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 don’t know of any dogma in fusion research. I mean, granted it’s always been 40 years away, but still… 😛 . The problem with cold fusion I think is more to do with the many charlatans and ignorant types who claim to have discovered it… when you get enough of them, it’s easier to just say “what a load of rubbish” and leave it at that.
As for the others listed… hmm. I think the ones with the most dogma attached are the ones with the greatest media exposure (now there’s a surprise). Take second-hand smoking – whether it’s harmful or harmless doesn’t matter if you can seize it as an issue to ban more smoking for some people. WRT HIV/AIDS… I suppose it’s possible that you could get AIDS (or failing that, something with very similar symptoms) through other means, but if 99.9…% of all cases of AIDS can be traced back to sex with someone who was HIV+ (or any of the other vectors HIV can use), and that IS a known cause… yeah. At some point you have to say “sure it may be possible, but hey, even if it’s right, it’s morally better to leave that to one side while we deal with the very real issue of HIV-caused AIDS”.
re: ferd berple November 5, 2012 at 7:41 am
quote “…vidence for new ideas is being held back by government institutions?”
For anybody working in a government job; Policy is God.
Once a policy is in place, its one hell of a battle to nullify it, if that is even possible. More enduring than stone is a policy, regardless of how inappropriate it is.
That dog doesn’t hunt; not one repeatable, verified, experiment has been reported where magnets/magnetism have been used to actually arrive at ‘o-ver-un-ity’ energy production (e.g. in the so-called “Rosemary Ainslie Circuit”). The young, inexperienced ‘garage’ experimenters in that field don’t understand the energy exchange in resonant circuits (between the inductor and the capacitor or the ‘strays’ involving those components) and which remain un-revealed so long as they rely on slow-response meters like DMMs and avoid the use of dynamic-display instrumentation like oscilloscopes (which have been involved in the real sciences since the 1930’s) which would allow them to ‘integrate the area under the curve’ and make power and energy measurements on the odd ‘waveforms’ they see in their circuit … unlike LENR where ‘excess heat’ **has** been reported and demonstrable time and time again …
Lucy, I’ll bet, is unaware of the ‘work’ (of course?) in industry specifically in the field of switching power supplies (over the last +30 years or so, beginning first in the military market), where, should ‘excess energy’ production ever have been observed during input-output energy efficiency measurements during development product *ALL EYES* in the engineering department would have been ALL OVER those circuits TO DETERMINE where this ‘excess energy’ was being developed! Trust me, these kinds of things draw the attention of engineers!!
You see Lucy, this *stuff* isn’t that hard to measure. Science isn’t like the field of ‘divining’ or fortune-telling where genealogy (one’s lineage to one’s forefathers and grandmothers!!!) is ‘said’ to play the important part in one’s abilities, rather, with science, it’s a matter of the application of one’s mind, the application of logic and the application of the field of metrology (the science of measurement) to make these judgement calls of ‘fake’ or ‘real’ …
.
We can see how Policy is currently being implemented here:
http://www.canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/50524
My disillusionment with science arose when I was in graduate school and spent about three months failing to reproduce a reaction originally published by a “big name in science”. When I finally gave up and approached my supervisor, his glib response was “they probably faked their results”. The most striking part of his response was his attitude: it conveyed to me the fact that he considered faking results as being nothing unusual.
On another topic, my understanding (from anecdotal sources) is that the AIDS epidemic in Africa is really an agglomeration of all the diseases of poverty; these receive minimal funding from the various international aid agencies. However, AIDS attracts bucket loads of money; therefore the African health services have learned to classify any diagnosed endemic disease as “AIDS”, and thereby get funded. The actual incidence of AIDS is apparently very low.
Spence_UK says:
” While I have no problem questioning science, when that leads directly to harming peoples health (as it can in this instance), I’m afraid I have to call out that quackery.”
Here’s a link to Peter Duesberg’s site. I don’t really think it is fair to accuse him of quackery and the are many parallels in the HIV/AIDS story and climate change alarmism.
http://www.duesberg.com/
Welcome to Peter Duesberg’s HIV/AIDS research web site.
