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
So how many women and babies died because forceps were kept secret for pure financial gain? The climate fraudsters are playing the same game and getting succor from the hallowed halls of academia and ignorant politicians. Sickening.
I found that to be one of the most poorly reasoned arguments ever written. It completely misrepresents the difference between advocating a legitimate position and what can only be called propaganda from those that selectively manipulate data to get to a desired outcome. The scientists were hiding their data so that it couldn’t get proper review. That is inexcusable. They were paid by the public and the public was asked to make policy based on that data. They were ethically bound to share it and that is how science works. Science isn’t about just taking the opinion of self anointed experts.
Justifying their action based on the “Well, others did it in the past” is pathetic. Others in the past have also been psychopaths. We should excuse all unethical behavior based on that line of reasoning. They went far beyond being just advocates when they manipulated the data to fit their political and personal agendas. That should be just as criminal as any other kind of fraud. I am sure that most people in jail for corporate fraud were also advocating a particular projected outcome. They got into trouble by selectively manipulating data or failing to report it accurately or completely. Why does some CEO go to jail for that and these guys get a free pass? The answer is obvious. They are political activists and protected by activist politicians and most conservative politicians don’t have the will to take on a protected class of activist because they call themselves scientists.
You can keep all your little secrets if they have no bearing on the rest of us. You do not however live apart from us and when your research is used to change our way of life via legislation, taxation etc, then you have a moral duty to open yourself to scrutiny.
No one is above the natural law.
There are several strong examples of the railroading of emergent science in Australia. References above to the Warren/Marshall Nobel laureates are but one.
Professor S Warren Carey was an early adopter of plate tectonics and later encouraged investigation into an “expanding earth” theory, both of which were initially unacceptable to the mainstream. If you have the interest, please read
http://www.science.org.au/fellows/memoirs/carey.html#8g
One particular passage (edited here for brevity) is:
“Relationship with the Australian Academy of Science.
“Carey’s relationship with the Australian Academy of Science was stormy to say the least. The record will show that he accepted Fellowship of the Academy following a telephone call from Sir Rutherford Robertson on 27 April 1989. ….
“The long-running dispute between Carey and the Academy had begun several decades earlier.
“Until the institution of the Australian Academy of Science in 1954, representation of Australia in international scientific bodies had been through the Australian National Research Council, of which Carey had been a Fellow since 1938. When the Academy of Science came into being, with twelve of the 24 Foundation Fellows being Fellows of the Royal Society of London working in Australia, Carey was not offered Fellowship. This, he believed, was because of objections by some Fellows who considered that his advocacy of continental drift was so outrageous that any adherent in its ranks would bring discredit to the Academy.
Carey submitted his orocline paper to the Journal of the Geological Society of Australia that year and it was reviewed perchance by three Fellows of the Academy, and rejected. In consequence, he wrote that he would never allow put his name to be put forward for election to the Academy, nor again submit a paper for publication by the Geological Society of Australia. The lines were drawn!
Following the success of the Continental Drift Symposium, Sir Harold Raggatt asked Carey’s permission in 1958 to put his name forward for Fellowship. Carey declined, citing the issue of the rejection of his paper.
In February 1969 …. again he declined nomination, comparing his earlier treatment with that of William Smith when publication of his Geological Map of the England and Wales was rejected by the Geological Society of London early in the nineteenth century. …. He further stated that ‘I do not think that the Academy will amount to anything geologically in my lifetime’.” end of quote.
This is the same Australian Academy of Science that this year preferred to remain silent when asked which guidelines it used when adopting an unvarnished rewrite of the IPCC position and issuing it as a public discussion paper.
http://www.science.org.au/reports/climatechange2010.pdf
Sam and friends and I spent many hours together discussing the merits of plate tectonics and some far reaching implications. It is sad that he is no longer here to add to the philosophy of evaluation of the emerging hypothesis.
BTW, much of the essay at the head of this thread by Terence Kealey is immature and unsupported. One becomes much wiser when actively dealing with a problem, than when merely observing it from the sidelines.
Scientists were human in the past, the were jealous, secretive, and clung to beliefs far to long in the face of contrary evidence. What conclusion did Dr. Kealey draw from this obviously true observation? That it is excusable as human for those claiming to be scientists to be advocates who refrain from open sharing of their methods and data.
