A poll follows.
Over at Bishop Hill, he’s listed some quotes from Geoffry Boulton on scientific integrity that I found interesting. He writes (with apologies for posting in full, I couldn’t see any way to excerpt this short article):
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Geoffrey Boulton is giving a speech to JISC, the goverment body which “inspires UK colleges and universities in the innovative use of digital technologies, helping to maintain the UK’s position as a global leader in education”. (Austerity, what austerity?). His comments are being widely tweeted under the hashtag #jiscmrd. Here are a few interesting ones:
Bolton from Royal Society saying that its “malpractice” to not publish underlying data to research at same time as paper published
“@ScienceBL: Boulton says publishing of data should be concurrent with the paper. #jiscmrd #datacite” <- very much agreed.
Boulton: cures for scientific fraud: open data for replication, transparent peer review, personal and system integrity #jiscmrd
#jiscmrd Geoffrey Boulton: open data is our responsibility to citizen science.
It’s funny to see Boulton calling for transparent peer review after failing to investigate allegations of journal nobbling – probably the single most important issue to have emerged from Climategate – during the Russell inquiry.
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The idea of having all the data and methods up front ahead of time make a lot of sense. In my view, this is central to effective peer review. Without it, it boils down to a “trust us” situation with the authors of the paper. Given all of the mess surrounding Marcott et al and the failures of peer review to catch its problems, and the uptrend in paper retraction in science in general, I thought it might be a good time to ask this question.
UPDATE: Some people wondered about whether they could join such a professional organization or not if it existed, not being accredited in the field. It should be noted organizations like the AGU and the AMS accept “associate members” i.e. people that have an interest in the science but who may not be accredited in the field. There’s no reason to consider why that could not be the case for a new organization. – Anthony
By now the question of peer review is almost obsolete. The areas of science that have ACTUAL UTILITY for humans have been operating outside the system of Publish Or Perish for a long time.
Medicine has its own clinical trial rules; engineering depends on acceptance by the customer; materials science is the same; agricultural research has close contact with farmers.
All other branches of science are basically forms of mental masturbation, and their little games are irrelevant to human progress.
Wamron says:
March 26, 2013 at 3:25 pm
March 26, 2013 at 7:51 pm
Wamrom you are 100 percent correct in both postings. Most readers here see science from the perspective I would call “hard science” based on modern physics and mathematics. Then there’s the “soft science” based on nothing more then pure conjecture, intellectual sophistry and well let’s mop it all up as “postmodern science”, a disingenuous coined term to cloak pseudo- and anti-science. Here we find all of sociology and big parts of psychology, working very hard – in the process trashing taxpayers money – to further the cause of the “Cargo Cult Sciences” as only the genius of Richard Feynman so wonderful accurate and sardonically could expose.
Apart from the unnecessary financial burden they place on societies around the world to fund their “scientific” work, there is real harm done to people on a massive scale. All this because they are allowed to experiment with and implement results of their contrived and twisted theories that – according to their research – explain and constitute what makes humans tick and how society should work. Lets have a look at a few examples and remember this is also a global issue:
– repressed memories, false accusations of sexual child abuse got parents and people working with children locked up in jail for years and created deeply divided and traumatized communities;
– autism spectrum, a neurological condition, attributed to mothers as a consequence of being emotionally frigid and cold (imagine the pain, self-doubt and guilt of these mothers);
– Freud and his ilk who still terrorize people in endless therapies with concepts sprouted from their own sexual frustration and vivid imagination;
– all other psychological therapies that are not scientifically controlled and monitored for results and efficiency; to my knowledge the only therapies that really work are based on conditioning and incremental exposure to a fear stimulus (spiders, elevators, flying, etc);
– the nearly four decades long sociological experiment on the Norwegian population, acclaimed to be the most gender-equal society in the world. They got stuck in the feminist-paradox and a police-force so inadequate staffed, organized and trained that Breivik had ample time to kill over 70 people before he was finally stopped; Here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hjernevask a 7 part Norwegian shocking documentary exposing (Norsk?) sociology for what it really is, a degrading, patronizing and inhumane rabble of would be scientists;
– Diederik Stapel, professor of social psychology (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diederik_Stapel)
who nearly two decades was fabricating and manipulating data for his peer reviewed “scientific” papers; his ultimate goal was to produce evidence in support of left and socialist societies. One of his remarkable papers and a sent from heaven for his left/socialist (climate) clientèle: “Meat eaters more selfish than vegetarians”;
– multiculturalism, social benefits and a sub-par enforcement of regulations created parallel societies of Muslims immigrants all over Europe which are social time-bombs with a big potential for inter-ethnic violence;
Add new age, homeopathy, second hand smoke, immunization, all the scares on food and health and the subsidized NGO’s telling their version of the truth. Now we begin to see the true dimensions and scale, the real big problem that only science can and must address. It is an moral obligation to the taxpayers, to get us all back to a normal society based on real science and truth. For Joe the plumber and Beth the hairdresser all this is science, a big maelstrom of confusing messages with no authority to decide for them, to help and guide.
