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.
Benjamin P. (08:11:18) :
anna v (23:09:16) :
Pay close attention to this part of your definition of model…
“12: a system of postulates, data, and inferences presented as a mathematical description of an entity or state of affairs ; also : a computer simulation based on such a system”
No.
The theory of gravitation is not a computer simulation and a system of inferences. It is an elegant basically simple mathematical formulation . It is not a model. It could be called an algorithm, not a model. It is not a description, it is a generator of descriptions that fits all possible data. It is used in models but is not a model.
‘… wilderness is a myth.’
Ah, myth! Magic word to Mr Eye-magination!
Carl Jung, Mircea Eliade, Joseph Campbell, Northrop Frye! Eliot, Joyce and Yeats, Oh my!
Etymologically from the same Indo-Euopean root as English ‘mouth’. The primitive meaning of ‘mythos’ is ‘speech’–an easy hop from there to ‘story’.
A myth is not a lie; a myth is the only way of telling certain truths about the world and our place in it.
Of course ‘wilderness’ is a myth, a story constructed with the human tongue. No settled land, no towns and cities–in general, no man-affected landscape– that is ‘wilderness’. In other words, the definition of wilderness must be framed in the negative; no humans, no wilderness.
For most of human history, ‘wilderness’ has had a negative connotation: what was not man-affected was not man-friendly. Only in a technologically developed, prosperous society that has won for itself some small measure of breathing room from the pursuit of the Four Horsemen can an appreciation for the wild develop.
Alas, I am a poor refugee from the post-modernist wreckage of the English Department!
Giles Winterbourne (08:44:05) :
“The most recent findings by Dr. Svalgaard et al. are based on only the first of three years of data during the current decline of solar cycle 23. At least two more years of data (through the solar minimum) are required to provide a more accurate prediction.”
Except that today we have precisely the data we need for this [comes from waiting three+ years 🙂 ] and the recent data corroborates the early prediction as the polar fields have hardly changed. If anything the average value over the last three years is a tad smaller that the very early value, so perhaps a better prediction today would be closer to 70, which is not significantly different from the original prediction.
‘Again though, we still do not have a *mechanism* to explain how one mass feels another mass.’
If you had a balky ‘M’ key, and it had misfired on each instance of the word ‘mass’, the result would be an intriguing sentence.
As it is, the use of the verb ‘feel’ seems to ascribe sentience to masses. Suspenders ‘ ‘ would help.
I think we may have to be satisfied with an operational definition of mass, and forget about an essential definition.
But getting back to ‘mechanism’– ya see how language can govern thought? ‘Mechanisms’ are, literally, human contrivances, like the mechanism of a clock. There is no problem with using the term analogously of natural processes, as long as one remains aware that this is a figurative and not a literal usage.
Same deal when we say that the human brain is ‘hard-wired’ for language; the analogy is from manmade, metal-wire circuitry. A very helpful analogy, to be sure, but analogical still. Analogies from computer science (or is it IT now?) are probably closer.
A third example, not from technics, is the concept of a ‘law’ of physical nature, analogously parallel to the laws of political societies.
Giles Winterbourne
Sir, you glory in a name out of Henry James. The last name, I mean, and I can’t at the moment remember which novel.
” I think science has been under attack for some time now and too often scientific issues have been taken over by politicians on the extreme left (global warming) and the extreme right (creationism). ”
Science cannot be government funded to any significant degree and avoid the necessary consequence of being ‘political’.
‘Political’ need not be a dirty word; it is closely related to the word ‘policy’, as in ‘public policy’, and in 21st c. technologically developed societies the input to policy-makers of the best work of scientists making is vey important.
“Daisy Miller’, of course! [slaps his forehead in disbelief].
Arthur Glass (07:19:00) “I also suggested to Anthony that a continuing thread on science education in elementary and secondary schools might make for a pleasant and illuminating discussion.”
I second the motion.
I would include post-secondary education in the list, but certainly the deeper roots are (generally speaking) more important.
How is it that members of our society are being conditioned to accept modeling output (such as forecasts) without even thinking to question underlying (potentially UNTENABLE) assumptions?
I’ve taught, coached, & judged 1000s of introductory-level statistics students. I have no hesitation in asserting that things are going HORRIBLY wrong with our society’s efforts [actually lack thereof] to help students develop reliable & enduring roots.
