John A: This is a provocative essay, and I’ve thought of at least a couple of replies to counter some of the arguments, but I think it deserves a wider audience.
The Global Warming Policy Foundation
by Dr Terence Kealey, Vice-Chancellor, University of Buckingham
Member of the Academic Advisory Council for the Global Warming Policy Foundation
The Mont Pelerin Society Meeting Seminar on Science, Scepticism and the Future. Sydney, Australia, October 2010
The hard core of a programme is rendered unfalsifiable by the methodological decision of its protagonists. — Imre Lakatos Criticism and the Growth of Knowledge 1974
The scientist is restricted by his instruments, money, the attitudes of his colleagues, his playmates, and by innumerable physiological, sociological, historical constraints. –Paul Feyerabend, Against Method 1975
The emails sent by members of the climatic research centre at the University of East Anglia have provoked international outrage, as have the many flawed global warming papers that have appeared in recent years such as those describing the hockey stick graph(1), to say nothing of the flawed predictions of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) over such issues as the rate of disappearance of the glaciers in the Himalayas. But such outrage has been naive because it has been premised on the assumption that scientists are – and should be – dispassionate seekers after truth. Yet in fact scientists are and should be advocates. Science has always been rooted in advocacy, as was illustrated by an episode from its very beginnings during the 5th century BC.
Pythagoras (of the Theorum) was a good scientist but he was of a mystical bent and he revered ‘rational’ numbers (whole numbers or whole fractions). He believed they explained the Harmony of the Spheres. Pythagoras, indeed, believed that whole numbers underpinned the universe from music to the movement of the planets. But Pythagoras had a student called Hippasus, and Hippasus discovered that the square root of 2, √2 is not a rational number. It is in fact an ‘irrational’ number, and its exact quantity will never be precisely calculated because, as Hippasus showed two and a half thousand years ago, irrational numbers can never be definitively calculated. This proof upset Pythagoras and he asked Hippasus to retract it. But Hippasus refused, so Pythagoras had him drowned.
That’s what scientists are like in their natural state. Now – call me soft – but I think Pythagoras went too far; I think that scientists should desist from killing each other or even from telling outright falsehoods. But, like advocates in court, scientists can nonetheless be expected to put forward only one very partial case – and that as strongly as possible – and no-one should expect a scientist to be anything other than a biased advocate.
Consider the early controversy over the age of the earth. The 19th century geologist Sir Charles Lyell had, by his study of the rate of erosion of cliffs, proposed the earth not to have been created at 9.00 am on the 23rd of October 4004 BC but, rather, some hundreds of millions of years earlier. But, as we know from volcanoes, the core of the earth is red hot. And when contemporary geologists measured the temperature of the molten core, and when they calculated its rate of heat loss, they concluded that the earth could be only a few millions of years old. Had it been any older its core would have completely cooled. Lyell had apparently been falsified.
In the face of this apparent falsification, did Lyell’s followers ditch their ideas? No. Like advocates presented with contradictory data that cannot be challenged, they simply ignored it. They knew how old the sedimentary rocks had to be, and they didn’t believe the falsifiers. So, not knowing how to falsify the falsifiers, they simply pressed on with their own pre-existing programme of research, assuming
that something helpful would turn up eventually. Which it did. Somebody in some other discipline discovered radioactivity, somebody discovered the core of the earth to be radioactive, somebody discovered that radioactive reactions emitted heat and hey presto the problem was resolved: the core of the earth generates heat, which is why it is still hot; and the earth is indeed very old.
In his 1605 book The Advancement of Knowledge, which helped launch the modern discipline we call the philosophy of science, Francis Bacon proposed a four-step process by which science advanced, namely by (i) observation, (ii) induction, (iii) deduction and (iv) experimentation. Bacon saw this as an almost mechanical or determinist activity based on logic, which he supposed precluded individualistic human whims. But because the number of potential observations is so large (does the colour of an astronomer’s socks correlate with his or her recordings of the movement of a planet?) scientists must inevitably select the observations they believe to be relevant, from which they then deduce and induce the theories they seek to test.
Scientists therefore select particular theories out of a range of possibilities. And they then (being human) design experiments to prove their own theories right. Consequently, contrary to what many people believe that Karol Popper wrote, science is in practice not about falsification.2 In practice great scientists ignore embarrassing data, and they refuse to feel falsified when they don’t want to be.
