct a competing theory in order to dispute the original. You are either willfully oblivious to the fact that science is a process and has to defend itself, or simply ignorant about the scientific process itself.
As has been pointed out repeatedly to you, a competing theory does not have to be developed from the same data in order to dispute the original theory if the question is whether the existing theory was arrived at using good methodology, honest data sets, and rigorous peer review. That sort of dispute is settled by the authors and proponents of the original theory opening up the methodology, the data sets extracted from the raw data, algorithms, models etc that were used to formulate the original theory to examination. Not simply pointing to the raw data.
Otherwise, it is and should be considered junk science and quite possibly the principals held liable for fraudulent use of whatever private or public funding they received.
Gabriel, the clear climate code project is a good start: clear code, openly available, and testable. The problem is that the clear climate code starts with the UEA and GHCN climate data, which was selected and normalized in a poorly documented fashion. (In fact, for at least a while, the UEA story was that they no longer had the original data, and we know from the “HARRY_READ_ME” file that they had extreme difficulty recreating their own results from the data they had.)
A number of people who question the overall results have compared regional data with no selection to the selected data in the common data sets, and have uniformly discovered that the warming signal is exaggerated by the selection process. This would lead perfectly reasonable code to show warming.
The point is that the clear climate code project is good, but that doesn’t mean it settles all the issues.
Now, as I end up repeating regularly, I personally am a “lukewarmist”: I am pretty convinced that there has been significant warming over the last 400 years, and find it completely plausible that there is an anthropogenic component. On the other hand, I question the estimates of the magnitude of the anthropogenic component, and its cause. (I suspect, along with Roger PIelke Sr, that land use patterns may have a much bigger role than they are allocated.) But belief isn’t the point: the point is that we now know with some certainty that the process isn’t repeatable — this is why, for example, the UK Met Office is now starting a project to recreate the data set starting from raw data, with all methods open and documented — and that there are a number of counter-studies that suggest the process was compromised. So the best thing was can say scientifically is that the magnitude and cause are not well understood.
The “Pascal’s Wager” approach of saying “just in case it is true, we ought to do everything to reduce CO2″, however, only makes sense in two cases:
(1) If the potential downside is infinitely costly (eternal damnation in Pascal’s case)
(2) the proposed behavior has no costs.
Neither of these is true in the global warming debate.
My personal belief is that between land use changes, microsite contamination issues and the increased strength of the sun, at least 90% of the 0.6+/-0.2C warming over the last 100 years can be explained away as something other than CO2.
This would mean that the increase in CO2 from 280ppm to 350ppm resulted in a temperature increase of at most 0.05C. Now combine this knowledge with the fact that CO2 ability to absorb IR is pretty close to saturated already, and the fact that 60 million years ago CO2 levels in the atmosphere were more than 20 times (not 20%, but 20 times) greater than what we have today, and not only did all life end, but life flourished at levels not seen before or since, and I feel confident in declaring that we have absolutely nothing to fear from the small increases in CO2 projected over the next few centuries.
Actually, I hope the planet is warming, and that we can prevent a return of the glaciation. We are technically in an Ice Age right now, just a glacial minimum. If there is a geographic element to there being an Ice Age (relative positions of the contenants), we are going to be in an Ice Age for many millions of years, unless the plates take off in unexpected directions. Or unless this dreadful pollution they are fussing about negates geography’s effects.
I think you’re doing Popper a disservice. By his own falsifiability criteria, the bad behavior of climate science is unravelled. Popper’s whole point is that we can’t prove something true, and that scientific consensus can be unravelled by a single countervailing observation. He would have been horrified by the climate mafia of today.
And if Dr. F. was here himself to tell those at Univ of Va and the man-made climate-change movement about cargo cult science, I’m sure the response of Michael Mann, et. al, would not be anywhere near “Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman”.
The link to the cargo cult speech is broken. Here is an alternative:
http://calteches.library.caltech.edu/51/2/CargoCult.pdf
Cargo cults persist because sometimes for a few people the magic works.
Occasionaly a small plane load of anthropologists or missionaries will use one of the makeshift air strips, reinforcing people’s faith in the magic.
