Story submitted by John Droz.
Today I received an email from an editor, who was saying that “Science” depends on what your political persuasion is. I dispute that opinion and answered as follows —
Briefly, what has happened is that:
1 – Politicians from both ends of the spectrum fully realize that they need the appearance of scientific support to promote their political agenda.
2 – Combine this with the fact that there are thousands of scientists who have left the confines of real science, for their own financial or personal agenda reasons (e.g. which is no different than priests departing from Christian values that they have literally dedicated their lives to upholding).
So, it is an easy matter for politicians in #1 to find rogue scientists in #2 to support essentially any position — and then claim to the public that their agenda is “based on science.” This type of “science” is pseudoscience or “cargo cult science” and is just a sham meant to deceive the gullible.
These agenda promoters have become so brazen that some are now even asserting that traditional science (of Galileo, Newton, Einstein, etc.) is no longer relevant, and that we should be using such alternatives as “Post Normal Science”. This, of course, is preposterous.
The reality is that genuine science is apolitical, and consists of a:
a) comprehensive,
b) independent,
c) transparent, and
d) empirical assessment of claims.
Put another way, there can be a profound difference between “reports by scientists” and “scientific reports.”
So, facing this mishmash of claims, it’s up to objective citizens to discriminate between the real and the pretend. This is not easy to do, but using the four-part template above that will tell the story.
For example, when AGW is claimed as a hypothesis, the appropriate question is:
Show me the: a) comprehensive, b) independent, c) transparent, and d) empirical proof.
For example, when wind energy is claimed to be a cost-beneficial solution to energy & environmental issues, the appropriate question is:
Show me the: a) comprehensive, b) independent, c) transparent, and d) empirical proof.
The indisputable fact is that no such proof exists for either.
That is not a political conclusion, but a scientific one.
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John, short & sweet -well put
That pretty much says it.
Part of the problem is that the public understanding of what constitutes science is not unlike that of the editor that made such a silly statement to you, John. It is not hard to fool most as a result.
Mark
I totally agree with your definition of science. The problem I have is that billions of dollars of government money will likely redefine what is considered science if the leftist bureaucrat/politician has the choice to determine what science it should support. That has already happened in the AGW field. Many governments have invested many billions of dollars to establish the politically convenient scientific explanation they want. Jones, Mann, Hansen et al. are doing their best to make sure that interpretations suitable for any extremist is available in scientific sounding packages. It comes with all the talking points that money could buy.
“Story”?
Rant would have been a better tag.
How about some facts?
As a pretty good example, this (below) from Dr. Wllie Soon of Harvard. Dr. Soon exposes the U.S. EPA using junk science to promote a political agenda: Ending coal-fired power plants.
http://townhall.com/columnists/williesoon/2011/06/06/epa_environmental_propaganda_activists/page/full/
So NASA and every Scientific peak body on the Planet is corrupt? now that is post-normal.
Even though it’s implied in your list I would add e) falsifiable. The problem with AGW today is that literally all results no matter how contradictory “prove” the hypothesis.
I agree with your comments but I am surprised at your naivety. Most people don’t understand science, don’t want to understand science and certainly don’t want to want to analyse scientific reports. They want headlines that say “we’re doomed due to sea level rises” “we should drive only electric cars” “humans are the cause of climate change” etc. etc. As these headlines sell newspapers and attract TV audiences, the MSM is only too happy to pander to these sentiments. Scientific debate has no place in the thinking of most a fact the alarmists and politicians, have skilfully used to their considerable and mutual advantage.
Good job, John. However Nitpick Larry has one small quibble. In the theoretical sciences, there’s precious little in the way of “empirical proof” for anything. However there’s a large bone yard filled with the corpses of failed hypotheses. Here’s how the game is played.
1. Articulate an educated guess–or even a wild guess–about how Nature works in your bailiwick.
2. Design and carry out a laboratory experiment or a field study that has the potential to falsify–or at least to cast serious doubt–on your hypothesis.
3. If your pet hypothesis survives your experiment, and subsequent variations of your experiment carried out by others, and if it also survives the sniping of bah-humbug colleagues, who are intent on finding fault with either your methodology or analysis, then it eventually gains tentative acceptance as a legitimate theory,
In other words, prediction–as well as its first cousin ‘postdiction’, aka backcasting–is the coin of the realm. Climate ‘scientists’ have used more than 20 GCMs, and all of them predicted continued warming, when in fact the global warming trend peaked and died in 1998. Since then, there have been some cool years and some balmy years, but no discernible trend. That part of the AGW meme is a thoroughly falsified hypothesis. However the ex-scientist Warmist hired guns are continuing to blather away. I think that we’re in agreement on this main point.
The Global Warming movement has been so successful that I fear for the future. Even if the movement is successfully overturned (which I guess it will be at some point), its proponents and their successors will be keen to replicate their success in other fields. What would stop them?