Scientists know they are working at the limits of knowledge, which means that that knowledge must necessarily be imperfect, so (like Charles Lyell) scientists will refuse to draw definitive negative conclusions from unhelpful new findings because they know that those new findings might themselves need re-evaluation in the light of further subsequent data (such as radioactivity) that has yet to be revealed.
Indeed, as Thomas Kuhn explained in his classic 1962 book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, scientists’ personal attachment to their own theories in the face of conflicting data means that the research community’s dispassionate collective verdict over what is ’truth’ can be delivered only after all the competing data has come in and only after all the arguments have been made (or, as was said humorously by Max Planck:- “A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light but rather because its opponents eventually die and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it “). These arguments have been summarised by Alan Chalmers of Finders University in his excellent introduction to the philosophy of science What Is This Thing Called Science? (3rd ed 1999, Open University).
Consequently, we can see how the climate change scientists of the IPCC and of the conventional global warming paradigm saw no conflict between their partiality in the arguments they put forward and their responsibilities to ‘truth’, just as advocates in court under the common law see no conflict between their partiality in the arguments they put forward and their responsibilities to ‘justice’.
In both cases, the scientists and advocates see their prime responsibility as being the putting forward of the best arguments to support their case/client, and they delegate the adjudication over impartial ‘truth’ to the jury of peers.
Such partiality cannot excuse misrepresentation, of course, nor the persistent non-disclosure of inconvenient facts, and those will always be ethical crimes, but it would be naive of the general public to expect scientists always to present their work and theories dispassionately. It would also be naive of the general public to expect scientists to disclose all their data promptly. In his otherwise excellent 2010 book The Hockey Stick Illusion (Independent Minds) where he dismissed the claims of many climate change scientists, AW Montford nonetheless professed astonishment that researchers might feel that they can legitimately withhold original data. But as Tim Birkhead recently reported in the Times Higher Education, such withholding is a conventional aspect of many disciplines in science. Indeed, it is endorsed by the British Government’s research councils. Thus the Natural Environment Research Council states that “individual scientists, principal-investigator teams and programmes will be permitted a reasonable period of exclusive access to data sets they have collected” while the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council states that ‘researchers have a legitimate interest in benefiting from their own time and effort in producing the data, but not in prolonged exclusive use. ‘3
But why should scientists publish anything at all? In his 1942 essay The Normative Structure of Science Robert Merton, the great sociologist of science, described science with the acronym CUDOS (note how it is pronounced). The letters stand for Communism, Universalism, Disinterestedness and Organised Scepticism, by which Merton meant that scientists share knowledge (communism), that knowledge is judged objectively (universalism), that scientists act in ways that appear selfless, and that ideas are tested collectively.
But actually Merton was being ahistorical. Pace his acronym, scientists indeed seek either kudos or money or both (ie, they are not communistic, they are selfseeking, which is legitimate but not particularly noble) but their publishing has always been dictated by self-interest. Indeed, in its natural state science was originally characterised by the paradox of secret publishing: researchers did not want others to benefit from their advances. So some scientists, having dated the report of a discovery, would seal and deposit it with a college or lawyer, to open it only to dispute priority with a later competitive publication. Others would publish in code or in anagrams: Galileo published his discovery of the rings of Saturn in 1610 as smaismrmilmepoetaleumibunenugttauiras for Altissimum planetam tergeminum observavi (I have observed the most distant planet to have a triple form) while Robert Hooke published his law of elasticity in 1660 as ceiiinosssttuu for ut tensio sic vis (stress is proportional to strain.)
Secrecy was originally normal: when around 1600 a young London obstetrician called Peter Chamberlen invented the obstetric forceps, for over a century he, his younger brother, his younger brother’s son and that son’s son (all obstetricians) kept the invention a secret. Rich women, knowing that the Chamberlens were the best obstetricians in Europe, engaged them to deliver their babies, but the price those women paid (apart from handsome fees) was to be blindfolded and trapped alone with the Chamberlens in a locked room during labour so that no one could discover the secret of the forceps. That emerged only during the 1720s when the last Chamberlen, having retired rich but childless, finally divulged it.
It was Robert Boyle who, by his leadership of the Royal Society of London, which was created exactly 350 years ago this year, negotiated (i) the convention whereby priority – and therefore esteem – goes to the scientist who publishes first, not to the scientist who might have made the discovery earlier but who has kept the findings secret, and (ii) the convention that papers are accepted for publication only if they contain a methods section as well as a results section, to allow reproducibility.