Peter H. Duesberg, Ph.D. is a professor of Molecular and Cell Biology at the University of California, Berkeley. Biographical Sketch
He isolated the first cancer gene through his work on retroviruses in 1970, and mapped the genetic structure of these viruses. This, and his subsequent work in the same field, resulted in his election to the National Academy of Sciences in 1986. He is also the recipient of a seven-year Outstanding Investigator Grant from the National Institutes of Health.
On the basis of his experience with retroviruses, Duesberg has challenged the virus-AIDS hypothesis in the pages of such journals as Cancer Research, Lancet, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Science, Nature, Journal of AIDS, AIDS Forschung, Biomedicine and Pharmacotherapeutics, New England Journal of Medicine and Research in Immunology. He has instead proposed the hypothesis that the various American/European AIDS diseases are brought on by the long-term consumption of recreational drugs and/or AZT itself, which is prescribed to prevent or treat AIDS. See The AIDS Dilemma: Drug diseases blamed on a passenger virus.
That’s a famous surname, Johannes. Any relation to Stephen?
Here is an example of what Richard Martin (Super Fuel) calls “Technological Lock-in,” similar to what happened with the “IBM PC.”
In this case the Thorium Molten Salt Reactor project was cancelled and discarded in favor of a more conventional reactor design. The scientists say they were ordered to halt all work immediately and no funding was going to be provided for properly decommissioning the experimental reactor. Years later, the say, the site had to go through a very expensive clean up operation because of that omission. See dinner conversation below at the 15 minute mark:
ORNL Thorium Molten Salt Reactor Experiment Researchers –
Dick Engel & Syd Ball – Dinner & Interview :
“Published on Sep 28, 2012 by gordonmcdowell”
53 likes, 1 dislike; 4,345 Views; 34:07 min
“Dick Engel and Syd Ball explain over dinner (and a post-dinner interview) their involvement with Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s thorium molten salt research. Why are molten salt reactors important? Were there any significant challenges? Why was the program shut down?”
* * * * * * * * * * * *
Kirk Sorensen produced a fast pace video that goes into the political details (including recordings of President Nixon) that explains why this program was shutdown to focus all work on the more conventional Sodium Fast Breeder reactor. One driver for these projects was a belief that uranium was rapidly being depleted and so some form of ‘breeder’ reactor was going to be required. It is important to note that the real technological advantage here is the liquid fueled reactor concept that allows almost all fuel and dangerous long-lived transuranic wastes to be consumed and the only reason for going to all the trouble to use thorium is a lack of uranium that is not yet a problem, especially as liquid fueled reactors are so efficient. Canadian, Dr David LeBlanc’s great applause line was “Come for the thorium, stay for the reactor.” The solid fuel rods of current light water cooled reactors must be replaced after only a small portion of the fuel is consumed because they cannot contain the dangerous internal nuclear waste that has been generated. I understand that both reactor types produce the same amounts of the more benign short-lived (<300 yr) hot fission fragment waste.
The Thorium Molten-Salt Reactor: Why Didn’t This Happen
(and why is now the right time?)
“Uploaded by GoogleTechTalks on Dec 22, 2011”
601 likes, 16 dislikes; 52,273 Views; 36:02 min
Google Tech Talk
December 16, 2011
Presented by Kirk Sorensen
Minor correction to my last post: for (>300 yr) read (less than 300 yr)
Also re Duesberg.
Climate change skeptics are familiar with this sort of treatment and language.
“The tenured professor of molecular and cell biology — who said he has been called “homophobic” and a “mass murderer” in the past for his beliefs — elicited further controversy after the publication of his most recent article in a scientific journal sparked the resignation of a member of the journal’s editorial board.”
and:
“People who deny the causality of AIDS are denying reality,” said Jeff Sheehy, director for communications at the UC San Francisco AIDS Research Institute, in an email. “I know individuals infected with HIV who are dead because they believed denialists and … initiated treatment too late to save their lives.”
and:
“Duesberg said his beliefs have limited his academic career on campus. He has been teaching a laboratory course since 1987 and claims he was restricted by other faculty from giving a lecture for more than 20 years.”
http://www.dailycal.org/2012/02/22/uc-berkeley-professor-denies-link-between-hiv-and-aids/
Alex Heyworth says:
November 5, 2012 at 5:40 pm
That’s a famous surname, Johannes. Any relation to Stephen?
