Over at Steve McIntyre’s, there’s a fascinating discussion going on about the relevance of the hockey stick in the context of the Myles Allen mis-identification of the temperature record in a 2011 conference on Climategate as being the hockey stick issue rather than the paleo-record, Yamal, and “hide the decline” tricks being the central issue.
Allen is in a furor defending himself and his misstep, even going so far as to suggesting Bishop Hill is picking “the least flattering” photos to put in the blog post when in fact it is nothing more than the default thumbnail from YouTube. Even the Communicate 2011 website featuring Allen’s presentation uses the same thumbnail (scroll down). The FAIL on display here is hilarious.
In the middle of all this there’s a new paper which may explain why so many scientists, the IPCC, NGO’s, and governments bet on the hockey stick as the “hot hand” in the climate science card game. The paper has a prescient title:
Why Do People Pay for Useless Advice? Implications of Gambler’s and Hot-Hand Fallacies in False-Expert Setting
by Nattavudh Powdthavee, Yohanes E. Riyanto (May 2012)
So why would I point out a paper on gambling as being relevant to the hockey stick? Because, the hockey stick was in fact a huge gamble on the part of “The Team”. They knew full well the science in it was shonky, but they hedged their bets with techniques (such as Mike’s Nature Trick) that gave a result that they felt sure would be “bought” by the scientific community at large. It was a good gamble at the time, but as Climategate has shown us, it may have been a winning hand with a one time jackpot, but they are losing the card game as the other players slowly realize they have a cheat in their midst.
At the blog “Stumbling and Mumbling” there’s a review of the paper with the headline:
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The strong demand for charlatans
In the improbable event of ever being invited to give a commencement address, my advice to graduates wanting a lucrative career would be: become a charlatan. There has always been a strong demand for witchdoctors, seers, quacks, pundits, mediums, tipsters and forecasters. A nice new paper by Nattavudh Powdthavee and Yohanes Riyanto shows how quickly such demand arises.
…
The predictions were organized in such a way that after the first toss half the subjects saw an incorrect prediction and half a correct one, after the second toss a quarter saw two correct predictions, and so on. The set-up is similar to Derren Brown’s The System, which gave people randomly-generated tips on horses, with a few people receiving a series of correct tips.
And here’s the thing. Subjects who saw just two correct predictions were 15 percentage points more likely to buy a prediction for the third toss than subjects who got a right and wrong prediction in the earlier rounds. Subjects who saw four successive correct tips were 28 percentage points more likely to buy the prediction for the fifth round.
This tells us that even intelligent and numerate people are quick to misperceive randomness and to pay for an expertise that doesn’t exist; the subjects included students of sciences, engineering and accounting. The authors say:
Observations of a short streak of successful predictions of a truly random event are sufficient to generate a significant belief in the hot hand.
(h/t to Marc Morano for the link)
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To me, this sounds exactly like what happened with the Hockey Stick, as it was that “a-ha” moment for many people. IPCC had a “hot hand” and everybody started betting on it. Matt Ridley elucidates on that very issue in the CA comments
Matt Ridley Posted May 28, 2012 at 6:38 AM | Permalink
Far from being an irrelevancy, for me personally, the MBH hockey stick was absolutely vital in first extinguishing my scepticism then fiercely re-igniting it. When I first saw it, I was blown away by the clear evidence of unprecedented climate change, and I immediately told people I was no longer sceptical about climate change, a subject I had not been paying much attention to or writing about at that point, but had expressed some doubts about in print a few years before. That it had been published in Nature was good enough for me at the time. Aha, I thought, a smoking gun.
Then when I came across Steve’s work and realised how full of holes both the method and the data were, and that the IPCC was not interested in listening the criticisms, it made me doubly sceptical about not only paleo-climate data, but climate change theory generally, Nature magazine’s standards and — following the farcical enquiries — the British scientific establishment’s willingness to be bought. The hockey stick was by no means the only thing that caused me to change my mind twice, but it was the most salient.
