The Science Credibility Bubble 1747
eldavojohn writes "The real fallout of climategate may have nothing to do with the credibility of climate change. Daniel Henninger thinks it's a bigger problem for the scientific community as a whole and he calls out the real problem as seen through the eyes of a lay person in an opinion piece for the WSJ. Henninger muses, 'I don't think most scientists appreciate what has hit them,' and carries on in that vein, saying, 'This has harsh implications for the credibility of science generally. Hard science, alongside medicine, was one of the few things left accorded automatic stature and respect by most untrained lay persons. But the average person reading accounts of the East Anglia emails will conclude that hard science has become just another faction, as politicized and "messy" as, say, gender studies.' While nothing interesting was found by most scientific journals, he explains that the attacks against scientists in these leaked e-mails for proposing opposite views will recall the reader to the persecution of Galileo. In doing so, it will make the lay person unsure of the credibility of all sciences without fully seeing proof of it, but assuming that infighting exists in them all. Is this a serious risk? Will people even begin to doubt the most rigorous sciences like Mathematics and Physics?"
Yes, Here's Why (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Yes, Here's Why (Score:5, Insightful)
The argument from incredulity is often applied to science by the layperson. You don't need an opponent or a debate to use a logical fallacy. The fact that the Kitzmiller vs. Dover case had to happen proves that people question science regardless of it's validity.
It wouldn't be real science without real skepticism. A theory should remain a theory until it can stand up the to the scrutiny of skepticism.
Re:Yes, Here's Why (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Yes, Here's Why (Score:5, Informative)
Yes, but the emails show that the preexisting bias is on the climate-scientists side, not the skeptic's side.
Look, we have a group of people discussing the deletion of emails in response to a FOI request. They also discuss boycotting forums that publish an opposing point of view. That these items were even considered is all the sign we need that something is not kosher. Sure, the science may remain legitamite, but these particular scientists are not to be trusted. They are snake-oil salesman who at best may have lucked into the correct side of a debate.
-Jeff
Re:Yes, Here's Why (Score:5, Insightful)
In a networking analogy, it's RIPE, ARIN and the other registrars facing people calling them chicken little for pointing out IPv4 exhaustion and suggesting to use ip addresses "with higher than 256 parts", calling networking engineers "stupid people didn't think of that" and calling IPv6 a scam "to sell some routers".
So it's perfectly understandable that scientists with 20+ years in the field feel a little touchy and get annoyed by the 50th FOI request. The best solution for creationists, climate change denialists and 9/11 conspiracy theorist is to send them to school. If I were a climate scientists I would have been really annoyed by that time now by the elementary ignorance demonstrated by these people.
Snake oil salesmen my ass, if you examine someone's private correspondence over a 10 year period and that's all you find, then I want to give the give a damn medal for integrity.
Re:Yes, Here's Why (Score:5, Informative)
I don't think that means, what you think it means: Scientific Theory [wikipedia.org]
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Yes, Here's Why (Score:4, Insightful)
A theory should remain a theory until it can stand up the to the scrutiny of skepticism.
Wrong.
A theory should remain a theory only as long as it can stand up the to the scrutiny of skepticism.
Real skepticism has criteria (Score:5, Insightful)
Real skepticism provides criteria by which it can be satisfied. Unchanging skepticism in the face of evidence is not scientific.
Re:Yes, Here's Why (Score:4, Interesting)
The argument from incredulity is often applied to science by the layperson. You don't need an opponent or a debate to use a logical fallacy. The fact that the Kitzmiller vs. Dover case had to happen proves that people question science regardless of it's validity.
Exactly. There has never been, nor ought their be, an automatic trust of anything, including science. By definition of "layperson", we do not know and are not read-up on, the exact arguments for an against any particular theory. It has long been the case that unscrupulous individuals will try to sell a product or an idea "because science says so". This is behind every diet fad, every exercise machine, every crackpot "business methodology", that we've been exposed to for centuries (see: snake oil salesman).
The reason that climate change has been resisted and argued by so many, for so long, is exactly this. We do not trust the people interpreting this for us at the national level. We see a group of people who have financial motivation to resist, a group of people who have financial motivation to sell green-wash products, and a group of people who advocate shucking technology and returning to some insane, idealized view of nature, where man and animal and nature all get along, and don't eat or kill each other. All "climategate" has done, is confuse us further. We still lack faith in science, we still do not trust any of the people arguing, and we have good reason for this lack of trust.
Re:Yes, Here's Why (Score:5, Insightful)
There has never been, nor ought their [sic] be, an automatic trust of anything, including science
"Automatic" trust? Perhaps not. "General" trust? Yes.
We generally 'trust' science thousands of times per today. This morning I went into a man-made 'cave' deep in the ground and got on the subway. The 'cave' didn't fall in and the subway didn't crash. The subway train didn't have a 'driver' - It was automatic and operated by a computer. I listened to my mp3 player and trusted everything.
Two weeks ago I let my doctor inject two different kinds of vaccines into my arm.
I could go on and on with examples, but the bottom line is I trust science and the mechanisms that are put in place by scientists (engineers, doctors et al) to accredit each other - And I trust these people orders of magnitude more than Palinesque drones who believe some kind of flying spaghetti monster made the world 6,000 years ago and that Fred Flintsone lived with Triceratops.
Re:And that's bad how? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:And that's bad how? (Score:5, Insightful)
The Universe has some rules it plays by. We still don't know what they are, we may not ever. The best we ever do is to model those rules. Each model is "correct" within a particular range of validity. GR is correct at large length scales. QM is correct at small. Newton is correct at gamma approximately equal to 1. And so on...
Perhaps it may surprise you to know that reputable scientists also use Special Relativity *a lot*, despite being replaced by GR, or that we use different models (point, parton, and valence quark) of the proton depending on what regime we're in.
Re:And that's bad how? (Score:5, Insightful)
Einstein questioned "valid" laws of science and look what it got him.
Indeed I shall - it got him a series of logical arguments with which to dispute the wisdom of the time. Gradually, through debate and observation and experimentation, more and more people realised he had made a series of logical points that disproved the old ways of doing things.
Let us compare this to the argument from incredulity - the equivalent would have been Einstein saying, "But I don't understand it! How does it work? No, look, see, the feather and the hammer land at different times! Ha! Scientists are dumb!" in which case I doubt he would have quite the same status in the history books.
Re:And that's bad how? (Score:5, Insightful)
That would be a truly welcome change.
"[This] will make the lay person unsure of the credibility of ALL sciences without fully seeing proof of it..."
Tada, that's how science is SUPPOSE to work. Don't blindly follow anyone including scientists without quantitative and reproducible proof. Science isn't a religion, it's a fact. YOU ARE ENCOURAGED, NAY REQUIRED TO QUESTION SCIENCE in order for it to prosper.
On a secondary note the same thing applies to government.. but that is a different rant.
Re:And that's bad how? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:And that's bad how? (Score:5, Insightful)
> two words - Sarah Palin.
And we thought BDS was bad enough. The mention of Mrs. Palin's name seems to instantly polarize any conversation, so why bring her into this thread, already a certainty to become a veritable flamefest?
But since you did, lets do examine her ideas on the merits instead of ad hominim attacks on her. Seems she is saying pretty much what I have been saying here on /. for years. That the science and politics of GW and especially AGW have blurred into a horrid muddle such that even the raw data (where it hasn't been destroyed) isn't trustworthy. Therefore basing multi-trillion dollar reordering of the world's economy on it is stupid. Therefore The Won trying to ram a New Deal on Carbon down our thoats by hook (Copenhagan) or crook (EPA) isn't even on the same planet with science, it is ideology, pure and simple.
> Because of some possible (and if so quite serious) data shenanigans, Obama should boycott
> the talks entirely to send a message. i.e. Quit.
Yes. Because the reaction has been to attack the messengers, bury the whole matter and proceed on the same predetermined course. By going Obama is declaring for that faction. No other spin is possible. The only exception would be if he went and used the occasion to put his speaking skills into the service of Science by utterly flaying the whole perverted exercise, which we both know won't happen.