Dr. Kealey failed to understand the lessons of the past he actually cited. Those valuing science in the past understood the need for intellectual honesty and openness, enough to establish standards and to encourage openness by granting priority to those who share and publish. The human failings of scientists in the past is not a reason to excuse such behavior, but rather is just as much reason today as in the past to insist on open disclosure of data and methods and to cultivate intellectual honesty. Those of us who love science love it, not because scientists are advocates great at hoarding their data, but because science aspires to higher standards of proof, skepticism, openness and integrity. The climategate “scientists” were pilloried because they obviously failed to aspire to those standards, and the credibility of their science and unfortunately, all of climate science suffered.
There is another aspect of human social nature that Dr. Kealey forgot, the value they place on honor, fairness and cooperation and their recognition that this requires being good at detecting deceit and verifying that others have an open hand. That humans are capable of deceit, bias and concealment only increases the social need for standards and verification. I doubt even Dr. Kealey would deny that the scientist who is open and helpful in the sharing of his data and methods and has the intellectual honesty to admit uncertainty, possible sources of error and conflicting explanations has more credibility. Unfortunately, humans can also find claims of confidence and certainty persuasive, but those claims lose their persuasive power if the proponent’s integrity and openness is questionable.
I don’t remember when I’ve read such a büttløad of crap so I’m going to assume its late and I’m tired and will re-read again tomorrow. But for now, yes, of course I expect scientists to separate their passions from the science. I also have no belief it is probable, but that belief does not shade my expectations. For what it is worth I also expect my surgeon to be qualified, interested in my health, capable of doing the work, and not engaging me as a patient for the paycheck. I also expect he/she will not be using me as a lab to develop some hidden agenda.
I expect similar high ground from lawyers, architects, and construction firms that build the bridges I will drive over on my commute to work. If any of them have this notion that their core purpose is to advocate that which they cannot prove yet strongly believe in then I want them off the payroll. Especially when they have no freaking proof or hope of proving their pet notions.
There is a huge difference between concealing research data to protect a trade secret versus concealing research data driving an important public policy debate. With a trade secret, e.g., 17th c. obstetric forceps, if the secret gets out then it loses nearly all its value. With no value, there is no drive to innovate.
With research pushing a public policy debate, the opposite is true. It gains value the more it is revealed. One should push it into daylight, convince everyone, and ensure that the correct policy decision is made.
Unless, of course, all that data is dodgy. Then, yes, you’d want to keep that a secret.
But other than conflating two types of research data, (a minor point, really), that was a very interesting essay. I particularly liked the discussion concerning Pythagoras. Much like the the Team, Pythagoras and his ideas drove public policy. It was prestigious, both for him and Greece. So when poor Hippasus started making some inconvenient observations, he threatened not only Pythagoras, but also Greece, and he was executed.
But in this day and age, if some people think the public naive to be outraged by a puppet show on a cave wall, then I guess the last 2000 years of Western Philosophy has been a waste of time.
RockyRoad says: “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.”
One of the worst articles? Certainly.
But it was a good post – Anthony Watts not needed.
And IMHO, in the WUWT context, it was an important post, because it lets us see inside the warped mind of a contemporary university vice-chancellor. Is this an isolated example, or is this the universal consequence of a postmodernist society? I suspect the latter.
It’s like watching people growing ass’s ears and tails and starting to bray.
This article is a great explanation of why “the Team” feels no moral qualms about cooking data, stacking peer-review, and attacking critics by any means possible. Apparently that’s the real scientific method.
Thanks, Dr. Kealey, for your bracing honesty. Now we know what the public must do to defend itself from the depradations of these hucksters: Defund government-funded science.
I agree with Katherine (at 8:14) and Paul P. (at 8:29)
Advertisements are presented publicly in anticipation that at least someone will buy your product. Those buying the “subsidized” climate science product peaked a while back. Can we now stop the subsidy and our governments and pseudo-governments from trying to tax us into submission to support their own growth. There are real issues to be addressed. Wider availability of clean water is one among many.
The scientific method will not solve all the problems in the world.Great science and Great scientists flourished amongst extreme poverty.Many people would have us believe that scientists are responsible for the increase in wealth that we enjoy today and this underlies the activism that we see today,If science can make us rich or it can make us poor then it can make us rich using a different low carbon way.It is necessary to think critically about whether the policies these scientists advocate is in the interests of all of us or just in the interests of these scientists.
Can we just introduce a dose of reality here?
At the end of the day these “scientists” (and I use the term loosely), were paid public servants charged with advising the government on changing climate conditions. They were given a large amount of taxpayer’s funds to accomplish this.
Rather than tell the truth of their findings, they told the government what they assumed the government wanted to hear. Then they falsified data to support their erroneous advice, and then worked behind the scenes to discredit anyone who may have given the government more accurate data.