We see here, therefore, that science is not innately a public good: it is innately a discreet one where, in a state of nature, scientists would publish not their methods but only their findings – and where they would sometimes delay or obscure the publication even of those. But it was Boyle who realised, in classic game theory mode, that if the Fellows (aka members) of the infant Royal Society collaborated with each other in publishing their findings (i) openly, and (ii) including their methods sections, then the scientists within the Society would do better, by virtue of their access to the whole of the Society’s membership’s collective discoveries, than would those isolated researchers who worked outside the circle of mutual disclosure. And it was because the Royal Society’s original experiments were conducted collectively but in the presence only of its Fellows, and because its publications were preferentially circulated to its Fellows, that the Fellows enjoyed an advantage over non-Fellows.
Science, therefore, only appears to be public because, over the centuries, most scientists globally have gradually modelled themselves on the Royal Society’s ‘new’ conventions, the better to take advantage of the mutuality of knowledge. But not all scientists have done so completely, and as Birkhead showed in his THE article many disciplines have elaborated the convention of publishing their findings a year or two before they publish their data, thus keeping a lead on the further study of their data.
Everyone in those disciplines agrees that, since the exploitation of other people’s data is so much easier than discovering it for oneself, a discoverer’s year or more of monopoly is only fair.
To conclude, therefore, scientists are not disinterested, they are interested, and as a consequence science is not dispassionate or fully transparent, rather it is human and partially arcane. As I argue elsewhere, science is not the public good of modern myth, it is a collegiate and quasi-private or invisible college good.4 That means, by the way, that it requires no public subsidies. More relevantly, it means that individual scientist’s pronouncements should be seen more as advertisements than as definitive.
Peer review, too, is merely a mechanism by which scientists keep a collective control over access to their quasi-private enterprise. One the e-mails leaked from the University of East Anglia included this from Professor Phil Jones, referring to two papers that apparently falsified his work:- “I can’t see either of these papers being in the next IPCC report. Kevin and I will keep them out somehow – even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is!”
So what? Climategate tells us no more than the philosophers of science have long told us about research, and the public should be less naive.
Notes and References
1. Mann ME, Bradley RS, Hughes MK, 1999, Northern Hemisphere Temperatures During the Past Millennium Geophysical Research Letters 26: 759.762
2. It should be noted that falsification and falsifiability are different. As Popper proposed, a statement cannot be seen as scientific unless it is falsifiable and can thus be tested by the scientific method. So the statement that the moon is made of green cheese is a scientific one, because it can be tested and falsified. But the fact that none of the moon missions to date has found green cheese does not falsify the hypothesis because not every part of the moon has yet been explored.
3. Birkhead T, 2009, Whose Data is it Anyway? Times Higher Education 1,901, 27.
4. Kealey T, 2008, Sex, Science and Profits William Heinemann
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Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. So when the UN, via the IPCC demands the wholesale dismantling of the industrial infrastructure of the planet, they’d better put the cards on the table. I don’t care what some small dendrochronologist does with his tree rings when he’s just in it for the fun. I wouldn’t even care if he claimed the MWP didn’t exist. There are lots of scientists who are wrong, no big deal. But when his crazy utterances suddenly become the posterchild of the biggest anti-industrial effort the UN has ever made, maybe then we should make an exception from his right to his own private data, shouldn’t we? And if such an exception is not possible, well, then stuff the science, the IPCC and the UN. No accountability means no action; why should one react on a fabrication.
I agree with HybridWeb, Verity Jones, and others : Just because “scientists” have sometimes done these things in the past does not mean it was ever right or desirable.
Terence Kealey said that the Climategate emails provoked outrage, “But such outrage has been naive because it has been premised on the assumption that scientists are – and should be – dispassionate seekers after truth. Yet in fact scientists are and should be advocates. Science has always been rooted in advocacy, as was illustrated by an episode from its very beginnings during the 5th century BC.“.
TK then goes on to whitewash the scientists involved, based on his absurd notion that scientists should be advocates, where by advocate he means someone who twists or conceals evidence in order to promote a pet theory. This meaning is made clear by the body of his statement.
Even lawyers in the western adversarial legal systems are not permitted to do this. [“but some of them do” you say? I draw your attention to TK’s use of the word “should“]
Science has indeed sunk into an appalling abyss if TK’s views are representative of today’s scientists and university science faculties.
