There has been a development over the last 10-15 years or so in the scientific peer reviewed literature that is short circuiting the scientific method.
The scientific method involves developing a hypothesis and then seeking to refute it. If all attempts to discredit the hypothesis fails, we start to accept the proposed theory as being an accurate description of how the real world works.
A useful summary of the scientific method is given on the website sciencebuddies.org.where they list six steps
- Ask a Question
- Do Background Research
- Construct a Hypothesis
- Test Your Hypothesis by Doing an Experiment
- Analyze Your Data and Draw a Conclusion
- Communicate Your Results
Unfortunately, in recent years papers have been published in the peer reviewed literature that fail to follow these proper steps of scientific investigation. These papers are short circuiting the scientific method.
Specifically, papers that present predictions of the climate decades into the future have proliferated. Just a two recent examples (and there are many others) are
Hu, A., G. A. Meehl, W. Han, and J. Yin (2009), Transient response of the MOC and climate to potential melting of the Greenland Ice Sheet in the 21st century, Geophys. Res. Lett., 36, L10707, doi:10.1029/2009GL037998.
Solomon, S. 2009: Irreversible climate change due to carbon dioxide emissions. The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Published online before print January 28, 2009, doi: 10.1073/pnas.0812721106
Such studies are even reported in the media before the peer reviewed process is completed; e.g. see in the article by Hannad Hoag in the May 27 2009 issue of Nature News Hot times ahead for the Wild West.
These studies are based on models, of which only a portion of which represent basic physics (e.g. the pressure gradient force, advection and the universal gravitational constant), with the remainder of the physics parameterized with tuned engineering code (e.g see).
When I served as Chief Editor of the Monthly Weather Reviews (1981-1985), The Co-Chief Editor of the Journal of Atmospheric Sciences (1996-2000), and as Editor-in-Chief of the US National Science Report to the IUGG for the American Geophysical Union (1993-1996), such papers would never have been accepted.
What the current publication process has evolved into, at the detriment of proper scientific investigation, are the publication of untested (and often untestable) hypotheses. The fourth step in the scientific method “Test Your Hypothesis by Doing an Experiment” is bypassed.
This is a main reason that the policy community is being significantly misinformed about the actual status of our understanding of the climate system and the role of humans within it.
A bit off accountability would go a long way in publicly funded science.
Not much has changed sins the dark ages, as long as scientists can publish fraudulent papers and the consequences are a position as a Director of a science centre and or the Nobel Price science has a problem.
My take on science is believe those who are seeking the truth doubt those who found it.
Leif Svalgaard (20:01:48) :
Leif makes many good points above, further related material can be had from Thomus Kuhns books which can be found online at http://books.google.com.au/books?q=kuhn&btnG=Search+Books
Esp, [1] The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, and [2] The Copernican Revolution
To Jeff L (19:56)
Re “As a scientist, this is actually one of my largest concerns with the AGW community – ultimately this will not only discredit climate scientists but all scientists & the public will no longer trust anything scientists say. This could have a huge adverse effect on the progress on a technological society such as ours.”
Jeff, I wonder if the problem our technological society has is that so few kids are well educated in science today? We have a great culture for business, but when you realize that half the startups in Silicon Valley the last 15 years or so were started by immigrants, from places like India, Taiwan, etc., you wonder about the ability of those born in the U.S. to think critically about scientific issues?
Siemens writes this in their financual reports big turbine admits forecast limitations
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The forecasters couldn’t abide by disclosure laws.
Agree – posted April 19, 2009:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/04/19/quote-of-the-week-4/#comments
First there is a Scientific Hypothesis. For example, the Hypothesis that increased humanmade atmospheric CO2 causes catastrophic global warming.
With some substantial evidence, that Hypothesis becomes a Theory, as in the “Theory of Evolution”.
Then with absolute proof and lack of counter-evidence, that Theory becomes a Law, as in the Law of Gravity.
Global Warmists have repeatedly stated that “The Science is Settled”. Warmists claim not only that increased atmospheric CO2 causes warming, but that current and future humanmade increases in CO2 will cause catastrophic global warming that threatens the very existence of life on our planet.
Warmists have thus promoted their alarmist statement past Hypothesis and Theory to the status of Law.