There is a lack of careful & patient emphasis on UNDERSTANDING fundamental concepts. Excessive (administrative) valuation of (the appearance of) fast-spinning wheels is systematically trumping (almost without exception) deep focus on educational FUNDAMENTALS.
Some restraint (of the spinning-system) is in order. Having most-of-the-population confused all-of-the-time serves only LOCAL*SHORT-term (administrative political convenience) goals.
Other societies are RAPIDLY overtaking us as we INFIGHT. Many of my students have been from societies with ‘superior’ education systems. They STAGGERINGLY outperform locals …& with both ease AND grace. We NEED to take note – & take ACTION — NOW, I would argue. With our eyes OFF-the-ball (and instead seriously & misguidedly focused on silly, partisan politics), we are SITTING DUCKS that will EASILY be picked-off if we do not smarten-up FAST …and notice our surroundings.
If we decided to, we could move fast —- we could have results within (about, I’d say) 2.5 generations. All we have to do is get dead-serious about survival – and stay calm, of course.
Eventually there will be a change-of-the-guard. We need to prepare before that moment arrives (…and we don’t know when it will happen so there is not a moment to waste).
The Cold War kept us on our game. When the iron curtain collapsed, we got sucked into a unipolar void — you can’t pitch a very good tent with only one source of tension.
Our next rise will be driven by educational need – and I don’t mean ‘theory’ — I mean hard practice — real knowledge – widespread across all members of a whole society. This will be the (long-term) way to survive a (grueling) contest with our emerging competition. As much as it is against our very deep, divisive conditioning, our survival – at this stage – depends on militant cooperation.
–
Thank you for your comments Arthur.
Arthur Glass (13:42:35),
Wasn’t the author Thomas Hardy? I read the Woodlanders many years ago. And I think someone made it into a movie, but I never saw it.
Anna, one last time.
Gravity is a Theory, to make predictions about the way gravity manifests itself we use mathematical models.
Or should we keep arguing semantics?
Ben
Also Anna,
“The theory of gravitation is not a computer simulation and a system of inferences. It is an elegant basically simple mathematical formulation”
What are those “computer simulations” based on? Some hamster randomly pushing buttons to generate an output? Or are they MATH EQUATIONS!?
The only difference is the MODELS we use to predict the effects of gravity are relatively simplistic compared to climate.
Ben
Actually, it’s the Law of Gravity: click
Not trying to be argumentative, but in this case, semantics do matter.
Ref: Leif Svalgaard (15:56:09) “these are LOCAL school board decisions…”
Now, not so much: There are local boards that get heavily influenced by special interest groups; and that happens nationwide. However, the Texas State Board of Education has adopted weakened science standards that can allow creationists to pressure textbook publishers to include their pov. Because Texas is a large state, their decisions influence national publishers and every state winds up with materials under that influence. http://www.tfn.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=5745 and http://ritter.tea.state.tx.us/teks/scienceTEKS.html
Might especially be interested in the parts of the following that were deleted as they pertain to this thread: ( Page 7-8 http://ritter.tea.state.tx.us/teks/science/ch112b_as_approved032709.pdf
(3) Scientific investigation and reasoning. The student uses critical thinking, scientific reasoning, and
problem solving to make informed decisions and knows the contributions of relevant scientists.
The student is expected to:
(A) in all fields of science, analyze, evaluate, and critique scientific explanations by using
empirical evidence, logical reasoning, and experimental and observational testing,
7
05/08/09 — As approved by the State Board of Education on March 27, 2009, for second reading and final adoption,
with technical edits, as authorized by State Board of Education operating rules. Not yet filed; will be subject to
review for non-substantive, technical edits by Texas Register editors.
including examining all sides of scientific evidence of those scientific explanations, so
as to encourage critical thinking by the student;
[(A) differentiate among scientific fact, scientific hypothesis, scientific theory, and
scientific law;]
Before all the recent stuff, I had to tiptoe around several issues when I was developing and writing 6-8 Environmental and Ecology online curriculum for a publisher developing materials to meet Texas standards.
Benjamin P. (09:11:09) :
All our “predictions” on gravity are based on models. David is just seething ignorance with respect to models and science when he makes his bold claim. I use models all the time to predict how trace elements will fractionate in a crystallizing magma chamber. Models are employed in the field of genetics, chemistry, geology, climatology, biology, ad nauseam. All you folks have done is stigmatize the word “model” and then use that stigma that you have created as some strawman argument of why climate science is bunk (because they use models!!!)
