Consensus does not necessarily guarantee sound science
Guest post by Forrest M. Mims III
Consensus is often cited in support of scientific paradigms, including anthropogenic climate change. Australian physicist Tom Quirk has neatly dissected the consensus argument for the human role in climate change in an article in Quadrant Online entitled “Of climate science and stomach bugs.” This curiously entitled piece begins with the story of how Australians Barry Marshall and Robin Warren revolutionized the treatment of stomach ulcers in 1982 when they discovered that peptic ulcers are mainly caused by a bacterium.
While their claim was stubbornly rejected by drug companies and surgeons who profited handsomely from treating ulcer patients, in the end truth prevailed over dogma and Marshall and Warren received the 2005 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine.
Quirk’s article then compares the conflicts of interest, money and pseudoscience of the stomach bugs story with the ongoing debate over climate change. His account reinforces the sometimes neglected but essential role of skepticism in all of science and is well worth reading.
See: http://www.quadrant.org.au/blogs/doomed-planet/2013/01/of-climate-science-and-stomach-bugs
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Quadrant and others under attack at “The Conversation” – with the usual savoir-faire and grace (not!)
http://theconversation.edu.au/peer-review-isnt-perfect-and-the-media-doesnt-always-help-11318
A very interesting analogy, it was the money to be made that gagged the science and stopped the truth coming out.
Here is West Wales the con men are selling renewables, the spivs, absentee landlords and other antisocial elements are beggaring their neighbours jumping on the green money bandwagon putting turbines up next to equine businesses and in front of otherwise rural peaceful gardens. The money is speaking and local people are cottoning on that the green movement is no longer about saving the planet
I remember that… The science finally won out, what a route, that discovery took…
100 million times the kooks in the climate game, all vying for the game of the century.
I think Piltdown Man is another good parallel to the man made global warming hoax. It was a hoax from the beginning, it had a very strong consensus at first and it took 40 years to get everyone to accept that they had been fooled. If not for a minority of anthropologist skeptics who first questioned it – it might have survived as fact to this day.
IT is about to get a lot worse, here is the new claim on our money, $700 billion a year for climate change…
http://news.yahoo.com/report-700-billion-needed-climate-change-212700708.html
“”A great deal of money and prestige was riding on ulcers by 1982, when West Australians Barry Marshall and Robin Warren proved that the Helicobacter pylori (H. pylori) bacterium caused most peptic ulcers, neatly reversing decades of medical doctrine. Even worse for the revenue streams of drug companies and medicos, the bacteria could be eliminated by the use of antibiotics.
No ulcers meant no ongoing business, so it should come as no surprise that, in medical circles, all hell broke loose. Drug companies would not countenance the idea that Marshall and Warren’s findings were valid. Revenue was under threat, as were share prices and the egos of those who had driven the drugs’ remarkably successful marketing campaigns. Doctors were slow to change their habits, so surgeons continued to put their patients under the knife, all the while insisting that Marshall and Warren were peddling nonsense.””
A great deal of money and prestige was riding on coal and oil when many scientists proved burning fossil fuels caused most of the global warming, neatly reversing decades of oil and coal companies doctrine. Even worse for the revenue streams of oil, coal and gas companies and their billionaire executives, the burning of fossil fuels could be eliminated ( well greatly reduced! ) by the use of renewable energy.
No burning fossil fuel meant no ongoing business, so it should come as no surprise that, in fossil fuel circles, all hell broke loose. Oil and coal companies would not countenance the idea that climate scientists findings were valid. Revenue was under threat, as were share prices and the egos of those who had driven oil and coals remarkably successful marketing campaigns. Governments were slow to change their mind, so oil and coal executives continued to put the planet under the knife, all the while insisting that climate scientists were peddling nonsense.
There fixed it for Mr Quirk.
Nice analogy, except of course that it is the coal and oil multinationals that are the pharma companies and renewable energy is Marshall and Warren. Also ” billions of dollars in taxpayer-backed loans and grants to renewable energy corporations” here in Australia is around $500 million, or twenty times less than the handouts, subsidies, tax breaks and ‘friendly’ loans the mining industry receives.
Gradually better written descriptions of the fraud of two centuries will be released to the eyes of an angry public.
We have most of the information now, its just a case of it coming together in a coherent form.