In fact, Catastrophic Humanmade Global Warming is still a Hypothesis, and a failed one at that.
There has been no significant net warming since 1940, in spite of an 800% increase in humanmade CO2 emissions. Earth is now entering a natural cooling cycle, after a ~25-year natural warming cycle. It is this recent 25-year natural warming cycle that has been used as evidence for alleged catastrophic global warming. As Earth continues to cool, this falsehood will become increasingly apparent to all, and Al Gore, young Barack and their ilk will become increasingly humiliated after being caught in a BIG LIE.
The only Theory that seems to have survived this foolish, wasteful debate is the Theory of Warmist BS – that almost everything the Warmists have stated will turn out to be false, alarmist and self-serving.
Witness that IPCC centerpiece, the Mann Hockey Stick. Eliminating from the historic record both the Medieval Warm Period and Little Ice Age was not problem for these so-called scientists – just sweep it away with the shoddiest of cherry-picked evidence, and hope nobody will notice.
When someone does point out Warmist falsehoods, just say they are “in the pay of big oil” or try to intimidate them by more direct means, including threats of violence.
I want everyone to remember who the Warmists are. I will stand by my statements, but you can expect the Warmists to be running for the exits in the coming years.
Watch as various strident individuals and organizations try to back away from their Warmist statements – it’s already starting, and is rather amusing.
John A (19:45:09) :
“I predict Roger Pielke Sr will be ignored for decades.”
No his “flawed thinking”
will be called out on climate Progress within 24 hours.
The emotional anti science board. How many people take classes in experimental design?
I’m with Leif in this. The real world is very different from epistemology classes. New science generally means working with noisy, incomplete data, particularly in fields where you don’t really work with experiments but have to really on observations from natural systems (and computer models) .
The problem is that very rarely you have small enough error bars, or the best complement of data, to allow you to completely exclude a scenario. You tend to chose one (life is short and there’s only a finite amount of time to do your work) that for some reason you think is more plausible (most often you inherit that from your thesis advisor) and if you’re lucky future research will invalidate the other scenarios before yours. It generally works well because even if everyone is on the wrong wagon, eventually the ever increasing accuracy of measures will show that you need to try something else.
In my view part of the “Climate” problem stems exactly from the fact that people think science follows that set of 6 rules. It doesn’t, it’s more like a random sampling through the large set of possible scenarios, many of which get discarded after some time.
Glance at astrobiology and see how difficult is investigating any possibility on the existence of biosystems outside the Earth following the scientific method. The unique place on where we can observe living beings -until now- is the Earth.
I hate to disagree with my friend Mr Leif, but I have to (or maybe I don’t, it all depends on how one interprets his comment at (20:01:48).
In order to be able to ask a question it is necessary to have some reason to do so. In some circumstances one might just throw out a question at random and hope it relates to something but in reality every question is reactive rather than proactive – some observation has caused it to be asked. Mr Leif’s points 1)-4) conflate asking the question and doing background research, point 1) raised the question and 2)-4) are part of the background research. That such research gives rise to another, or more accurately, a more closely defined question does not detract from point 1) raising the question in the first place.
No hypothesis can be formed until the question is formulated with precision, which is why his points 2)-4) are the very definition of “background research”.
As for communication of one’s conclusions, there can always be difficulties. I well remembering submitting an article to one of the better English law journals many years ago (it was so long ago cheese hadn’t been invented yet). The main thesis was an absolute killer, faultless in both principle and supportive authority; English law was about to move in a new direction. Then I received a reply from the editor, which I paraphrase: “Dear Mr Bigot, I submitted your draft to Professor W, Professor X and Dr Y as well as considering it myself. We have reached the conclusion you are a blithering idiot. Lots of love, Professor Z.”
The problem goes deeper than that.
I have seen in microcosm a similar sociological process happening in a strictly scientific community of about 60 people. It was then that I realized that 60 people are enough for crowd psychology.
Let me describe it. In the data some decades ago, a 4 sigma bump was discovered by a junior scientist in the invariant mass of the muon pion system. Great excitement followed when the bump was verifiably there . In a group meeting everybody was enthusiastic for presenting it at the next conference ( the real peer review). Adrenalin was high and everybody was riding an exciting wave, because it was a precursor of new and unexpected theory. It was announced.