Scientists want the goodies that come from making magic for the politicians.
Politicans want the goodies that come from making magic for their constituents.
People just want a share of the goodies the magicians are able to provide for a fortunate few.
Some aphorisms about science (as a student, I had to learn this the hard way)
1) When your data conflicts with the theory, throw out the theory
2) Its better to know nothing than to know the wrong things
3) If we knew what we are doing, it wouldn’t be called research
4) The consulting statisticians lament “You should have come to me before designing the experiment!”
Agriculture was the birthplace of statistics (I’m ignoring Students t-test, developed at Guiness brewery of course)My degrees are in ag science: I took so many stats courses I could be a big time climatologist
EDUCATION, n. That which discloses to the wise and disguises from the foolish their lack of understanding.
– Ambrose Bierce, The Devil’s Dictionary
An education imparts no wisdom whatever. It simply gives a talented person the proper tools to finish his job. Richard L. Whitford
Talent is not a product of education. An education is simply a source of information talent can use to get the job done.
Richard L. Whitford
Was in Louis Nizer who left for our time to the effect that, an expert is in no way, a “know-it-all”; rather is he, one who knows his field so thoroughly and the path of knowledge for the human mind in that field that, he is able to present the intrinsic and constitutive elements so that, those but unlearned in that science are able to apprehend those elements and follow the logic so that, they too, may agree or disagree according to a true understanding in the requisite knowledge?
Anyone who says “The science is settled” is not a legitimate scientist. The same goes for anyone who says “The debate is over.”
And it goes doubly for anyone who uses “skeptic” as a perjorative.
“Exactly, and that’s what journals are for. You are not scientifically entitled to files off someone’s hard drive, though you might be legally obligated.”
This is so bogus and stupid a statement that, unless it was a parody intended to show the stupidity of the AGW cultists, it leaves no room to do anything but insult the author’s intelligence. If this is what “AGW science” has become, then it is nothing short of a cult of faith. No one, and especially not a bunch of charlatans that want to convince us there is an impending environmental apocalypse that can only be staved off if we allow them to implement their political solution – one that results in the most massive expansion of government, the most massive reduction of mankind’s freedom paralleling that caused the communist movement, makes a bunch of elites that have carbon footprints that match that of small cities stinking rich selling new energy that can’t generate a fraction of we need now, let alone will need to continue to have anything above a 19th century living standard – should ever be able to argue that the onus of disproving their insane power grab is on others, and worse, that they are not allowed to look at the fundamental facts that these losers pretend backs their faith, in order to do so.
I will say it again: the AGW movement is a fanatical religious cult, and frankly as dangerous as any cult can be. Those that valued the scientific process and gave us so much in the past would be spinning in their graves at what the AGW has done. These people stand to make trillions if they can sucker the people’s of the world to go along with their plans to return us all to a 18th century feudal society. The scary thing is how many of the government elites, most knowing quite well that this is all based on falsehoods, are happy to go along because it will enhance their power over the serfs.
In other words they are a selfish lot determined to live high on the hog at our expense.
Food for thought if thought is possible in the Global Warming consensus crowd.
Back in the mid 1970s I was in high school. Our English Lit teacher assigned us an essay on “current events” as our mid-semester essay. I picked the hottest scientific story going on at that time.
Global Cooling.
I looked up Global Cooling in textbooks, in scientific journals and in popular science magazines. I even used news magazines as source material.
At that time the “scientific consensus” was that the earth was heading into a dangerous period of Global Cooling that could well presage a “new Ice Age.” NewsWeek ran a cover story on the issue, with lurid graphics of New York City being overrun with glaciers. Congress held hearings on the issue, and the most prominent scientists of the day were called to Washington DC to testify and to suggest means to avoid the coming Cooling Catastrophe.
Many of the very same institutions that are today bleating about “Global Warming” were bleating then about “Global Cooling.” Nobel prize winning scientists were offering potential solutions which included painting rooftops black, spreading soot on arctic and antarctic glaciers, even potentially dropping atomic bombs into volcanoes to vent some of the earth’s heat to replenish the heat being lost inexplicably during the Cooling Crisis.
