Consensus does not necessarily guarantee sound science
Guest post by Forrest M. Mims III
Consensus is often cited in support of scientific paradigms, including anthropogenic climate change. Australian physicist Tom Quirk has neatly dissected the consensus argument for the human role in climate change in an article in Quadrant Online entitled “Of climate science and stomach bugs.” This curiously entitled piece begins with the story of how Australians Barry Marshall and Robin Warren revolutionized the treatment of stomach ulcers in 1982 when they discovered that peptic ulcers are mainly caused by a bacterium.
While their claim was stubbornly rejected by drug companies and surgeons who profited handsomely from treating ulcer patients, in the end truth prevailed over dogma and Marshall and Warren received the 2005 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine.
Quirk’s article then compares the conflicts of interest, money and pseudoscience of the stomach bugs story with the ongoing debate over climate change. His account reinforces the sometimes neglected but essential role of skepticism in all of science and is well worth reading.
See: http://www.quadrant.org.au/blogs/doomed-planet/2013/01/of-climate-science-and-stomach-bugs
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Nick says
“No burning fossil fuel meant no ongoing business, so it should come as no surprise that, in fossil fuel circles, all hell broke loose. Oil and coal companies would not countenance the idea that climate scientists findings were valid. Revenue was under threat, as were share prices and the egos of those who had driven oil and coals remarkably successful marketing campaigns. Governments were slow to change their mind, so oil and coal executives continued to put the planet under the knife, all the while insisting that climate scientists were peddling nonsense.”
Nick, I got news for you. Those who produce fossil fuels are not as stupid as Washington and those naive enough who have been fooled by the Washington crowd into believing renewable fuels will replace their product near term. They are energy companies that hire the best scientists and engineers, pay them accordingly, and know the viability of renwable fuels as well as other options. They have research and engineering departments and are continuously studying means to make a profit selling energy. They are not afraid of renewable fuels, but probably fear stupid regulations and decisions out of Washington that could destroy the US industry and economy.Keep in mind though that most of the US major oil companies already earn circa 50% of their income overseas because of poor access to US Federal Lands and are competing with overseas operations, and they can always relocate to a more favorable economic “climate” as are the “rich” folks from California.
A memorable and succinct article by Tom Quirk who has nailed all the usual suspects. Consensus science is not Science. Science is inquiry and scepticism and rigorous verification. Any one who thinks that Consensus is proof is barking up the wrong Gum Tree.
If you have to resort to claiming consensus then you have a weak argument.
Let’s not forget the old pseudo-science of eugenics, the study of hereditary improvement of the human race by controlled selective breeding. Its supporters included Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, and Winston Churchill. It was approved by Supreme Court justices Oliver Wendell Holmes and Louis Brandeis, who ruled in its favor. The famous names who supported it included Alexander Graham Bell, inventor of the telephone; activist Margaret Sanger; botanist Luther Burbank; Leland Stanford, founder of Stanford University; the novelist H. G. Wells; the playwright George Bernard Shaw; and hundreds of others. Nobel Prize winners gave support. Research was backed by the Carnegie and Rockefeller Foundations. The Cold Springs Harbor Institute was built to carry out this research, but important work was also done at Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Stanford and Johns Hopkins. Legislation to address the crisis was passed in states from New York to California. Sounds like a consensus to me. Many women were sterilized because the courts found them to be mentally unstable.
Continental drift is another example. If I recall correctly, it took decades before the theory was accepted – long after there was plenty of evidence for it. Same with “germs” or bacteria vs. “vapors” or “evil spirits.”
It’s all in Kuhn and Pearcey, really.
[snip. We do not tolerate labeling others as “denialists” here. — mod.]
Tsk tsk. Res ipsa loquitur. Okay, try again:
from Derek Lowe (on Marshall and Warren): “Crazy ideas won’t necessarily get you tossed out of the club. Crazy ideas with nothing to back them up will. But just come back with the evidence, and they won’t be crazy any more. Show me the religion that takes its heretics and makes them bishops, won’t you?”
So, everyone here, publish your ideas that contradict global warming and you too can get a Nobel. And be a bishop, too!!
Indeed, shattering the consensus is the mark of all big breakthroughs in science.
