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
Anecdotal contribution: I’m not a veterinarian. Perhaps one of you fine readers is, and can confirm or deny… I remember when this all came to light. I also recall hearing that vets had long known and been treating and curing ulcers in pigs with a combination of antibiotics and bismuth (pepto-bismol ring a bell with anyone?). Don’t know if this is true. But, if so, it would be a perfect example of all those times we hear “Well, you’re not a climate scientist, so what do you know anyway?” since, of course, everyone knows that medical doctors are one step below Gods and vets are one step above butchers /sarc. Not to demean Marshall and Warren, but it is just possible that they were the first to accept what their “lesser brethren” had already known about.
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.
————
I am skeptical about whether Quirk has captured the truth about the ulcer story and also the validity of the analogy with climate science.
I am also skeptical that any of the WUWT audience will question in any way some agenda driven story telling. It will be ra ra ra it must be true because it’s what I want to hear all the way.
You see I am a real skeptic.
izen:
At January 22, 2013 at 12:50 am you make surreal assertions saying
NO! You are mistaking quantity for quality.
Many papers supporting AGW are published by academics whose careers depend on publication count, and whose funding is targeted at supporting the AGW scare. Most work which critiques the AGW-scare is conducted by non or ex academic scientists at their own cost and who publish when they have something worthy to publish.
A ton of bovine excrement is not worth as much as a gram of a diamond.
The so-called “consensus” on global warming is bought and payed for: funding has been almost exclusively provided to support the scare. Tens of billions of $ have been expended in attempt to find evidence – any evidence – to support the AGW scare. The attempt has failed in the search for something – anything – which would validate the scare.
But the same research has discovered much evidence which shows the AGW scare is unfounded; e.g.
missing ‘hot spot’
missing ‘Trenberth’s heat’
missing ‘committed warming’
missing Antarctic warming
decelerating sea level rise
no discernible global warming (at 95% confidence) for 16+ years while atmospheric CO2 concentration continues to rise
etc.
The apparent consensus among the minority of scientists who claim to be ‘climate scientists’ is a direct indication of the magnitude of their funding.
Izen, please try to think before posting blatant nonsense.
Richard
izen
‘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’
Possible true but what’s your evidenced its hundreds every month ?
But stepping back from that you see the classic trick to claim there is no research that challenges AGW theory. Now people may ask given the research seen just on this web site how can that be true ? Well the answer is simply , for some AGW is a self evident truth its therefore impossible for valid research to be done which challenges it. Therefore it follows that any research that does is automatically invalid regardless of content and so the claim ‘no research exist ‘ can be made .
And I would suggest izen seeks out the Feynman lecture on Youtube to understand what is wrong with rest of their claims .
So I followed the link. Quadrant has seriously gone downhill since I last looked at it.
First question.
Any medicos here to give us actual proportions of ulcers that are treatable by killing off h. Pylori?
Or better, any of you old guys out there taking a proton pump inhibitor drug cos anti-biotics are not the relevant treatment.
Do the answers to these questions prove that Quirk does not know what he is talking about and is just making stuff up about ulcers.
If you accept reasoning by analogy doesn’t this prove that Quirk is also wildly wrong about climate scientists as well.
So who is this Quirk any way? Some over-specialist. Or just a crank who hangs around universities.
Ok tracked it down. Quirk is a distinguished old guy in his 70’s
[snip . . ad hom, you know the rules . . mod]
@ur momisugly Climate “Ace”. The only consensus here is that science needs to be based on facts and evidence. The CAGW conjecture which you espouse is based on very little in the way of evidence, some of which has even been doctored. Many here used to believe the Warmist nonsense, to some extent, until they started looking into it for themselves instead of simply believing what they’ve been told, as you do.
As far as consensus science goes, Michael Crichton nailed it when he said:
“I want to pause here and talk about this notion of consensus, and the rise of what has been called consensus science. I regard consensus science as an extremely pernicious development that ought to be stopped cold in its tracks. Historically, the claim of consensus has been the first refuge of scoundrels; it is a way to avoid debate by claiming that the matter is already settled. Whenever you hear the consensus of scientists agrees on something or other, reach for your wallet, because you’re being had.
Let’s be clear: the work of science has nothing whatever to do with consensus. Consensus is the business of politics. Science, on the contrary, requires only one investigator who happens to be right, which means that he or she has results that are verifiable by reference to the real world. In science consensus is irrelevant. What is relevant is reproducible results. The greatest scientists in history are great precisely because they broke with the consensus.
There is no such thing as consensus science. If it’s consensus, it isn’t science. If it’s science, it isn’t consensus. Period.”
I would add that even the claim of consensus itself among scientists on CAGW is a fraudulent one. It is a lie, used to (it is hoped) convince people of the truth of the Alarmist claims.
@- Stephen Richards
“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.”
Your surgeon may be put of date. As the H Pylori cases get treated the number of ulcers with H Pylori associations drops to around 50%
@- Knr
Feynman was an egotistical prat, Gell-Mann is much more worthy of respect and certainly much better on the epistemology of science than the “pop-culture” shallow nonsense that Feynman came out with.
