I already have a quote of the week, but since the fact that Nature decided to pay any attention at all to the Heartland Conference in Washington, D.C. which ended July 1st, this deserved a special place on WUWT, and thus the first ever “Quote of the Month” is a real doozy. However, given that Nature has chosen to mention the conference at all, I see it as a win.
It is scientists, not sceptics, who are most willing to consider explanations that conflict with their own. And far from quashing dissent, it is the scientists, not the sceptics, who do most to acknowledge gaps in their studies and point out the limitations of their data — which is where sceptics get much of the mud they fling at the scientists.
Wow. Apparently, Nature has never seen the rampant quashing of dissent that goes on at Real Climate, which we documented with data and anecdotal reports nor have they ever noted the lack of curiosity on the part of the Hockey Team when it comes to looking at a failure of statistical analysis techniques, or alternate explanations for changes in environments and natural signals, such as the recently discovered and peer reviewed paper about sheep grazing effects on tree rings being greater than that of temperature.
No, Nature implies that the scientists that they represent are always curious about limitations, without fault, and are as pure as the driven snow, with only truth as motive. Climategate showed the world otherwise.
I do agree with Nature though on one point, the displays by some of the book sellers at the conference were spurious, and I’d much prefer that if Heartland ever does another one of these conferences, that they leave such displays out. But, it seems that whomever the reporter for Nature was, he/she didn’t venture beyond the lobby and listen to any of the presentations made as the article makes no mention of them.
The view of Nature is sharply contrasted by that of Dr. Scott Denning, who did attend the science sessions, both as participant, and speaker. He said of the conference in this article:
“I was treated with respect and even warmth despite my vehement disagreement with most of the other presenters,” Denning wrote, expressing thanks for prominent platforms he was provided during the conference, including an hour-long keynote debate with contrarian Roy Spencer of the University of Alabama, Huntsville.
…
“These were not a bunch of brain-washed idiots,” Denning said of the conferees, rebutting an impression many in the science community might have.
…
An example of “what doesn’t work” in speaking with audiences such as those at the Heartland conference, Denning wrote, “is the condescending argument from authority that presumes that the Earth’s climate is too complicated for ordinary people to understand, so that they have to trust the opinions of experts.”
Nature seems to take the position of judging all skeptics by the books being sold in the lobby, or the proverbial “judging a book by it’s cover”.
The videos of all the Heartland conference presentations are available here:
http://climateconference.heartland.org/watch-live/
While Nature is in the business of dissing conferences, they might want to have a look at what went on at the 2010 American Geophysical Union convention in San Francisco, as Steve Mosher relates here in Craven Attention.
Read the entire article in Nature linked below. They do accept comments.
Heart of the matter
- Nature 475, 423–424 (28 July 2011) doi:10.1038/475423b
- Published online
- 27 July 2011
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v475/n7357/full/475423b.html?WT.ec_id=NATURE-20110728
h/t to Dr. Leif Svalgaard
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UPDATE: Dr. Judith Curry advises a post on this at Climate Etc. with detailed questions from the unnamed Nature reporter.
http://judithcurry.com/2011/07/27/nature-on-heartland/
J says:
July 27, 2011 at 12:11 pm
Funny, I just finished reading Atlas Shrugged by Ayn and that’s not the gist of what I read. Now admittedly, some who proclaim to follow her ideology may claim what you say, but that’s not what the book says. I suggest you read it for yourself; let me know if you still stand by your statement.
Under my point of view, Skeptic is the scientist who can think critically.
Then, there are other type of scientists who just collect data and publish papers without much critical thinking.
“Nature Disses Skeptics”
Dog bites man.
Nature’s case is that its owner/publisher is obviously biased in favor of AGW. What’s the interest in play? Digging might be worthy of some time. For instance in Canada, the Globe and Mail belongs to the Thomson family which Foundation is involved with Point Carbon and whose Trustee is Sir Crispin Tickell of UNEP fame since 1992… One can easily understand no dissenting viewpoint will be presented there: it took them 2 weeks to even mention climategate!