Global warming MAY be happening (but probably hasn't for a decade now..), AGW even MIGHT be the major cause. But with even the raw sensor data in serious doubt (ask Google about the recent review of the raw data in Darwin or the rerun of the New Zealand long term trend data from their raw data. The rot extends far beyond EAU's CRU now.) and the main actors proven by their own words to be activists instead of scientists who can say? And that is the point, nobody who hasn't got a few years to dig into data has no rational basis to decide. The experts are tainted on both sides by trillions of dollars of incentives, political/religious beliefs and the raw data is suspect. So on the one hand we might all be Doomed! yet the only proposed solution to the possibility is 100% certain to produce ruin. So the rational person looks for option #3 and says, so just how much would mitigation cost should we do nothing and the Warmers prove to be right?
If you are going to cry wolf on such a biblical scale as the AGW theory does, you really should make every attempt to be open and above reproach. If the warmers had truly believed the science was settled they should have put together a datadump worthy of the claims. Put the full raw data, the adjustments with detailed explanations for each out along with the complete fully commented source to the models used to process it that gave the results that lead them to their frightening theory of doom. Let everyone fully examine the whole thing to the best of their abilities. That would have settled the science.
Instead they let Al Gore ride in and turn the whole thing into a crappy PowerPoint, then into a movie and finally ride it to become the Nobel Goracle with a hundred million dollar personal forture riding on a pet theory that just happened (amazing coincidence, Trust Me!) to require the exact same policies his ilk had been pushing since Karl Marx defiled the Earth with his presence.
Or take James Hansen. He is going around saying anyone who "Denies" his theory should be tried for crimes against The Earth. Were he just another crackpot pundit he could be safely ignored. Look at MSNBC's raings, we are pretty good at ignoring crackpots. The problem isn't even that Hansen wears the robes of a High Priest of Science!, hell he has the NASA patch on his robes, in the ranks of Science! that is better than a cardinal's hat. No, the problem is that the rest of the priesthood hasn't taken any action against him.
When a heretic priest comes busting into yer temple demanding everyone adopt a new set of beliefs the established church
Re:And that's bad how? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:About That Data (Score:5, Informative)
2. The data is for the US land area, not the whole world.
3. Here is the paper listing [ornl.gov] and referencing the adjustments. Be the first to prove in detail how and why they are wrong to make and you'd be instantly famous.
Calling Pons and Fleischmann... (Score:5, Insightful)
Didn't we see the same bloviation from the mainstream media when cold fusion went from the energy source of the future to a byword for scientific fraud? It seems to me if the reputation of hard science could survive out and out fraud like that, it will probably survive the climate change "fraud".
Re:Calling Pons and Fleischmann... (Score:5, Insightful)
So, the main difference is not that scientists might be proved wrong or fraudulent, since that happens from time to time and is proof that the system works. The problem here is that the system itself is alleged to be rigged.
Re:Calling Pons and Fleischmann... (Score:5, Insightful)
So, the main difference is not that scientists might be proved wrong or fraudulent, since that happens from time to time and is proof that the system works. The problem here is that the system itself is alleged to be rigged.
Within the academic community, you have the same problem in both of these cases: inability to repeat the experiment. With Cold Fusion, you can't get the same results when you follow the experimental procedure. That's failed science. With the global warming 'scandal', you have a few scientists who are the only ones with access to the raw temperature data. There is no independent analysis of the data, meaning the statistics (and released data) can be tweaked or cherry-picked until the authors get results they want. Without independent analysis repeating their results, that's failed science as well.
The issue is when other studies are based off of the 'groomed' data, rather than the raw measurements. We need to take their word that the data wasn't cherry-picked to seem hotter, and nobody can independently verify that it wasn't. That makes it easy to dismiss the findings, and makes it hell for those who want to study the phenomenon. It's too important not to verify.
The other problem is that a layperson (or even many scientists) wouldn't know if it was rigged or not. For the layperson, we see news articles that say "In a research paper published in Nature...", and nobody gets to read the paper. So the average person is told "take our word for it", which doesn't do much to combat rumors of poor science. Without people who are science-literate (though perhaps not PhD scientists) being able to read the paper, see that it is sound, and tell their non-scientific friends why, it will always appear like a bunch of hand-waving.
Re:Calling Pons and Fleischmann... (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes some of the emails happened to be more interesting than the others. Would people stop trying to pretend like each and every email must indicate fraud for there to be any fraud?
Re:Calling Pons and Fleischmann... (Score:5, Insightful)
2. The tree ring proxy temperature problem is pretty well documented for the past 10 years at least. The basic idea is that using tree rings as thermometers gave an error bar +-x% and it has been discovered, that since 1960, actual temperature records started to disagree slightly with tree ring temperature records. Actual temperature records have an error bar of +-x/y%, where y is > 1, so they are more accurate than tree ring proxy records (which is why they are called a proxy in the first place).
3. The deviation since 1960 doesn't automatically mean that the records are wrong before 1960, as the instrumental records validate a large chunk of the pre 1960 period tree ring proxy data as correct within a given error bar. Noone knows the reasons why the tree ring proxy data is wrong "recently", but it is entirely possible that the cause is something like "more recent rings on trees take time to dry out" or something like that. It would be interesting to find out the cause.
4. The tree ring proxy data wasn't destroyed or altered, the "decline" is "hidden" in a graph for policymakers that depicted temperature data. It makes sense to replace the tree ring data with more accurate instrument records, because they are well, more accurate.
Re:Calling Pons and Fleischmann... (Score:5, Insightful)
I recommend the following:
1. Collect a bunch of data
2. Try to build a model that predicts that data
3. Run the model
Does the model match the data? No? Mess with the model. No? Is the data correct? Probably. Do we have any other sources of the data? Yup. Try that. Does that work?
This is fraudulent how? That sounds like a normal way of testing a model in a closed laboratory situation never intended for public consumption.
Next time you write some code, I'll criticize your use of static variables and constants in the concept phase without knowing anything about the model you're building.
What (Score:5, Insightful)
Science shouldn't be "accorded automatic stature and respect" any more than politics should. There's no reason to trust a scientist any more than you'd trust your barber.
The problem isn't that people aren't automatically believing science, it's almost the exact opposite: people are automatically doubting science. And that's quite another thing entirely.
Re:What (Score:5, Interesting)
I would argue that people don't know when to doubt, and when to believe.
Which scientists do they believe when it comes to Autism and vaccines? Which scientist to believe when it comes to global warming? It is just they have more insight into the infighting that is present into the community now.
The infighting has ALWAYS been there. When I was in graduate school I never saw a larger bunch of petty people whining over who was the bigger fish in there tiny ponds.
Re:What (Score:4, Insightful)
I would argue that people don't know when to doubt, and when to believe.
Which scientists do they believe when it comes to Autism and vaccines? Which scientist to believe when it comes to global warming? It is just they have more insight into the infighting that is present into the community now.
The infighting has ALWAYS been there. When I was in graduate school I never saw a larger bunch of petty people whining over who was the bigger fish in there tiny ponds.
You believe the theory that has observations to prove it works. Not the scientist. Pretty simple if you ask me.
Re:What (Score:5, Insightful)
That's fine, if you can read the papers, and read the papers confirming (or not) the observations, etc. For example, with the whole autism/vaccine kerfluffle, the original paper by a British doctor has been debunked, and apparently he made up and/or mis-represented his data. Plus various doctors (which the public conflates with scientists, which is sometimes true and sometimes not) make all sorts of claims, often based not on scientific methods or verifiable proof, but instead on personal opinion/experience and a few particular cases they've seen. The problem is that it's way to easy to jump to an unwarranted conclusion, or to do what humans are all too good at - picking facts that support what we already believe or want to believe.
The public has little or no understanding of how science works (even many non-scientist academics don't). Combine that with the modern media's preference to not interpret, but instead present all points-of-view as equivalent (or to prefer certain points-of-view based on politics), and it's easy to see how the public can reach the belief that science is just opinion too - that you can pick who to agree with, based on what you want to be true.
Re:What (Score:5, Insightful)
Um, but if that scientist consistently, and repeatedly, refuses to give you his data or his methods (hi Michael Mann!) and just says "believe me" on an issue that will cost your country literally billions of dollars, are you just supposed to shut up and go along? Especially when it appears after much prodding and poking that some of the data were cherry-picked, others were "adjusted", and finally, the raw data was deleted? The Earth may well be warming, but it has warmed and cooled countless times over the millenia, and the case for AGW is certainly "not proven". So I think a healthy skepticism before imposing the huge financial penalties and bureaucracies that are being punted about is the only wise position.
Re:What (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm certain that people believe it when a spacecraft launches, or their new TV is even thinner.