No, TK, the public is not naive. They don’t expect scientists to be perfect, but they do expect them to be reasonably professional. In this case, Climategate has revealed to the public that the scientists involved are charlatans and robbers. No wonder there is outrage.
This is an idiotic essay composed of superficial and indefensible points. He’s wrong about the role of Bacon, Boyle & Popper. Their roles have been done to death by serious historians, and, Dr. Kealey hasn’t read any of them, much less source material. The story about Pythagoras is probably apocryphal, which has also been covered extensively. But as we hear from the very vice-chancellor, “partiality cannot excuse misrepresentation”. So, I hope the fact that he is arguing against the IPCC won’t allow his to get away with misrepresenting the history of scientific thought.
A naked emperor or in this case is it mandarin defending his own nakedness, his paucity of clothing.
The issue is that science flourishes better in periods of enlightenment, always has. We are in one now this internet age, it’s probably what saved us.
The Reason is very simple it lets those with the best knowledge, most technical skill, most passionate and vested interest become a part of the process even if they act as devil’s advocate, which really is what the methode’ is about.
Excusing past problems in the scientific method, would be akin to an OJ Simpson defence. OJ Simpson got away with it therefore I am innocent, regardless of the evidence. Ronald Biggs got away with it for 20 years therefore I am owed 20 years freedom before trial. I want the rules and excuses of that time in history
It’s a nonsense. Science methode has evolved with the understanding of science, better tests in response to severe scientific mistakes in arrogance and haste, even Canonisation of Catholic Saints has better tests of Reason than expounded, by our above mentioned belligerent and bellicose self excuser.
The past wrongs under previous ignorant systems do not make present wrongs right. No one has ever said all Science historical figures were perfect just their work deserves respect, because it still stands.
Used to tutor kids in maths who were scared of the subject, first thing I set them, go and look at the life and times of the great mathematicians and understand they are human, very talented but very human.
(That and I used to hit them with sticks and threaten them with my mobile rack and thumb screws, not big on carrots, that’s for librarians and kindy teachers, very big on sticks, implements of rigorous scientific encouragement).
I should add that Imre Lakatos became the defender of Popper’s main ideas and his wonderful book was written as the main statement of that defense. Lakatos took up this task after a conference on Popper and Kuhn that occurred in London in 1968 or so. Lakatos’ work is not derivative of Popper’s, but adds many new elements. Those debates were really enjoyable.
In the USA, the main proponent of Kuhn, other than Kuhn, was Wolfgang Stegmuller. The main critic of Kuhn was Isaac Levi at Columbia University. These debates become far more technical and require a knowledge of model theory. Their positions are recorded in many articles and some books. You can find the books on Amazon. The starting points are, for Stegmuller, The Structure and Dynamics of Theories, 1976, and for Levi, The Enterprise of Knowledge, 1983. Both men have been prolific since these starting points.
Cynthia Lauren Thorpe – Nice rant! Try:
All that is necessary for evil to triumph, is for good men to do nothing – Edmund Burke.
The price of freedom is eternal vigilance – Thomas Jefferson.
WOW!
That’s an amazing admission of wrongdoing.
“This proof upset Pythagoras and he asked Hippasus to retract it. But Hippasus refused, so Pythagoras had him drowned.”
No pressure?
“One the e-mails leaked from the University of East Anglia included this from Professor Phil Jones, referring to two papers that apparently falsified his work: ‘I can’t see either of these papers being in the next IPCC report. Kevin and I will keep them out somehow – even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is!’
“So what?”
Truly amazing! The “what” in question is that policy is being made and people’s money is being spent on these policies. Not only the policy, but the research as well. It’s not just one side against the other. If two private institutions want to go after each other, fine. But this is about using the people’s money and deceiving them. Even if bad things were done in the past, they were still bad.
nice excuses …
If you publish your results you must publish your data, programs and methodology or you are nothing more that a press agent and not a scientist.
The example of the OBGYN’s who kept their forcep INVENTION a secret is simply a strawman … they didn’t “discover” the forcep, they invented it. That is engineering not science.
Weak tea for this site …
wuwt and realclimate get mentions here:
29 Dec: MSNBC CosmicLog: John Roach: ‘Weird life’ reveals science at work
http://cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2010/12/29/5733384-weird-life-reveals-science-at-work
Well, on the one hand, I can see what Kealey is trying to say (I think!) – in that science in the past has been very much ‘personalised’ and ‘massaged’ for whatever reasons at the time (kill the heretics, etc, etc!) – but to try and move that into the current AGW debate (or indeed modern science in general) is somewhat disagreeable.