No other experiment saw this bump.
The thing deflated, and people collectively went the other way ” who is responsible for this nonsense”. For all I know this bump is still there in the stored data of that experiment, a 4 sigma bump.
Fortunately the media were not involved. The media act as an amplifier of crowd feelings.
Fortunately at that time grants were given to institutions and not to individuals, so there was no incentive to push these exciting, to the researchers, results to the extreme, in order to feed the kids.
Fortunately there were other experiments/voices that could show that even a low probability event of 4 sigma could happen statistically given enough data, or luck.
My three “fortunatelys ” high light where the exciting for them results of climate modelers took a life of their own as social science .
1) Media, who fish for excitement like sharks,
2) Funding which has become personality centered instead of institution centered.
3) When media becomes the peer review, independent researchers have a hard time checking and balancing new information.
This melee is just what is needed for manipulators of crowds to ride the wave of media hyperbole and guide the ship into the desired tax harbor.
In my opinion, to assure that this sort of thing does not happen again, funding of science has to go back to institutions and stop being personality centered, somehow.
It is a sad indictment of the AGW lobby that such an article needs to be published at all. A senior secondary school student would know the steps of the scientific method Dr Pielke outlines. Yet greed, tenure, funding grants, and sheer dishonesty gnaw at the very institutions which should be defending intellectual integrity.
Others have pointed out how this will reduce the standing of science in the eye of the public. Too many non-scientists are now proclaiming their own ‘scientific’ message – from Nicholas Stern in Britain, Al Gore in the US, Ross Garnaut in Australia, etc, etc – and the scientifically illiterate cannot discern the difference. Of course such confusion is eagerly seized upon by the poseurs.
And equally, politicians too busy or too lazy to do any searches for real science, become the willing spear-carriers for such types. In Australia, we have a ‘Climate Minister’ who sounds like a AGW-mantra chanting robot.
In the last few days, a senator has, at his own expense, researched both sides of the debate, here and in the US. This has drawn fire from the state-run ABC, with hypocritical questions as to whether he still has an ‘open mind’!
What an appalling situation – an ‘open mind’ must be a closed mind of the ‘correct’ bias.
Having your favorite theory tested to destruction must seem like very strange behaviour to the non-scientific public. Far safer to gather behind to large group of like minded advocates . Fish swim in large schools to save being eaten don’t they?
Graeme Rodaughton (19:38:20) said “Advocacy has it’s place, in politics, in the law court, in business – just not in Science “, and he is right ,but there is something that satisfies the human soul in something being universally ‘settled’. Politics,Law,Religion,Corporate business in every society all rely on reaching out and offering some form of comforting equilibrium. Witness the current financial disequilibrium and the enormous effort being applied to restore calm. Science stands out as an outlier in all of this in trying to knock itself down to prove its correctness! This looks like very odd behaviour indeed to the general public and those trained in the non sciences.
This is where WUWT can help bridge the understanding gap.
Pamela Gray (20:20:43) :
Leif, I am reminded of the life course Albert Einstein found himself on as he wrote his first major paper — as a patent clerk. Talk about a weird scientific process. His was all in his head!
Einstein is somewhat of an exception [in many ways!]. He asked a question “what would the world look like if I was riding on a lightbeam?’ and from that the rest followed without being guided by experiments. He didn’t even know about Michelson and Morley’s [it is said].
Niels Bohr had a singular insight and capitalized on it his whole life. Again their was no hypothesis and further experiments [although lots of other people did to convince themselves]. Bohr said once [I was there] or perhaps even often that when he saw the Balmer formula for the wavelengths of the principal Hydrogen spectral line series, everything was immediately clear to him.
But such insights and questions are rare, indeed.
Without placing myself in the same league, a similar singular insight has shaped my own research the past six years. It has been known for 45 years that the solar wind speed, V, and magnetic field, B, together determine geomagnetic activity, A, according to the formula A = B V^2, but until six years ago we did not know how to separate the influence of B and V, so could not determine either back in the time before spacecraft measurements of B and/or of V. It is like knowing that a pair of shoes and a handbag together cost $200, but that knowledge does not have enough information to tell us what the price of the shoes was.