Morality, Integrity, Honesty will bring back Respect and Authority but only if scientists and institutions decide that there is Valor and Honor in an official and public ousting, dishonoring, revoking of titles and permissions to teach, for those who are found guilty of repeated and/or grave transgress or digress from truth and real science.
In my view on science you are in or out, welcome or banned from academic institutions and allowed or not allowed to teach and do science. Then there can’t be a Dr. med. who also is practicing homeopathy as that is clearly against the rules. In order to maintain Respect and Authority there can’t be any contamination from pseudo-science. Psychology as part of real science would have to go trough a thorough and in depth process of re-evaluation to weed out the pseudo-science. As in Terry Pratchett’s disc-world, wizardry, HEM (High Energy Magic) and from now sociology and some climatology can be studied at the Unseen University.
Second try….I deal a lot with peer review and would warn aganst rating it too highly. It improves papers and may encourage debate, but really new ideas cannot be peer reviewed. I am worried what more emphasis on peer review (as promising more ‘truth’) would mean for the social sciences. Providing all evidence would require opening a ‘brain’ – all thougth processes – and a great deal of human thought would be dismissed altogether (see Polistra above). Instead patience is needed, natural science will win out in the end, but this may take a long time. Re CAGW, one hint….this is best explained as a social science phenomena , a part of history when solutions were looking for a problem. Here social sciences , especially interest analysis, provide better insights into what went on and who drove the AGW ‘scare’. But this is another story……its summary is that while the science debate keeps many people engaged and funded, no decison will be possible for a long time .If the ‘sceptics’ want to win the argument now, they must venture into the social sciences and analyse ‘science’ as a part of market-forces, selected and funded to support other groups. Big research science is in need of political support and this will only be ‘delivered’ if solutions are offered as well as the problem. Why was there so little response to the threat of global cooling, in the late 1980s, while that of global warming was welcomed with open arms by assorted bureuacracies?
I have to add one point in response to Burger above…too much about guilt and others being able to find out in time to punish…. While he lists a lot of scientific ‘errors’ or wider misuses, it is easier to know with hindsight, and I notice a right–wing bias. What about eugenics, so beloved and acted upon until failry recently in the West and by no means fully discredited. At the extreme, the results. But the belief that nobler and cleverer people are ‘bred’ is was and remains to some degree beloved of the Right, and even some socialists in past, on scientific ground..genetics and experience. If humans could be breed ‘better’ dogs and horses…why not humans? A master race of leaders might result, thanks to genetics. Is this idea dead? Is it ‘science’?
Sonja Boehmer-Christiansen says:
March 27, 2013 at 4:09 am
I hope you will watch all http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hjernevask and please read Richard Feynman’s original adress http://www.lhup.edu/~DSIMANEK/cargocul.htm. You will understand why I am so harsh on social science.
Tobias…Thanks for the clarification. As I thought, we are on the same wavelength. I too have thought of dependence and exploitation as comparable to slavery. However, I have to remind myself that it is not the same as being held captive by force and sold for cash or barter like a used car. Hundreds of thousands of people are in that situation. Some of them in Western Europe (eg as proven in court cases inthe UK) and the USA.