So what’s up with Nature’s publishing group and owners?
Oh please.
Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools Rm 1:22
All things are full of labour; man cannot utter it: the eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear filled with hearing. Ecc1 : 8
Trust me , if the human race makes it thus far, 200 years down the line, we will still be plucking each others here for who is right or wrong…whether the skeptics have any salt or the limits of the intellectuals / scientific thesis, etc
“the scientists, …….. who do most to acknowledge gaps in their studies and point out the limitations of their data”
Whooa! Has Stalin coughed? Isn’t this a bit of the shift in the Party line? Wasn’t it, not so long ago, the line that the science was settled and absolutely OK as a basis for building public policy? Any ‘disputing’ was necessarily from non-expert persons whose work could not have been published in peer-reviewed journals, because no peer reviewed journal would publish a paper effectively denying the Earth was round. Now we have ‘gaps’ and ‘limitations’. Does that mean the science is not settled after all, and so not an adequate basis for policy? Or are we talking about trifling squabbles within a broader consensus, which in no way prevent policy from ploughing right ahead?. Is there a Kremlinologist in the room?
Two words:
Heartland Institute.
Apparently, Nature has never seen the rampant quashing of dissent that goes on at Real Climate
… or is it that Real Climate aren’t the scientists at all ?
“it is the scientists, not the sceptics, who do most to acknowledge gaps in their studies and point out the limitations of their data — which is where sceptics get much of the mud they fling at the scientists.”
The theory that the trace gas co2 is driving the earth’s climate/weather systems is unscientifically and hegemonously preserved by these so-called “scientists” as the only possible explanation. So putting on fake scientific airs about “admission of gaps in their studies” and “limitations in their data” is a very bad act: the studies and data are all in the service of a rediculous theory, which only stands if all competing explanations are kept out of the discussion.
Real scientists are asking if Earth’s weather and climate systems are responses to its space environment. Notice there are extremely powerful electrical weather events and auroroas on virtually all the other planets.
Henry Galt says:
July 27, 2011 at 12:18 pm
Bystander says:
July 27, 2011 at 11:05 am
Um – not sure that all points of view and open debate are truly embraced here. There seems to be a lot of yelling “troll” when an opposing view point is offered here.
er…
If you troll you get called up on it.
If you post links from deltoid, skepticalscience, realclimate (or worse) as if they are a font of knowledge that we sceptics have, somehow, missed reading you may get called up on it.”
Henry… Why shouldn’t we use links from skepticalscience? The site is full of intelligent people even if they’re not overly nice.
This issue isn’t about being nice… It’s about understanding the impact humans are having on our Climate, and how fossil fuels and the Greenhouse Gas effect is damaging the future of generations to come.
Bystander says:
July 27, 2011 at 11:05 am
Um – not sure that all points of view and open debate are truly embraced here. There seems to be a lot of yelling “troll” when an opposing view point is offered here.
That’s not been my experience.
After the spate of tornadoes in April, I asked “equal and opposite” questions both at WUWT and at Climate Progress. In each case I posited the view opposite to the prevailing one held on that blog (warmist here, sceptical there) and asked the people there for their explanation as to why that view was wrong.
On WUWT I was treated with courtesy, and the science was explained clearly and without fuss or bluster.
On Climate Progress I was first laughed at (apparently they wanted to see Joe “tear me a new one” – whatever that means) accused of being a troll, and was later abused by Romm. Apparently that is some kind of honour. One poster did take pity on me and made an attempt at an explanation, but in the end I was left with the feeling that the reason I had been attacked was that there was actually no truth in the assertions made (that the April tornados were “proof” of AGW) and that Romm/CP couldn’t face up to the fact that they were, basically, just making stuff up.
Hey, they stopped calling us ‘deniers’. What do you expect? An apology?
This is just another in the many steps of walking back from the schilling and hype that Nature, SA, and others fell into regarding the latest End Of The World that once again failed to happen.