Then the ‘miracle’ [the insight] happened:
—–Original Message—–
From: Leif Svalgaard [mailto:leif@leif.org]
Sent: Monday, May 19, 2003 12:38 AM
To: Cliver Edward W Civ AFRL/VSBXS
Subject: A miracle happened.
Hi Ed,
Attached are the figures for our second paper in the series. I was bothered (as you were) by the Cliver & Ling 2002 paper. Especially Figure 5 of that paper. When Bartels constructed the u-index [in the 1920s], he knew what he was doing, so we must understand the behavior of the u-index. The rise is ominous, especially since riser-people don’t plot from zero 🙂
Lockwood is, of course, already in trouble by the fact that 1901 and 1964 both have equally deep minima in Figure 5, but let that slide for now.
My recent (attached) analysis explains everything and everybody can now be happy except Lockwood. The miracle that happened was the realization (and proof) that the u-index is not sensitive to the solar wind speed, but only to the IMF magnitude. In fact, u is simply a plot of B: B = 2.72 + 0.388 u. A doubling of u from 5 to 10 means a change in B from 4.7 to 6.6 nT, thus not a doubling. My Figure 8 tells the story. Call me to discuss.”
I remember plotting Figure 8 starting with the year 1872 [when the u-index started with good accuracy]. Once I plotted the u-index for 1930 [where A = B V^2 was very high [the highest since 1872]], but the u-index was not, the whole thing was crystal-clear and all my work since has just solidified and confirmed that insight.
I have had precisely five such moments in my entire career so they don’t happen every day. And I have been lucky. To many people they don’t happen.
David Holliday (19:15:47) :
“Anyone who thinks a prediction based on a computer model is science is an idiot!”
And anyone who thinks AGW theory relies on computer models is an ignorant fool.
But of course, since I completely agree with the scientific consense, (which is not all that difficult to understand if you actually give it a go and leave the politics behind), it will be my post that is snipped rather than the highly ridicule-filled rant above which calls into question the integrity of the work of many dedicted, honest people.
@ur momisugly – Filipe (20:52:26)
At some point there needs to be direct attempts to “attack” the theory with experimental observation that is repeatable, and capable of independent validation.
AGW Advocacy Science avoids such tests like the plague.
Novel theories typically are able to make predictions for new phenomena that have not been observed before. REF: Einsteins General Theory of Relativity posits that light will be bent by the gravitational fields of stars. Armed with this prediction, experimentalists checked it out and found that indeed light was bent as predicted – had the opposite been found, then the theory would have been in deep trouble.
AGW Advocacy Science predicts a “Troposphere Hot Spot in the Tropics”, and it hasn’t been found, the absence is not seen as refutation of the theory… Hence, no connection between the theory and experimental observation. This is inline with my earlier statements that advocates will ignore or attack contrary data and results.
Another sad aspect of Advocacy Science is that it kills the opportunity to learn. – It is an extreme form of Hubris.
I get tired of reading about how some plant or animal has changed its nesting, feeding or blooming habits due to “climate change”. God forbid that living things on this planet change! Put it in a paper and claim its due to manmade climate change and you’ve contributed to the “huge” wieght of evidence for man made climate change. Of course the argument for man made climate change is an undeniable truth! It says so right there in those models. It’s not just the lack of verification of models, but the leap of logic by these silly studies based on what the models proclaim.
One question that I have often pondered: Why hasn’t someone produced a climate model based on Lindzen’s argument that water vapor is a negative feedback?
Thank you Watts, Pielke, etal for the points of view on this site.
Leif Svalgaard (20:01:48) : “The last step can take decades and is sometimes only successful when your opponents die off [so plan on living for a while].”
Good point. This was the case with J Harlan Bretz when the recognition of his explanation of the Channeled Scablands of Eastern Washington arrived.
May you live long and be rewarded.
another typo
“Just a two recent examples”
Here in Oregon there are activists who more often than any other warmists bromide play the “peer review” card in marginalizing skeptics.
Their dependency upon the peer reviewed journals is tremendous.
So they’ll be ignoring any evidence of peer review wavering right along with Pielke.
Leif Svalgaard (20:01:48) :
4) or, somebody decides to take the anomaly at face value and see where it leads [so the data ‘asks the question’]
I like that one, Leif. I really do like it.