Of course, most science is of the more pedestrian variety, incrementally improving on what we already know (or think we know). It is often good and worthwhile work.
For those who are unfamiliar with the story re stomach ulcers and h.pylori, one of the researchers had to deliberately ingest the bacterium and thereby give himself ulcers, and then take a course of antibiotics, before he was believed. The resistance to challengers of ‘consensus’ beliefs is huge. Rightly so, because there are a lot of quacks and nutters out there. But leaving aside internet memes about ‘magic’ foods and supplements and the like, it is always worth keeping an eye on outliers who are otherwise credible and honest, like these guys.
James says:
January 21, 2013 at 6:11 pm
I bet scientific consensus will beat web blogger self-proclaimed expert 9,999,999 times out of 1,000,000.
You guys are being far too tough on James’ math. He’s only out by a single order of magnitude. That’s quite close for for many who accept consensus CAGW theory.
I have had a passionate AGW activist tell me. “I understand that the greenhouse argument has to do with methane which might escalate in leakage with gas popularity. ” By how many orders of magnitude would that be out? Five? Ten? Of course if methane becomes “popular” more will leak. But by what % would such leakage affect global CH4 levels? It has to be very close to negligible.
Nate Silver demonstrated conclusively once again in the last US elections that good forecasts based on reasonable use of relevant variables and scads of data trumps the pundit guesstimaters every time.
Lots of folk, and lots of pundits, had persuaded that Romney would win.
He lost by around 5 million votes. (I think… I may have that figure wrong. by 3 million votes? Anyway, it was lots of votes.)
One of the reasons I like WUWT is that I am able to post contrarian views to the Skeptics’ Consensus that AGW is a load of over-ripe rubbish.
Of course, to dissent on WUWT, to be skeptical of the Skeptics, almost invariably elicits a gut vicious reaction from some posters. This reaction is very often coupled with a desire to shut me up and run me out of WUWT-town amidst a shower of personal abuse.
Despite this minority of posters, most, and I do mean most, are OK with having reasonable discussions.
The DR of Congo has found a green renewable alternative to the big old fossil. I’m sure it would catch on with Bamma voters and green activists.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/29/world/africa/female-bearers-in-the-democratic-republic-of-congo.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
Nick Kermode says:
January 21, 2013 at 4:51 pm
richardscourtney says:
January 21, 2013 at 5:22 pm
Well, maybe Big Oil et al. really are the evil geniuses people like Nick believe. After all, they’ve actually conned guys like him into fighting their battles for them!
Here’s a clue for you Nick: Oil companies make out like bandits when oil is A) scarce or B) plentiful? If you’re having trouble with the question, google 1970’s oil embargo and 1980’s oil glut.
The ulcer solution was too simple and flew in the face of accepted practice and policy. Many people cannot get their head around simple solutions.
“Any intelligent fool can make things bigger and more complex… It takes a touch of genius – and a lot of courage to move in the opposite direction.” Attributed to Einstein
Many commenters want to throw greed around as a root cause but I disagree. The majority of people do not have bad intentions, this includes the individuals that control big pharma, big energy, and big health care. Although many people, even very intelligent people, cannot think outside of their box. Surgeons want a surgical solution, drug makers want a breakthrough new drug solution, and psychiatrists want a mental fix.
What? A solution that treats ulcers with off the shelf antibiotics? That’s like saying the (enter natural process) causes climate change…
Barry Marshall and Robin Warren are two Aussies who have saved countless people from terrible suffering.
They are Aussie scientific heroes, IMHO.
I came across 2 interesting consensus stories these days as well.
1) The standard model of particle physics was wrong for the longest time in describing neutrinos (in that it was assumed they have no mass); and an astronomer had lost his telescope time/job over claiming that distant galaxies could be connected through filaments contrary to general wisdom, but which turned out to be correct.
Eric H
“Many people cannot get their head around simple solutions.”
Occam’s Razor has been around for centuries. Al Gore and President Obama should use it before they make complete fools of themselves and a shambles of your economy. Same applies to David Cameron and his cronies in the UK
Brian,
As an American expat in the UK, I hope so as well. William of Occam is my hero.
From the causes of most stomach ulcers to the ‘impossible’ quasicrystals – both proponents won a Nobel Prize no less. Yet consensus was strongly against them. Consensus is anti-science?
