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.
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
DirkH (15:06:46) :
couldn’t help myself from looking at Mr. SuperPostNormalMan’s Fortress Of Darkness
It’s a little bit like driving past a car accident. You don’t want to stare, but you catch a glimpse… “wtf is going on there?” and before you know it you’re about to cause another accident 😉
There’s that “robust” word again. *shudder
Is there any wonder why “science” gets taken over by political/activist interests when they intentionally institute a framework to facilitate it?
Peter B (15:15:06) :
So, “post-normal science” is an attempt to “soften” hard science.
I think that is a much more acceptable/polite (accurate?) way to put it – agreed!
For the electronics engineers can I suggest another analogy. Real science is like the traditional analogue RF receiver – what comes out is a direct relationship to what goes in. The audio signal out is a causal relationship (+ a bit of internal noise) to the input.
In contrast, Post Normal science, is a bit like a phase locked loop. The “model” is the internal oscillator, which is the model, which is compared to the actual environmental signal as and when available and adjustments made to resync the oscillator to the signal. This is in some senses a “superior” model, because it can cope with low information content subjects – so that e.g. the model of the climate, can be created and compared to available evidence on the climate and adjusted to match – and if you are lucky it can lock into the “real” signal from the environment at much lower signal levels and with better signal to noise.
But as every electronics engineer should know, PLLs also have the characteristic of false locking. They can lock into signals that aren’t there (harmonics) and can give the false impression of representing a reality which isn’t there. This happens because the internal model, continues to have a life of its own and the sparse information from the real climate/signal is insufficient to kick it out of a false mmode into the real mode where the internal model will match the environment.
Add to this the natural tendency to look for evidence to support our worldly viewpoint/group-think rather than looking for evidence to counter our view, and these non-deterministic (i.e. non-scientific) methodologies are highly subject to false paradigms such as the current fad re manmade global warming.
A terminological problem here.
We also use the term “acceptable premise” to mean a *rationally* acceptable premise. Such a premise may or may not be true, but it is not silly to treat it as if it were true.
There are rules for deciding whether a premise is acceptable, unacceptable, or provisional. These rules have nothing to do with how one feels about the premise, and nothing to do with how many people believe it.
Disagreement about a premise, is, however, a factor. A premise is acceptable if it is claimed by an expert, *so long as no other expert disagrees*.
The aim of the rules is to accept only premises which are “more like the truth” (as Xenophanes would have phrased if he had prescient and sensible enough to speak English) so as to produce arguments which similarly come closer to the truth.
“FaustiesBlog (15:32:42) :
[…]
They will be more devious this time. They will increase their inducements on politicians and the media. They’ll use every trick in the book because they want it so badly. Hell, it’s been 20 years in the making.”
They will be as incompetent and bumbling as the last time.
Hank Hancock: “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.”
I think you (and several others) are mis-reading Ravetz. The “extended peer community” does not include every person, no matter how uninformed. It refers to that subset of the public which has informed itself and possesses expertise or perspectives (as well as interest) relevant to the problem — which is a much larger group than the small and insular clique of “peer reviewers.” And, like it or not, what counts as “accepted” or “settled” or “normal” science will always be determined by a consensus of some sort. The only question is, How broad is that consensus? How much evidence and how many arguments were considered before it was reached?
Steve (16:09:53) :
“…Another way of putting it is that if everybody’s point of view is equally valid, then nobody’s view is valid. What results is a tyranny of rule by emotion, or force. Rationality is the casualty…”
Do not fall into the trap of thinking that cultural relativism means that all systems of ethics and morality are equally valid and thus equally valueless. Nihilism is fatal to cultures, individuals and immortal souls. A society that accepts the notion that no value is worth dieing for is a society that no longer deserves to live
Off Topic: Global Warming vs. Other Causes of Shifts in Bird Ranges
“The South African scientists say their work suggests that either “observed climate changes have not yet been sufficient to trigger extensive shifts in the ranges of indigenous birds in this region, or that a priori assumptions are incorrect.” Either way, as they continue, “this study highlights the danger of naive attribution of range changes to climate change,”
http://www.co2science.org/articles/V13/N11/B1.php
NickB: “Is it just me or is post-normal science not, as perhaps originally intended to be, an enlightened understanding of the intersections between hard sciences and soft sciences (social science, political science, perhaps a bit of philosophy thrown in for good measure)… but instead be better described as the gang-rape of hard science by the practitioners of the soft sciences?”