OT: fyi: Armstrong and Getty (a couple of Nor. Cal. talk show hosts) talked about the O.C. Register article on the recent surface station report by Anthony Watts and Dr. Roger Pielke Sr. I sent the hosts a link to the article over the weekend and was thrilled to hear that it got on the show. They are one of the top (if not the top) rated morning-drive talk show in Northern California, and many people around the world listen to their podcast.
If you haven’t read the OCR article, here it is: http://www.ocregister.com/articles/temperature-stations-global-2433763-heat-watts
WARNING! The other topics of discussion that day include the death of David Carradine under, shall we say, unusual circumstances, which may be rather offensive to some. The discussion of the report starts at 18:30 of Hr 3 and extends to 23:00.
Here is a link to a podcast of the show (3rd hr on 6/8/09): http://a1135.g.akamai.net/f/1135/18227/1h/cchannel.download.akamai.com/18227/podcast/SANFRANCISCO-CA/KNEW-AM/Armstrong%20and%20Getty%2006-08-09%20H3.mp3?CPROG=PCAST&MARKET=SANFRANCISCO-CA&NG_FORMAT=businessnews&SITE_ID=664&STATION_ID=KNEW-AM&PCAST_AUTHOR=910_KNEW&PCAST_CAT=News_%26_Politics&PCAST_TITLE=Armstrong_and_Getty_-_910_KNEW
If that link gets messed up, you can find all their podcasts here: http://www.910knew.com/cc-common/podcast/single_podcast.html?podcast=ang.xml
P.S. Anthony, if you have the time, I think you’d make a great guest for the show.
REPLY: Thanks, I do radio daily as it is, so no problem, anytime. – Anthony
Matt Bennett (21:39:25) : “And anyone who thinks AGW theory relies on computer models is an ignorant fool.”
Yes, Matt! Based on the evidence, AGW theory relies every bit as much on argument ad hominem, cherry picking, data tampering, organized suppression of dissent, and alarmist ranting as it does on computer models.
Matt Bennett (21:39:25) :
David Holliday (19:15:47): “Anyone who thinks a prediction based on a computer model is science is an idiot!”
And anyone who thinks AGW theory relies on computer models is an ignorant fool.
But of course, since I completely agree with the scientific consense, (which is not all that difficult to understand if you actually give it a go and leave the politics behind), it will be my post that is snipped rather than the highly ridicule-filled rant above which calls into question the integrity of the work of many dedicted, honest people.
Matt…
First, would you be so kind as to provide us with physical evidence taken from nature, not from models, on your assertion that AGW is a theory and it’s really happening nowadays?
Second, please tell us, is “consensus” included in the theory of truth? i.e. are scientific theories true if they have been constructed on consensuses? Thanks in advance for your prompt answers to my questions.
FatBigot (20:56:37) :
In order to be able to ask a question it is necessary to have some reason to do so.
It is rare that a question is asked in the first place. More often than not [I gave some examples in an earlier comment] the solution is ‘immediately obvious’ before the question is asked or even before one knows that there could be a question. Scientists have a tendency [like the great Gauss] to cover their ‘tracks’ and present their discoveries as an orderly progression [following the Scientific Method], but it is fake! An example of such is my own paper describing my ‘insight’: http://www.leif.org/research/Determination%20IMF,%20SW,%20EUV,%201890-2003.pdf
Leif Svalgaard (21:28:03) :
The “eureka” moment. ( Archimedes getting out of the bathtub)
I have had precisely five such moments in my entire career so they don’t happen every day. And I have been lucky. To many people they don’t happen.
Unfortunately though these happen to many people, but most of the time they have found coal and not gold. The sincere scientists of AGW think they have had their eureka moment. It is what draws people to science, that pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. It is the peer review process that should throw out the coal, but it has broken down in climate science, as Pielke observes above.
As for me, working in large groups, I have had some eureka moments, buried in group work. One stands out many decades ago, but I did not manage to convince the group to publish such innovative stuff. I was right, but so what?
Leif Svalgaard (22:14:58) : “…More often than not…the solution is ‘immediately obvious’ before the question is asked or even before one knows that there could be a question. Scientists have a tendency…to cover their ‘tracks’ and present their discoveries as an orderly progression…”
Yes, and that’s probably what I would do, too. At the very least, I’d be tempted…