That was 30 years ago. In 30 years our “brilliant scientists” have gone from scaring our children with tales of crushing glaciers destroying cities, to tales of rising oceans destroying cities.
Forgive me if I take this generation’s doomsday predictions less seriously than the do-gooders and anti-capitalists would like me too.
By the way, the conclusion of my essay back then was that the science was being overshadowed by the politics, and that people were using the supposed “crisis” to furhter their ideological goals.
The more things change, the more they stay the same…
Gabriel,
Give us a few billion dollars of taxpayer $ for data collection, offices, computers, salaries and so forth. And some more $ for journal publication, a snazzy PR campaign and lots of lawyers. I’m sure you’re willing to do that, right?
Gabriel Hanna:
“Surely if you can get totally different answers using even half the publicly available data, then the climate record is not robust enough to demonstrate warming.”
.
Goody. I get to choose which half, and don’t have to show my work. What do you want “proven”?
“Peer review” ought to be limited to validating the paper contains enough details that other scientiests could independantly reproduce the experiment. It’s not for canonizing a new piece of dogma, it’s for making sure the author shows his work.
But at this point, i’m afraid we’ll have to come up with a new term to describe it because “peer review” is probably too tarnished by the AGW frauds.
The final link in the article is dead. I’d like to read ‘Cargo-Cult Science’.
Please fix the link if possible.
The full commencement address from which “Cargo Cult Science” came can be found at CalTech here(PDF). The text can (currently) be found here.
Someone, I believe it was Feynman, once said “Be suspicious of what cannot be explained.” This is good advice not only with regards to science but for pretty much everything that came out of Washedup DC the last year and a half (like how EXACTLY is ObamaCare gonna cut the deficit?”)
I, too agree that “Sciencism” was a good one.
I realize that “Scientology” has been patented, and copyrighted.
Can indoctrination to the belief that propagating unconfirmed, serendipitous, disingenuous, theory can be actually be bestowed with the authority that graces “scientific prevailing wisdom”-suitable for supporting legislation, be called something? Is “Scienchism” available? (I declare coinage if unclaimed)
Is there some political-science equivalent to The Duluth Power Wheel in
plotting as many potential abuses of fatal conceit in defending “My Thesis=Blind Truth” as humanly possible?
(Wikipedia disallowed, no gleaning from debate fallacy terms either)
If you add absorbing gas to the atmosphere, it stands to reason the atmosphere will get somewhat hotter due to radiation from the sun and radiation from the earth. The issues become: How much hotter? What will that affect? Can we stop it? Should we stop it? What would it cost to stop it?
The complexities of the solar instability, the water cycle, cloud physics, the oceans, convection, make predicting global warming or cooling very difficult and very model-sensitive. Moving beyond that to biological implications, economic implications, geo-political implications, ethical considerations, etc. further add to the complexity.
Those who would jump from the computer models to legislation are jumping too far and too fast. They would have us building airfields to attract cargo….
Word.
I did my PhD work in simulation, from which I derived Martin’s First Law of Modeling: Any sufficiently detailed model will converge on the results most likely to lead to continued funding.
The primary, and most insidious, effect of the misfeasance revealed in the ClimateGate Files is that the results most likely to lead to continued funding were being selected by groupthink and political pressure.
This is hardly true just of climate science — a lovely and detailed exposition of the same effect can be found in Gary Taub’s Good Calories, Bad Calories.
From the National Review article -> The Dog Ate My Global Warming Data
Phil Jones and Tom Wigley authored the first comprehensive history of surface temperature, in the early 1980′s. They worked at the United Kingdom’s University of East Anglia, Climate Research Unit. Their paper served as the primary reference for the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) until 2007. It supported the IPCC claim of a “discernible human influence on global climate”, a warming of 0.6° ± 0.2°C in the 20th century.
Jones and Wigley used data from ground weather stations not designed to monitor long term trends. Many stations were placed near trees, in parking lots, and near heat vents. Changing urban settings surely biased readings. They modified the temperature data before using it in climate models. But, Jones and Wigley did not report their original data or how thay had modified it.