Sonja-B.C….how does it escape your attention that the Eugenics era culminated in the National SOCIALIST Party?
Why do you presuppose that rigour is necessarily “righ wing”?
Indeed, what do you even mean by “the Right”.Who, specificallyare these “Right” people who believe the things you say?
I think your comments only illustrate the problem in Social Science that the “correct” view / result / belief / finding is only ever to be those which are thought “better” or “preferable” for “ethical” reasons.
Sonja Boehmer-Christiansen says:
March 27, 2013 at 5:35 am
“… errors’ or wider misuses, it is easier to know with hindsight…..”
RULE 1: If you don’t know whats going on, be creative put forward hypotheses that are testable with relevant experiments. Wait until you know something for real but DO NOT TRY to mind-read, you can’t. You can study behavior, sensory perception and information processing some really good work has and is done there.
RULE 2: If there is hard evidence in other fields, as is shown in the documentary Hjernevask that trashes your conjectures don’t be arrogant, you better start doing real science before your field loses all credibility and will become obsolete in the future.
RULE 3: As climate science has shown, if Marxists ideology and postmodern science is driving research most probably there is no scientific truth to be found but a fantasy in need of some defense.
Expensive Freudian depth and other bizarre therapies are still going strong, there is no science there, the field should be deeply ashamed for still condoning black magic and wizardry.
“…. and I notice a right–wing bias ….”
Well, if common sense, searching for truth, supporting real science and looking open-minded, without ideological bias, into problems of society then you can call me anything you want.
And yes genetics is back with a vengeance, to trash all those silly equality and blank slate ideas in social science, with hard evidence as Hjernevask so clearly shows. It will be a lot more difficult to harass people in the future with nonsense ideas to create an “ideal equal marxist society”. And finally genetics shows also new paths to effective methodologies for learning and raising children with respect for their individual genetic makeup and inherited capabilities.
Hardly worth replying to. This rule-bound chap BB is too self-assured and certain of his views, to invite intellectual engagement. I just wonder what al this has to do with Karl Marx or even Freud, all have been built upon – science has many meanings.and even hard science is less hard when you look more closely. I am sure common sense is more widely distributed than he assumed…but I am wasting my time.
By the way, there wasn’t much that was socialist about the Nazi party, the term was atrtractive in those days. I woudl rather see right and left in US terms, or in UK terms. How strongly you believe that the ‘market ‘ can solve all problems, apart from military ones of course. Obviously, not all ideas and beliefs are confiend to Right or Left, simply defined as those who want to preserve andthose who want to improve, changethe world. We need both but that might be too much for this group to accept. The climate sceptics IMHO have little change of sucess in the policy arena until and unless they broaden their political basis This should be easy enough but not with the excessively self-righteous.
Sonja Boehmer-Christiansen says:
March 27, 2013 at 8:45 am
We can have an intellectual engagement and muse about life and the universe with all due respect and freedom until hell freezes over. Where science is concerned there has to be a common ground, understanding and acceptance of principles with no freedom at all. If you do science you play by the rules if you don’t well that isn’t science.
“…. even Freud, all have been built upon – science has many meanings.and even hard science is less hard when you look more closely”
If you built on Freud you built on trash, the only thing you will end up with is a lot more trash. One of the tenets of postmodern science, with many meanings, is that you can muse until hell freezes over and that is not science; there is always another path or back-door so there is no end. And if you look hard into the principles of hard science you will conclude that it gets harder than you ever imagined especially so for researchers in the social sciences.
As is stated before there is no politics in science, no consensus and no predefined target. But when science shows there is no such thing as CAGW or man made climate change or whatever then politics play a role. If there are very expensive policies based on wrong assumptions they have to abandoned and I would fight for that. Lets start doing science on preservation and see where we get there, seems to be a very nice topic. Willis Eschenbach did already some work on that I guess, lets go over there and see.