Thing is, do they even realise that is science?
In their mind science is a term for the fuzzy stuff that they read about in the papers - like is a glass of wine good or bad for you? Are potatoes/fish/eggs/etc good or bad for you? And all the U-turns since. Science is the word they associate with anything that goes wrong or seems to be a stupid waste of money to research.
The media has propagated this view of science, because journalists could never hack the subjects themselves, and they just want to get their own back on those people who could do it.
Re:What (Score:5, Interesting)
Indeed. Personally, I would like to see a bit more skepticism when it comes to science. As in "Hey, show me some data and explain to me why what you say should work before I take your word for it." Or at least go out and do some of your own research before accepting something from some random scientist. Too often news organizations quote someone with some professorial or scientific title and pretend that the quote has value. Unless I know that person and have been able to assess their credibility in some way beforehand, they could have just as well quoted my barber. This presentation issue is a failing of news organizations though. Any person can still do their own filtering.
What we're getting now though is that ad hominem attacks on scientists (of the sort of "You work for institution XYZ, you're automatically disqualified from contributing.") is seen as valid approach in any discussion on any topic. This is complete idiocy, and a mark of the intellectually lazy. To some extent, the public press and scientists themselves contributed to the problem. The press has elevated scientists to the status of oracles, and the public was happy to believe the oracles. Many scientists thrived on that elevated status, and did little to dispel it. Now that the oracles have been shown to be as human as everybody, the public is engaging in a massive back-lash. To some extent, it's to be expected.
But no matter how explainable the situation, there is a fundamental problem if science is being put on the same level as high-school English Lit (see posters above for ready examples) - and that's going to cause more problems down the line. Sadly , I find this attitude is mostly prevalent in the US - and various voodoo-practicing countries.
Re:What (Score:4, Funny)
Haven't seen Sweeney Todd, have you? There's plenty the tonsorial-industrial complex doesn't want you finding out.
Skepticism requires more than just questioning (Score:5, Insightful)
Doubt is good. Healthy skepticism is a sign of maturity and intellectual involvement.
Healthy skepticism is good when the skeptic understands the underlying ideas that go into the subject matter. If they don't understand the basics of, say, scientific theory, they aren't intellectually involved in the first place. That's a relevant issue with many lay people.
Dumber dumbed-down discourse (Score:5, Interesting)
When I was a kid, I used to genuinely believe that humans were on a path to greater wisdom, more profound discourse, and perfect knowledge.
Lately, I just see a bunch of power-hungry assholes doing their utmost to discredit intelligent thought and dumb-down the world around them, so they can continue on an unimpeded path toward greater assholism.
Open source (Score:5, Insightful)
Will people even begin to doubt the most rigorous sciences like Mathematics and Physics
The answer is no. The good thing about science is that it is open source. For mathematics, you can go through all of the proofs from your text books. For physics you would need a bit of gear to reproduce some of the experiments, but again, that is just a question of money and interest.
The basic point is that the scientific method don't expect you to accept anything without proof. If you can falsify any of the theories by experiment, people will pay attention to you, regardless of politics.
Re:Open source (Score:5, Insightful)
"If you can falsify any of the theories by experiment, people will pay attention to you, regardless of politics."
The upside to this is that science appears to hold itself to a higher standard of truth than religion and politics. The downside to this is also that science appears to hold itself to a higher standard of truth than religion and politics. Science always says first to its student: "Doubt me." It's a tough marketing job from there on out. As science has skepticism as a built-in requirement, people will always doubt its findings more than the claims of religion or the promises of politicians. Of course, science has the added benefit of being difficult to understand, much unlike the prescriptions of religion. This all creates a situation where knowledge and rational skepticism actually have no political force, and their antitheses, ignorance and hysteria, drive our political discussion.
If people reserved nearly as much skepticism for religion as they did for science, we would live in a much more sensible world.
Re:Open source (Score:5, Interesting)
Sure, you can go through the proofs and run some experiments - if you're a mathematician or a scientist. For the average Joe, these activities are as foreign as eating boiled locusts for dinner. Average Joe will doubt (and already does doubt) because he lacks the training to understand how math and science work. And average Joes outnumber and outvote mathematicians and scientists by a large margin, and end up electing the scientific ignoramuses who dominate one of the US national political parties.
Laypeople. (Score:5, Interesting)
You're assuming that everyone who has an opinion about this will actually be informed, will take the time to look through those proofs, reproduce those experiments, etc.
Read this. [nationalgeographic.com]
In particular, look at that graph. Are you frightened yet?
Evolution is one of the crowing triumphs of modern science. It has more evidence than any other theory I know of, from many branches of science -- the "tree of life" is repeated, exactly, in genetics, in the fossil record, in the geologic record, everywhere we care to look for it. It informs pretty much all of modern medicine and biology, and it is a humbling look at our origins and our true status with respect to other life on the planet. It is beautiful, important, and solidly supported by fact.
Even the Catholic Church has officially embraced evolution, and the big bang theory, as truth.
And a third of Americans reject evolution outright. These aren't people who just aren't sure -- they say it is definitely false.
Want to guess why?
Because they feel it threatens their religion. Because if evolution is true, the Earth (and certainly the Universe) cannot be six thousand years old, and they must accept that they are descended from apes -- or that, by any honest classification, humans are still a species of ape. Because they cannot accept the fact that at least some part of that religion is a fairy tale, or at least a metaphor.
The problem is, in order to reject evolution, they find they have to doubt just about every legitimate scientist who has an opinion on the subject, and keep themselves willfully ignorant. Furthermore, in order to believe the earth is six thousand years old, they pretty nearly have to stick their fingers in their ear and go "la la la la" in order to avoid pretty much every branch of science that has anything to say about the subject.
That is, if they are right, even the most basic grade-school cosmology must be wrong -- there are objects more than six thousand light years away from us. Geology must also be wrong -- not merely carbon-dating (which is already quite rigorous), but the kind of time scales modern geology suggests. And of course, modern medicine must be wrong -- our understanding of things like antibiotics relies on evolution to work.
And yet, they will feel qualified to address these issues, to challenge real scientists with such arguments as, "That's microevolution. Show me one 'kind' turning into another, and I'll believe it." When this fails to get them anywhere, they again close their eyes, ears, and minds, and ultimately turn to the very simplistic, reassuring, and ultimately wrong words of Ken Ham: "Who should you believe -- God or the scientists?"
The problem here is not just the validity of evolution. It is that in order to believe what the creationist wants to believe, they have to reject huge chunks of modern science. In order to continue to be relevant, they have consistently attempted to get their strange ideas taught in school -- not just as a philosophy, or a class in its own right, but as part of science.
And it's not just america -- 22% of Canadians [ncse.com] are creationists. Something like a third of Americans are.
So, the short answer is, yes, laypeople absolutely will doubt whatever they feel they have a problem with. If they doubt evolution, cosmology, Einsteinian relativity, geology, archeology, paleontology, etc, just so they can believe a certain way, it's certainly not a stretch that they would doubt anything that conflicts with their actual (polluting, wasteful) lifestyle.
And unfortunately, even when 99.9% of scientists agree on something, it doesn't help if they can't convince the public -- because laypeople are also voters.
We need another Carl Sagan.
Re:Open source (Score:5, Insightful)
NASA destroyed old tapes of data too.
Why? Because back in the days storage space was a premium. There just wasn't the room. Someone made an executive decision to make more space and they decided to get rid of the raw data.
Not saying this is what happened to the climate data, but sometimes shit happens. This isn't stuff people consider historic, so while we'll go out of our way to save Terabytes of White House email because it's instantly an historic record (...the ones that still exist *snort*) no one gives a poop about the raw data on the mytosis of genetic material in the Burandan Sea Slug.
Re:Open source (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, it's not unheard of to destroy raw data, but a list of what data was used and how is usually maintained. This way, someone else can collect the same raw data again and verify the original results.
The big problem with the CRU is they've failed to even disclose a list of exactly what data was used and what they did with that data. This makes it impossible to verify their results. It should also be noted that this info is required for publication in most journals, but they have managed to get published (most of the time) without it anyway. After all, if you can't peer-review their work, what's the point of a peer-reviewed publication? This is the heart of the controversy - not just a few leaked emails.
Re:Open source (Score:5, Insightful)
I mean, would you also like us to recreate the Big Bang so we can "run a true experiment" on it or would you rather we look at observable data and draw a reasonable conclusion that Big Bang did happen?