The Australian scientist Warwick Hughes wondered where the error estimate of “± 0.2°” came from. He wrote Phil Jones in early 2005, politely asking for the original data.
Jones responded “We have 25 years or so invested in the work. Why should I make the data available to you, when your aim is to try and find something wrong with it?”
“Why should I make the data available to you, when your aim is to try and find something wrong with it?”
Silly me, I thought “trying to find something wrong with it” was the whole purpose of peer review and the scientific process.
I work in the field of drug development. In that space, if you refuse to produce your underlying data it’s strong evidence of fraud. In fact, producing raw data for review by regulatory authorities is an absolute requirement before a drug can be approved. Large amounts of money are spent on training people at research sites to generate accurate records for each patient, and large amounts of money are spent to create databases containing individual records as well as aggregated data. If you can’t produce this stuff on demand, even many years after the fact, you’re in serious trouble. Why should any other field of science be held to a lower standard?
I work in the field of drug development. In that space, if you refuse to produce your underlying data it’s strong evidence of fraud. In fact, producing raw data for review by regulatory authorities is an absolute requirement before a drug can be approved. Large amounts of money are spent on training people at research sites to generate accurate records for each patient, and large amounts of money are spent to create databases containing individual records as well as aggregated data. If you can’t produce this stuff on demand, even many years after the fact, you’re in serious trouble. Why should any other field of science be held to a lower standard?
Thank you all for your thoughts and postings. It was quite a chore to wade through but worth the trip. Many of the points made about Climate Change can be applied to other subjective fields, politics being a star example. My observations tell me that politics and economics are subject to the sames laws as physics and engineering. The difference is that in engineering the results are self correcting because if they are not right the do not work. In politics it takes a generation to find out if you made a mistake.
LOL, “science has shown that this is an awesome article”.
Seriously though, I have long held that declarations such as “the debate is over” is the most unscientific declaration anyone could possibly make. This article puts so much needed substance behind my petty little belief. Thank you, Mr. Tipler, for this simple but well founded article.
“Cargo-cult sciense”, I love the name.
This article / author underscores the real conflict in public information in today’s world: the acceptance and praise of persons and their instruments which grow/evolve? from the RELATIVISM in modern discourse, in whatever subjects. Anyone’s “opinion” is valid as long as the persons are celebrities, the “correct” credentials are evoked, and “authorities” accept and use the “opinions” for public education, policy actions / control.
The “proof” of authority,i.e. clerisy OR celebrity, NOT demonstrable evidence.It boils down to INTEGRITY of the “scientists” in the practice of their disciplines, as it does in the integrity of the teachers in theirs, the public servants, including purveyors of information called Media, in theirs, lawyers, Congressmen, Judges, politicians etc. in theirs. ALL today impressed ( meaning captives in the service of some public body, e.g the old Royal Navy) by the “Mad Men” in the packaging not the substance.The temptations to short-cut real effort,time, evidence and truth is obvious. AND THAT is the difference between scientists, professionals, and pseuds. But the “public” gorged on information, inadequate, and often deliberately false, for “special interests” and population control in a free republic, has little interest in the history or truth of intellectual, social, political, moral events and developments. And so they become the puppets of those in the “professions” whose interests are self-enhancement and power over the “lives of others”, rather than adherence to the integrity of the disciplines.
INTEGRITY: entireness, wholeness, unimpaired state of anything, uprightness, honesty … (Concise English Dictionary )
I was talking to a black woman in a head scarf who was driving a a front loader this morning. She was parked across from Starbucks waiting to get started on a road drainage refit project. I was full of myself and bragged that when I was the boss, I always gave anyone a chance to do any job, being as it is impossible to tell beforehand who can succeed in a task, and I also claimed that I expected them to succeed, encouraged them to succeed and made things so that they would succeed. And the projects were successful! As I said those things not because they were true, which they were, but as a way of bragging, and as I spoke them I became sad for I realized that each one had also been a failure, for me, and even for the person I had chosen and worked with. And I knew, right then, with a dread inverse “Eureka!” why I had failed and brought others into failure with me.