“Ridiculed crystal work wins Nobel for Israeli”
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/10/06/us-nobel-chemistry-idUSTRE7941EP20111006
“2011 Nobel Prize in Chemistry: ‘Quasicrystals’ Once Thought Impossible Have Changed Understanding of Solid Matter”
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/10/111005080232.htm
As long as research is driven by grants consensus is meaningless. Those at the top award grants or otherwise and how many of you have worked for bosses who say I prefer to promote those who say my work is rubbish and I have got it all wrong?
I know of at least on group of ex climate scientist computer modellers who left because they could not get funding and what is worse had to sign away any rights to publicly promote any of the work they did or anything based on it if they wanted a reasonable severance package.
Go focus on Davos.
That’s where the battle in future will be.
The consensus of scientists is created by the weight of the evidence.
Because all the hundreds of peer reviewed research papers published each month support the AGW theory, the weight of evidence is all on one side of the scales, scientists respond by reflecting that evidential preponderance by exhibiting a consensus. The consensus among scientists is an indirect proxy measure of the strength of the evidence.
I am afraid the Comparison with the peptic ulcer story is rather misleading.
The established medical and drug businesses did have a financial interest in rejecting the bacterial cause of peptic ulcers, but the devil is in the details. It may help to remember that only a small fraction of the people with H. Pylori bacterium get ulcers, for most carriers it is a harmless commensal. A significant minority of peptic ulcer cases do not have the bacterium present. A significant percentage of patients treated to eliminate the bacterium do not get remission from peptic ulcers.
Another poster has suggested the Piltdown man as a hoax similar to AGW. But the Piltdown hoax was identified at the start by the dental experts who examined the finds and pronounced it to be an ape jaw and a human skull. It was only a small cadre of British biologists that continued to accept the skullfor reasons of national prestige. It was not given much credence outside that group. Tere was never a consensus in the scientific community that Piltdown was a credible pre-human fossil.
However the continuing finds of real hominid fossils did create a consensus that humans evolved from pre-human ancestors and that consensus, like the consensus on climate change, is a good indication of the width, depth and strength of the evidence.
James says:
January 21, 2013 at 6:11 pm
I bet scientific consensus will beat web blogger self-proclaimed expert 9,999,999 times out of 1,000,000. But good luck!
Wonderful. Your estimate of chances comes out like this:
– probability of “scientific consensus” is right: p=9.999999
– probability of “web blogger self-proclaimed expert” is right: q=-8.999999
It must be that way, because sum of probabilities of complementary events should come out as 1 (that is, p+q=1 in this case). Now, assuming negative probabilities or ones greater than 1 is a pretty unorthodox approach, but your bet, your responsibility.
In a fair bet the expected value of winning should be equal for the two parties involved. So, let’s assume the bet is about you pay a sum of money Y if the “web blogger self-proclaimed expert” turns out to get it right and get paid X if it is the other way around, that is if the “scientific consensus” prevails. The equation pX=qY should obviously hold, which means X=-0.899999989999999Y (X~-0.9Y).
In other words in the first case you agree to pay $10, in the second one it is also you who pay the bet, $9 this time (a negative sum won is a loss after all). Fair enough.
Heh, unorthodox probabilities come with a price tag attached, don’t they?
I have to admit, “Nick Kermode”‘s comment was HILARIOUS… funniest part of it was that he/she seems to think it had any meaning, and/or some sort of point was scored. Truly, the fact is that the “eeeevil” oil companies are always benefiting no matter how it plays out. The irrational hatred toward them is really quite amusing. (little secret – YOU TOO can buy shares in oil companies… and make money!)
Climate Ace says:
Actually. most of us want guys like you to hang around… you’re entertaining in your breathtaking certainty and lack of knowledge. Often, discussions with you guys will be read by noobs to the site, who then learn (even though you won’t).
Please try to avoid projection… I realize that all Breathless Believer sites want skeptical views to be shut down and hidden, but that’s because it doesn’t really take much to debunk most AGW alarms.
A significant minority of peptic ulcer cases do not have the bacterium present
When I was lying in hospital last year with an ulcer the surgeon told me the figure was ….. 97% of all ulcers are due to bacteria. 3% is only a significant figure to climate scientists.