Partly the problem is the subject is too rich.
Nick Kermode says:….”when many scientists proved burning fossil fuels caused most of the global warming, neatly reversing decades of oil and coal companies doctrine.”
Where’s the proof?
Nick Kermode:
At January 21, 2013 at 4:51 pm you wrongly assert
NO! Every one of your assertions is wrong.
1.
Oil companies have financed the global warming scare from the start; e.g. CRU was established using funding from oil companies.
2.
No scientist has “proved burning fossil fuels caused most of the global warming”. Indeed, decades of research conducted world-wide at a cost of $billions each year has failed to find any evidence for discernible man-made global warming; none, zilch, nada.
3.
The “doctrine” of coal and oil companies is their function of generating dividends for their share-holders and this cannot change.
4.
There is no foreseeable possibility of any significant displacement of fossil fuels “by the use of renewable energy”. Large scale use of windfarms increases the need for conventional power stations as back-up.
Strewth! Where did you get your silly notions?
Richard
Nick Kermode clearly doesn’t know anything about the oil industry. All the majors have gone along with the CO2 hypothesis because they were well positioned in gas, which would benefit. Initially they had little dabbles in renewables but saw pretty early that those markets would be small for decades and that hydrocarbons have a long future. Their track record over the past hundred years means their forecasts should be taken more seriously than anyone else’s.
re: richardscourtney says: January 21, 2013 at 5:22 pm responded to Nick Kermode, saying NO! Every one of your assertions is wrong.
Too true Richard!! (and well said too).
The history of medicine is full of stories like this. It’s not always the money which stops them from re-thinking: it’s just as much the investment of their egos in the wrong hypothesis which stops them from admitting their error, even in the face of overwhelming evidence. In most cases of the sort in medical history, it’s been one maverick who has managed to stop the juggernaut of rampant medical egos.
I don’t know if any of you have been following the tale of Dr Simon Wessley and his extreme and highly contentious disservice to research into Myalgic Encephomylitis. His approach to this disease, which is basically to state that sufferers are imagining it – in the face of all current research and evidence, and the experience of sufferers many of whom have died – has led to angry campaigns by ME sufferers attempting to refute his approach. This is urgent since Wessley has the ear of the Department of Health and more importantly, the DHSS who are removing support from sufferers of working age via ATOS decisions. The Countess of Mar has raised the subject in Parliament.
From here, parallels can be drawn with the situation regarding ‘climate skeptics’.and so called ‘climate scientists’. Dr Wessley is so averse to criticism of any sort that he resorts to accusing ME sufferers of all kinds of evil, including waging a hate war on him, stalking him, and threatening him; yet he’s been unable to substantiate any of these accusations. Meanwhile, not only has he just been knighted – he has also been named the first winner of the contentious Maddox “Standing up for Science” Prize, ostensibly for bravely defending ‘science’ in though under attack; although there is not one shred of evidence to underpin any of his views on ME. Most of us involved in promoting research believe these to be based on nothing more than his own opinion of sufferers as, to paraphrase his own words, ‘lazy sods’.
The only surprise in all this is that Phil Jones or some other Climate ‘Scientist’ didn’t win the inaugural Maddox prize, for the brave defence of their own equally evidence-free ‘science’. Maybe next year boys! A certain award of the Nobel Prize comes to mind, as a parallel.
The misapplication of what scanty research funding has been provided due this man’s pig-headed ideas is a national scandal. Yet he is honoured with a ‘science prize’ and a knighthood! You can follow the gist of the saga via these links:
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/me-bitterest-row-yet-in-a-long-saga-8348389.html
There are now 380 comments which are well worth reading to get the full story from those on the ground, if you can hack through them… They quote chapter and verse on exactly what Dr Wessley has said in the past, on this vexing topic. it’s not pretty and it’s certainly not science.
Reasons why this is such a perverse award:
http://www.meassociation.org.uk/?p=14132
Dr Michael Shepherd who helps to run and advise the association (and its excellent FB page) is himself both a medial doctor and an ME sufferer. Yes given that Wessley and his acolytes have cornered the diagnosis cirteria for ME, he too struggles to be heard.