Neither. It is science as it must (per Ravetz) be practiced when 1) the “ordinary evidence” (evidence as traditionally understood) is ambiguous, contradictory, or non-existent, and 2) the consequences (for the public) of assuming different answers are great, and thus indicate radically different policies.
Contrarian (16:17:08) :
Leif Svalgaard: “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’.”
Most people understand that “truth” has two meanings: “ordinary truths,” which are reports confirmable by observation and experience, and “higher truths,” which are claims entailed by some religious, ideological, or moral axiom.
Your latter kind of ‘truth’ falls squarely within Napoleon’s maxim.
Global Warming is not (imho) as big a threat to this planet as CO2 is. We can deal with the warming, however the acidification of the oceans as a result of elevated levels CO@ur momisugly in the atmosphere will be a much more challenging problem. The book Sea Sick mentions that the worlds oceans will be so acidic by 2038 that the only organism that can srvive in it will be jelly fish. An ocean with no fish in it is way more scary than Jaws.
Post-normal science — what a great potential there is in this area representing a potential new revenue stream for the Gallup organization.
People talk about science as if it operates in a vaccuum. Scientists are employed by government, industry and academia. and have never been detached from the real world. Scientists must eat. Someone pays their salary and funds their research.
Government is the biggest funder of scientific research. Eisenhower warned of the dangers in his last speech as President. In some science, government is the biggest employer, for example example in Atmospheric Science (climate). Not all of the science that is funded is in the public domain, some of it is classified. During the 60’s when plate tectonics was being debated, much of the data used was classified, and only available to some scientists with security clearance. The internet was created by the military, funded by the government. That which is not classified is not available free of charge to every taxpayer, but is protected by a subscription pay wall.
Research conducted by industry tends to be proprietory, and more applied science than theoretical. Industries also fund some science via academic scientists, but it’s a drop in the bucket compared to government funding. Industries also sponge off government funded science, especially Big pharma, and use such research in product development for new drugs (no discounts available to the tax papers who funded said research).
Academia of course begs for money from government grants, some industry grants, and of course has pressure from those in administration who seek to please those who provide the endowments and rate their universities. Researching an aspect of science that is not popular among the intellectuals and socialists who seek to mold this world in a form as envisioned by Plato is not conducive to a career in acacademia. Government and Industry scientists are also easily silenced as long as they are working for one or the other.
Science has been used to justify child labour, unsafe working conditions, to confirm the safety of lead and asbestos, to deny contamination of Polio vaccines with SV-40 from monkeys kidneys, to deny that bacteria could cause ulcers, to deny plate tectonic theory (first proposed in 1911), etc.
The concept of the democratization of science is interesting. I suppose it could mean that scientists should be given the freedom of speech without having to worry about all of the above (money and career). It should relate to peer review. I mean, could a scientist like Einstein working as a patent officer get his papers published on special relativity and quantum theory. I doubt it. He debunked a wildly popular theory at the time about the Aether, saying only that it was not needed for his theories (no proof offered).
Having anonymous peer reviewers is a great way to silence those speaking an inconvenient truth. There was no peer review in Einsteins day until later in his career when he challenged the popular view of quantum mechanics. He had a paper rejected in 1937 and was furious, saying I sent my paper to you to be published, not to be reviewed by other scientists first (stealing of others ideas was well established back in the day, and delays in publication were a concern). Peer review is a modern practice, popular only in the late 20th century. Science did quite well before peer review.
Einstein was one of those scientists who did not perform any laboratory work, and had to outsource his math. He and other scientists performed thought experiments, others collected data via experiments, some did both. Kind of like what computer modellers do when you think of it. They cherry pick some data collected by others, make some reasonable or unreasonable assumptions, program the math and use the big brain that is computer power to determine outcome. If outcome not what is desired, adjust data, assumptions and algorithms, wash, rinse, repeat . This especially works when the output or theory can not be disproven easily, at least not for 30 years or so.
It was skeptics who refined Einsteins theories, corrected some errors, and made improvements over the following decades. They never did accept his justified concerns about the spookiness of Bohrs Quantum Mechanics, so today Science is content to construct a world view of probabilities (percentage, or using words like IPCC’s very likely).
