Guest post by Henry H. Bauer
WUWT readers might find some interest in my new book, Dogmatism in Science and Medicine: How Dominant Theories Monopolize Research and Stifle the Search for Truth
http://www.mcfarlandpub.com/book-2.php?id=978-0-7864-6301-5
Here’s a synopsis:
Unwarranted dogmatism has taken over in many fields of science: in Big-Bang cosmology, dinosaur extinction, theory of smell, string theory, Alzheimer’s amyloid theory, specificity and efficacy of psychotropic drugs, cold fusion, second-hand smoke, continental drift . . . The list goes on and on.
Dissenting views are dismissed without further ado, and dissenters’ careers are badly affected. Where public policy is involved — as with human-caused global warming and HIV/AIDS — the excommunication and harassment of dissenters reaches a fever pitch with charges of “denialism” and “denialists”, a deliberate ploy of association with the no-no of Holocaust denying.
The book describes these circumstances. It claims that this is a sea change in scientific activity and in the interaction of science and society in the last half century or so, and points to likely causes of that sea change. The best remedy would seem to be the founding of a Science Court, much discussed several decades ago but never acted on.
Reviews so far have been quite favorable, see http://henryhbauer.homestead.com/Dogmatism-Reviews.html
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I have to agree that a government ‘Science Court’ would be promptly co-opted by activists, as has happend with just about every professional and governmental organization.
Look what is happening right now with the EPA:
http://washingtonexaminer.com/november-surprise-epa-planning-major-post-election-anti-coal-regulation/article/2512538#.UJfbiY5q4UV
The best remedy would seem to be the founding of a Science Court, much discussed several decades ago but never acted on.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
That would be completely daft. Whoever controlled the court would control the science. The notion that such a thing could be set up without itself being corrupted at some point is…. daft.
It will be an “interesting intellectual challenge” for people of broad minds to look at this..
http://www.lenr-canr.org/acrobat/OrianiRAenergeticc.pdf
Please note: 250,000 * 4.5 MeV > single particle energy at CERN.
But, of course Dr. Oriani (350 + publications in Electrochemistry, distinguished career, virtually “concert pianist” keyboard artist..) is just a QUACK now, he’s violated the DOGMA!
See Halton Arp, Seeing Red: Redshifts, Cosmology and Academic Science (1997), available here: http://www.amazon.com/Seeing-Red-Redshifts-Cosmology-Academic/dp/0968368905/ref=cm_cr_pr_product_top
Prof. Arp uses observational evidence to argue that the redshift of quasars and other objects is not caused by recessional velocity, but is intrinsic. The book contains ample photographic evidence of high-redshift objects linked to others with low redshifts. Prof. Arp suggests that quasars are not usually far-flung objects, but ejecta of closer galaxies, and may in fact be young galaxies themselves.
If he is right, then the assumption of an expanding Universe, which underlies the theory of the Big Bang, is wrong, and so is the BB. But this distinguished scholar has been disgracefully blacklisted by the academic astronomical establishment, his papers and views declared unwelcome in journals and at conferences.
There are none so intolerant, and defensive, as scientists who have their egos invested in their theories, to the point where they become unchallengeable dogma.
/Mr Lynn
Many of the problems being experienced in Climate Science are also being experienced in the fields of weight loss and nutrition. Unfortunatily, the perversion of th study of nutrition started in the early 60’s. Because of this the world is now experiencing the epidemic of obesity. Thank goodness for the web. “Good Calorie, Bad Calories” by Gary Taubes explains the perversion of the science of weight loss and nutrition.
David M. Hoffer has already said it perfectly.
Science Court?
Contradiction in terms.
Science Court? You mean someplace the delusional, the atrophied, and the vested can exercise real power?
To Tibor Skardnelli:
You wrote: “But, the academies of science didn’t have that ambition? The peer review process and all the rest aren’t there to precisely avoid these drifts?”
The process of peer review can become corrupted. Search on this site for valuable critiques of the current peer review process (e.g. the attitudes revealed in the first tranche of Climategate e-mails). Another outstanding critique of the peer review process was authored by the late Thomas Gold–an astrophysicist who had the annoying habit of stepping outside of field, making a seemingly outrageous claim–and being proven right. See:
http://www.jpands.org/vol8no3/gold.pdf
Dogma and suppression in science (all fields, paradigms don’t give up easily) is a major problem. The public is not aware of this. It’s rotten to the core.