I don’t doubt that all modern scientists, in their respective fields, follow certain ‘pet’ theories and therefore lines/directions of research. However, the true (great?) scientists will always LISTEN to alternative views and theories, IF for no other reason than to make sure theirs is the more ‘likely’. It is not unreasonable for scientists to have egos and to want to do well – but a good scientist can only become good or better by studying others work, even if directly opposed to their own theories!
Ignoring the issues of private R&D – where ‘investors’ do research for gain – the whole PUBLIC AGW theory is held up as some kind of Global ‘collective’ of concerned scientists doing the world a favour! But we all know that at least 75% of said AGW related papers are complete and utter BS and authors of said papers are simply jumping on the bandwagon.
The point about this PUBLIC AGW theory and all the public money so ‘invested’ in it – is that the ‘work’ was supposed to be done on OUR behalf and without prejudice. Clearly, the majority of climate scientists engaged in the main arena are far too partisan in their views and far to dismissive of other views to be providing a reasoned judgement for the benefit of the people of the earth! (whether this is a politically or economically enforced stance is yet another issue!)
The climategate emails clearly demonstrated a partisan approach – which, in a private R&D company, could be understood – but in the public domain sense (and especially in the context of these people so called ‘saving the planet’) such an approach is totally unacceptable.
No amount of twisting and turning by academia (a la Kealey) will be able to hide that basic flaw in the current AGW science field! I would like to believe it will all come good in the end – but this type of essay being promoted as some kind of ‘excuse’ does not give me much hope!
The most deceptive piece, is that scientists should not be accountable to laws of false advertisement and misleading conduct. ie, above the law. The man states clearly science should have no responsibility to the purchasers or sponsors and it’s all just a soak. He excuses and removes responsibility, by opinion poorly derived.
He argues ownership and no sponsorship rights, how elite.
If this little essay was written by:
by Dr Terence Kealey, Vice-Chancellor, University of Buckingham
then two things must be true:
1. Kealey has dabbled a little in the philosophy of science, become intoxicated by Kuhnian rhetoric, and has half-seriously penned his own version of it. This essay could have been penned by a distracted undergraduate in 1968. Summer of Love and all that, you know.
2. Australia is much gentler on persons of high title than the USA. If published in the USA in a serious publication that the public reads, the author would be canned.
However, it is true that there are professors, even some in the USA, who argue for advocacy in science. Invariably, they are Marxists. As we all know, the good Marxist is always watching for the avante-garde to reveal the latest version of the New Socialist Man. If there is a new man, everything is new, including science, or so the Marxists believe.
Is Dr. Kealey really claiming that because scientists are still human and some scientists in the old days did things that were nasty, spiteful, and even evil, nobody on the hockey team did anything wrong hardly, and we should just say “Boys will be boys (and girls),” and let it go?
I think “There must needs be offenses, but woe unto those by whom they come.” is much better.
Dr. Kealey’s examples seem poor. He uses events that are so obviously wrong to most of us that he has to apologize for them. He would have done better if he could find people doing the things we abhor in Climategate that we generally think were right to do so.
His examples of falsification are also off base. Using a different method to get a value that disagreed with Lyell’s did not falsify Lyell’s value. That only showed that at least one of them must be inaccurate. To actually falsify, he would need to show a problem with Lyell’s methods or execution such that he could not get an accurate value.
Dr Terence Kealey, Vice-Chancellor, University of Buckingham
Member of the Academic Advisory Council for the Global Warming Policy Foundation
For humanity’s sake, Dr. Kealey, take some Beano!
That was the worst case of self serving flatulence I have ever had the misfortune of perusing.
“…a discoverer’s year or more of monopoly is only fair.”
No, Sir! Not when national governments are deciding to reallocate Trillions of taxpayer dollars and destroying our cost effective energy production industries, based on ‘monopolized’ data, and misleading analyses that are not open to scrutiny and independent verification!
This man is a member of an ‘Academic Advisory Council’ yet his essay dismisses the collusion and frauds exposed by ‘Climategate’! Is this acceptable behavior, from an ‘Academic Adviser’? If his essay reflects the current moral state of ‘The Royal Society’ and British ‘science’ et.al., it illustrates a profound lack of honesty and integrity within British culture. Small wonder why the once mighty Great Britain is nearing bankruptcy, both moral and financial. And ‘woe unto us’ within the US of A, for we approach the same precipice…..