=============================================================
No, no relation.
However, I understand that one of my namesakes was instrumental in the establishment of the transdimensional law firm “Wolfram & Hart, Attorneys at Law”.
I suspect that our good buddy Mickey Mann would be well served if he retained their services.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolfram_%26_Hart
Rather than a science court, victims of abuse of the scientific method of inquiry need their own pressure group. For a few million US$ per year we could have one.
I recently wrote a paper after attending a Royal Society Meeting (link) and tried to find instances of where the Royal Society as an institution had contributed to science. Strangely such events were very rare, and one of the few exceptions was the setting up of a network of meteorological stations. Indeed, there is a notable early example of the Royal Society hampering the development of early time pieces (by John Harrison) which allowed accurate measurement of longitude, because the dominant thought was that this would be achieved via astronomical measurements (of small movement on the moon relative to stars with longitude).
So, I wonder how much of this criticism is “cherry picking” recent examples of problems. However, on the other side, I have noticed a marked slow-down in the speed of development of physics in that the whole subject changed in the early 20th century, but it has remained almost unchanged (at University entrance level) since.
_Jim says, November 5, 2012 at 4:52 pm: Lucy Skywalker says November 5, 2012 at 12:21 pm: … and other “fringe” developments along the lines of post-Tesla etc.
That dog doesn’t hunt; not one repeatable, verified, experiment has been reported where magnets/magnetism have been used to actually arrive at ‘o-ver-un-ity’ energy production
……………..
_Jim, As an electrical engineer I completely agree with you. You are right. But Lucy is a Skywalker and wanders free. Don’t spoil her fun!
Crispin in Seoul says:
November 5, 2012 at 3:36 pm
My (late) mathematician friend David Garcia-Andrade was particularly bugged by the invention of Dark Matter rather than to admit gravity varies with distance. In his book, “Casting paradox out of Cantor’s paradise” he corrects several errors in the very foundation of mathematics saying that the reason progress was so limited in mathematics is because of the refusal to correct (known) basic mistakes made by Cantor.
Google doesn’t want to find either your friend or his book. Any hints?
_Jim and David Socrates
Your comments are noted and your goodwill is appreciated. I reserve however the right to observe things for myself too! Why, these days, even on youtube one can discover extraordinary things if one goes “skywalking” – and not all are fakes – but one has to look carefully because some people delight in making fakes, as with Crop Circles.
_Jim says “Science isn’t like the field of ‘divining’ or fortune-telling where genealogy (one’s lineage to one’s forefathers and grandmothers!!!) is ‘said’ to play the important part in one’s abilities, rather, with science, it’s a matter of the application of one’s mind, the application of logic and the application of the field of metrology (the science of measurement) to make these judgement calls of ‘fake’ or ‘real’ …”
Two problems here. First, you simply state one view of the ideal of Science, it is certainly not its reality in practice – which is the subject of Bauer’s book here. Second, you refer to “divining” in a way that suggests your ignorance of the subject, or perhaps your information from sources that are against it – whereas, for good science’s sake, you should be able to refer to sources both for and against – and the best you can find on both sides. I’ve never met or read of a diviner focussing on genealogy – this subject belongs far more to biology, biochemistry, sociology and psychology.
All of the great scientists for whom I have profound respect have also had respect for both sides of Reality, both the inner and the outer, and the sometime appearance of strange anomalies that beat the normal laws of physics. Bauer is such a man. All that is required is to apply the apparently contradictory faculties of openness and discernment, and to pay very careful attention.
First get the Government into science. Then when it [snip] up science, then get a science court. Then get an ombudsman to monitor the court and on an on goes the tower of babel.
I request the author to list some respectable dissenters of Big Bang Cosmology (In case of CAGW, the list will be something like Richard Lindzen, Bob Carter, Ian Plimer, …) … Thank you!
ps
Some readers here might think I am a bit naively drawn into “funny” stuff sometimes. I’ve noticed however that often people are unwittingly talking about themselves rather than the “other” they appear to be talking about, if they have not developed enough self-awareness. People here see this clearly when it comes to Lewandowsky, but closer to home is harder to spot.