The government, in turn, was able to use that mis-information to justify many decisions, including, but limited to:
• Investing in and promoting the construction of wind-turbines instead of “real” base-load power stations (coal and nuclear);
• Preventing private investment in and the construction of “real” base-load power stations;
• Not increasing gas reserve holdings;
• Councils not increasing holdings of grit and salt;
• Councils and other bodies selling off snow-plows and other snow-clearing equipment.
If the big freeze gripping the UK continues for much longer or repeats itself too often over the next few months, it is not hard to imagine the following consequences of those decisions:
• Gas reserves running out and millions of people losing their primary source of home-heating;
• Widespread blackouts due to load-shedding as those people attempt to switch to electricity to try and keep warm – plunging even more millions into cold and dark;
• Supermarket shelves running empty as delivery trucks fail to arrive due to iced over, impassable roads due a lack of grit and salt;
• People unable to get to the supermarkets anyway because of the snowdrifts that can’t be cleared, due to the lack of equipment.
In short, people are going to die as a result of those decisions. Those deaths will be on top of the billions of pounds worth of already lost productivity, with road, rail and air transport ground to a halt.
If these “scientist” public servants had created this life-threatening scenario merely through staggering incompetence, they would still be guilty of monstrous negligence of duty.
That they falsified data, lied and schemed to deliberately help bring about this situation elevates them to mass-murderer status. The sooner the trials and public hangings begin, the better.
Let’s see if Kealey has the gonads to appear as a witness for the defence, and explain how it was all a matter of “boys being boys – everybody does it so it’s alright”.
I was wondering what was wrong with our educational institutions these days.
Thnx to Dr Kealey, now I know.
It’s sad really.
The Methode states outside of Private Funding,
Put up or shut the fock up. Prove or walk. Not blackmail, not censorship, not advertisement, not bullshit, walk.
Not a debating society on metaphors, make yer case and make it black and white. Prove it to the highest tests we have not philosophy, measurement as we know it.
You are allowed comments on impacts, after proof. Impacts of your research on an issue are not the case, the case is your proof. Make it or walk. Prove the issue.
Proof means all and everything, you hang yer hat on yer proof not yer excuses, and if you cannot do that, go and write fiction about what if’s.
The word science actually has a generic root, it means enquiry.
Science methode don’t actually encompass morality or ethics. A thing is or not.
Mods I’m out bin me, out for a day, anything else gibber gibber.
Sorry, haven’t had an opportunity to read all of the comments, I can only assume I am echoing other sentiments already stated.
Dr. Kealey, I don’t know what your function is at UB, but in my diatribe, I’m assuming you’ve a position of authority over some other scientists.
Holy rationalizations Batman!
Dr. Kealey,
You know, I get the fact that scientists are human. I came to grips with this fact many years ago. I’m even willing to accept the fact that some get into their profession for less than altruistic motivations. And personally, I couldn’t care less…….if they lived in a vacuum. Dr. Kealey, this is your lucky day, I’m going to impart some insight to you that you apparently lack.
It is the scientists themselves that anointed scientists as “keepers of truth” and “seekers of knowledge”. They are the ones that have beatified all of their profession and pronounced us laymen as unworthy of being able to understand their truth and knowledge. While in normal times, your pontifications may have been welcomed and considered refreshing, to speak these words now smacks of extenuation. Sorry, after over 30 years of getting it wrong, lying to the public, hiding material and contrived methodologies, vilifying anyone that may disagree, to the point that peoples livelihoods were destroyed, and a myriad of other monstrous actions, for you to come and say scientists are only human, I say bullocks(In America, I call BS). They have absolutely shown themselves to contain less than a modicum human decency. Dear God! Have you seen what some have tried to do to Dr. Wegman? You know, if they were studying the mating habits of wombats or revisiting the degree that light bends around objects, or discovering some unique chemical interaction when a basophil degranulates, no one would care. But, that isn’t the group of scientists we are discussing. Is it Dr. Kealey? We are specifically discussing people that call themselves climate scientists. You know, that discipline of science that allows people to make wild assertions without being held to supply even a modicum of proof.
Some other things I’m sure you are aware of, but apparently, some people in your general profession(science) have no compunction regarding. Laws are being passed because of things like the contrived IMMINENT glacier melt. Now, these laws aren’t just any laws, these laws have bearing on lives, and livelihoods on a global scale! It isn’t hyperbole or overreaching to say people have lost their lives because of this latest science debacle. Economies are being ruined. PEOPLE ARE FREEZING TO DEATH! while your nation blow-dries your whirligigs to keep them from seizing! Now typically, I’d say, “well, that’s what the Brits did. It doesn’t effect me.” But it does effect me. My country, and other countries around the world are passing the same laws, planting the same insipid whirligigs at a huge expense, pretending that they may be of some use. Why? Because this (and many other equally vapid actions) is exactly what scientists have told our policy makers to do.