=================================================================
This paper would seem to explain why so many bet on the shonky science of the Hockey Stick, and why they keep betting on it even though that “hot hand” has disappeared. I loved this part about ‘“the law of small numbers” – i.e. those who believe that a small sample of signals represents the parent population from which it is drawn‘ because it explains Yamal and the cherry picked ten sample set to a fault:
They write in the paper:
There is little economic theory in this area. Rabin (2002) and Rabin and Vayanos (2010) outline a model in which believers of “the law of small numbers” – i.e. those who believe that a small sample of signals represents the parent population from which it is drawn (Tversky & Kahneman, 1971) – will be willing to pay for services by financial analysts after observing randomly occurring streaks of profitable financial performances predicted by these professionals. This fallacious belief in the hot-hand of a financial expert arises as a consequence of the gambler’s fallacy, which is defined as an individual’s tendency to expect outcomes in random sequences to exhibit systematic reversals.
The authors suggest that an investor who believes that the performance of a mutual fund is a combination of the manager’s ability and luck will, at first, underestimate the likelihood that a manager of average ability will exhibit a streak of above- or below-average performance. Following good or bad streaks, however, the investor will revert to overestimate the likelihood that the manager is above or below average, and so in turn will over-infer that the streak of unusual performance will continue (see also Gilovich et al., 1985). The implication of this is that believers of the law of small number will be happy to pay for real-time price information provided by experts, such as stockbrokers or managers of actively-managed funds, even when it is well-documented that actively-managed funds do not outperform their market benchmark on average (see, e.g., Fama, 1991)
The parallels to the bets made on the Hockey Stick, and the continued faith by many that Mann came by his “hot hand” scientifically and the betting was sound are quite plain. It is another example of confirmation bias.
Here’s the paper and abstract:
Why Do People Pay for Useless Advice? Implications of Gambler’s and Hot-Hand Fallacies in False-Expert Setting
by Nattavudh Powdthavee, Yohanes E. Riyanto
(May 2012)
Abstract:
We investigated experimentally whether people can be induced to believe in a non-existent expert, and subsequently pay for what can only be described as transparently useless advice about future chance events. Consistent with the theoretical predictions made by Rabin (2002) and Rabin and Vayanos (2010), we show empirically that the answer is yes and that the size of the error made systematically by people is large.
Text: See Discussion Paper No. 6557 
@richard S Courtney
Richaard, I sincerely hope you continue to post on WUWT, I have enjoyed your comments and anticipate doing so in the future. Everyone gets a little short once in a while. What surprises me is that Anthony stays as calm as he does.
Apropos?
http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2010/12/29/dan-gardner-the-worlds-top-100-thinkers-cement-their-record-of-failure/
@RichardCourtney
This thread is about what it is suggested can be inferred about the ‘hockey stick’ affair from consideration of the paper
Why Do People Pay for Useless Advice? Implications of Gambler’s and Hot-Hand Fallacies in False-Expert Setting
by Nattavudh Powdthavee, Yohanes E. Riyanto (May 2012)
The only pertinent conclusion in that paper is that people want to believe information which they can use to their personal advantage.
That conclusion is a truism. It is a trivial fact known to everybody.
That was NOT what the paper was saying. What the paper said is that even though individuals know that a data series is random, if they are given two correct forecasts of that random data (by definition this must be just coincidence) they will believe the forecaster for the next prediction – even though the series is random so logically forecasting cannot be possible.
Obviously as you state if that forecast of random data fits with the recipients bias then confirmation bias will also play a role. But that was not what the paper was showing.
To quote again
“Subjects who saw four successive correct tips were 28 percentage points more likely to buy the prediction for the fifth round.
This tells us that even intelligent and numerate people are quick to misperceive randomness and to pay for an expertise that doesn’t exist; the subjects included students of sciences, engineering and accounting. The authors say:
Observations of a short streak of successful predictions of a truly random event are sufficient to generate a significant belief in the hot hand.”
However, your leap to an incorrect conclusion shows interesting confirmation bias 😉
@omnologos says: May 28, 2012 at 9:00 am
Agreed. Climate Jihadis (copyright me) is the way I look at them. Look hard, and they are fundamentalists, Never liked fundamentalists of any hue. Never will. This lot are beyond the pal.
Warren in Minnesota says:
May 28, 2012 at 12:26 pm
I had a similar thought comparable to Pamela Gray’s comment. I think that there must a few politicians who deliver snake oil to their constituents in just this fashion at all levels of the republic.
_______________________________
Oh very much so. Before the 2010 election I called everyone I was thinking of voting for and asked pointy little questions. After the election I found they flat out lied to get my vote. GRRrrrr.