We cannot afford to be tolerant of these and similar deceits, because ‘tolerance’ acts like a societal subsidy to undesirable behavior. If you want more of a specific type of behavior, be ‘tolerant’ of it. Do you want more trash in the streets and graffiti scrawled over everything? Tolerate it. Would you like to have more illegal immigration? Tolerate it! Do you think more voter and welfare fraud is acceptable? Tolerate it all….
Dr. Kealey rose to prominence, like so many others, because folks ‘tolerated’ his disingenuous drivel.
“So what? Climategate tells us no more than the philosophers of science have long told us about research, and the public should be less naive.”
Translation: Science is corrupt, has always been corrupt, get used to it plebe.
He misses the main point due to an inability to follow logic to it’s conclusion. If it is corrupt science and always will be, then why should any scientist who acts as activist be taken at face value; especially if they are predicting the end of the world as we know it? Aren’t they just politicians or priests at that point? Do we need more politicians or priests?
I don’t understand the link to the Mont Pellerin group?
AGW is religion, not science. How can you win against a religion? I thought that if we had a few bad winters the Believers would see the error of their ways, and we could stop paying out to this expensive new Church, but no, heavy snow before Christmas is also proof of AGW, apparently. So on your knees, repent, and pay up.
1. I take science to be a set of methods for conducting empirical investigations, and a body of knowledge derived from those investigations. Perhaps Dr. Kealey can enlighten me as to what empirical investigations are attributed to Pythagoras.
2. To argue for a hypothesis is legitimate advocacy. So is arguing against a contradictory hypothesis. But there is a fundamental difference between attempting to refute a point of view and attempting to suppress it. Some of the Crutape letters have clearly crossed the line.
3. ‘But Hippasus refused, so Pythagoras had him drowned.’
That’s what scientists are like in their natural state.
Dr. Kealy, you lie.
A key point Dr Terence Kealey (Vice-Chancellor of the University of Buckingham) misses is that if your science is FUNDED BY THE PUBLIC then the public owns it or has a serious stake in it should it also be privately funded.
In the case of Dr. Phil Jones, Dr. Michael Mann, Dr. James Hansen, …, and any others that work for the government or universities funded by the government they have no choice but to hand over the data and all notes and programs and source codes or anything else used in their research that is necessary for the reproduction of their work upon request.
Most of the examples Dr Terence Kealey gave are of PRIVATE individuals conducting science by their own purse using their own money and not public monies. In such cases private interests are permitted to prevail although it may well be in their interest to publish as soon as possible for many different reasons. Patents are extensively to protect the benefits of discoveries by private scientists, engineers and inventors and it’s notable that the Patent system requires publication of their detailed idea should they wish some legal protection.
One Richard Feynman has this to say about falsification and it’s importance and it should be a lesson to Dr Terence Kealey as he is being schooled by Feynman indeed:
“But this long history of learning how not to fool ourselves–of having utter scientific integrity–is, I’m sorry to say, something that we haven’t specifically included in any particular course that I know of. We just hope you’ve caught on by osmosis.
The first principle is that you must not fool yourself–and you are the easiest person to fool. So you have to be very careful about that. After you’ve not fooled yourself, it’s easy not to fool other scientists. You just have to be honest in a conventional way after that.
I would like to add something that’s not essential to the science, but something I kind of believe, which is that you should not fool the layman when you’re talking as a scientist. I am not trying to tell you what to do about cheating on your wife, or fooling your girlfriend, or something like that, when you’re not trying to be a scientist, but just trying to be an ordinary human being. We’ll leave those problems up to you and your rabbi. I’m talking about a specific, extra type of integrity that is not lying, but bending over backwards to show how you are maybe wrong, that you ought to have when acting as a scientist. And this is our responsibility as scientists, certainly to other scientists, and I think to laymen.
For example, I was a little surprised when I was talking to a friend who was going to go on the radio. He does work on cosmology and astronomy, and he wondered how he would explain what the applications of this work were. “Well,” I said, “there aren’t any.” He said, “Yes, but then we won’t get support for more research of this kind.” I think that’s kind of dishonest. If you’re representing yourself as a scientist, then you should explain to the layman what you’re doing–and if they don’t want to support you under those circumstances, then that’s their decision.