In my book an activist is not a scientist by the very definition. The Union of Concerned Scientists is effectively an oxymoron. They are advocates and ideologues driven by a forgone conclusion, not the kind of ever-questioning seekers of knowledge “old-school” scientists are/were. Chalk up another pathetic advance of collectivist thinking.
This applies for an established science, i.e. one without room for dissent other than in details (like evolution or plate tectonics). Climate science still exists as a science with uncertain integration of its parts. The AGW dispute is based on a linear series of postulates that each have elements of uncertainty, both in themselves and how they fit or influence the others. We are only having this disupte because the putative final effects are large enough that socially concerned individuals have invoked the Precautionary Principle, specifically that the volume of money and human exertions is of no concern in the face of the smallest chance of a worst-case scenario of global warming. To wait for normal scientific proof is not warranted under the application of the Precautionary Principle of the warmist.
While I am sympathetic to the concept of rational scientific principles to the demonstration of global warming theories, we as skeptics cannot hope to use this as an argument against action as proposed by the warmists. The PP demands that we act without full or complete knowledge. The weak point in the warmists concerns, however, is still the linkages and the “certainty” that exists at the end. The PP does not say that a poorly predicted crisis should be averted, but that a reasonably well predicted one should. Our task is to demonstrate that each of the steps is sufficiently uncertain or in actual error in light of observations that the culmination of the series of postulates has no practical value at this time, that the day of sufficient certainty is still to come, that we can wait.
There is no crisis coming on us until we are reasonably certain there is. Trenberth, Hansen etc. say there is. We say there is not. Each link we can show is flawed, beginning with the temperature data, will lead to the house not falling down but being shown to be too weak for political lives to depend on it.
Nice analogy. “Scientists” have been molesting the data entrusted to their care.
John Droz:
I think your item requires an important alteration because – as ii stands – it is not true.
Pseudoscience deals in “proof” while science deals in evidence.
Real science subjects every conjecture, hypothesis and theory to attempts at disproof. A single piece of empirical evidence that contradicts a conjecture, hypothesis or theory requires amendment or rejection of the conjecture, hypothesis or theory. Each rejection or amendment is a small step in the advancement of science: it corrects misunderstanding and, thus, improves understanding.
So, the item should say;
“the appropriate question is:
Show me the: a) comprehensive, b) independent, c) transparent, and d) empirical evidence.”
Please note that this comment is not a knit-pick and is intended to be supportive.
Richard
John, you write
“Show me the: a) comprehensive, b) independent, c) transparent, and d) empirical proof.”
I really like that. No math models or unsupported theories.
More live ammo for the sceptic case. Thanks Mr. Droz
Good points but it is not cargo cult science.
Cargo cult science is when people dress in white coats, work in labs, hold conferences and publish papers but never really discover anything. They are copying the actions of real scientists but there is something missing
http://www.lhup.edu/~DSIMANEK/cargocul.htm
“During the war they saw
airplanes land with lots of good materials, and they want the same
thing to happen now. So they’ve arranged to imitate things like
runways, to put fires along the sides of the runways, to make a
wooden hut for a man to sit in, with two wooden pieces on his head
like headphones and bars of bamboo sticking out like antennas–he’s
the controller–and they wait for the airplanes to land. They’re
doing everything right. The form is perfect. It looks exactly the
way it looked before. But it doesn’t work. No airplanes land. So
I call these things cargo cult science, because they follow all the
apparent precepts and forms of scientific investigation, but
they’re missing something essential, because the planes don’t land.”
Unfortunately, the majority remain convinced by the “science” when it is apparent that we have no evidence to support the AGW hypothesis.
Use of the word “proof” leaves me slightly uncomfortable. I’d much prefer “evidence” as conclusion from evidence leaves room for interpretation, rests on data, can be challenged on method and repeatability, and is only as good as the data. Conclusions are therefore always open to change, whereas proof tends to imply finality. Other than that, the points made are fine.
When I researched the topic, I was surprised to find our modern view of science is really only as old as WWII, in that post WWII the whole subject was reformulated with new divisions such as “theoretical ” and “practical” science and the terms such as “blue sky” got into vogue.
From almost anyone’s perspective the 1960s and 70s were the hay day of this new science as a succession of nuclear, moon landings & satellites, lasers, semiconductor, computing and other “discoveries” emerged in quick succession. No doubt an awful lot of these “discoveries” were as a result of the intense work during WWII, but one can’t help being impressed.
I’m still not sure what happened after the 1970s, but in many areas this new science seems to have stood still. Worse in other areas it went off after the “grand theory” and ignored the basic science that brought benefit …. and of course we started seeing the development of pseudo sciences like “climate science” in which a small group of third rate “scientists” attempted to bypass empirical evidence in order to come up with the in vogue “grand theory” of the atmosphere.