When there is public debate on science, it is due to one reason. That the science is going to be used as justification to regulate someone or something, which will cause reduced profits, or higher taxes, supposedly for the public good. But as JP Morgan once said, you must have 2 reasons for everything, a good reason (public good), and the real reason (wink, wink). Scientists can be found to support any position, and the silencing of scientists with opposing views is quite simple, as already explained.
Leif Svalgaard (14:25:03) :
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.
—————————————————–
As one of the Joe Publics who frequent here, the above exchange is interesting to me as I can’t tell which view is ‘weired’. I used tobe able to tell by the view that lands out of the concensus. With trust gone –
remember 2,500 scientists proclaim the debate is over on AGW, Joe Publics now have to emerse themselves in the Science (less the Hermetics!) and hope
to find some way to the truth of the matter without guidance from the ‘concensus’. I take the reference above to be about the ‘SSM controversey’ or a version thereof, which probably drives Lief mad, who does whack-a-mole duties here. It’s now a new world where I can mine all kinds of sources for information from the net but still can’t understand a lick of the actual science. So speaking plainly-PNS isn’t the way forward. But business as usual of science by concensus isn’t either. For however long that has been going on, different lengths of time for different fields, has also come to an end. A vacuum has emerged. And lots of things are getting sucked in including things that suck. um er………so, I feel a little lost.
Ahhh yes, I can see it now: “The relationship between velocity and acceleration is not acceptable to me, because I do not understand calculus. It is too complex for me, the common man. So, since my point of view is just as valid as someone who understands calculus, I now demand that the relationship between velocity and acceleration now be… purple. That is acceptable to me.”
I hear the Dark Ages gearing-up for them comeback!
*their comeback. Sorry!
Truth is truth and facts are facts. What you do with the truth and the facts is a second thing, called politics.
For example, before World War Two Churchill was desperately trying to warn people about Hitler, and was generally dismissed as a war-monger. In speech after speech he listed the truthful facts about Hitler’s military build-up, and how Germany’s air force was growing larger than England’s, and how they were again building U-boats, and how many tanks they had. He did not stray from the truth or exaggerate the facts. However the way he interpreted the facts differed greatly from the way pacifists did, and the way rich lords (who saw Hitler as a “buffer” against communism) did.
In a democracy I think we the people need the truth and need the facts. We don’t need truth “softened.” Don’t baby or mollycoddle us. Once the truth is laid out, in all its starkness, you can go on to put whatever “spin” on it you chose. The public is not as dumb as many think, and expects and evaluates “spin.”
However once you start to “soften” truth it starts to become something other than the truth. In truth, it starts to become a lie. And once the public becomes aware it has been lied to, you can expect all hell to break lose. You can, in fact, expect to be thrown out of power, and the only way you can remain in power is to destroy democracy.
Completely OT
What if the daffodils had bloomed a month earlier? MSM would say “Global warming, we’re all doomed.”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/cumbria/8567629.stm
[mods: feel free to snip/delete, just food for thought]
15 March: Business Week: Bloomberg: Simon Lomax: EPA Studying Own Carbon-Trading System, Official Says (Update2)
Editors: Richard Stubbe, Charlotte Porter
The existing Clean Air Act “could enable us to include emissions trading” within agency regulations aimed at reducing carbon dioxide and other gases that scientists have linked to climate change, Anna Marie Wood, a senior policy analyst at the EPA, said at an event in Washington hosted by the American Bar Association.
“We’re considering all that right now and thinking about what might make sense,” Wood said. While the agency “strongly prefers” that Congress pass new laws dealing with greenhouse gases, “we think that there’s a lot of progress that can be made using certain tools under the Clean Air Act.”..
The budget request showed the EPA’s interest in carbon trading under existing law and there are “continuing signals from the agency that they’re looking at this and evaluating this internally,” Allan Bedwell, a vice president at CantorCO2e, the emission markets unit of Cantor Fitzgerald LP, said in a telephone interview…
A “cautious and responsible approach” by EPA officials today will help the agency fend off court challenges from groups that oppose any future carbon trading regulation, he said.
“The stakes are big, and when the stakes are big, these issues get litigated, even if there’s a fairly small chance of success,” Cannon (Jonathan Cannon, a University of Virginia School of Law professor and former EPA general counsel during the Clinton administration) said..
http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-03-15/epa-studying-own-carbon-trading-system-official-says-update1-.html
johnnythelowery (17:25:45) :
It’s now a new world where I can mine all kinds of sources for information from the net
Most of what is on the net is dis/mis/non-information or just plain junk.