The scheme Nick Kermode claims that subsidies are small for renewables and large for “fossil fuels” is exposed here:
http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/43376.html
Very naughty Nick……
My wife was a long time sufferer from peptic ulcers in the 1980’s. It took us 5 years to find a Doctor willing to treat her for the bacteria (and we had to pay him out of our pockets, the insurance company refused to pay. The insurance companies and almost every doctor we went to told us that ‘it won’t work’. She took the treatment and her ulcers disappeared in a matter of months and she has never had a recurrence.
There is, of course, a better example of ‘consensus science’ at its best. Dr Eugene Parker proposed, in the 1950’s, that space was not ‘an empty void’, but was, in fact, filled with what is now referred to colloquially as, “solar wind”. Parker was ridiculed, harassed, and insulted by the ‘scientists’ supporting the ‘consensus’ of the time. He was proved right and the ‘consensus’ collapsed, just as the ‘consensus’ (such as it is) regarding ‘Global Warming, Climate Disruption, Climate Pollution (my personal favorite), etc is being proved wrong.
“Consensus science’ is the worst form of science and any scientist who cites ‘consensus’ as a point supporting his hypothesis is a poor scientist at best.
There is no consensus on “global warming” and “CO2 warming”: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/04/30/consensus-argument-proves-climate-science-is-political/#comment-972119
Climate-science consensus: Find a captive audience, feed them a well crafted survey, and crow when 97% of the attendees agree with some part of it. Replication not necessary.
Of course, for their side to maintain that 97% (a 32.3:1 ratio), they must never put out another survey to ANY group.
Any survey with results less than 97% would be seen as a loss; as would any survey that matches the 97% (no gain).
Any survey that reaches 100% would fail if only one respondent spoke up, so that’s out.
So the success of their consensus is based on a number range that is greater than (but not equal to) 97, and less than (but not equal to) 100.
Maybe a “reverse” consensus should be put out – for every name that questions CAGW, insist that they find 33 names that don’t question it.
A quick example: when we saw forty-nine signers to a letter to NASA Administrator Charles Bolden (http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/04/10/hansen-and-schmidt-of-nasa-giss-under-fire-engineers-scientists-astronauts-ask-nasa-administration-to-look-at-emprical-evidence-rather-than-climate-models/), they should have immediately been able to come up with 1,617 names (with associations and degrees) to counter that. And for every NEW name, find 33 NEW opponents.
They insist on names, associations and degrees. Maybe we should too…
I bet scientific consensus will beat web blogger self-proclaimed expert 9,999,999 times out of 1,000,000. But good luck!
REPLY: And I’ll bet the truth will eventually prevail, despite your protestations to the contrary – Anthony
The last Coaches Poll before the College Football National Championship Game revealed there was an overwhelming consensus of college football coaches responding that Notre Dame was the best college team in the nation. The results showed that 95% of the “experts” (56 of 59) agreed. Of course, when the real world results were available it became obvious that the Poll should probably have asked the University of Alabama players what they thought. Not even close.
James said; “I bet scientific consensus will beat web blogger self-proclaimed expert 9,999,999 times out of 1,000,000. But good luck!”
Ah must be a climate scientist, his math is out by a factor of 10.
James,
…9,999,999 times out of 1,000,000.
Is that climate science math?
Consensus science has been around a long time. Ask Galileo and Copernicus. It’s only been in the past 20 years or so that Galileo has been un-excommunicated for his sin of speaking against the consensus. Ultimately the truth does prevail, but sometimes the damage cannot be undone.
Well, James, if Anthony was nothing more than a web blogger and no one else with real expertise in the subject of climate science agreed with him, I’d say your numbers were probably right. But Watts is a bit more than just a blogger, and there are plenty of real scientists both within and outside of the climate community who support much of what he says, so I’m going to take a wild guess and say your numbers are just a load of bullocks.
Correct me if I am wrong, but do surgeons have to have scientific qualifications apart from having served an apprenticeship as a butcher,and being able to do and undo the most intricate of sailors knots on wet cotton in a matchbox just by the cunning use of big and adjacent toe of the left foot ?
[snip. We do not tolerate labeling others as “denialists” here. — mod.]
I must say hello to the great Mr. Forrest Mims III.
Seeing your name atop this page put a big smile on my face, as your bylines in P.E. and elsewhere, always have.