Reply to W as well:
I AM SHOCKED BY THE LOW QUALITY of debates here and may well stop wasting my time after making 3 points . 1) Science is a product of the human mind/brain emerging over time and tested by many othet minds..against reality (if there is such a thing…here we get inti philosophy, not wanted here I imagine). My example as a science here is geology, but I lived for many years with people working in the world of physics and astronomy. Climate science may not be that different from geology, it relies more on deduction from evidence than tests in labs, and models are best understood as experiments….Science as a product is indeed apolitical, butas a process and in its use and fundning is certainly IS NOT. (I was once a senior researcher on science policy and I know only too well that a huge amount of politics goes into research.) Modern Big research is best understood as an enterprise or business – getting research grants, framing projects and research questions selling its ‘products’ to ‘users’, persuading the media…. Governments are often the ‘users’ of research finding (‘science’) as well as the funders, and certainly are for climate/energy policy and its ‘underpinning’ IPCC science. Increasingly, ‘actors’ in the market, especially investors, also want research to advance their policy ambitions. Technology projects have a more direct link to science and engineering than energy policy of course, but bureaucratic ambitions are everywhere Both bureaucracy and government – the state – tend to reflect ‘vlues’, in our case green values that may well clasj with science, but in the real world values/fears /promises will be more powerful than science. You surely do not claim that the global warmingf debate is primarily about science? Science is used and abused to justify policy….)
By the way, in German, policy and politics are the same word and science embraces all forms of knowledge sought with an opemn mind (without belief or practice, in theory) and witout prior commitment to outcome. You have science of religion or art….when you you study it.
2. I am pleased to state that I do not understand your last comment. My birthcertificate still shows the Hakenkreuz, in case that helps. I suspect you are MUCH older than me, hence thanks for the compliment. I claim to be neutral in current ideological battles so ridiculourly revealed inthe USA…surely climate science here is used in power battles.
3. The solution of the energy issues related to or making use of the global warming threat, have a great deal to do with free markets and/ or government policies , whatever you claim. Just look at who prefers whay ‘hypothesis’.
Sonja B.C: “This rule-bound chap BB is too self-assured and certain of his views, to invite intellectual engagement.”
BUT, that is EXACTLY how your comments read.
For a start, you see the world in a rigid Left / Right narrative, you say so yourself: “I woudl rather see right and left in US terms, or in UK terms.”
Now do you not agree sterotypes are a bad thing? They limit your perception to preconceived notions. Well a “stereotype” literally means two dimensions. But Left / Right…which you have justsaid is how you see the world, is ONE dimension, its a far, far more limited and blinkered, or as you put it, “rule-bound” way of perceiving the world than even the most bigoted racist stereotyping.
Its something you not only do by example but, as Ive quoted, you actually admit doing.
Then you bring in a question about whether BB believes the free market solves things. This has nothing whatsoever to do with anything he said. To make sense of that reference we have to assume that everything you say is determined by ideological presuppositions that have nothing to do with the topic at hand. So when you express clueless wondering what Marxism had to do with BBs comments you not only reveal your ignorance but seem oblivious to the fact that your entire style of discourse loudly broadcasts your commitment to ideology, Marxist or otherwise.
I dont know how old you are but you come across like an eighteen year old. When I was eighteen I too uncritically repeated the orthodox narratives of the dominant ideology of the ideological culture I shared. I too dismissed the opinions of those who assert the insight that comes with experience. Now I am older, and I find they were all correct.
Stick around and you learn by observing. but I suspect you’ll be too full of yourself and dissapear as inconsequentially as you appeared.
BTW you obviously know squat about National Socialism.
Sonja BC……………”I AM SHOCKED BY THE LOW QUALITY of debates…”
Well thats exactly what any of the thousandsof non-commenting readers of your comments will conclude about you.
we posit arguments…you disregard them.
Your pomposity is IMMENSE: “…here we get inti philosophy, not wanted here I imagine…”
well I was reading Popper before you were born…. I suggest you digest theTractatus b efore you pronounce yourself versed in philosophy.
You know what…I DIDNT BOTHER reading the rest of your adolescent drivel.
If you want to “debate” you have to abide by this basic principle: each person respondst o the preceding points of the other.