For a simple overview of the amount of research in AGW on a weekly basis see this –
http://agwobserver.wordpress.com/
izen:
At January 22, 2013 at 5:00 am you write
No, Feynman was a good scientist and a great lecturer.
[snip . . c’mon you are better than this . . mod]
Richard
@- R Courtney
“The apparent consensus among the minority of scientists who claim to be ‘climate scientists’ is a direct indication of the magnitude of their funding.”
Do you think that all science {ie cosmology, particle physics, genetics} is constrained to provide a consensus to conform with the assumptions or beliefs of the funding bodies, or is this a conspiracy hypothesis {without evidence} that you only apply to science that deals with the climate?
@- R Courtney
“The apparent consensus among the minority of scientists who claim to be ‘climate scientists’ is a direct indication of the magnitude of their funding.”
Do you think that all science {ie cosmology, particle physics, genetics} is constrained to provide a consensus to conform with the assumptions or beliefs of the funding bodies, or is this a conspiracy hypothesis {without evidence} that you only apply to science that deals with the climate?
@- “No, Feynman was a good scientist and a great lecturer.”
[snip . . site rules . . mod]
And such consensus has zero merit when the scientists and all their precious ‘evidence’ is purchased by a single political organization – the US federal government.
It’s a gravy train Izan. I would like you to deny that if, in truth, the human component of CO2 added to the atmosphere made no significant/measurable impact on earth’s temperature, we will NEVER be told of that by your consensus of climate scientists because it would eliminate their jobs. The government is virtually their only source of income, (who else funds climate research?), so admitting they are wrong would be career suicide.
LazyTeenager says:
January 22, 2013 at 3:36 am
You see I am a real skeptic.
That is highly doubtful. The overwhelming evidence suggests otherwise.
@ur momisugly izen (5:00 am)
Follow your own link to this paper:
“Are secular correlations between sunspots, geomagnetic activity, and global temperature significant?” – Love et al. (2011)
”With respect to the sunspot-number, geomagnetic-activity, and global-temperature data, three alternative hypotheses remain difficult to reject: (1) the role of solar-terrestrial interaction in recent climate change is contained wholly in long-term trends and not in any shorter-term secular variation, or, (2) an anthropogenic signal is hiding correlation between solar-terrestrial variables and global temperature, or, (3) the null hypothesis, recent climate change has not been influenced by solar-terrestrial interaction.””
So, the “consensus” does not reject the hypothesis that long term trends of solar activity effect climate to a degree necessary to explain 20th century warming.
Moderator:
Your rule is law, and that is as it should be.
Also, I have great admiration for the superb quality of the actions of Moderators on WUWT so I do not want to challenge any of their decisions in any way. The quality of Moderation on WUWT is probably the major reason why WUWT is the Best Science Blog on the web. Hence, I do not want anything I or anybody else says to influence Moderation of WUWT in any way.
Having said that, I write to respectfully state my opinion on your moderation of my comment at January 22, 2013 at 5:39 am. I stress that this opinion is for consideration of onlookers of my snipped point and is not an criticism of nor an appeal against your judgement of it.
In my opinion, when a person posts using an alias to insult a deceased person who cannot defend himself, then it is reasonable to reply to that person with similar insult using similar language especially when the original insult was untrue and the reply is true.
However, I recognise that my reply to 1zen violated site rules and I want it to be clear that I am not objecting to its having been snipped.
Richard
Concensus in Biology of the explanatory power of random mutation/natural selection. Unfortunately, the ones tasked with doing the explaining, the evolutionary developmental biologists, are in open revolt, are calling for the complete demolition of the whole of the theory of evolutionary biology and recommend a ‘start from scratch’ approach. In Physics, the ‘concensus’ has been roaming around a super-string desert which predicts nothing at any energy level at any scale, is un-testable. Super-symetry is all but ruled out by the LHC. The AGW movement: failed science, entrenched careers, massive monetary investment, zero correct predictions, lucrative payoffs for the top people, political entrenchment, mirrors what else is happening in biology and physics. Something i wouldn’t haver said 10 years ago. It’s a massive crisis.
Lazy Teenager, your nickname certainly does you proud. I wish only that you became as lazy with your idiotic rhetorical questions. Then we wouldn’t have so much of your annoying trolling going on.
As for your rhetorical questions:
I’ll not read this literally, and instead assume that you’d asked only ‘what proportion of ulcers are caused by bacteria. The answer (according to Web MD) is over 90%. You are a lazy teenager indeed. But then, you were never really interested in the answer, were you?
A nice little bit of intended sophistry on your part, LT? So what if some ‘old guy out there’ is treating an ulcer that is not bacterial in nature? That’s not the point, and Quirk never said 100% of ulcers were bacterial in nature, so as to be disproved by a single exception. You tried to force this exaggeration into Quirk’s position, not him. And then you imply tacitly that you’ve won some point in the debate. Lazy, and disingenuous, too.
No. But the questions themselves show you as one to create straw men and to frame your arguments using sophistry and dishonesty. In short, to be your usual, normal, lazy, disingenuous self.