Greenhouse gas theory has been falsified in so many directions it’s not funny.
Fifty years’ rise in CO2 brought it up by a third, overall. Not a single replicable record of earth frequency infrared light in the atmosphere rising along with it.
Fifty years’ rise in CO2 without temperature correlations.
Thirty years of computerzed assemblies to flex the mirrors of earth-based telescopes and not one single word by the design, maintenance, operations people associated with these about the extra infrared light in the atmosphere, leading to more motion of it.
Heat on gas is motion. Period.
The mirror flexing assemblies are designed * * * precisely for removing magnified detection of motion of air due to earth frequency infrared spectra* * * – there’s no such thing as “Greenhouse Gas isn’t falsifiable.” It’s a giant heater in the sky. Period.
If widespread experiment hasn’t shown a giant heater in the sky growing warmer in step by step progression with the presence of CO2 and Water then it is falsified.
When 50 years of mankind’s most disciplined and exacting minds having their fingers on the nuclear button while having their ships’ atmospheres go from that at sea level, in open hatch & fan on conditions,
to 4,000 ppm CO2
and not one single nuclear, electrical, thermodynamic, electronic, mechanical, engineer write a single paper
about how the heat handling capacity of air changed as the CO2 rose to 4,000 ppm
that’s falsification.
When 50 years of mankinds’ most advanced electronic space & internet age instrumentation arrays, detect not a single correlation between ever rising CO2 and overall water vapor,
that’s falsification.
When 14 years’ search for infrared downwelling in night skies shows
LESS infrared downwelling than before, that’s falsification.
——————-
Long-Term Trends in Downwelling Spectral Infrared Radiance over the U.S. Southern Great Plains
by
P. Jonathan Gero Space Science and Engineering Center,
University of Wisconsin Madison,
Madison, Wisconsin
and
David D. Turner
**NOAA/National Severe Storms Laboratory,
Norman, Oklahoma,
and Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences,
University of Wisconsin Madison,
Madison, Wisconsin**
——————————-
Abstract:
A trend analysis was applied to a 14-yr time series of downwelling spectral infrared radiance observations from the Atmospheric Emitted Radiance Interferometer (AERI) located at the Atmospheric Radiation Measurement Program (ARM) site in the U.S. Southern Great Plains.
The highly accurate calibration of the AERI instrument, performed every 10 min, ensures that any statistically significant trend in the observed data over this time can be attributed to changes in the atmospheric properties and composition, and not to changes in the sensitivity or responsivity of the instrument.
The measured infrared spectra, numbering more than 800 000, were classified as clear-sky, thin cloud, and thick cloud scenes using a neural network method.
* * *
The AERI data record demonstrates that the downwelling infrared radiance is decreasing over this 14-yr period in the winter, summer, and autumn seasons but it is increasing in the spring; these trends are statistically significant and are primarily due to long-term change in the cloudiness above the site.
* * *
Received: November 16, 2010; Accepted: March 23, 2011″
——————-
That’s called ‘FALSIFIED when several different fields, each measuring an unmistakable and exceptionally easily measured entity: heat, in form of light,
check what the people who thought Mannian Statistics is real,
said,
and they’re found WRONG.
And not just WRONG
but able to be proven wrong on ANY scale
from a BOTTLE with some more CO2 in it
to a submarine
to a university greenhouse
to the entire earth, as measured with ground based optical, ground based infrared,
and space based infrared,
astronomy.
Also balloon drifted instruments auto-transmitting data show no heating of the upper part, of the lower troposphere. They didn’t show warming and government employees tried to claim they were all broken: what’s their excuse since the allegedly broken ones were fixed? We can check for a tropospheric hot spot with them again. It’s not there. We know that because of the next thing:
then there are the myriad aircraft, military, private, and commercial, whose thermal sensors are good enough for trusting human life too, criss-crossing the skies at every hour the past 50 years:
not one field of instrumentation anywhere
CHECKING claims of Greenhouse Gas Theory atmospheric dynamics,
finds evidence it’s true.
Certainly they’ve proven the atmosphere’s not warmer by any mechanism remotely connectable with anything having to do with the infrared-resonant gases.
That’s called falsified when that happens, and Greenhouse Gas Theory’s been falsified, because all the above happened.