Virtually any system can be manipulated. Look at the social sciences; they cite each other to a ridiculous extent. If there are scores of citations in a paper you know it is to keep the money flowing from government to the trough/gravy train. eg Lewandowsky paper – Misinformation and its Correction: Continued Influence and Successful Debiasing
http://www.cogsciwa.com/
22 pages of references; he may have left out a few of the worlds social scientists.
In matters closely related to atmospheric physics, Ludwig Boltzmann had a really tough time selling his theory of statistical thermodynamics in the latter 19th century because it requires a belief in the existence of atoms and molecules:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludwig_Boltzmann#Philosophy
“Boltzmann’s kinetic theory of gases seemed to presuppose the reality of atoms and molecules, but almost all German philosophers and many scientists like Ernst Mach and the physical chemist Wilhelm Ostwald disbelieved their existence.”
Yes, that’s the same Mach whose name is linked to the supersonic ‘Mach index’. Mach and many other prominent scientists of the day believed that matter was continuous. Why else would God have created the Real Numbers? (Curmudgeon Kronecker knew that God only created the Integers, the rest was the work of Man.)
It wasn’t until J.J. Thompson finally proved the existence of electrons in 1897 (for which he received the Nobel Prize in 1906) that these “smooth matter” believers finally had to gave up and accept the atomic theory of matter.
So the “take-away” here is scientific “progress” is often one step backwards, two steps forward.
Roger Knights says:
November 5, 2012 at 6:51 am
More quotes from Bauer’s book, Science or Pseudoscience?:
Roger, you spend too much time in polite company. Fight with every fibre the establishment of a ” Science Court” or other regulatory bureaucracy – that would end up shutting out the last trickle of dissenting science. I don’t believe you to be a naive from all I have read of you. I suspect the suggestion comes out of frustration in finding a solution. A start would be to set up a disciplinary body as they have for engineers that disciplines unacceptable practices, inadequate skills, etc.. Engineers have to adhere to a strong code of ethics and can be barred from their profession if a violation is serious enough. Remedies for lesser infractions include suspensions from practice, retraining requirements, remedial courses, study of ethics, etc. Cooking up data using invalid statistical techniques would certainly be considered a serious breach as would intimidation of journal editors who publish sceptical papers. Perhaps scientists should be demoted – have to redo their PhD’s, work as technicians for 5 years and sit an examination to test their capability with the tools they need to do the kind of research they do. High committees and courts definitely would be a wrong step. It is more or less what we have now essentially – lets not give it a scepter.
Its that old “body count” mentality from Vietnam, just make the numbers look big and everyone assumes progress is being made.
They say if it cannot be quantified it cannot be managed or scored.
What they forget to say is if it can be quantified and scored someone will figure out a way to cook the books.
Larry
Welcome to some enlightenment. The greed for power is in everything tied to gold. Misinformation and propaganda are layered in science to protect those who hold the oil for the lamp.
I suppose everyone here is generally aware that cancer research in this country had been in a virtual stall for two decades because the government would only participate in research that conformed to a model of its own devising. One that was an obvious dead end when it came to effective treatments. In fact the last wave of truly effective treatments have come from fields afar, such as the HVP/Cervical Cancer link.
I left science many years ago when, as a post doc, the head of department refused to fix two crucial problems with the equipment until his students had finished collecting data for their PhDs! He didn’t really question that the work needed doing.
Back then, in 1975, I don’t think things were as bad as they have become now.
Part of the problem, is, I think, that science has produced several towers composed of layers of theory, together with experimental data that depends of the theories. Think, for example, of the amount of cosmological research that would become worthless if it became accepted that a significant number of red shifts don’t represent the distance of the objects!
People also throw around the word ‘proof’ far too much in science. The concept of proof is really only applicable to maths, and the idea that (say) the discovery of thermal radiation at 3 deg K ‘proved the big bang theory, seems quite absurd. Couldn’t the radiation have had other causes?
However, I would have one word of caution to Anthony. I’d be cautious about pursuing the analogies with the other issues discussed in Henry Bauer’s book – not because they may not be valid, but because warmists will try to smear you by association. Likewise, I’d say that someone running a website devoted to cold fusion (say), would be well advised to avoid the climategate controversy.