Wow! Where to begin with this one? As per my earlier post regarding my background, while “seething ignorance” probably applies to my knowledge of solar dynamics, with regard to my knowledge of computers and computer modeling it is not remotely close to being true. With regard to modeling gravitational effects, I’ve been there done that. With regard to your statement comparing the models you use to climate models, I cannot think of a more disingenuous reply. If the models you use were as inaccurate and unreliable as climate models I doubt you would use them or if you did I doubt you would keep your job very long because your results would suck. With respect to the “stigma that you have created” the stigma is not on models but on the people who use inaccurate and unreliable models to predict future climate. And, finally, with respect to “why climate science is bunk”, climate science is bunk because AGW “scientists” continue to use computer models to try to prove a theory instead of proving the theory and then using models to model it! A computer model cannot prove a theory! Repeat after me, “A computer model cannot prove a theory!” Nonsense is when you try to prove a theory based on models you create yourself. That is what the AGW crowd is attempting to do.
Interesting thread.
I can’t help but think the whole vexed problem of global warming goes back to C.P.Snow’s “Two Cultures” (1962?) in which he portrayed a divide between people who were educated in the arts and humanities, and people who were educated in the sciences.
When I was at university in Britain in the 1960s, studying Architecture (when I wasn’t chasing girls) most of the ‘fun’ people studied humanities subjects – English, history, philosophy, etc -. They were the ‘hippies’ and ‘radicals’ who marched and protested. They talked Marxism and politics and literature and art and music. The science students were relatively uninteresting, and generally conservative, and not much bothered with politics and literature. Each had no little contempt for the other.
Despite studying architecture, I actually got a lot of science education at university, and it was towards science that I gradually began to gravitate. The ‘fun’ people had gradually begun to seem superficial, vain, faddish. I guess I wanted to find something that was more rigorous and rational. I moved slowly from the arts to the sciences. It was possible to do, back then.
But it’s the arts graduates who are now running Britain. The BBC, for example, is stuffed full with arts and humanities graduates. They’re highly literate, highly eloquent, and very fashionable. They can talk about just about anything. But they know nothing about science. Almost nothing at all. To them it’s boring. It’s mechanical. It’s, well,… beneath them. They think it’s, well, just not very important. Not as important as freedom, equality, truth, society, post-modernism, art, music, literature – all the widest perspectives of human life.
The result is that they’re very naive. They are as wonderfully innumerate as they are wonderfully literate. They freeze up at the sight of numbers, particularly large ones with decimal points in them. Any scientist or doctor or researcher can come along and tell them something, and they’ll accept it entirely uncritically, because they have no means of investigating science claims. For them, scientists are unquestionable authority figures, whose authority is measured by the number of letters after their names.
In such circumstances, what better way is there to advance some political or moral cause than to present it as science? What better way to get all these arts and humanities graduates to do what you want than to dress it up with charts and tables and numbers and equations and (best of all) computer simulation models? They won’t be able to question it. They won’t be able to pick it apart. Not like they could if exactly the same political programme was presented to them in plain English with its cultural and historical antecedents laid bare.
And maybe this is all that we’re now witnessing. The global warmists are using their mathematical and scientific skills to steam-roller an arts and humanities-educated political and media class who simply have no defences against them. Or no more defences than peasants armed with wooden sticks facing an oncoming tank army.
And in this they’re greatly assisted by the fact that most real scientists aren’t that interested (just like in my student days) in politics, ethics, economics, art, music, and literature. They’re interested in string theory, and galaxies, and DNA, and beetles, and tides. That’s what they spend most of their time thinking about. And they’re usually focused on a very small patch of their own particular discipline. Can anyone tell me what Einstein’s politics were? Or Rutherford’s? Or Bohr’s? Has anyone got a painting by Boltzmann or Euler? Or a poem by James Van Allen?
So the AGWers are exploiting a fault line running through our whole society: the division between the arts and the sciences. On the one side of it they’re duping the arts guys, who are just incredibly easy to dupe with numbers and graphs, and who have no defences whatsoever against them. And on the other hand they’re relying on real scientists to continue to remain largely indifferent to large-scale political and ethical and economic issues, and keep their noses to the grindstone of the disciplines they work in.
They’ll only be defeated when all the arts and humanities people suddenly realise that science does matter after all, and that they really should know about it, and it’s a dangerous hole in their education which the AGWers are exploiting. And they’ll also only be defeated when the science guys suddenly realise that all that politics and ethics and economics and art and music and literature does matter, and isn’t quite as trivial and unimportant as it looks, and that they’ve got a dangerous hole in their education too, which can be and is being exploited.