Scientists, Dr. Kealey. Your scientists. Your profession. Your colleagues. Your academia. The very same group of people for whom you’ve offered this extenuating excuse of , ‘well, they’re human after all’, as if that absolves them of their actions. I’m sorry, Dr. Kealey, that isn’t good enough. I would say, to all the scientists out there, “If you can’t do better than that, you owe it to the world to get out of that profession.”
One last bit of insight I will impart to you Dr. Kealey. Memories are usually very short. In this instance, though, I think the opposite will hold true. The world will not forget anytime soon. Climate science in particular, but also science as a whole has a very slight window of opportunity to police themselves. This great climate debate is all but over. Unless the earth suddenly and dramatically warms very soon, it will be relegated to the trash heap of history. When it becomes apparent to the decision makers and the general populace of the world that is was only a morbid contrivance of some socialist Malthusians, they will turn their weary eyes towards the scientists. I pray, for the good of humanity, that science by that time, will have done the things necessary to prevent a re-occurrence of this nasty bit of unscientific history.
Regards,
James Sexton
The Methode states outside of Private Funding,
Put up or shut the fock up. Prove or walk. Not blackmail, not censorship, not advertisement, not bullshit, walk.
Not a debating society on metaphors, make yer case and make it black and white. Prove it to the highest tests we have not philosophy, measurement as we know it.
You are allowed comments on impacts, after proof. Impacts of your research on an issue are not the case, the case is your proof. Make it or walk. Prove the issue.
Proof means all and everything, you hang yer hat on yer proof not yer excuses, and if you cannot do that, go and write fiction about what if’s.
The word science actually has a generic root, it means enquiry.
Science methode don’t actually encompass morality or ethics. A thing is or not. the issue of discussion.
Mods I’m out bin me, out for a day, anything else gibber gibber.
Dr Kealey’s essay is very revealing.
It reeks of a brazen arrogance which is typical of his ilk.
To reiterate the point made by others, scientists who accept public funding don’t have the luxury of owning the raw data, their methods, the results of their endeavors etc.
Such arrogance, unwittingly betrayed, invites its own nemesis.
The problem isn’t that Scientists are advocates, the problem is that the system set up to deal with that, Freedom of Speech, is being undermined because the people who decide what to publish are also becoming advocates.
When pro and anti papers have equal exposure with proofs open to test and repudiation then science progresses because those not involved can use balanced judgement to decide. When one side seek to “silence” those on the other, whether by murder, suppression, refusal to publish or abuse then the scientific process breaks down.
When looking at AGW clearly this is occurring.
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.
Good god, “feel falsified” – I can’t believe he actually said it! But I guess that’s why Kealey thinks his ideas about science must be right, too. They can’t be falsified because he simply won’t let his ideas be falsified, a mechanism which actually describes the workings of the totally useless kind of Conspiracy Theory where its adherents, again, simply won’t let it be falsified, essentially by employing the infantile, “whaaaaa stomp stomp, no, you can’t make me [feel falsified]” tactic, which can also be upgraded a bit to the Malignant Narcissist’s feelings of total infallibility.
Strangely, Climate Science’s CAGW “tenets” and method come to mind, speaking of which, the first sentence of Kealey’s quote above perfectly describes the convenient use of Climate Science’s Models as “experiments” and “proofs”, which Kealey must surely seen as a truely inspired epitome of the method used by all “great scientists”, instead of as a method which should be mostly useful to anyone wanting very badly to escape the real world, when hallucinatory drugs are not handy.
Interesting, and true. But beside the point.
The point is not how individual scientists work, it’s how science works. So although we understand, say, Hansen’s need to ignore every piece of confounding evidence, that doesn’t mean it’s excusable. It’s still bad science. The essay confuses what is ‘normal’ and ‘accepted’ behaviour by individuals with what is acceptable by science as a whole.
It’s also a rather pointless analysis in the context that Climate Science operates. Is the writer really saying that senior scientists have license (explicit or implied) to deny facts when it suits them, even when this has profound and expensive effects on public policy? One of the problems here is that the normal (small-minded, ambitious) attitudes of individual scientists have been allowed to expensively misdirect public policy and public spending. That is indefensible, and telling the public to stop being so naive is also indefensible. These people are paid from the public purse and have a duty not to misinform the public. Mostly that duty amounts to keeping their damn’ mouths shut when they don’t know what they’re talking about. (Which, like most of us is nearly all the time).