One example of the principle is this: If you’ve made up your mind to test a theory, or you want to explain some idea, you should always decide to publish it whichever way it comes out. If we only publish results of a certain kind, we can make the argument look good. We must publish both kinds of results.
I say that’s also important in giving certain types of government advice. Supposing a senator asked you for advice about whether drilling a hole should be done in his state; and you decide it would be better in some other state. If you don’t publish such a result, it seems to me you’re not giving scientific advice. You’re being used. If your answer happens to come out in the direction the government or the politicians like, they can use it as an argument in their favor; if it comes out the other way, they don’t publish it at all. That’s not giving scientific advice.
…
But not paying attention to experiments like that is a characteristic of cargo cult science.
…
And now you find a man saying that it is an irrelevant demand to expect a repeatable experiment. This is science?
…
So I have just one wish for you–the good luck to be somewhere where you are free to maintain the kind of integrity I have described, and where you do not feel forced by a need to maintain your position in the organization, or financial support, or so on, to lose your integrity. May you have that freedom. ” – Richard Feynman
Read Richard Feynman’s full article here: http://pathstoknowledge.wordpress.com/2010/02/19/cargo-cult-science-a-lesson-from-richard-feynman-for-scientists-of-today-to-learn.
Sounds like Dr Terence Kealey needs to go back to grade ten science class and relearn the basics.
As for the alleged climate scientists they would be well schooled by Feynman’s notion of publishing the means to falsify their papers. It shows their full integrity in their work.
I can’t believe that Dr Terence Kealey is suggesting that the only way for scientists to adapt to falsifications of their work is to die and let the next generation move on! How horrifying. How pathetic Dr. Terence Kealey! That’s not science, that’s more akin to religion!
A key question is raised and remains, at which point does a scientist admit that something has falsified their work? It seems highly relevant to the works of alleged climate scientists such as Dr. Phil Jones, Dr. James Hansen, Dr. Michael Mann and others.
I am looking at this from a political angle. He does not trying to defend the climate ‘science’, but to defend the fraud. I believe this is a surrender document. One that tries to give an apologia for those who ran the biggest clip joint in history. But he wants to be a little ahead of the curve, so to speak. Just one thing friends, remember who wanted to throw who in jail for being on the wrong side. Remember also those impoverished by their policies. Remember that when they beg for mercy.
Where oh where is Anthony Watts when you need him? This has got to be one of the worst articles ever posted on WUWT, but I shall not kill the messenger–just his message.
I stumbled unretrievably where he said
So I looked up the word “biased”, and sure enough, there it was:
The operative word here, of course, is “unfair”.
So anything that’s unfair is acceptable? The end justifies the means? Is that what science is about? I didn’t realize scientists advocated any such thing. For if that is indeed the case, then losing or adjusting or falsifying data is completely acceptable; jerry-rigging experiments or backstabbing critics or destroying evidence is just fine and dandy too.
Count me out. If that’s what “science” has become, I want no part of it. Criminal behavior rules the day. (And the “truth” about the world around us is obtained from such a method? Funny how the world around us eventually makes fools of such people and those that accept them without skepticism.)
Laughable. Absurd. Downright disgusting.
Working in the hard sciences as either a scientist or an engineer requires a dispassionate frame of mind. One seeks to understand nature and meet her requirements regardless of what your thoughts are about how she should be. This makes the concept of an activist-scientist an oxymoron and I think intellectually dishonest.
A telling example of this wrong thinking was Trenberth’s Climategate email “The fact is, we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it’s a travesty that we can’t.”
Had Trenberth remained a scientist instead of an activist and kept an emotional separation from his work, the quote might have instead been “We should check our theory’s assumptions for why we can’t account for the lack of warming.”
His quandary was either the AGW theory is wrong or nature is wrong; at this point the activist part of him had already sided with the AGW theory. It was too pretty to give up.
What a load of self serving hogwash. This is post normal science doing what it does best. It is caught red handed so it tries to reinvent the scientific method to suit itself. Science had to use the scientific method to advance, otherwise we would all be in a mish mash of spells and incantations, much like the wackier greens have descended into today.
Now when the climate emails expose their temperature adjustments, they try to rake up their version of the evolution of science to justify hiding and adjusting data to suit their ends.
Dr Terence Kealey,
Your article was easy reading.
I take your basic premise to be that objective knowledge in science and by scientists is possible but not normal based on the historical examples you cite. If this is your premise then it is false.