I let the impressions stay partly because I know that the time is coming that more mainstream Science needs to open up to a very great deal of “funny stuff” which is already being researched in abundance on the edges – sometimes, it is true, with naivety, sometimes even with intent to deceive – but that is not the whole story and the baby should not be thrown out with the bathwater. That is not a truly scientific approach! However, the “funny stuff” touches areas where many people have irrational dislikes and rejections – a telltale sign is OTT behaviour. We see this with both Leif and his opposite number, Geoff Sharp.
From the beginning of Science, scientists tended to keep the “funny” side of their work hidden – or it got hidden for them by subsequent “followers”, as is the case with Newton and Clerk Maxwell. But we damn well need to grow up. There is important material here.
The other side of my work is that I fight for the good observational science seen here, typified by such as Anthony Watts and Bob Tisdale, in “green” and “alternative” and “orthodox” circles which need disabusing of their fantasies.
What all the sides of my work have in common is paying attention. Thus I look at both the external evidence and at my internal reactions. Over the years, this builds good habits which are fundamentally aligned to Scientific Method.
Bauer made four “anti-trust” suggestions:
1. Allocate 10% of public R&D money to contrarians.
2. Appoint contrarians to advisory & grant-giving panels.
3. Create a Science Court to advise legislators considering legislation involving scientific issues to arbitrate between mainstream & contrarian claims.
4. Appoint ombudsmen to journals, foundations, and government agencies.
Bauer’s footnote 39 referenced a bibliography of writings about the science court idea, but its link has gone bad. I Googled for: “Science Court: A Bibliography” and got four useful links at the top of the page:
1. Science Courts… and Mixed Science-Policy Decisions
http://ipmall.info/risk/vol4/spring/taskfor.htm
The Science Court Experiment: An Interim Report*:
(* Reprinted with permission from 193 Science 654 (1976))
Task Force of the Presidential Advisory Group on Anticipated Advances in Science and Technology**
(** The task force is composed of three members of the presidential advisory group — Dr. Arthur Kantrowitz (chairman), Dr. Donald Kennedy and Dr. Fred Seitz – and [16 others])
2. The Science Court is Dead; Long Live the Science Court!
http://ipmall.info/risk/vol4/spring/field.htm
3, Symposium Index – The Science Court – Pierce Law Center IP Mall
http://ipmall.info/hosted_resources/RISK_Symposium_ScienceCourt.asp
4. The Science Court: A Bibliography. Jon R. Cavicchi*.
http://ipmall.info/risk/vol4/spring/bibliography.htm
=================
I’ve taken a quick peek at these and am very impressed. I’ll return later with more to say. Critics of the Science Court idea should check out what’s actually been proposed.
PS: Here’s the link to the Amazon page for the book, where one can download the Kindle version for $15, which I’ve done. (Sorry if this link has been given before–I don’t remember seeing it.)
http://www.amazon.com/Dogmatism-Science-Medicine-Dominant-Monopolize/dp/0786463015/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1352205888&sr=1-1&keywords=Dogmatism+in+Science+and+Medicine
Bauer’s book gives this link to the names; many subsequent signers have been added: http://www.cosmologystatement.org/
TRIM @9.53
The other matter in the discussion of the seasonal flu vaccine, at least to my observations in Australia is…workforce/labour issues.
The vaccination is offered to employees in the government services, thus maintaining a [unionised] workforce of ‘public health’ and OH&S pseudo-specialists. The regulatory control which the ‘new public health’ exerts over the populace, backed often by poor research methodology & methods, is quite amazing. Everything from packaging tobacco in olive green packets through to control of playground equipment & installation. The list is endless. As is the research cohort which has developed to support this ‘industry’. Victoria (State of Australia) has a massive local government public health enterprise, Queensland (another State) being second.
Roger Knight, thank you for your insightful and interesting comments which I have read over the past few days.
I’m 10% thru Bauer’s new book. It’s an easy read. Here’s a link to the Amazon page where all his books are listed:
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=ntt_athr_dp_sr_1?_encoding=UTF8&field-author=Henry%20H.%20Bauer&ie=UTF8&search-alias=books&sort=relevancerank
Bob Kutz says:
Wow . . . I had no idea this was happening in BBT Cosmology or string theory . . .
Someone else may have mentioned this (haven’t read all comments yet) but as for string theory, “The Trouble with Physics” addresses groupthink in that field.