Didn't start it, just makes it worse (Score:5, Insightful)
We're already well into the era when people doubt the motives and findings of scientists. You can see it here on
Problem is, people really believe that they can become experts on extremely complicated topics and weigh the evidence for themselves. I'm not saying we need to have blind trust in authority, but sometimes you've got to recognize that someone who studied climatology for X years might actually know a thing or two that you can't pick up from reading a blog.
Re:Didn't start it, just makes it worse (Score:5, Insightful)
sometimes you've got to recognize that someone who studied climatology for X years might actually know a thing or two that you can't pick up from reading a blog
This.
Happens in every field; I get it all the time supporting computers. I ask them to do something, and suddenly I'm questioned, berated, argued with, told it won't work, they've done it, yadda yadda, and when I finally get them to do it and humor me...it fixes their problem and they hang up. No apology, no thank you, and likely no realization that they don't know my field as well as I know my field.
Re:Didn't start it, just makes it worse (Score:5, Insightful)
Problem is, people really believe that they can become experts on extremely complicated topics and weigh the evidence for themselves.
This is a serious problem. On the one hand, a democratic society holds that each member can and should act independently, weighing the factors that they find personally important, to come to vital decisions. On the other hand, most people are ignorant on nearly every subject, and lack the means, ability, incentive, or time to become expert on each subject as it comes along. Making medical decisions is one of the most important examples of this. When presented with a treatment for a condition, who among us can really make an informed decision? Are we ever even given the proper tools to make decisions (such as percentages of success, side-effect, and failure for the treatment, practioner, or hospital? Hardly. Instead we have FUD like, "OMFG they're putting POISON in vaccines." I work in neuroscience research at a big hospital, and *I* don't know why thimerisol is used as a standard preservative in multi-dose vials of H1N1 vaccine. I don't even know how much mercury would end up being in a standard dose of a vaccine, or if that is enough to cause neurological issues long-term. If I'm in the same general field, and I don't have the proper tools to evaluate the risks, how possibly can the general public?
Right. They can't. Not possible; not even remotely possible. It would take a motivated, highly educated person with a lot of money to pay for scientific articles (they aren't by-and-large free except when you have a university affiliation), and lost of time to comb through stacks and stacks of papers in order to make an informed decision about one treatment. This is a barrier to knowledge that is not realistic. Expecting the lay person to make good, informed decisions is a joke. Expecting that the lay person can understand the myriad of complexities about climate change when the very idea of a static climate is demonstrably bogus is nothing more than political propaganda.
So, people have been brainwashed into thinking they can become experts on any subject in a few short minutes (witness all of the "well, why dont' they just do ..." comments on Slashdot where readers who are familiar with a subject for the time it takes to read a condensed summary presume to be able to second guess experts who have devoted their lives to a particular field). They clearly cannot do this, and nothing is going to get any better in that regard as science and technology continue to make astonishing advances. We, the scientists, must therefore be absolutely certain and vigilant about promulgating only truth, and fighting propaganda at every turn.
I am not a climate scientist. I am not a geologist. I have friends who are, and from my second-hand understanding of anthropogenic climate change, no one really understands what is going on. Sure, there's some evidence for anthropogenic climate changes (like the ozone hole over Antarctica), but *I* lack the skills and knowledge to understand the issues. So when I hear Al Gore saying things like, "we dump billions of tons of CO2 into our thin atmosphere like it was a sewer," it makes me angry that anyone is listening to that drivel at all. He might be right, anthropogenic CO2 may be a really, really big problem, but delivering that message with distortions and distractions that make the Soviet propaganda machine appear tame in comparison, ultimately is doing far more harm than good.
Blind trust in authority is bad. But so is what we have now where fear, uncertainty and doubt determines what the public thinks.
Funding (Score:4, Insightful)
Who could have possibly predicted that accepting hundreds of billions of dollars from governments over the last couple of decades could have somehow politicized Science?
-Peter
Re:Funding (Score:5, Insightful)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_society [wikipedia.org]
Just out of curiosity, if pure science is not funded by government, how should it be paid for? By private industry? Do you somehow think that we can place greater trust results of science paid for by corporations?
Re:Funding (Score:5, Informative)
Who could have possibly predicted that accepting hundreds of billions of dollars from governments over the last couple of decades could have somehow politicized Science?
-Peter
Dwight D. Eisenhower - 1961.
"The prospect of domination of the nation's scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present and is gravely to be regarded. Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientifictechnological elite."
Hundreds of billions??? (Score:5, Informative)
Hundreds of billions??? You have the wrong side. 20 Billion dollars over 30 years for the entire world. Compared with 37Bn dollars given as subsidies to fossil fuel and nuclear power industry *EACH* *YEAR* by the *US* ALONE* and I think you find the finger points a different direction.
How many people would want a piece of THAT action?
Much more.
Re:Funding (Score:5, Insightful)
Who could have possibly predicted that accepting hundreds of billions of dollars from governments over the last couple of decades could have somehow politicized Science?
-Peter
For some reason people have a very romantic view of what it means to be a scientist. They seem to think that the scientists just pocket the money they get. All of it goes to research, i.e. salaries for post-docs, phd students, etc. (of the not Ferrari-driving nor private jet flying kind), equipment, and conference expenses. And it is expensive do to science.
But until you see scientists buying private jets, yachts and arrive at the university in Bugatti Veyrons, I suggest you calm down.
Science Should Always be Questioned (Score:5, Insightful)
I mean, there are extremes, and people shouldn't be disbelieving scientists just because they're scientists, but at the same time, we shouldn't always take things at face value just because Bill Nye the Science Guy says so. There is a happy medium...
Re:Science Should Always be Questioned (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Science Should Always be Questioned (Score:5, Insightful)
Scientists are human. (Score:5, Interesting)
I work in a field closely associated with climatology (satellite remote sensing), and I work with climatologists. And I agree with the article on one point: We really do not understand how big a deal this 'climategate' is.
The worst bits in that email dump are petty squabbles between researchers and critics. That's standard -- often critics are dishonest people who are attacking the science in order to advance a political agenda, and that is very frustrating to someone who wants to do honest science. Yes, tempers flare in private emails. Scientists are human. If people are going to lose faith in science because scientists are human...then we as a race are doomed, in my opinion.
As for the results of the CSU climate research, they're not in any doubt. Every criticism of them has been answered, and there are other studies that agree with the CSU results. So attack the scientists for being human if you must, but the science is sound and must be heeded.
I really do not understand why this has blown up into such a conflagration. Anyone who gives up on science because of this trifling matter is welcome to go back to the dark ages and live their short, wholesome, science-free life.
Re:Scientists are human. (Score:4, Insightful)
The worst bits in that email dump are petty squabbles between researchers and critics.
Then you haven't been paying attention. The worst problems are evading a legitimate FOIA request, coercing journals to not publish the works of "skeptics", and excluding "skeptic" literature from the IPCC record. Those aren't "petty" scrabbles due to the stakes involved.
Re:Scientists are human. (Score:5, Informative)
(Reposting this where appropriate)
People seem to forget the context of that "undermining the peer review process" took place.
They certainly tried to impact the peer review process. The paper in question resulted in half of the editorial board of the journal in question resigning over the peer review process that took place.
http://www.sgr.org.uk/climate/StormyTimes_NL28.htm [sgr.org.uk]
The paper in question turned out to be underwritten by the American Petroleum Institute.
As for Mann and Jones' apparent effort to punish the journal Climate Research, the paper that ignited his indignation is a 2003 study that turned out to be underwritten by the American Petroleum Institute. Eventually half the editorial board of the journal quit in protest. And even if CRU's climate data turns out to have some holes, the group is only one of four major agencies, including NASA, that contribute temperature data to major climate models — and CRU's data largely matches up with the others'.
Read more: http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1946082-2,00.html#ixzz0ZJERceR1 [time.com]
Re:Scientists are human. (Score:4, Insightful)
The problem is that in a democratic system, they have the power to take the rest of us into the dark ages with them.
Data and algorithms (Score:5, Informative)
Other research [nasa.gov] centers [noaa.gov] also collect similar data, and some have open-sourced their algorithms [nasa.gov].
And yes, their conclusions are similar to those of the CRU. That's what the GP means by saying that criticisms have been answered.