Anyone starting at the top and reading down will see how I comprehensively took you apart and stomped all over you in my previous comment. But you havent the balls to try to counter my pints or the savvy to recognise that you are now embarrassing yourself by continuing without so trying.
Keep coming here little child. keep posting. Keep demonstrating to the silent lurkers as well as the few commenters the kind of puillanimous excuse for a person that is destroying our culture every time you draw a breath.
…BTW you know squat about National Socialism
Sonja Boehmer-Christiansen says:
March 27, 2013 at 11:12 am
“I AM SHOCKED BY THE LOW QUALITY of debates here and may well stop wasting my time …”
Sonja, you have indeed stumbled on to the wrong blog if you are interested in cheerily engaging minds here on modern meanderings born of the co-opted, corrupted and broken social sciences (google: “Corruption of the social sciences” – without the quotes, google amazingly tries to suggest something away from this direct topic but the quotes give you what you want). Below an example:
http://blogs.theaustralian.news.com.au/paulkelly/index.php/theaustralian/comments/a_clarion_call_for_the_sake_of_our_kids/P100/
Many of us here are feverishly trying to prevent the same precipitous ruination of the hard sciences that has befallen the social sciences, and basically bled them of any scientific substance. Social science is now merely an international leftist advocacy party railing against the productive sector. I don’t fault you Sonja, because you are young enough to have inherited this mess and are probably unaware that social sciences used to have disinterested scientific underpinnings – real endeavor to understand what makes things tick. But now that you all understand that bashing and trashing the productive sector is all there is to it, there is no need for hypotheses and vigorous debate (you all already agree, so you debate trifles, because you know there should be debate in science). There is nothing post normal or political about physical reality (please spare me the “if-a-tree-falls-in-the-forest-type pseudo-philosophical homily. It does make a noise whether you are there to hear it or not). It has causes and effects the likes of which you don’t get to choose on the basis of fashionableness or politics. We fight ferociously and not very chivalrously at times because it’s important. You are most welcome, but your honed sensitivities may prevent you from getting any salt from it.
…But its safe to bet you hate Israelis.
Gary Pearse, dont waste your fingers typing, she’s just going to pigeonhole you as another “Right wing” OLD guy.
On second thoughts, keep typing………..every opportunity you give her to display her lethal combination of naiivete and arrogance just proves my assessment.
That’s why I’ve given her comments attention. I hope to elicit more gems like her previous ones.
Wamron, slavery ……… and we are bad guys? When I read this http://frontpagemag.com/2013/frank-crimi/the-selling-of-syrias-refugee-child-brides/ just now it blew my top of, got blood shot eyes, oh man this is sooooooo bad for my health! Can you understand why I wrote this passage:
– multiculturalism, social benefits and a sub-par enforcement of regulations created parallel societies of Muslims immigrants all over Europe which are social time-bombs with a big potential for inter-ethnic violence;
This started way-back before September 2012, is public knowledge all over their ummah and sanctioned by religious leaders. We have 1 million believers of this so called religion of peace imported into our country (NL). Nearly all of them watch exclusively TV channels in that region and an estimated 100 hundred of their sons left our country to go fighting (jihad) over there “for the good cause”. They demonstrated in our streets against, satanic verses, cartoons, kuran burnings, incited hatred and yelled for death and destruction with impunity. And now, silence, nada, nothing. Our country donated more than 32.5 million euro aid for the Syrian refugees. The EU is helping Egypt with 5 billion euro to bolster democracy over there!!! There are more than 50 IOC member-states and what did they donate for Syria, but now we can at least read what their actions are!
http://gideonsnews.wordpress.com/2013/03/27/glenn-beck-michele-bachmann-under-investigation-because-shes-against-radical-islam/
We in the western world are mad, bonkers, beyond any normality and redemption! Thanks to our leftist and incomprehensible gullible elites who are steering us to social unrest and violence.
These tweets and comments conflate peer review and replication. Peer review is a lightly-once-over pre-publication check for egregious boners and excessively unorthodox findings. Not the core issue.