People send me things. Here’s one from today’s mail. It is a response by Dr. Jaap Hanekamp to the essays by Oxford Professor Jerome Ravetz carried here on WUWT recently.
Dr. Ravetz’s first posting on WUWT created quite a controversey. You can read it here:
Climategate: Plausibility and the blogosphere in the post-normal age.
and Part 2 here:
Hi AnthonyWith great interest we read Ravetz’ essay on WUWT and the discussions that followed.Now at climategate.nl (which contrary to climategate.com is alive and kicking 🙂 we also have posted an extensive reaction in English which we hope can clarify some of the problems with Ravetz’s hypothesis of post-normal science.
Jaap Hanekamp, the author, is publishing a lot about the precautionary principle. He is a chemist and also a teacher of chemistry and science philosophy at the Roosevelt Academy in Middelburg. – Marcel Crok
The democratization of science, instead of reductionism, is the method of Ravetz’s choice to move forward with science. Because of the many technological and scientific risks we are exposed to according to Ravetz and many with him, particular directions in scientific and social inquiry, because of their ostensible positive social, political, and environmental outcomes, should be favoured. Put differently, scientific inquiry, at the same time, should be explanatory, normative, practical and self-reflexive.
Therefore, ‘an argument is cogent for an audience if, according to standards that audience would deem on reflection to be relevant, the premises are acceptable and in the appropriate way sufficient to support the conclusion.’ (Boger, G. 2005. Subordinating Truth–Is Acceptability Acceptable? Argumentation 19: 187 – 238) Ideally, this acceptability approach should empower people with capacities to reason critically and to assess sharply the conflicting (scientific) argumentations that play an important role in their lives. The UK government’s inquiry into the purported adverse health effects of mobile phones for instance, concluded that in future ‘non-peer reviewed papers and anecdotal evidence should be taken into account’ as part of the process for reaching decisions on these matters (Mobile Phones and Health. 2000. Independent Expert Group On Mobile Phones, National Radiological Protection Board, Didcot, p. 102.)
Even if one were to agree, in a preliminary sense, with the acceptability approach as democratically laudable and worthy of effort, given the wide divergence of audiences and participants not sharing a common interest, resolving an argument’s validity on the basis of acceptability of premises and acceptable inferential links embedded in a given value-based context will in all likelihood inexcusably favour the stronger of the ‘disputants’ and place the weaker at a decided disadvantage. Thus, if we are to excise external authority (as previously hypostatised in the notion of God, by the way) that is thought to frustrate democratisation of the scientific discourse and thereby subverts the cause of justice, then the acceptability requirement re-imposes another, but hidden, authority that it sought to eliminate, namely the will to power.
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OT: A news item that went unnoticed, and that all greenies want to bury, is a statement made last Friday by EDF Energies Nouvelles (French Green Power Company). A power purchase agreement was terminated without explanation by Indianapolis Power and Light Company regarding the supply of wind energy by enXco, a local EDF company. The contract was unilaterally terminated by IPL, and more than 10 days later, EDF has acknowledged it to the market.
Ecotretas
See english translation with links here
In the Ravetz essay, he says: “And what about the issue itself? Are we really experiencing Anthropogenic Carbon-based Global Warming? If the public loses faith in that claim, then the situation of science in our society will be altered for the worse.”
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Oh, come on!! Will the public still refuse to utilize the best in medical and pharmaceutical research and development? I think not!
The public isn’t as gullible, nor as stupid, as many in the university systems seem to think. We know when we are being conned, and demand the truth.
Many in the lay public have very good to excellent scientific credentials and training in engineering, medicine and all the related disciplines, and are discerning consumers of science.
Seems to me that the climate community, with their tails between their legs, are lashing out at the blogs. Tough beans, the Internet is showing great value as a community meeting place to hash out difficult policy questions.
Dr. Hanekamp has addressed most of the problems with Dr. Ravetz’s views, maybe too gently in my mind. Dr. Ravetz wants us to believe that epistimology should take a back seat to acceptability, that is, the science of knowledge, how we know what we know, should be sacrificed for a general feeling of acceptability, not based on anything we know, but what we might be afraid that we might know. Dr. Ravetz of course didn’t state it quite that way.
If we feel that something could happen, then is it acceptable that it might happen? Take out the words something and it in the sentence and fill in the blanks as desired. You can use that sentence to generate fear of many things.
Unfortunately, science is being subsumed into sociology in this way so the sociologist can assume power over what is considered to be the important focus of science.
Professor F A Hayek (who is an economist) discussed this problem of ‘constructivism’ in his lecture/writing ‘Socialism and Science’.