Now, of course, what I’ve presented here is a little bit of a caricature. In reality, quite a few of the arts guys know quite a lot about science, and quite a few of the science guys know quite a lot about art – Richard Feynman was as proud of being a samba drummer as he was of his Feynman diagrams. It’s not actually as black and white as I’m presenting it. But I think the division between the two cultures is nevertheless very real.
You really have to hand it to the AGWers. Theirs has been a brilliant coup. They’ve exploited a profound division in Western society. And perhaps in doing so they’ll turn out in the end to have done us all a favour, and forced us to become rather more well-rounded, well-educated people than we were before.
And then you’ll be able to come here and read Leif Svalgaard expound upon the solar magnetosphere one day,… and upon Salvador Dali the next.
David Holliday, EM Smith,
Thanks so much for that enlightening expose, but I’m well aware of what computer models are and how they work. What both of you are effectively saying, which I find stunningly arrogant, is that because your careers have involved some dabbling in computer models, you are therefore authorities on the ones built by climate scientists and are somehow able to see faults that they cannot (and that no other scientific authority has seen fit to point out to them, incidently) Pretty brave claims.
You’re both fooling yourselves and I recommend you read a few reputable books on how we know what we know about climate change. The science is over a hundred years old and the predictions that are proving correct were around before the modern computer was born. The evidence of climate change is all around you and does not rely on computer models for its confirmation. Models will prove useful in predicting a range over which the consequences will be spread and in deciding the most effective ways of dealing with it. The fact that it’s happening is not in question, no matter what your political objections.
It is slightly scary that even with a nearly record minimum in solar activity and a series of La Nina’s the warming trend is still slightly positive. It appears we are swinging back into El Nino this month though, just as the arctic sea ice extent crosses over and exceeds even 2007’s record June low. You won’t be able to keep the blinkers on for too much longer.
The science is over a hundred years old? Really?.
No this unsupported speculation is over two hundred years old: and to date there is nothing to suggest it is anything more than supposition.
Of course you can build computer models to model any fantasy you please. But fantasy is all it is.
I do not know what you mean by reputable books, no doubt they are ones approved by censors, but I do suggest you go and read some basic textbooks on physics, chemistry, mathematics and statistics.
Kindest Regards
David Holliday (17:02:26) :
In other words, your area of expertise involved scientific models which happen to be well tested and measured. There is little room for gross error. Climate modeling is a bit more exploratory.
Matt Bennett (18:21:07) :
David Holliday, EM Smith,
Thanks so much for that enlightening expose, but I’m well aware of what computer models are and how they work. What both of you are effectively saying, which I find stunningly arrogant, is that because your careers have involved some dabbling in computer models, you are therefore authorities on the ones built by climate scientists and are somehow able to see faults that they cannot (and that no other scientific authority has seen fit to point out to them, incidently) Pretty brave claims.
You’re both fooling yourselves and I recommend you read a few reputable books on how we know what we know about climate change. The science is over a hundred years old and the predictions that are proving correct were around before the modern computer was born. The evidence of climate change is all around you and does not rely on computer models for its confirmation. Models will prove useful in predicting a range over which the consequences will be spread and in deciding the most effective ways of dealing with it. The fact that it’s happening is not in question, no matter what your political objections.
It is slightly scary that even with a nearly record minimum in solar activity and a series of La Nina’s the warming trend is still slightly positive. It appears we are swinging back into El Nino this month though, just as the arctic sea ice extent crosses over and exceeds even 2007’s record June low. You won’t be able to keep the blinkers on for too much longer.
Matt: This warming trend is from the Little Ice Age (circa 1700s through 1800s) perhaps, and how much higher would it have to go to exceed the Medieval, Roman and Minoan warming periods???
The key point – before you get scared of “warming”, – is to demonstrate that natural variation of climate is no longer in operation – something that has not yet been done.
Also, given that the current arctic sea ice is also above the 2005 and 2006 numbers and frankly the yearly records are rather bunched up at the moment – seems to be drawing a conclusion from insignificant evidence.
REF: http://www.ijis.iarc.uaf.edu/seaice/extent/AMSRE_Sea_Ice_Extent.png
Let’s wait for September and assess the minimum for 2009 vs the other years…
WRT Computer Model validity – REF this http://landshape.org/enm/errors-of-global-warming-effects-modeling/#more-2330
Benjamin P. (16:02:58) :
Anna, one last time.