Re:Scientists are human. (Score:5, Informative)
The paper actually contains information that explains what you're seeing on the picture. The adjustments made are detailed, compared [ornl.gov] and explained. The references for the expanded reasoning can be followed.
Besides, the graph is about the US temperature measurements. US != global. It could show warming and global warming could not be happening or it could show a decrease in temperature and global warming could be highly severe. Your argument is simply bad.
One citation explains it all. (Score:5, Interesting)
"The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt."
- Bertrand Russel
As evidence of the validity of Russel's insight, consider the people who are cocksure enough to assume it is they who are the doubters. They will even quarrel amongst each other about which of them is the intelligent, when in reality they are all idiots.
Skeptical of science? (Score:5, Interesting)
Oh, I'm sorry. I guess that we can't really thank science for medicine, computers, airplanes, the food on our table. I guess that one murderous programmer working on an open source file system means all of Linux is shit, too. And you know what? I got taken for a ride buying speculative real estate in Florida. I guess this means that you can't make money in real estate, that the whole thing's a rotten idea. Incidentally, I threw out the bath water. Where'd the baby go?
I'll buy that argument once religious whackadoodles promise to renounce their faith because of televangelists and pedo-priests.
Science costs money, ergo... (Score:5, Insightful)
"You've never worked in the real world... they expect RESULTS!" -- Dr. Peter Venkman
Therefore, the "tolerance stackup", a polite word for 'fudging data' will lean in the direction of the benefactor.
If this statement is not the truth, it is certainly the perception. Convince the masses that the scientists are not supporting the suppositions of the sponsors and maybe they will trust the science again. Start by convincing me.
Jesus, I have not seen more worthless CRAP on /. (Score:5, Informative)
I can not believe that someone on this forum, FOR NERDS, would make such a huge mistake on the REAL stuff that matters.
"You've never worked in the real world... they expect RESULTS!" -- RAY STANTZ TO Dr. Peter Venkman
As a Slashdot reader, you should know better...You might as well have misquoted a Python line, sheesh
What does he mean, begin to doubt? (Score:5, Insightful)
Some people already doubt science in general, to limit it to just math and physics belies the current trend of refusing to accept what science, in all its forms, tells us.
Men on the moon? Nope, can't be done because of . WTC towers collapsed because of structural damage compounded by extreme temperatures? Nope, it was a government plot because . Vaccines help prevent acquisition of serious diseases? Nope, doesn't work because . Evolution? It's impossible because .
There will always be those who will find any excuse to deny the scientific evidence. That doesn't mean one shouldn't question the evidence or how it's gathered. Rather, instead of saying, "See! They used the word 'hide' so they must be falsifying the data!", one should look at the entire context of quotes and information to see what is meant.
Science, in all its forms, is one of those areas where there will always be discussion about something, but once someone, or some group, comes up with an explanation, their data and processes can be checked by others to see if those people get the same results. If not, go back and see what the differences were. If still failure, back to square one.
I am reminded of the one CSI episode* where after doing all the evidence gathering, interviewing suspects and finally finding the body, the only conclusion was that the girl, upon trying to retrieve her waste can from a garbage bin, had been partially crushed between the bin and the wall when a vehicle came by and accidentally clipped the bin.
The parents were sure their daughter was murdered and planned on hiring their own investigator to find out who killed her. Grissom remarks, "Mrs. Rycoff there is no one guilty of this."
"Because you say so?"
"Because the evidence says so."
*The episode is called Chaos Theory and is one of my all-time favorite CSI shows. Right up there with Fur and Loathing (the plushy and furry convention episode).
When politics/religion meddle with science (Score:4, Insightful)
This has always been a problem and there has probably never been a time when politics and/or religion did not have inappropriate influence over scientific research.
Some (lay) people see science as a religion in and of itself having its own agenda. This is a failure in the sense that since attempts to deal with understanding the most absolute reality possible and tries to be impartial to any particular point of view. (Let's not get into the politics within science itself, I know it exists, but let's stick with idealism for a moment while I make my point.) In politics and religion, there is a propensity to believe "if you're not with us, you are against us" sort of ideas and so when data that is unfavorable to their position emerges, they tend to respond to it as if it were an enemy rather than a new facet of reality. (Fighting an enemy is one thing. Fighting reality is another!)
All science is to be doubted and disputed. This is part of how things work. However, lay people see a doubting of science as a problem of trust or faith because they know of no other context in which to process falsified or incorrect scientific data. While it was a tremendous disservice to the whole scientific community to have "climategate" surface, it is not as big of a problem within the community as it is outside of the community.
It would be really nice if people were able to acquire the simple understanding of what science is and is not and how it should be treated. The public knows that the weatherman is not always accurate but must always be depended upon nevertheless. The public knows that the weatherman does not control the weather and only reports his observations and renders predictions based on those observations. The public, in general understands and appreciates this correctly and fully. What the public needs to do, then, is expand this understanding to ALL of science and not just meteorology.
That much different? (Score:4, Insightful)
When there are people that espouse creationism, and that vaccines cause autism, it's obvious a lot of lay people didn't respect science before. How different can it be now?
Somewhere in hell, Jenny McCarthy, and William Dembski are going at it like rabbits. Their offspring will be the ultimate creature of evil.
How to restore healthy debate (Score:5, Insightful)
The best way to restore healthy debate on climate change science is to open source everything...the data, the source code for the computer models, and the methodology for how the data is collected: specific locations of data collection (is it a rural area, a parking lot in a city, on a school roof, in direct sunlight or in the shade), date and time of day (noon, midnight, 5pm), weather conditions at the time it is collected (sunny, raining, under a snow drift), age of the equipment (mercury thermometer installed in 1953 or digital sensor device). All of these factors would influence a simple temperature reading. Heck there are probably dozens of other factors that I am not considering.
Since our government is PAYING for so much of this research it should be no problem to PUBLISH all of these details and let everyone debate from a common framework. However, I believe our government has an agenda and therefore won't ever take such a logical approach.
While we are at it, let's do the same thing for how inflation, unemployment, public health statistics, education metrics, and poverty rates are calculated.
Re:Math is now a science? (Score:4, Insightful)
It would be nice if it was that simple.
But, at least one scientist who was going to study the validity of the ice core methodology was told that it would be immoral to undercut this important foundation for global warming and he was fired so his institute could continue to get funding.
Science is often badly distorted for decades at a time. Long term, you can't stop the truth. But short term, money wins out.
The journal, Science? (Nature?-- it's one of them) declared several years ago, after global warming was only a few years old and before many of the initial predictions failed, that the global warming debate was over and it was time for political action. Does that sound like the scientific method to you?
Nature just came out and said that the emails show nothing wrong and the ends justify the means. Does that sound like the scientific method to you?
Global warming is probably real- anthrocentric global warming is a little more in doubt.
Re:Math is now a science? (Score:5, Insightful)
If the Pythagorean Theorem required an increase in taxes people would start to doubt it. There was an interesting research paper in which conservatives were given a news article which outlined a study with evidence for humans being responsible for global warming. At the end of the article they either appended a paragraph explaining possible regulation and taxation solutions or a paragraph suggesting that we needed increased Nuclear Power to solve the problem.
Those who read that the solution was taxes were more likely to doubt the validity of the science than those conservatives who read the article with no mention of increased taxes but instead read about Nuclear power.
The problem with climate change science at this point isn't the science it's that the solutions go against conservative values.
"Liberals are trying to take over the world through fascism. Global Warming increases taxes and gives the government increased control over our lives. Therefore Global Warming is an eco-fascist plot to take away freedom and control us." The science doesn't actually matter one way or the other.
The real lesson of Galileo wasn't that science will persecute those it feels are heretics. It's that you can't change the minds of those who base their scientific conclusions not on empiricism and research but on whether or not it threatens completely unrelated personal beliefs.
We might not have perfect models or understand every nuance of climate change but we have pretty good research on the larger points. Challenges to climate change are similar to those against Evolution. "There is no way to know what really happened 100k years ago, because we can't trust proxy data or radio-isotope testing.", "Scientists don't completely understand the underlying mechanisms or why it's happened in the past or when exactly it'll happen in the future.", "There isn't enough time to do real studies since the time frames are so large.", "This is just a liberal plot to destroy our country and fill our children's minds with pseudo science." "It's a modern day religion.", "The scientists are suppressing dissent and withholding their data." "The science isn't settled." "So-and-so admitted that they have huge gaps in their understanding and that it's frustrating to not know X one way or the other."