Well when science lies so they can get their grants, what are people supposed to do?
I guess we have to go it alone, since we have no grant to bow to.
It’s obvious the people at “Nature” either did not read any of the climategate emails, or did not comprehend what was written and implied in those emails! I was a skeptic before climategate, but those emails gave me concrete evidence that the main players in the AGW hoax did, and continue to, conspire to promote their false science and prevent dissenting science from being published.
But if we could get only 10% of scientists to become skeptics, then won’t skepticism take over? (I read something about a computer model for that, and everybody knows computer models are infallible.)
But seriously, folks, I thought scientists were supposed to be skeptical. Isn’t that how science advances, by questioning the accepted scientific view? Won’t science stop dead if we eliminate skepticism?
Whatever happened to Greg Craven anyway?
J:
What you describe is libertarianism not Republicanism. Republicans are just as much for government involvement as the Democrats, just in different aspects of peoples’ lives. Small “l” libertarians on the other hand believe most people will do the right thing when educated as to what is in their best interests and the government should get out of the way and let them.
Just thought I would clear that up.
J,
apparently you haven’t learned that strings of unsupported and airily broad-brush assertions are rightly blown off here at WUWT. If you have an argument, please make it with facts and reasoning.
A scientist who isn’t a skeptic, isn’t a scientist.
“It is scientists, not sceptics, who are most willing to consider explanations that conflict with their own. And far from quashing dissent, it is the scientists, not the sceptics, who do most to acknowledge gaps in their studies and point out the limitations of their data — which is where sceptics get much of the mud they fling at the scientists.”
Haha, what a load of nonsense, it is even worse they we thought.
They do opposite of what the sceptics generally do, then got the cheek to say they do what the sceptics do, but say sceptics actually don’t do it. One lie at first can be easy to cover up, then lie to cover up the first lie not so easy. So have to lie to cover up that lie to cover up that lie etc. Starts getting difficult to hide the orginal lies in the first place. Then the same people pushing this lie, start forgetting some of the details about each parts of the lying, so many contradictions occur. Between all the lying threats are issued to sceptical scientists making it known about these lies. Finally Nature add another lie to cover up a previous lie and many other lies, will they be no end?
Anyone who calls himself a scientist but refuses to publish all his date and codes because people might use them to disprove his work, is not a scientist, no matter how many letters are published after his name. I’ve never heard of any sceptic withholding data, but if that is the case, then he too should be called on it. Such actions are anti-science in the extreme. But then, labelling people as either a scientist or a skeptic is not much better.
Nature’s comment is true, if you consider that none of the Hockey Team are scientists in any reasonable sense of the word. IMHO, Nature’s comment is more a statement of how things should be. Perhaps its purpose is misdirection to deflect criticism of some of the things published in Nature.
As alarmist David Suzuki keeps saying on the Discovery channel fill-in … real scientists are sceptics !
Really, though, what should we expect? Journals like Nature and Science are little more than mouthpieces of mainline science. They are like trade journals. They do Public Relations for science. As evidence, look at the amount of “fluff” in the form of editorials and science journalism that these journals now include.
In all endeavors, from science to banking, only a fraction of the respective denizens actually practice what they preach. Some disciplines are closer to the ideal than others. Climate scientists are not as biased as, say, sociologists, perhaps. People here may laugh at this, but I find people in the “professions”, the disciplines that run under strict codes of ethics to be generally quite ethical. There are exceptions of course. Yet, it isn’t codes of ethics that lead to ethical behavior in these disciplines, but rather what prompted the codes of ethics in the first place; which is, the accountability that comes from having to provide safe, functional, effective services and products on a daily basis. There is nothing similar in any of the sciences.
tallbloke says:
July 27, 2011 at 1:31 pm
Whatever happened to Greg Craven anyway?
==============================================
As I recall, after much fun was had at his expense, he picked up his marbles and went home. Something about missing his family or something. I don’t think he could take the heat, so he got out of the kitchen.