In 99% of the history of science, when an individual was wrong and adamant about it and didn’t change his views until he died, it had no effect at all on the public. This is not the case with Climate Science (and with various other areas of research that have affected public policy in the last 50 years). The obligations of scientists whose work impacts public policy are clearly different from those whose work doesn’t.
I do think that some education in the history and philosophy of science would go a long way. Most people in technical disciplines will have education in this area only if their leisure reading has led them there. At the very least, Hansen, Jones et al. should have a slave following them about whispering ‘Remember you are mortal’.
I point you to http://sciencepolicy.colorado.edu/admin/publication_files/resource-1891-2005.49.pdf for a very interesting post Kuhnian take on climate science
I did not read it the way almost all commenters have. I think they have the wrong end of the stick. This guy is an observer, not an advocate, and he wants to point out that we are all human, and this affects scientists too. It’s all very well knowing how things ought to work in an ideal world, but we have to deal with the world as it is. This is how it is, and always was. Things are not perfect. AGW scientists cheat. We have to expect it, and correct it, where it occurs. Now take that and insert any other field for AGW. Same applies.
Those who study the philosophy of science often produce a view of the subject unrecognisable to scientists themselves. And so it is here.
The problem is the tendency of those who study a thing to try to resolve dichotomy; to attempt to definitively classify science as one thing OR the other where in fact it is quite often one thing AND the other. The argument here presents a false dichotomy between science as a public good carried out dispassionately by idealists, and as a private good carried out for purely personal gain by selfish human beings, and argues in favor of the latter. In fact it is both.
Science IS an idealistic calling which expects high standards of rationality, open mindedness, and selfless ethical behavior. And it is these ideals that attract many people to science. But scientists are also human beings who have to make a living. And so alongside this ideal version of science, this platonic ideal as it were, this temple of pure thought and rationality; there exists the day to day reality, the dirty business of making a living as a scientist. Because sadly pure ideals don’t pay the bills.
Science as a career is a very human institution full of real people with all the usual human flaws. It is a hierarchy just like in the business world where people climb to the top often over the bodies of their colleagues, where the coin of progress is not the advancement of knowledge per se but mere publication in peer reviewed journals, and where in the day to day grind of trying to get ahead, the ideals of science can often seem distant.
But those ideals still exist. They are still real. They are still revered. And they can still be invoked to bring people to heel when they get too far out of line. Similarly the private benefit to their careers that individual scientists may gain by publishing doesn’t invalidate the fact that the output of the scientific process as a whole is usually a public good.
Feynman describes the situation in science as analogous to the distinction between a religion and a church. A religion is a set of ideals. A church is the very human institution which usually fails to live up to those ideals. But the failings of the church do not invalidate the ideals of the religion. It is the same with science.
The problem with any attempt to draw a parallel between the anthropogenic global warming charlatans and the geologists following the lead of Sir Charles Lyell is that Lyell and his successors upholding the “ancient earth” hypothesis didn’t deliberately and concertedly cook their data to prevent refutation of their conclusions.
Nor did Lyell’s followers, when confronted by those colleagues who had “calculated [the planetary core’s] rate of heat loss [to conclude] that the earth could be only a few millions of years old,” make deliberate and concerted effort to suppress the publications of their contrarian colleagues. They simply noted that the “cooling earth” theorists had advanced an idea which didn’t explain the evidence directly observed (“the rate of erosion of cliffs” and other phenomena providing correlative information) and kept on plugging away.
The difference between Lyell’s followers in geology, y’see, and the AGW fraudsters is enormous. In the former case, intellectual honesty and a respect for the empirical prevailed. In the latter, methodological gormlessness was exacerbated by pure cupidity to produce what has got to be the most egregious manure pile of suppressio veri, suggestio falsi in the history of science.
And I use that legal term with explicit intention. I want to unleash the tort lawyers on them, and see them hounded into penury, insanity, and public disgrace until each of their various carcasses are handed over to the undertakers. They have certainly been culpable of professional misfeasances rising to the level of malpractice, and the damages they have imposed upon their victims – both proximal and distal – have gotten to levels at which assessment requires us to borrow techniques of mathematical calculation hitherto reserved for the use of astrophysicists.
If us medical doctors have got to live under the blade of the ATLA guillotine, why the hell shouldn’t the global warming “climatology” fraudsters?