Re:Climate Science isn't a Science! (Score:5, Insightful)
No. Climate science works on similar timescales as evolution and both biologists and climatologists would be shocked to hear that they can't formulate a hypothesis, make predictions and attempt to disprove them. That's exactly what they do. You seem to have a very naíve idea of what an experiment is - that stuff the chemists do in the labcoats right? Climate science produces testable predictions both for our current future and starting from past points to arrive at conclusions about our past. Climate scientists made predictions based on a theory about past climate, before knowing what the past climate looked like, then someone actually came up with a way of measuring the past climate. That's predictive value. Evolutionary biologists do the same, please read Richard Dawkins' latest book "The greatest show on earth" for a robust overview how evolution is based on testable ideas.
At no time in the past 100 years did the scientific consensus suggest that there would be imminent global cooling. There were some (one?) article that suggested global cooling in the 70s and the mainstream press run with it. It is also pretty well known that climate is cyclic and "imminent" in climate science might mean 10 thousands years. There was also a valid view that aerosol pollution would cause "global dimming" and reduce temperatures slightly. We fixed that problem by banning a lot of those pollutants in the 70s thus _averted_ the problem. There wasn't any serious following for "global cooling" among scientists in the past 100 years. You are exaggerating extremely heavily. Comparing climate science to 9/11 theories or creationists is disingenius. It reminds me of that Monty Python sketch about "what did the Romans ever gave us...". You have to realize that a lot of things in your life depend on the scientists and the scientific consensus getting it right. There would be no internet, computing industry, aviation, etc. without scientific base research in a lot of these areas. Science, it works.
Re:These "scientists" weren't (Score:5, Informative)
please, please, please get your facts straight on what these scientists did with their data when they 'threw out raw data'
they threw out siberian tree-ring data for certain years (i believe it was 1960 to present) that they were using to infer local temperatures and, instead, used the actual local air temperatures. this turned a graph that showed temperatures over a period of time longer than thermometers have existed in from one relying on only tree-ring data, to one relying solely on tree-ring temperature data to one using mostly tree-ring data with some tree-ring data replaced by more accurate actual temperature readings.
yes, the tree-ring data in this location diverges unexpectedly from the actual temps recorded. that is a problem to explain. but it has nothing to do with the fact that the temperatures really did continue to increase.
Re:These "scientists" weren't (Score:4, Informative)
Re:These "scientists" weren't (Score:5, Insightful)
You are correct. In fact the actual data is better to use than the tree ring proxy data. BUT the tree ring proxy data is trending downward when temperatures are going up. This means that there is something fundamentally wrong with the calculation of a proxy temperature from tree ring data from 1960 on. However, if the tree ring data cannot determine correct temperature proxies over the last 40 years, then what is the quality of all the other proxy temperatures calculated from tree ring data over the last 1000 years?
In other words if the tree ring temperature proxy values are wrong now, then they're probably wrong then.
What does this mean? It means that the logical conclusion is that they are still using the tree ring data to determine proxy temperatures because is produces a result they desire. That result is the elimination of the Medieval Warm Period from the climate record.
The reason for eliminating the MWP is all about having the ability to use the word "unprecedented". Our current release of CO2 may be causing harm, and may require action, but the climate scientists apparently felt they needed more. If the MWP shows temperatures have been as high as they are now in the fairly recent (geologically speaking) past, then maybe the current change isn't due to CO2 but is due to some other factor. They did not want that question to exist. The warming had to be unprecedented in order to be "certain" that the warming was man made.
Hiding the decline was all about making sure that the graphs didn't show temperature trending up when the tree ring proxy temps were heading down. It doesn't matter how you parse out the e-mails what they did here is wrong and it is FRAUD and it did a great disservice to science.
Re:These "scientists" weren't (Score:5, Insightful)
They threw out the data 25 years ago -- long before the majority of these scientists had any agenda at all, besides getting laid, because it was on magnetic tape and punch cards, and they were moving buildings. But hey, don't let a few facts interfere with your conspiracy theory.
Re:Nobody deserves a free pass (Score:5, Interesting)
The more science is viewed with skepticism the better the science will be in my opinion.
Fair enough, but sometimes you have to make a decision now, based on what you know now. If you allow your "skepticism" to turn into "I'll make decisions based on the theory that is most personally convenient to me, even if the current evidence, while not conclusive, weighs against it" then you are not just being skeptical, you're being foolish.
Every serious scientific review that has looked at the evidence carefully (and at the raw data and at the analysis procedures, etc.) has concluded that the balance of evidence strongly supports AGW and strongly supports action now to curb emissions.
It is possible that in ten years time the balance of evidence will shift (or even tomorrow) but for the decisions we have to make today, that is irrelevant.
Re:Ummm. No. (Score:5, Insightful)
We tried that with the state lottery system. It turns out that most people can't understand statistics, and if they could, we wouldn't be able to afford the schools that don't teach it.
Modern-Day Galileo (Score:4, Interesting)
“Certain results of observational cosmology cast critical doubt on the foundations of standard cosmology but leave most cosmologists untroubled. Alternative cosmological models that differ from the Big Bang have been published and defended by heterodox scientists; however, most cosmologists do not heed these. This may be because standard theory is correct and all other ideas and criticisms are incorrect, but it is also to a great extent due to sociological phenomena such as the ‘snowball effect’ or ‘groupthink’. We might wonder whether cosmology, the study of the Universe as a whole, is a science like other branches of physics or just a dominant ideology.”
—Martin Lopez-Corredoira, astrophysicist.
http://www.holoscience.com/news.php?article=bqx15w21 [holoscience.com]
Some of you more knee-jerk types would also benefit from this article [thunderbolts.info] because some of you use some really weak arguments.
Re:Modern-Day Galileo (Score:5, Insightful)
“Certain results of observational cosmology cast critical doubt on the foundations of standard cosmology but leave most cosmologists untroubled. Alternative cosmological models that differ from the Big Bang have been published and defended by heterodox scientists; however, most cosmologists do not heed these. This may be because standard theory is correct and all other ideas and criticisms are incorrect, but it is also to a great extent due to sociological phenomena such as the ‘snowball effect’ or ‘groupthink’. We might wonder whether cosmology, the study of the Universe as a whole, is a science like other branches of physics or just a dominant ideology.”
—Martin Lopez-Corredoira, astrophysicist.
That is so retarded it needs to wear a helmet. The way to get ahead in science, if you want to really make your mark, is to kill the darling theories of your elders in a hail of factual bullets. Scientists are like sharks and lame hypotheses are blood in the water.
Re:Modern-Day Galileo (Score:5, Interesting)
There is the difference, just as people have been distrusting some sciences recently there has also been an increase in intellectual elites showing distain for the, lets call 'em Plebes. I think it stems from being walled up in Universities and not having to work for a living.
Someone in the real world that works on cars, develops deodorant or makes heart medication doesn't say "I'm a Scientist so I'm right!" They say "I'm an automative engineer, or a chemist that works on medication, or I'm a chemist that designs right guard." Its like the BASF commercials here in the US, "Helping Make Products Better."
All too often in the debates about GCC someone who is a climate researcher will go "Well I'm a climate researcher so I'm right and the people that don't agree with me are idiots." Yea, not the best way to approach people. /Disclaimer, I spent the last 6 years at a University not working for a living, now I'm out doing real work again.
Re:Modern-Day Galileo (Score:5, Insightful)
The thing I find most amusing is that scientists used to be branded as heretics. Now certain groups of them are going the branding.
When it comes to climate change, for instance, I can't simply find myself agreeing with an alternate hypothesis. Nope. I'm one of those "deniers" as if I was some kind of Jew murdering Nazi or something. Which, you know, is a really healthy way to handle the whole discussion.
Re:Modern-Day Galileo (Score:5, Insightful)
My logic tells me that true science is more about questions than answers. I believe that we continually need to move forward but with enough doubt about how far we have come to be able to freely discuss "facts" that we have already established.
In the fable of the Blind Men and the Elephant ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blind_Men_and_an_Elephant [wikipedia.org] ), various people correctly observe things and make differing conclusions about them. While there are definitely times to apply Occam's Razor and accept certain facts and move on, that does not mean there is not more to the story that can be observed later from a different angle.
Any "scientist" who works to "shut up" the opposition, has ceased to be a scientist and has turned into a political creature. Science is not about manipulation but about free and open discussions based upon the merits of the arguments.