At the very least, improved calorimetry (the science of measuring the heat of ____ reactions or physical changes) techniques, methods and equipment would result …
.
Oops, mods/Anthony, one in the spam filt b/c I forgot to trim a verbotten word in quoted text … TIA _Jim
P.G. Sharrow says:
November 5, 2012 at 7:50 am
A Science Court would not work as it would be captured by the “powers that be” and therefore no improvement over the present system. It may actually make things worse. The Internet/blogisphere Is the real solution. pg
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I agree. If you want to know the ‘truth’ or the closest thing we have today to the ‘truth’ you best bet is to get on the internet and read all the conflicting information. With health and diet I can try a ‘new’ idea and monitor the results on my own body. You can easily use a weight scale, blood pressure cuff and blood glucose meter at home to take out some of the subjectiveness. You can also get blood work done by a doctor before and after when you think you have hit on the correct diet for your body type.
As Bob Johnston said with the “wheat belly” high blood pressure and “pre-diabetes” in much of the American population, it is well worth putting a bit of effort into eating the best diet for your health. (I think of bread as an “edible napkin” at best and a slow poison at worst.)
Too bad other science is not as easily tested by the layman.
Bob, the dominance of the Standard Model in cosmology is potentially far more egregious than “the team” is in climatology from a strictly scientific and mathematical point of view. The battles over fundamental physics are just as serious and potentially more important to us scientifically and technologically. Among other matters there is the red shift and Hubble’s Constant. Like the capacity of CO2 to absorb LIR, there is little controversy regarding the correlation of red shift to distance. But, there are also anomalous objects, particularly pairings of active galaxies with moderate red shifts and very high red shift objects. Imaging seems to show connections of strings of matter (gas and dust) tying the objects together. Halton Arp first noticed this. His catalog of unusual – “peculiar” I believe is the word he used – galaxies is a standard reference in astronomy, but Arp’s publicly expressed doubts about the nature and cause of the red shift have lead to his being cut off from funding and access to instrument time in the US, There are other approaches as well. One shows that there seems to be a very close relationship of the red shift and the rest mass of the electron. Sir Fred Hoyle demonstrated in the only unpublished keynote address to the AAS that the mathematics of relativity can be employed show that red shift should correlate inversely with the age of matter, which would be quite odd. There are tremendous implications if a new steady state cosmology were to emerge. And that is merely one tiny corner of one discipline.
Ah yes a science court, with the press as watch dog – thats what got us to this political/economic disaster that is AGW. When you have state sponsored science and state regulated markets you get what you are taxed for. Please see the EUs’ “energy” Commissioners’ latest promise to force the UK to double the UKs “renewable” energy production. AGW is a top-down politically driven perversion of science. We already have self-appointed judges of the science. Before assuming the position of dictator (unelected), the EU Commissioner and his 2 assistants were lawyers.
A science court would surely be as much a victim of prevailing prejudice as any other “official” science body.
It looked promising until I read the “Science Court” bit, which I find inconsistent with the message the author (seemingly) wants to convey.
Today you have doctors like Dr Dzugan treating high cholesterol as a symptom of low hormone levels with almost 100% success rate and yet you have virtually every doctor out there prescribing statins to treat the symptom. I think he will eventually win a Nobel Prize like Dr. Barry Marshall.
If you want to see just how bad the “scientific” dogma in medicine is just try to get a doctor or health nurse to discuss the seasonal influenza vaccine shortcomings as described in the work of Dr. Lisa Jackson and the reviews of the doctors and researchers at cochrane.org
http://ije.oxfordjournals.org/content/35/2/337.short
http://summaries.cochrane.org/CD001269/vaccines-to-prevent-influenza-in-healthy-adults-
Keep in mind both groups are not anti-vaccine. They actually have a high opinion of some vaccines but see little value in the seasonal influenza vaccine. Try to get your doctor to even read their work. He will probably call you names and in some cases refuse to treat you. They now want to force all health care workers to get the seasonal influenza vaccine or be fired and refuse to discuss anything that doesn’t back their position.
Science for sale is a huge problem in society and it isn’t limited to climate research.