It is fitting this is published near Halloween time in Nature, because the IPCC is full of scare stories.
IPCC: Climate panel is ripe for examination
Mike Hulme & Martin Mahony Nature 502, 624 (31 October 2013) doi:10.1038/502624c
- Published online 30 October 2013
Sociologists of science wish to study the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) for the same reason that they want to examine other loci at which scientific knowledge is made — whether in a laboratory, the field, a museum or at a conference. We too approached the IPCC in autumn 2010 with a request to study it from the inside; we too were told ‘no’ (see Nature 502, 281; 2013).
We therefore had to rely on self-reported accounts. Using document analysis and interviews with lead authors, we analysed how authors navigate the distinction between scientific description and value judgements, for example when offering information pertaining to the definition of ‘dangerous climate change’.
The IPCC has become a dominant institution in climate science — in the assessment of knowledge for policy-making, and in how assessment practices alter empirical and computer-simulated climate science. Global knowledge assessments such as those undertaken by the IPCC call for carefully documented systematic studies by trained ethnographers.
Let us hope that the IPCC will recognize itself as a legitimate object for scholarly investigation this time around.
Mike Hulme, Martin Mahony
King’s College London, UK.
==============================================================
Josh previously provided some levity:
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It’s something that I have banged on about for years with little success. people on all sides of the debate underestimate how subjectivity in any team member can skew the results of studies. All of us will view any findings with the jaundiced eye of the individual and see what we wish to prove. It’s having the insight to know we do it that is the critical issue.
Hmm..
“Let us hope that the IPCC will recognize itself as a legitimate object for scholarly investigation this time around.”
If the IPCC doesn’t recognize itself as a legitimate object for scholarly investigation, then why should we accept it as legitimate?
Just wondering.
I am absolutely tickled to see that anybody still recognizes the Fallacies of Informal Logic and their important to the classical art of Rhetoric (the art of persuading someone to believe something that ain’t necessarily so.)
Got to read “Scientivist” carefully.
Good job Josh.
LOL
Gareth Phillips says:
October 31, 2013 at 8:10 am
It’s something that I have banged on about for years with little success. people on all sides of the debate underestimate how subjectivity in any team member can skew the results of studies.
Seriously Gareth, wouldn’t that be one reason why one should allow others to view their data and methods?
“Sociologists of science wish to study the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change”.
Why? There’s no “science” to speak of going on in the IPCC.
JohnWho says:
October 31, 2013 at 8:11 am
—–
They have long since abandoned any pretext towards being scholarly.
So let me get this straight – socioligists, purveyors of a very squishy “science”, want to study the IPCC, purveyors of another squishy “science” – oh yeah, I’m sure that will provide useful, scientifically reliable results.
Is my eyesight going or is that UNEP logo mooning us?
Why doesnt someone offer a Michael Mann Bobblehead Doll made… There has never been a better subject
“for the same reason that they want to examine other loci at which scientific knowledge is made”
…reading challenged
“relevant to understanding the scientific basis of risk of human-induced climate change”
“The IPCC …. does not conduct any research nor does it monitor climate related data or parameters.”
We too approached the IPCC in autumn 2010 with a request to study it from the inside; we too were told
‘no’only if IPCC can adjust the data after it is collected.@ur momisugly Patrick B. Although I am a historian and hence see sociologists as disciplinary parasites who have appropriated history’s domain to create a ‘science’ of society, there have been valuable contributions by sociologists to our understanding of the history of science, notably in the work of Robert Merton. The best among the sociologists (ie the most historically inclined) have asked different kinds of questions and hence enriched historians’ approaches in turn. That being said the IPCC Climate Panel is kidding itself if it thinks it will escape the scrutiny of sociologists and historians. Both fields are interested in understanding the kinds of self-deception and historical contingencies that lead to scientific errors, politicized science, and temporarily successful fraudulent science. In the end we will find all three of these encompassed in the history of this organization, based on the existing revelations of Climategate and shoddy science.
JohnWho says:
October 31, 2013 at 8:13 am
Got to read “Scientivist” carefully.
Good job Josh.
Absolutely. What a most excellent word: “Scientivist”!
JohnWho 8:13 am
Got to read “Scientivist” carefully.
#Scitivist – nomination for a hashtag.
These sociologists probably think that in studying the IPCC they are studying science.
Sociologists like to think everything is political. They tend to portray science as a process by which alternative “ways of knowing” struggle for supremacy via an essentially political and social process. In focusing on the social elements they tend to downplay the importance of things like evidence, truth, fact and proof. The result to me appears to be a distorted charicature of science.
I suspect the sociologists will love the IPCC because it embodies exactly the kind of politicised “science” they like to portray.
This is slightly off topic, but I am so annoyed with it, that I hope it will be permitted. From today’s GWPF, I find http://www.thegwpf.org/uk-government-no-global-cooling-centuries/
I quote “The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Energy and Climate Change (Baroness Verma) (Con): The UK government has made substantial investment in research that concerns the likelihood and timing of future changes in global and regional climate.
All of the climate models and policy-relevant pathways of future greenhouse gas and aerosol emissions considered in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) recent Fifth Assessment Report show a long-term global increase in temperature during the 21st century is expected. In all cases, the warming from increasing greenhouse gases significantly exceeds any cooling from atmospheric aerosols. Other effects such as solar changes and volcanic activity are likely to have only a minor impact over this timescale”
So, presumably the UK Met. Office used the IPCC models to prepare this reply. It is given in the House of Lords, by a Peer of the Realm, so by the rules of the British Parliament, it OUGHT to be accurate. Since the climate models are completely incapable of producing accurate predictions, the answer gvien by Baroness Verma is little more than a pack of lies.
It was this sort of statement by the Met. Office a few years ago that persuaded Heathrow Airport not to invest in snow clearing equipment, so the a mere 5 inches of snow closed one of the busiest airports in the world for several days. 5 inches of snow here is Ottawa, Canada, would barely cause any delays in service.
Surely it is about time that someone with both authority and courage to stand up and say this nonsense of CAGW must stop before even more damage is done.
JohnWho says:
October 31, 2013 at 8:14 am
Gareth Phillips says:
October 31, 2013 at 8:10 am
It’s something that I have banged on about for years with little success. people on all sides of the debate underestimate how subjectivity in any team member can skew the results of studies.
Seriously Gareth, wouldn’t that be one reason why one should allow others to view their data and methods?
Thanks John,
Absolutely, having someone else confirm your outcomes and conclusions from an independent or devils advocate perspective is critical in excluding bias. A study like this could be really interesting and inform the debate no end.
Employing ethnographers is absolutely essential for climate science. Also psychologists. This is a good Halloween post.
Examination of the UN IPCC under the RICO statutes would be a far more useful act.
I like “Scientwist” better.
Wonderful idea to study the IPCC. Some on this string think sociologists and historians would do a respectable job while others think not.
Does anyone know of any entity that could undertake this inquiry?
“Scientivist” is a great word… ranks up there with one I use on occasion: “meteorologer” 🙂
The IPCC does not conduct independent research but is, instead, a government and UN-supported international clearinghouse http://climal.com/climate-change-facts.php
vigilantfish says:
October 31, 2013 at 9:04 am
Very well said. Today, very few of our best have a serious understanding of the discipline of history or the importance of its uses.