The stick was always critical to the AGW message. It appeared to be the only really significant EMPIRICAL evidence for a strong human effect on climate. Without it the advocates need to rely on models, which have failed the test of prediction and clearly to no adequately simulate natural variability. So the stick needed to be defended tooth and nail.
With the stick gone, the advocates are in their last stages of reality denial, as one can discern from their yet more radical and more shrill claims and warnings. “Climate science” has become a form of astrology in which everything that happens is made to fit the dogma, but nothing is definitively predicted.
then delete my previous post- ta
and this one
[Reply: Thank you. Now check your mail. -REP]
Richard S Courtney, It baffles me why you spent a lot of time reading and discussing something you find has zero value. When I come across a thread that doesn’t interest me, I skip it and go on to something that does interest me. What I find interesting, others may not (and visa versa). So I see no point in wasting my time to stop and complain about how useless I think a thread is.
When you’re invited to dinner and the host serves an item you don’t care for, do you just skip it and eat the things you like? Or do you force yourself to eat it and then spend the whole evening berating your host for serving a food you don’t care for? If you do the latter, don’t be surprised if you upset your host and are not invited to dinner again. Most people understand what common Courtesy is. The good thing is, it’s not rocket science so it should be easy to learn.
This tells us that even intelligent and numerate people are quick to misperceive randomness and to pay for an expertise that doesn’t exist; the subjects included students of sciences, engineering and accounting.
————
I thought all of this kind of stuff was pretty well known already.
In fact the same kinds of issues can just as easily mislead people who see cycles everywhere and even people who produce prognostications for the mining industry.
Slightly off topic…. but where are the trolls?
Why is that when a thread directly questions the work of one of the team, the trolls show up to defend it with some of the most obscure links and ridiculous assertions one can imagine. Yet here we are in discussion of the fundamentals of science and belief, and narry a troll to be seen.
I was hoping that Phil Clarke would show up here. Over on the Yamal thread, I have him so tied up in knots that he has not stated clearly for all to see that Briffa’s Yamal reconstruction could not possibly represent global temperatures and challenged me to provide evidence that Briffa, the IPCC or anyone else ever made that claim!
Bringing this back on topic…. If (which I doubt) Phil Clarke actually believes his own drivel, this is an excellent example of cognitave dissonance (which is a big part of what we’re discussing here though nobody has yet used those words in this thread). Backed into a corner on the impossibility of Briffa’s ten trees representing global temperature, Phil Clarke not only stipulated to it being impossible, but then turns around and tries to claim that it was never presented as a representation of global temps in the first place.
So deeply is he invested in his world view that “Briffa is right” that his own logic defeats his own argument. Is he stupid? Havig debated him in several threads, I can assure you he is not, he is very clever and his manipulative deceptions are at times very sophisticated. But he’s shot off both his feet and is now aiming for the knees to protect his belief that Briffa’s work is legit.
Time to add Bafflegab Pays by J. Scott Armstrong, University of Pennsylvania, to the mix
So much for science by “authority” and “Peer-reviewed papers” Scott Armstrong has several other papers and studies that punch holes in pompous Phds. Armstrongs other papers can be acessed via http://jscottarmstrong.com/
Armstrong also has a website : The Global Warming Challenge. It might be a good addition to WUWT.
Dr. Armstrong is the kind of guy you really wish you could take courses from. Too bad I am about 800 miles too far south to take any of his Marketing courses.
TYPO
Over on the Yamal thread, I have him so tied up in knots that he has NOW stated clearly for all to see that Briffa’s Yamal reconstruction could not possibly represent global temperatures and challenged me to provide evidence that Briffa, the IPCC or anyone else ever made that claim!
The role of the “law of small numbers” in climate scientology goes beyond The Hockey Stick. “Global Average Temperature” (GAT) generally increased throughout the 20th Century, and though warming has stalled for 10-15 years, alarmists insist it will resume with a vengeance. It’s like a financial advisor whose stock market system “worked” when the market was rising: “Don’t worry, my foolproof scientific system [CAGW theory] post-predicted the earlier bull market [warming], so the market [GAT] will resume its climb any day now, and soon you’ll be rich [doomed]. Trust me, numbers don’t lie.”
@Gail Combs
Chinese modus operandi: “Punish one, teach a hundred”.
IanM
“…all religions are little more then charlatanism, with no foundation in reality except to concentrate power and wealth in a ruling class….”