Your approach is limited and subject to a simple argument against it. It is easy to show that objective knowledge in science has prospered with the steps taken by notably open scientists whether their lessor contemporizes where open or not.
I agree that the modus operandi of the CRU scientists and their associated international team represents what I call the ‘hairy underbelly of the science process’. You unsuccessfully showed that the hairy underbelly process is common in the history of science. Your article is incomplete; unbalanced.
John
I’m with AGWman – this is a very good summary of how science and scientists actually work.
The problem which this summary does not address – and which I believe most people here are talking about – is the effects of a very subjective process on the taxpayer. Many billions of units of currency – truly vast amounts of cash – are proposed to be spent on the basis of the hypotheses of a claque of self serving, unelected and unaccountable human beings,.
This is the true value of this assessment – it very accurately portrays how the fundamentally biased propositions behind the AGW myth came about.
So, in the end the scientists are simply behaving like they always have and it is the responsibility of our elected leaders to act. Unfortunately their motivations are also flawed and they are rarely bright enough to evaluate adequately the pros and cons of such issues. And so we bumble along, as we always have done – let’s hope that we emerge from this absurd dream sooner rather than later.
Pardon the cross-posting, but readers here might be interested in the following post across at Bishop Hill, where someone posted a link to this discussion:
Terence Kealey makes some good points, but he essentially commits the Naturalistic Fallacy by accepting what has been observed (scientists behaving badly) with what should be the behaviour of scientists.
Aside from the ethical dictates (honesty, fairness, etc) society does and should make demands on the conduct of science, which (while it might, as he suggests, deserve no public subsidy) is overwhelmingly paid for by the taxpayer. There is a prudential question about what standards we might apply to their conduct both as mechanisms of quality assurance and as a means of ensuring that all benefit from scientific knowledge.
Therefore, while Kuhn and Feyerabend describe the way in which scientists behaved in the past, society through its various institutions (eg the US Supreme Court in its Daubert ruling) have established standards as to how scientific evidence might be judged. The requirements are both ethical and prudential, and monopolies over use are granted and covered by laws such as those relating to patents. Patents, as a judge once recounted to me, were set at 15 years because two terms of apprenticeship were deemed to be an appropriate period for an exclusive monopoly. The example Professor Kealey gives of obstetric forceps being kept for exclusive use for more than a century has been deemed to be unacceptable because, as this case shows, the reward for innovation (in a privatised view of science) must be balanced against the public interest in preventing adverse neonatal outcomes (for mother and child).
Other kinds of knowledge are regarded substantially differently, even when the rapid dissemination of accurate information is a virtue: think markets and insider trading.
The practice of non-disclosure described does not apply under the Australian Research Council – and rightly so. Data must be archived and made available for reasonable use – even the documents and notes of interviews with which I deal. Those who generate data should have first use, but they do. I agree that it should be made publicly available at the point of publication, especially if it has been publicly funded. There is no justification for prolonged non-disclosure beyond that; the generators of the data will, after all, likely have other papers in press or in preparation by this time, and so any ‘lie’ will be halfway round the world while the sceptics are still putting their trousers (to paraphrase Churchill).
Even when science has enormous commercial importance, we regulate for quality and in the public interest. Pharmaceuticals and chemicals must have their efficacy and safety demonstrated under highly regulated conditions. Geological analyses on ore discoveries must meet appropriate standards of conduct and disclosure. Governments and stock exchanges insist upon it. Patent law provides commercial protection, but such protection also requires provision of evidence.
In short, climate science is overwhelmingly an enterprise that is paid for from the public purse. We have every right to demand openness and transparency and put in place institutional mechanisms that require good conduct, even if – indeed BECAUSE – Professor Kealey is correct in suggesting that they will behave badly. Some have misinterpreted Professor Kealey somewhat, and would do well to note the following statement near the end of his paper:
‘More relevantly, it means that individual scientist’s pronouncements should be seen more as advertisements than as definitive.’
But I would point out that even advertisements are subject to the requirement not to make false claims, and advertisers should not be given a monopoly in any market. The alternative is the GUM store. He errs in not making the points I make here, and as a result, becomes an apologist for the indefensible. He should, rather, apply the standards of the USC in Daubert (or similar).
Nevertheless, as he believes that science requires no public subsidy, I take it we can expect that he will prohibit staff at his university from seeking public research funds.