And now in the 2010s, we are beginning a new phase: that of denial. Denial that much of “science” has failed to achieve anything of significance in the last 40 years. Denial that these new vogues subjects such as “climate science” are not science at all but use the far more lax evidential standards of economics or marketing.
Looking at my gas bill, the message-pigeons are coming home to roost: the public are getting the message that the real greatest problem facing mankind is not a tiny bit of warming and the highly speculative decrease in numbers of some lesser spotted goat-toad, but the real reality of higher energy prices which mean many people in Scotland simply cannot afford to turn on their heating.
Science has proven completely useless in forming government policy on energy. Looking at the way that anti-biotic immune bacteria are escalating due to low-dosage use in farming (and hence the latest EColi outbreak) it also appears that it has totally failed to direct government policy to saving the greatest achievement in medicine: the “end” of epidemics of illness that were prevented by antibiotics.
Scientists are certainly not alone in this… economists are easily bought. Given the nature of modelling and forecasting in the field of economics, answers are somewhat more malleable than in the harder sciences. Ironically I now find myself in a position which involves forecasting … I have a pair of dice cufflinks I wear to work at least once a week. Most people don’t seem to get the subtle message 🙂 Heck I wore them to the interview for the job and they employed me…
Paul Deacon said:
The Global Warming movement has been so successful that I fear for the future. Even if the movement is successfully overturned (which I guess it will be at some point), its proponents and their successors will be keen to replicate their success in other fields. What would stop them?
———————————————————————-
I share your fear. If/when the movement is overturned, I am afraid that the laws they will have instituted in its name will remain. Example: here in California, the Air Resources Board has enacted regulations on diesel emissions based upon “scientific” data provided by someone with a phony diploma. Even though they have been outed, they are not standing down from their anti-diesel jihad.
Cap-and-Trade is set to be implemented in California soon. I can easily believe that it will not go away even after CAGW debunking goes mainstream.
As for what would stop the CAGW perps from replicating their successes after being outed, they would probably just go on as though nothing had happened. Examples of past failures who have done just that: Paul Erlich, John Holdren.
And the perps will declaim (after debunking takes hold): “At least we tried to do something to save the planet. That’s more than anybody else did”. And they will be lionized as idealistic martyrs by the left for their efforts, and will move onto the next sham cause.
More wisdom from the great scientific mind Richar Feynman . The para following the cargo cult comment linked above.
http://www.lhup.edu/~DSIMANEK/cargocul.htm
>>
Now it behooves me, of course, to tell you what they’re missing.
But it would be just about as difficult to explain to the South Sea
Islanders how they have to arrange things so that they get some
wealth in their system. It is not something simple like telling
them how to improve the shapes of the earphones. But there is one
feature I notice that is generally missing in cargo cult science.
That is the idea that we all hope you have learned in studying
science in school–we never explicitly say what this is, but just
hope that you catch on by all the examples of scientific
investigation. It is interesting, therefore, to bring it out now
and speak of it explicitly. It’s a kind of scientific integrity,
a principle of scientific thought that corresponds to a kind of
utter honesty–a kind of leaning over backwards. For example, if
you’re doing an experiment, you should report everything that you
think might make it invalid–not only what you think is right about
it: other causes that could possibly explain your results; and
things you thought of that you’ve eliminated by some other
experiment, and how they worked–to make sure the other fellow can
tell they have been eliminated.
>>
Key phrase : scientific integrity. It’s that simple.
Science in itself is incorruptible, but almost all humans are “corrupt” in the sense that they set standards for their own behaviour that they can never actually met. Take politicians. They tell us they are there to serve the community and to make the world a better place. This is highly unlikely to be true, because this form of extreme philanthropy is not normal human behaviour. In fact politicians are usually driven by sex – they want to be famous and be rich and get on the telly and then meet lots of sexy women. But they usually don’t want to admit this even to themselves – which is why they seem surprised when they find themselves embroiled in some kind of sex scandal. Even John Major was involved in a sex scandal for goodness sake.
Why should we consider scientists to be any different? Regardless of their profession they are still driven subconsciously by the need for more sex/fame/money. They like to tell us differently – they almost certainly tell themselves something different. Thus they want to get rich and be on the telly, whilst all the time telling themselves they are driven by a desire to rescue humanity. But science (like politics and, oddly, classical music) can offer so much more – it can offer immortality. Not even God can do that anymore. Come up with the right theory at the right time and your name could go down in history FOREVER. Your theory doesn’t even have to be correct as such – look at the Millican oil drop experiment. Millican made up his results as he went along and still became as famous as Einstein. His name will live on forever. But only if there are humans around to remember it of course. So all us bags of blood and urine must be saved from destruction at our own hands due to AGW or nuclear armageddon or what not, not because that’s how God would want it to be because all good scientists know there is no such thing as God, but because we are needed to allow the scientists name to go down in history.