Re:Modern-Day Galileo (Score:5, Insightful)
Any "scientist" who works to "shut up" the opposition, has ceased to be a scientist...
Does this also count, if the "skeptics" do not use science to make their case, are given media exposure much greater than their viewpoint is worth, and has funding that far exceeds the research funding of the real scientists? I guess than that trying to shut up the "creation scientists" is the wrong way to go - instead, we should use our limited time and resources endlessly debating them. Do that for flat earthers, too.
Eventually all debates come down to which facts one wants to believe (unless you actually do the experiments yourself - and good luck with that). All I'm saying is that our peer review process, even with its flaws, works better than any other system out there that we've had up to this time (sort of like democracy). Those who seek to tear down this system (and, make no mistake, those who are blowing this one incident out of proportion are doing this), in the guise of "fixing it" are evil.
Re:Modern-Day Galileo (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Modern-Day Galileo (Score:5, Insightful)
If all ideas are NOT equally valid, then I challenge them to even predict what the weather will be over my house, in exactly 7 days from now !
You see the problem is, climatologists can't even predict the "small stuff" to any degree of accuracy, yet will quite happily stand 100% by their conclusions on what will happen in 10 years fro now, declaring that they know better, and everyone else is either unqualified, or misguided, or a moron.
That's a bit disingenuous. The "small stuff" is actually much harder to predict that "big picture" stuff.
Try this example - take a hunting hound and turn loose a fox about 5 minutes ahead of him - the fox runs east. Now release the hound. Tell me what his exact position will be in 1 minute. I'm guessing you'll have a pretty hard time guessing exactly where the dog is going to be. HOWEVER, I'll bet you a month's pay that over the next 5 minutes his GENERAL DIRECTION will be east.
The same basic thing applies to climatology. The weather is a shaky little bugger that is far to variable to make exact predictions on specific days. It can however be perfectly possibly to extrapolate a general trend and direction in the data.
Re:Modern-Day Galileo (Score:5, Insightful)
Just because one has the "right" to say it, doesn't mean they should.
Aristotle would call it Hubris - "to cause shame to the victim, not in order that anything may happen to you, nor because anything has happened to you, but merely for your own gratification. Hubris is not the requital of past injuries; this is revenge. As for the pleasure in hubris, its cause is this: men think that by ill-treating others they make their own superiority the greater."
I've done both academics and working both in agriculture and the public sector and in my view no one "earns arrogance".
Re:Modern-Day Galileo (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, there is a long, long list of people who should have been told to STFU. Newton, Galileo, Celeste - ohh, the list goes on and on.
Seriously, #1 on my list would be that douchebag, Al Gore. He did more to politicize the global warming crap than anyone. If you want my most serious opinion on GW - yeah, the earth is warming. It's going to warm, no matter what we do. Do I really think that mankind is hastening the inevitable? Wellll - not really, but it's possible. Yeah, let's do whatever we can to clean up the environment, and to stop wasting shit - that makes sense with or without the threat of global warming. Stop polluting. I like it. Those things that you just HAVE to have, you should shop for the most energy efficient model. Stop driving cars to the corner for a gallon of milk. Stop wasting. Everyone will benefit - global warming or not.
But, as for man CAUSING global warming - BULLSHIT!!! How many ice ages has the earth had now? And, how many interglacial periods?
The earth didn't end with any of the ice ages, or during any of the interglacials.
It's time to adapt, people. Doomsayers go under the bus. People with a plan can get on the bus.
Re:Modern-Day Galileo (Score:5, Interesting)
The scientists should actually have pointed out the inaccuracies in the video, but they didn't. So when average Joe like me sees this, what do I use to draw my conclusions? Well its not rocket science - Al Gore talks rubbish and the scientists still support him. Where does that leave the credibility of the scientists? Well in my book, up the creek without a paddle.
As far as I am concerned, this is an engineered crisis to manipulate people to start being more conservative with their energy consumption, while moving towards using sustainable and renewable forms of energy and manufacturing. While I am all for the objective, I object being lied to and coerced, and will never be able consciously align myself ethically with people who believe that they have the right to behave in such a manner.
Re:Modern-Day Galileo (Score:5, Insightful)
I've seen him lauded for raising awareness of the issue. Like most popularizers, he's been criticized on the details by scientists, including those who support the broad consensus view on anthropogenic global warming. The Nobel Prize was the Peace Prize, not one of the scientific prizes.
In fact, plenty of them have, including those who support the point Gore was making in the speeches and video.
Re:Modern-Day Galileo (Score:5, Insightful)
Free speech is one thing, but when talk-radio (just one example) come out with completely made up 'facts' and statistics on the fly to please their listeners, they ought to be fined hard if the study they pretend their stats come from doesn't exist in peer-reviewed form. I've listened to them 'debate' the current climate problems, and it would have been a good laugh if it hadn't made me cry first.
Re:facutal inaccuracies? (Score:5, Informative)
Yes. Some of the science was valid. But some of the facts presented as true were blatantly designed to mislead.
My point is, one either supports the scientific method or one does not. There are no grey areas. Either its science, or its propaganda. It cannot be both. 'An Inconvenient Truth' is propaganda masquerading as science, which is actually what this forum topic is about.
Re:Modern-Day Galileo (Score:5, Interesting)
They have every right to say this; when the people arguing against them are not climate scientists, or in scientific fields related. If I tell someone with a PhD in climate science that they are wrong, they have every right to chuckle at me, since I really don't know what I'm talking about. This is not a problem.
It is when the guy with the PhD thinks his expertise entitles him to refuse to publish the full, raw data he used along with his analytic methods. It is when he uses his influence with a journal to exclude equivalently credentialed scientists' papers because they disagree with his interpretations of the data. Science is not a priesthood. We do not (and should not) accept proclamations from scientists as truth because they hold a piece of paper or have three letters next to their name. We analyze their data and their methods,and try to poke holes. If nobody can poke valid holes, then his analysis gains acceptance until someone comes up with a better analysis. When certain scientists - the very people who should know the merits of scientific scrutiny the best - start trying to circumvent this process, it damages their credibility and the hard-earned reputation of science as being based on fact rather than emotion or politics.
It is also a problem when the guy with the PhD thinks his expertise in a given scientific field makes him an expert on public policy. Folks can accept scientific observations that the world has been warming in recent years yet have differing views on appropriate solutions. One of the disturbing things about many practitioners of climate science is how they've been merging with a parallel alarmist religious/political movement that thinks warming is our capitalistic sin against the planet, and which assumes the solution has to be drastic carbon output reductions regardless of how much economic collateral damage it would cause. The thought of engineering other ways to produce planetary cooling is dismissed. Discussions of such policies is not the realm of science. It is the realm of public policy, which thankfully is not left simply to a handful of people whose expertise is often exceeded by their hubris.
We need to remember that scientists are human beings too. They are as fallible as anyone else. Back in the 1970s there was a big scare from climate scientists that we were going to have massive global cooling and enter a new ice age. The problem is that climate is very complex, and attempts to model it inevitably miss something. While such models are valuable tools to gain understanding and predict future events, they do need to be taken with a grain of salt. So let's have a debate about what we should do about global warming. But let's go into it open-eyed, realizing that the participants and the models all have faults that should make us leery of hasty and dramatic changes in policy.
Re:Modern-Day Galileo (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem is some idea that science should be "fair and balanced", and that every view, from any source, is valid, or at least should be debated or considered. Scientists should tell MORE people to STFU, if you ask me.
There is another problem with your view... insofar that it treads dangerously close to representing something else. Here, I'll paraphrase your quote and show you how it would parse:
'The problem is some idea that christianity should be "fair and balanced", and that every view, from any source, is valid, or at least should be debated or considered. Bishops and priests should tell MORE people to STFU, if you ask me.' (after all, only someone trained in, say, Canon Law would be qualified to speak authoritatively on christianity, right?)
Re:Modern-Day Galileo (Score:5, Insightful)
By your logic, what right did a (then) non professional scientist like Albert Einstein have, meddling in a respected and obviously 'more-qualified-than-thou' field of professional science?
Actually, by the GP's logic, Albert Einstein's PHD in Physics made him qualified enough to question the established scientific thinking in the field of physics in a rigorous and meaningful way.