Gravity is a Theory, to make predictions about the way gravity manifests itself we use mathematical models.
Or should we keep arguing semantics?
To say “we use mathematical models” in order to describe solving differential equations is like saying that playing music is modeling musical theory.
It is sophistry to support your confusion of what the difference is between modeling and exact theory outputs.
Also Anna,
“The theory of gravitation is not a computer simulation and a system of inferences. It is an elegant basically simple mathematical formulation”
What are those “computer simulations” based on? Some hamster randomly pushing buttons to generate an output? Or are they MATH EQUATIONS!?
The only difference is the MODELS we use to predict the effects of gravity are relatively simplistic compared to climate.
No.
The difference is that in modeling we use a large number of approximations of possible solutions of differential equations ( as I have stated in my post , anna v (12:18:19) : )i.e. we have already solved the theory, found the solutions, and are imposing boundary conditions.
There is a basic qualitative difference, not quantitative, in the concept “theory” and “model”.
That there can be semantic confusion among scientifically trained people between the meaning of theory and solutions from a theory, and modeling, goes partway towards solving for me the puzzle of how there can be scientists who confuse cause and effect. There is general confusion.
idlex (18:04:45) :
Ditto.
You really have to hand it to the AGWers. Theirs has been a brilliant coup. They’ve exploited a profound division in Western society. And perhaps in doing so they’ll turn out in the end to have done us all a favour, and forced us to become rather more well-rounded, well-educated people than we were before.
A favor if the whole western civilizations does not go down the drain with the carbon credit scam, and we have to start from square number one again.
anna v (21:16:32) :
oms (21:45:40) :
You are also demonstrating this semantic confusion.
it might be fair to say that the differential equations ARE the mathematical model. The harmonic oscillator equation is not an exact description of a spring-mass system or a tight string or anything else, just as the Euler equations are not an exact description of fluid flows.
The solution of the harmonic oscillation is not a model. It is an exact solution of a theory, it exists in mathematical space whether people that will use it exist or not. One may need a model to fit this solution to actual oscillators, but it is a different action than solving the equation.
Models need people and the culture we have.
Let me put it differently:
Theories and their mathematical solutions, like the music of the spheres, are there whether or not people are there, in a mathematical space.
Using the word “model” for a theory shows how these video games of climate models have convinced their users that they are doing rigorous science. They have no concept that they are just using a tool of integration, they think it is theory.
idlex (18:04:45) ”They are as wonderfully innumerate as they are wonderfully literate. They freeze up at the sight of numbers […] They won’t be able to question it. They won’t be able to pick it apart.”
A couple of years ago I was contracted to help develop a course on functional numeracy. You’ve hit many of the key points addressed by the committee.
Math educators are neither sufficiently empowered nor sufficiently supported by the system to achieve the learning outcomes with which they are taxed.
This is not a simple issue.
Although there is growing awareness of the problem, there is not yet the critical mass necessary to solve the problem.
Amongst the largest remaining [planning stage] problems:
Division (amongst math educators) on the nature of the optimal solution.
–
idlex “[…] using their mathematical and scientific skills to steam-roller an arts and humanities-educated political and media class who simply have no defences against them. Or no more defences than peasants armed with wooden sticks facing an oncoming tank army.”
Discussions like this one help flag issues needing attention – plus: let’s not assume:
a) that the true agenda is the ‘apparent’ one.
b) that common sense is absent.
–
You are right about the need for bridging. I’ve switched disciplines a number of times, mainly motivated by the need to gather ideas & methods from other disciplines to pursue answers to interdisciplinary questions. It is an administrative challenge – even a serious burden – for disciplines to support the development of well-rounded hybrids. This – along with attitudes – must change, but it will clearly be most efficient to exercise restrained patience and to prepare to roll with the changing-of-the-guard, rather than to head-on-confront old-school traditionalists who are culturally conditioned to consume inordinate amounts of energy fighting. We (who plan for positive change) can afford them some dignity on their way out while we spend some time sharpening our tools.
In a more educated society, there would be far-less-agitated concerns about ‘peer-review’; the publication process could be more liberalized since a higher proportion of literate & numerate citizens would empower society to be stimulated by unconventional ideas without feeling threatened by tidal waves of mass-misguidance.