Perched in the equipment cab above me the woman smiled and said, answering my words, “You are one of the rare ones, then.” But my inside conversation had already turned sour and I slightly scowled, first, before composing a smile and a thank you, then quickly turned and walked away.
Wide-open, welcome anyone ‘Science’ fails for the same reason I do. I’m an idealist, I want others to succeed, even in stuff they thought they had no chance at. Why? Because I want that for myself as well. A scientist like a Feynman is very very rare.
But did this ideal Feynman REALLY exist? I wonder! For with a true whole commitment to open science he would never have been a long term celebrated major scientist. His words in books and lectures say one thing, sure, but what of his actions within the walls of ‘Science’ as a profession and enterprise? Wasn’t Feynman a peer-reviewer? Wasn’t Feynman a member of PhD review panels? Was not Feynman a member of the Establishment of Science in that sense of Establishment as protector of the “Authority of Science”, as a wall between experts and laymen?
This is how I fail as a manager, again and again. I leave myself wide open — in the idea space — to attacks from any attacker at any time, and not only do not seek protections of entitlement, but I actively refudiate them. I’m a zealot idealist of openness. I am a destructive threat to most conceptions of establishment. In my fantasy, my insanity, there are no PhD’s, because there do not have to be PhD’s. In my craziness there are no peer-reviewed journals — because anyone is invited to review.
In the idea-space, I do not build castles and fortified positions, I want to live in a place open to all comers.
But there are only the rarest of organizations, and those come and go rapidly like a spark from a Fourth of July sparkler, able to operate to that motif. I worked in one once, but even in that company the ethos of full openness was unsustainable. It changed. And it died. Humans and their establishments live and die, that death was not accounted to the change in ethos.
While the internet, groups, forum and blogging are close to the open ideals I have, look right here in this very forum — PajamasMedia — and see how establishments develop. There is an elite, over time and habit the entry of new members to that elite becomes more difficult, the existing members must protect their turf. Simple human nature, and indeed more primitive than that! Even a tiny cell in the body has walls and walls within walls, each part jealous for it’s own turf and fierce to reject
that which is not ‘it’.
Just HOW open can any field of human endeavor really be?
“You are one of the rare ones, then.”
bvw:
You wrote: “But did this ideal Feynman REALLY exist?” Short answer…yes. I was privileged to have him as a physics teacher.
Further wrote: I wonder! For with a true whole commitment to open science he would never have been a long term celebrated major scientist. His words in books and lectures say one thing, sure, but what of his actions within the walls of ‘Science’ as a profession and enterprise?” I don’t know what you mean by “enterprise, but – aside from that – RPF was a major scientist without your walls. One thing was he never accepted an honorary degree, thinking that honorary degrees denigrated the people who EARNED said degree. As far as ‘celebration’ goes, Feynman was to the second half of the twentieth century what Einstein was to the first half.
Further wrote: “Wasn’t Feynman a peer-reviewer? Wasn’t Feynman a member of PhD review panels?” Sure thing: he also marked my undergraduate papers – hard, I might add. But this just makes him a good teacher.
Further wrote: “Was not Feynman a member of the Establishment of Science in that sense of Establishment as protector of the “Authority of Science”, as a wall between experts and laymen?” Feynman resigned from the National Academy of Sciences – as Establishment as you can get – feeling the whole set up was phony.
In sum, read a good biography: such as Gleick’s “Genius”.
Then you MIGHT be able to comment intelligently.
By what measure, Good Ole Charlie, was my post not found intelligent? Show your sources and all intermediate equations used to solve!
You do see you have a vested ownership in Good Ship Feynman, eh? Perhaps your own profession self-worth depends on having been his student. Clearly Feynman himself was conflicted as to what he might do, to be a true knowledge seeker but set by his era’s necessity — stuck fast by time’s arrow so to say — to be part of the establishment, and even those parts of that establishment willing to throw babies of ideas considered ugly over a Spartan cliff.