—–
Because the ruling class has misused and corrupted religion to maintain power over people doesn’t mean all religion is charlatanism. That would be like declaring all science to be charlatanism because some are willing to misuse and corrupt science for power and personal gain. Neither science nor religion would be of use to charlatans if there wasn’t some basic truths and power to be found in them. In both cases, the trick is to be wise enough to discern truth from falsehood so you don’t end up throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
Gail Combs says (May 28, 2012 at 1:08 pm): “Oh very much so. Before the 2010 election I called everyone I was thinking of voting for and asked pointy little questions. After the election I found they flat out lied to get my vote. GRRrrrr.”
Did you perhaps reveal, even unintentionally, which answer would get your vote? If so, next time try to elicit the answer that won’t get your vote, and see if the candidate(s) takes the bait. 🙂
This sounds right. Given the actual information that Briffa had but disregarded, as learned by McIntyre, I think the team went for the home run (the Nobel Prize and money) and expected the science to follow. It simply did not occur to them that they were wrong.
A long time ago, as an engineer, then as a manager, then as an executive responsible for major investments for a major Fortune 100 company, I learned to: Show the uncensored data, then show how & why you formed the final data & your conclusions. This training produces very humble engineers, honest engineers & informed decision makers. Unless you know what when into the stew, your sure to miss the baloney!
That’s what all CAGW & the Hockey Stick has been all about, hiding the uncensored data & getting the baloney!
davidmhoffer says:
May 28, 2012 at 1:35 pm
TYPO
Over on the Yamal thread, I have him so tied up in knots that he has NOW stated clearly for all to see that Briffa’s Yamal reconstruction could not possibly represent global temperatures and challenged me to provide evidence that Briffa, the IPCC or anyone else ever made that claim!
========================================
David, ask him, since Briffa’s temp reconstruction fell apart because of rising CO2 levels…..was his reconstruction a measure of temp increase…or CO2 increase
Friends:
Please note that I am only providing this post to point out an error of fact which has been posted by two people, has not been corrected by others, and would be a distortion of the discussion if not corrected. I am not writing this for any other reason.
The error is most clearly expressed by Ian W when he writes.
And, therefore, he and another commentator assert that my understanding of the paper by Powdthavee & Riyanto is mistaken. That is an error of fact.
That conclusion of the paper by Powdthavee & Riyanto is not directly relevant to discussion of the immediate adoption of the ‘hockey stick’ because the ‘hockey stick’ was adopted (by the IPCC and others) when there was only one datum: i.e. the MBH ‘hockey stick’ itself).
However, that conclusion (of Powdthavee & Riyanto) confirms the truism that people want to believe information which they can use to their personal advantage. And if the paper by Powdthavee & Riyanto is not confirming that truism then it has no relevance to the ‘hockey stick’ debate.
As an addendum intended to shut-down possible mischievous responses to my presenting this post, I add the following.
Several people (whose opinions I respect) have said I have been in error in this thread when I (twice) tried to explain why I think having this thread on WUWT is a mistake. They may be right because I often make mistakes. But the claim that I made a
is clearly not true and I suspect it is mischievous.
Richard
Thanks to Anthony for giving us this holiday post. I am a little too jaded to believe the people who foisted this scheme on us were fooled by a lucky streak. This was a conscience effort to bilk taxpayers and everyone involved knew it all along.
@richard S. Courtney – I’m back online for a bit while we prep for the next holiday event.
You are most welcome to continue posting, and no I don’t expect people to like everything but there are days when I have my limits for “no good deed goes unpunished”… today is one of those, especially when I could have easily posted nothing at all. I don’t take many days off. I constantly wrestle between wanting to get my life back and keeping this blog going. For today at least, you made the choice easy.
Anthony:
Thankyou. And I apologise that I spoiled your day: it was not my intention.
I genuinely hope you had a good time with your family.
Richard
Dennis Nikols
“I will say, knowing full well I will receive the wrath of the believers, all religions are little more then charlatanism…”
Not wrath but just a hint that this statement lacks logic. ‘Because all my previous girlfriends ended up with someone else, therfore my wife is going out with someone else.’
There is such a thing as trust, however cynically exploited by many.
richard verney, above, appropriately quoted the line, “Still a man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest”. I think we all recognize this weakness. I’m sure I have it. But I think this line from a poem by Edwin Morgan that I learned at school teaches us more: “Deplore what is to be deplored, and then find out the rest.” In other word, finding faults is easy.