And it's absolutely no accident or quirk of fate that it took someone who was well studied in the field to up-end the established thinking, while the 'theories' of gaggles and gaggles of uneducated crackpots claiming to be following in Einstein's footsteps continue to come to naught. Because Einstein, armed with his PHD, understood the existing physics and thus its realistic flaws and limitations. Whereas the crackpot is theorizing from a position of ignorance.
Similarly, there are actual climatologists who take issue with certain studies and more so the strengths of their conclusions. They are useful. Then there are people who are not climatologists and don't understand climatology claiming it's all a huge conspiracy and it can't possibly be true because of the sun, ha ha, those stupid scientists never thought of the sun, or natural climate cycles, yeah, only the true rebels have ever thought of that etc etc.
It's not hard to tell the difference.
after all, only someone trained in, say, Canon Law would be qualified to speak authoritatively on christianity, right?
To the extent that I accept the existence or need of any worldly 'authority' on Christianity (which is to say not much... after all it's ultimately about a personal relationship between you and the Creator), then absolutely yes. Because if you haven't studied the Bible and Theology beyond attending church on Sunday, then you sure as fuck aren't an authority on either.
I mean, what are you trying to say? That you can be an 'authority' on something without having studied it? That only accepting people who actually know things about the subject at hand as authorities is elitist, or equivalent to Religious Orthodoxy?
Einstein is a very bad example for that point of view!
Re:Modern-Day Galileo (Score:5, Insightful)
This isn't only happening in Climate science. My wife works in Mollecular Biology and has told me dozens of stories about PHD's fudging their results so that they can maintain their grants. Big Gov't gives them money to prove certain things for them, so inevitably, they need to prove those things to keep getting the money.
This happens wherever people's livelihood depends on Government Grants. Invariably, someone will end up committing fraud to keep getting the grants.
I love the irony in these CRU scientists refusing to release their data because "all they want to do is prove it wrong". Where would we be if Newton, Galileo, Einstein and others had felt that way. Methinks they doth protest too much. Besides, How the hell can you build a climate model without allowing for variations in the solar output??? How can you embed the data in the code. That is the number one rule for coders. Keep the code and data separate. If the data changes, the code can still run a new set of data. These huge gaps in logic keep me a skeptic.
Re:Modern-Day Galileo (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Modern-Day Galileo (Score:5, Insightful)
I guess that depends which subset of the numbers you choose to work with, and how "accurate" a model based on ice cores from 100,000 years ago can actually be, considering all their other models can't tell you if it will rain tomorrow.
Face it, any numbers older than about 50 years ago are based on best-guess, nothing more. So for them to declare what will happen in 20 years from now, based on a regression of 50 data points in the past is hardly valid statistics.
If, just if, next year's average is actually colder, will that make a difference ? No, they'll simply declare "localized variation" as always. Funny how when the data agrees with their guesstimate, it's "valid", but when it disagrees, it's "localized variation".
Now I'm not a PhD, hell I didn't even finish college, but common sense, gut instinct and 41 years in the school of life tells me something smells bad about the whole AGW agenda. And if the 75% or whatever percentage of "common schmucks" feel this way, how successful do you think any emission reduction efforts will be ?
I always placed my belief that the scientists knew a hell of a lot more than me, and I could trust what they said. But recently, perhaps with age, has come the same cynicism I now feel for corporations, pharmaceuticals, politicians etc ... they ALL have another agenda behind their ideas, be it money, grant funding or plain old power.
For a bloody good read, try Tom Clancy's "State of Fear". It puts an awful lot of these issues into the perspective of the common man.
Re:Modern-Day Galileo (Score:5, Insightful)
common sense, gut instinct and 41 years in the school of life tells me something smells bad about the whole AGW agenda
You should not rely on gut feelings when there is better information to hand. And there is. Ah, but you suspect that info is all cooked and made up, to support some agenda, which might be only to keep the government funding flowing? Your instincts missed much more plausible and likely explanations.
Science is competitive, as everyone can see from some of the less than honest suggestions in those emails. If there was good evidence that Global Warming was not real or was not our fault, there'd be a bunch of scientists eager to enhance their reputations by publishing this. To suppose that the majority of scientists could have agreed on the same something that isn't true and joined a vast conspiracy is ridiculous, and that's why people who entertain such thinking are given short shrift and dismissed as cranks, nutcases, and conspiracy theorists.
Perhaps you think it's not like that, it's more that this bandwagon has gotten sufficient momentum that most scientists are jumping on uncritically? You see, we have this thing called "peer review" that does a decent job of stopping that. Who is there qualified to check a scientist's work? Only another scientist, a peer. Obviously scientists can't spend too much time reviewing each other's work, so the system that's been adopted is to have 2 other scientists review each new work. It weeds out most of the garbage.
Face it, any numbers older than about 50 years ago are based on best-guess, nothing more.
No. This is another typical assertion, this claim that we don't or can't know very much. Oh yes we can! You think 50 year old data is worthless? You are wrong. Such data can and has been checked and cross checked. When tree ring data, lake sediment data, ice core data, historical data, and more, and from many different trees, lakes, ice cores, and observers are all in agreement, it's a safe bet that the data is good.
Now for the other explanations you have overlooked. Chicken Little doesn't work for the government, Chicken Little works for the media. The media is forever "sexing up" the news because drama sells. Of course they've cherry picked the juiciest emails. They love controversy, and will happily jump on and enhanced manufactured controversy as well as report on real controversy. For instance, among the educated, there is no controversy about Evolution, and anyone who suggests there is a controversy between Evolution and Creationism hasn't troubled with "trivial" things like reading any of the evidence, or giving the evidence a fair hearing, and learning why scientists concluded that we evolved. Those people won't spend time informing themselves. The rest of us are understandably annoyed when these ignorant trolls who won't spend time studying the issue they want to discuss try to waste everyone's else time with nonsense.
I always placed my belief that the scientists knew a hell of a lot more than me, and I could trust what they said. But recently, perhaps with age, has come the same cynicism I now feel for corporations, pharmaceuticals, politicians etc ...
And finally, you throw in the false equivalence. You think scientists are just as prone as corporations to manipulating and manufacturing evidence to support a conclusion? We're all equally scummy? Wrong again. Of course science is not immune to misconduct. But I might suggest that corporations, politicians, etc are more prone to unethical behavior than scientists. Science is all about finding the facts and modeling them, an activity inherently resistant to cheating, lying, and denial, and in which the chances of getting away with any of that are much lower. Soon as a few other scientists try to duplicate some fantastic result and cannot, the trouble starts. Those who have tried (Cold Fusion comes to mind) have been caught
Re:Modern-Day Galileo (Score:5, Insightful)
There is actually a parallel between why the media jumped on Tiger and the science flub so badly. In both cases the media attention is strengthened by the idea of breaking an otherwise stable 'uninteresting' topic.
Tiger is important in the world (of entertainment). He is an awesome sportsman, successful, rich, married nice girl, blah, blah, whatever. Problem for the media has been that we already know all of this by now. There is rarely ever anything new, or better (media point of view) bad to report. Well...the car crash ignited this massive media blitz against him for the sake of _trying_ to bring the guy down to 'the rest of us'.
Science is also seen as uninteresting. It's all logical stuff done by smart folks that know what they are doing. Nothing to report on. Problem is that those boring and smug scientists are behind all this science that is telling us to change our lives, and we can't come up with any reasons to tell them to buzz off, because well...those reasons typically have to be scientific, and we can't beat them at their own game.
And up comes a reason we can slap them over the head with...they cheated, and we know all about that. You know what says the media to fuel a story they have been itching to get away with, they probably all cheat!
Re:Yeah, about that... (Score:5, Insightful)
Once you've tagged an entire class of people as untrustworthy because of the basic fact of them being employed, you are incapable of engaging in any relevant discussion about the topic without redoing everything yourself.
Since I'm pretty sure you don't have an LHC in your backyard or your own temperature satellite in orbit, it means that you have two options when talking about science: shut up, or make crap up. And again, judging from the fact you're posting in this story, I'm pretty sure you are not prone to silence.
It's people like you that are ruining the US.
Re:Global-warming denier papers are usually garbag (Score:5, Insightful)
But how do you explain all this to your average Sarah Palin follower? That's the scientists' conundrum here.
An effective way to start is to not insult them. Maybe rather than thinking that a college level education is what is needed, why don't you try and describe it in a manner that anybody at an 8th grade level could grasp? You might get a more welcome and understanding response than by being an elitist prick.