He made his peace, and did bra but not ket. What else can a man do? The world is not made for purity of ideals, it is a refinery.
bvw,
Thank you for posting. I don’t think I’ve ever encountered someone brave enough to disparage the great Dick Feynman. You truly are a monumental fool. Clearly, you know nothing whatsoever of the man, or of integrity. Not even his close friend and lifelong rival, Murray Gell-Man would agree with any your views on Feynman.
Upon reading your response to Good Ole Charlie and your bizarre Spartan analogy, I must ask you. Did your parents have any children that lived?
Words mean nothing. They’re cargo cults.
If people belived in Climate change, they would stop using oil and coal and gas. There’s no evidence anyone’s stopped. Ergo, nobody believes in climate change.
Not necessarily. Liberals rarely believe that they should be the ones to bear the burden of solving problems that only they can see.
Too many poor people. Raise someone else’s taxes, all the while dock your boat in another state to avoid $500K in sales taxes.
CO2 a problem, tell the plebes that they are going to have to live in caves so that you don’t have to worry about their future anymore.
Nooooo, you have to remember who is doing the demanding. These are the same people who pushed welfare, and did all they could to avoid paying taxes. They are the sort who donate clothing to a second hand shop (deducting the value when new from their taxes as “charitable donations”) but they have cut the buttons off the clothing and tossed them into a can, and never dig any out to put on their cloths that lose buttons. They are very vocal in support of bike paths, anywhere but where they live. They criticize the police, but call the police any time a minority drives through their neighborhood. They also support gun control and “may issue” laws, and have firearms and permits.
.
IOW, “Laws are for the peasents to follow.”
Here’s a PDF of the Feynman Cargo Cult article: http://www.filejumbo.com/Download/9A8316D12AEBB6FC
Perhaps we need Stephen Colbert or Will Ferrell to rectify this situation by coining a new word. Scienticious come to mind. Proposed definition: Scienticious – An adjective applicable to conclusions about natural phenomena that satisfy the requirement of minimal truthiness as established by scienticians of minimal integritude.
An Excellent Article.
I got a Physics degree in the mid sixties. I spent about 10 years of my life (10 to 21) checking out the work of great men, Hooke, Newton, Maxwell, Einstein, Maxwell etc etc etc etc.
I distinctly remember Einstein telling me how I could prove his proposition to be WRONG – merely by measuring Mars’ position during its transit of the Sun. Someone did check it a few decades later – and Einstein was right!
These AGW Climatoligists aren’t fit to clean the shoes of these great men.
And they want hundreds of billions from me on their say so!
This may have already appeared in the comments, but both essays–What is Science? and Cargo Cult Science–are in Feynman’s book The Pleasure of Finding Things Out. Google Books has a “preview” of this book and you may be able to read both essays.
I’d like to add, since I don’t see it in the comments, the famous story of Feynman and computer models. When the Challenger space shuttle blew up, there was some suspicion that the cold had reduced the flexibility the shuttles engine’s “O” rings. The NASA engineers pointed to computer models showing that couldn’t happen. Feynman took one of the recovered “O” rings from the shuttle, froze it, then showed that it had, in fact, lost its flexibility and shattered in flight. I’m sure Feynman would have had nothing but contempt for the “certainty” that afflicts alarmist climate science based on nothing–and I mean nothing–but models.
As the climate modelers admit, in some of their better moments. For example, Stephen Schneider wrote: “Computer modeling is our only available tool to perform what-if experiments such as the human impact on the future.” IPCC contributor Mike Hulme says the same thing: “Virtual climates created inside computer models are the best we’ve got.”
Nor is alarmist climate science open to Popper’s falsification principle, as Hulme admits: “[Climatological] statements emerge from processes of deliberation and discussion rather than from pure observation, experimentation and falsification.”
Yes, alarmist climate science is cargo cult science in more ways than one.
When I have written some computer code, it isn’t enough to evaluate it in the manner that seems to be standard these days with scientists — that is, to simply verify that it behaves as I expect it to (i.e. that “observation matches theory”) — the code isn’t tested merely by observing it do what I want or expect it to do, but rather by trying deliberately to break it. And that deliberation is never a guarantee that I’ve thought of all possible ways to try to break it — my familiarity with what I expect of the code can be an obstacle.