I hope that CRS,DR.P.H is correct in that ‘the public isn’t as gullible, nor as stupid as many in the university systems think’. But if you talk to people in the Social Sciences in the universities they really do seem to think that science can be treated in a similar fashion to sociological problems where ‘every view point is valid’!
“The public isn’t as gullible, nor as stupid, as many in the university systems seem to think. We know when we are being conned, and demand the truth..” ~CRS, Dr.P.H
It is actually the intellectuals who are the most prone to being conned. They all to often lack the common sense to sniff out the con and their egos are so huge they actually believe that #1 they could never fall for a con and #2 no one would dare try and con them as they are too smart to fall for it.
Much too long and convoluted, just to state the obvious: “The tendency to suspend judgment about truth by lending primacy to the approach of acceptability, the democratization Ravetz so praises, re-establishes the very anti-democratic practices it thought to avoid.”
Basically, if ‘truth’ is what your audience wants to hear or find important, then it ain’t science. It becomes what Napoleon once said: “a set of lies agreed upon”.
I think instead of “post-normal” science it would be much more accurate and and appropriate to use the term “Ab-Normal.”
And then there’s the whole issue that if you’ve got to use qualifiers, then we’re really not talking about “science” at all anymore, are we?
Why not just call it “the study of hopey changey stuff that makes us feel good, so we all voted for it to be true”.
“Feel-Good-Science”.
There is no science “light” for the good of humanity or democratisation of science. If climate models come up with valid preditions they are “scientifically sound”, as long as they don’t they remain flawed. The public is entitled to the truth that the climate system is still poorly understood and will remain so for another while, and actions currently initiated appear to be pretty ineffective and naive indeed.
The CRU emails revealed climate researchers are not scientists. Their task is to “fix” data to fit the AGW theory, and silence real scientists. Why is this douche complaining?
Goobly Gook, Goobly GOOK, GOOBLY GOOK
Gunning Fog Index: 20.2
Mark Twain’s “Tom Sawyer”: 5.8
Just a thought. Wordy, convoluted, does not mean “intelligent/clear”…
Max
Imagine that post normal science principles applied to eugenics by a global government.
There used to be lies, damned lies and statistics. Now there are lies, damned lies and Post Modern Science.
We were conned by a few third rate academics. That’s all. Of course it isn’t the end of proper Science. Just as we were conned by a lot of Marxists before them.
We have far too many Universities, and I sometimes wonder if they are good wholesome places to send the young to be educated. Cut off their grants, send the young out to work.
Rhyl Dearden (14:01:41) :
I hope that CRS,DR.P.H is correct in that ‘the public isn’t as gullible, nor as stupid as many in the university systems think’. But if you talk to people in the Social Sciences in the universities they really do seem to think that science can be treated in a similar fashion to sociological problems where ‘every view point is valid’!
Yet is is the same public that in blogs [e.g. this one] chant that one has take all views into consideration, no matter how weird.
Do you know if some people you remember, in the past, more precisely from 1939 to 1945, applied a kind of this post normal science principles, with the “nice” consequences we all know?
Democratisation of science!
Ive never really liked quantum mechanics any chance of a quick vote!
Wow1 For once, I agree 100% with the Leif Police
I am sorry – but I read the whole essay and did not understand it. I have no idea what post-normal science even is.
And they walk among us!
The only interesting thing about all this post-normal stuff is what is Hulme up to right now with his mass manipulation center?
Concurr with CRS, Dr.P.H.
As an engineer and physician (Harvard Medical School, if it matters), I have found blogs to be the best place to interact on matters of science, medicine, and policy.
Peers are here, available right now, and can review and debate within hours that which used to take months.
Once, libraries defined universities. That is where you had to go for knowledge.
Professors and ‘peers’ collected there.
Now, knowledge is everywhere … and almost immediate … and feedback to correct error or stimulate debate is at your fingertips.
‘Peer Review’ … it is HERE as the interactive dialog … and not as the published comments of those who control the publications.
The day we start practicing post-normal science in the medical research lab and offering cures by consensus is the day we start killing a lot of people with pharmaceutical snake oil. Post normal science might have a place in the social and metaphysical sciences as long as they promise to keep it to themselves. However for the biological, chemical, and physical sciences, it is akin to practicing voodoo.
Truth isn’t always “acceptable,” and it certainly isn’t democratic. Which is why some people hate truth, and real science.
RickA (14:33:03) : That’s good. You are normal, not post-normal.
Wow, an average of 26 words per sentence (I measured!). Who writes like that when actually trying to communicate? I would be interesting to compare this with the thoughts (err, and the verbiage) of the rulers regarding democracy back in the day.
Here’s the rules for science, they haven’t changed in a long time:
1) everyone can play.
2) your work needs to be reproducible by others.
3) experiments need to validate the hypothesis.