Wow. No it does not. Using rules of informal logic, we don’t presume malice, even when mistakes are made and someone makes an errant claim. If Quirk was wrong, or even “wildly” wrong, that would not necessarily discount other claims he might make. The way to evaluate claims is to look at the available evidence. In this case, you haven’t identified any error by Quirk, only hinted at an error that would only exist in your own wild exaggeration (the 100% case). In this case, to the best of our current medical understanding, the evidence is clear. And the treatment of ulcers was radically changed, following the overturning of a previous consensus by the medical establishment.
Ah, an excellent finish, LT, another statement masquerading as a question that’s a baseless and stupid ad-hominem attack, perhaps the most trite and insipid of the logical fallacies. Well done.
Please go away, LT. You’re so boring and silly. You persuade no one of anything, except of the fact of your own foolishness.
Oh, and next time you say “I am a real skeptic,” make sure you capitalize and quote the word (as in ‘I am a “Real” skeptic’). Then everyone will understand exactly where you’re coming from, just as they are coming to know “Real” climate scientits.
I assume you’re talking about Halton Arp’s observations of galaxies of very different redshifts connected by visible filaments. Has his work been vindicated, and his standing in academic astronomy restored? That would be big news, as it would turn the consensus about the ‘expanding universe’ and hence the Big Bang on its head. AFAIK, that’s a consensus that remains dogmatically un-shatterable despite any evidence to the contrary.
/Mr Lynn
izen wrote:
“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.”
This statement ignores the relative mertis of different forms of evidence. There is a qualitative hierarchy of evidence, with reasoned conjecture at one end and direct observation at the other end. AGW is extremely weak in both direct observation and “input-output” test results, and is based largely on model output at least in terms of meaningful predictions. This is only partially the fault of climate scientists, it is mostly rooted in the nature of the claim and the lack of powerful evaluatioin tools. So there is a vast gulf between the value of a skull that you dug out of the ground and a GCM that shows it will get too hot.
@ur momisugly izen
Another paper from your link:
“An influence of solar spectral variations on radiative forcing of climate”
Joanna D. Haigh1, Ann R. Winning1, Ralf Toumi1 & Jerald W. Harder2
”It is known that solar radiative forcing is modulated by the ozone response to changes in solar ultraviolet2. The effect of an increase in ozone is twofold: first to reduce the flux of solar radiation reaching the tropopause and second to increase the flux of infrared radiation, mainly through its impact on stratospheric temperatures.”
….
”If this is the case, then it is necessary to reconsider the current understanding19 of the mechanisms whereby solar cycle variability influences climate: the impact on the stratosphere is much larger than previously thought
and the radiative forcing of surface climate is out of phase with solar activity. At present there is no evidence to ascertain whether this behaviour has occurred before, but if this were the case during previous multi-decadal periods of low solar activity it would be necessary to revisit assessments of the solar influence on climate and to revise the methods whereby these are represented in global models.”
Are you sure the “consensus” actual is what you think it is?
***
Climate Ace says:
January 21, 2013 at 9:33 pm
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.
***
If the shoe fits…….
Science for sale is everywhere. If you think Barry Marshall and Robin Warren had it tough wait for the next medical fight. Marshall and Warren were up against a $2 billion a year industry and it took a decade, Dr Dzugan is up against the $25 billion a year statin drug industry. Even with his near 100% success rate it will be decades before everyone admits he is right.
It is truly sad to see science for sale because all of our advances have been due to scientists following the scientific method and we abandon that now at our peril.
Valuable essay by Pointman on the ways in which a scientist driven by integrity may become a ‘leaker’ of inside docs, to protect the genuine practice of science against the politicized drive for ill founded ‘consensus’
http://thepointman.wordpress.com/2013/01/18/on-climate-science-and-all-those-leaks/
@izen
…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…
I would like to see your evidence for that assertion. My understanding was always that there was a strong consensus of the entire western establishment, with the British Museum, the Royal Society and the Smithsonian actively suppressing contrary evidence. I can cite my copy of ‘Unsolved Problems in Modern Science’ (Haslett, Bell and Sons,1935) where the lineage of Piltdown Man is covered with not a speck of doubt that it is genuine – a classic example of consensus.
You should note that, once the Piltdown controversy began being used as an example of scientific fallibility in the global warming argument, the Wiki entry was rapidly updated to indicate that there was really no controversy at all. As a result, any cites from that article are unlikely to be accurate or balanced.
izen:
At January 22, 2013 at 5:54 am you say to me
Oh! Good use of the ‘straw man’ fallacy, 1zen.
Among other things, I pointed out that climate science is biased by funding and explained the bias. In reply you want to discuss “all science {ie cosmology, particle physics, genetics}”.
Why discuss those? Why not discuss chicken farming?
Perhaps it is because you don’t want to discuss the funding bias in climate science?
For an explanation of the funding bias in climate science that even you may be capable of understanding read
http://joannenova.com.au/2011/10/map-the-climate-change-scare-machine-the-perpetual-self-feeding-cycle-of-alarm/
Get back to me when you want to talk sense.
Richard