A vacuum has emerged. And lots of things are getting sucked in including things that suck. um er………so, I feel a little lost.
Blogs that are reasonably moderated can be a source of stuff to compensate for the junk. Still, junk will slip through, now and then, but Joe Public usually has a good snake-oil detector, so use it.
For me, the concept of “Post Normal Science” is an anathema. And I am not overly fond of the term “Normal Science” either. In general, I prefer the simple label “Science” which has its opposite, “Non-science”.
I do not doubt that “Post Normal Science” should be placed squarely in the “Non-Science” category. The core of scientific impulse is to be found in the act of each individual apply logic and reason to problems by (and for) his or her-self. Since PNS seems to be some form of bureaucratised “group think”, I fail to see how it can lay claim to the moniker “Science”.
Science used to be called “natural philosophy.” The philosophical component has been long excised in “new age” PhD programs and logical, evidence-based reasoning has been sacrificed to the puerile notion of “consensus” in the school yard. Small wonder that all sorts of totemic ideas mushroom in the minds of agenda-driven “climate scientists,” who seem strangers to basic scientific discipline. Mere acceptability is unacceptable! What is required is solid, old-fashioned scientific proof. They seem totally unequipped to produce such. Arguments about serving noble causes are just a fig leaf for ineptitude.
I do not know what the arguments are in these essays. Lots of really big words that dont seem to make sense. I heard Warren Buffet say that writing should be clear and straightforward. He said when he reads something over and over and cant figure out what it means, he realizes that the author is purposely trying to make it hard to understand. What poor writers these fellows are! Ravetz particularly.
I cannot define “post-normal” science after reading the essays. Nor can I define “normal” science. I dont know what it means when the other author insists that science should be “normative.” Nor do I know what he means when he says that science must be “self reflexive.”
What happened to replication and the good ol scientific method? And to keeping accurate notes and measurments?? And honest statistics? And searching for a theory that explains data which is actually observed? Lets get that right before jabbering on about….whatever they are jabbering about.
I felt a little dumb until I re-read the same paragraphs of Ravetz’s essay about 4 times and realized the guy is full of it, and full of himself. I have no idea whether I agree with his point, since I have no idea what his point is. I am astounded that anybody listens to him.
I appreciate your comment and I do see your point. However my concern is not so much the extended peer review of the subset of informed public. In fact in medical research that subset of reviewers does exist in a sense in the form of doctors, PA’s, and equally important nurses and other care givers who must reason how to responsibly administer emerging drugs, treatments, and practices at the patient level.
In very simple terms, I see post-normal science as being consensus built shortcuts aimed at accepting a view or solution to an issue too complex to be presently understood and thought to require immediate action. Speaking only from my experience in medical research this kind of thinking heavily biases the processes towards Type I errors – rejecting the null hypothesis when the null hypothesis is true. In other words, accepting the working hypothesis because it supposes to offer a solution whereas the null hypothesis does not offer a solution but rather says the solution proposed will have no effect (or worse a detrimental effect).
In medical terms, a Type I error means subjecting a patient to a treatment that imposes risks or direct harm while offering no real benefit. In climate science it is implementing damaging and costly policy which offers no benefit to the climate. Sometimes the best thing to do is nothing. Post normal science doesn’t seem to allow for that conclusion.
Ray Hudson (17:26:20) :
Ahhh yes, I can see it now: “The relationship between velocity and acceleration is not acceptable to me, because I do not understand calculus. It is too complex for me, the common man. So, since my point of view is just as valid as someone who understands calculus, I now demand that the relationship between velocity and acceleration now be… purple. That is acceptable to me.”>>
The problem here, is NOT the common man demanding that the relationship be “purple”. The problem is he who understands calculus CLAIMING that it is purple (when it isn’t), warning of disaster happening because of purple (but it doesn’t) refusing to explain what data and evidence justified purple (and getting caught making it up) and never the less, trying to stampede the common man who doesn’t understand calculus and so is presumed to be unable to determine that the calculus isn’t actually calculus, into solving purple by giving up massive quantities of green.
This isn’t a return to the dark ages. The dark ages was suppression of science to maintain power. This is the elevation of purple to obtain power.
“The democratization of science, instead of reductionism, is the method of Ravetz’s choice to move forward with science.”
When’s the next election? Can we all vote?