‘Proof? We don’t need no steenkin proof’*
*With apologies to Treasure of the Sierra Madre.
Rich Trzupek writes:
In a post over at Peter Guest’s blog, Michael “Hockey Stick” Mann is quoted making one of the most remarkable statements that I’ve ever heard coming out of a supposed scientist’s mouth:
“Proof is for mathematical theorems and alcoholic beverages. It’s not for science.”
He goes on to explain that science is all about “credible theories” and “best explanations” and his gosh-darn critics supposedly don’t offer up any of those.
Now it seems pretty obvious that Mann’s attempt to separate proof from science stems from increasing public awareness that the warming predicted by the high-sensitivity models that Mann and others have championed just hasn’t occurred over the last fifteen years. No matter. You don’t need “proof” when you have “credible theories”.
Read more here
I seem to remember an Austrian guy with “credible theories” of eugenics that went on to exterminate millions of people in the name of those theories.
Theo Goodwin August 1, 2013 at 8:12 pm Very well said. The idea of “inference to the best explanation” totally overlooks the empirical evidence. Reminds me of the song “All the girls look better at closing time.”
Thanks, but your 2nd sentence is not what I meant, and I don’t agree with it; “inference to the best explanation” does take empirical evidence into account. I only meant that the best available explanation is not necessarily good enough.
“Al Gore has warned that there is now clear proof that climate change is directly responsible for the extreme and devastating floods, storms and droughts that displaced millions of people this year.”
From http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2011/sep/28/al-gore-proof-climate-change
Looks Al disagrees with Mike.
@ur momisugly William Astley:
“I am truly curious how the warmists, the media, the public, the politicians, and the scientific community would react to significant cooling. ”
They will blame it on ‘anthropogenic global dimming’ (AGD), caused by aerosols emitted by fossil fuels. They will say:
‘It was always a balance between AGD and AGW. We always knew that (Didn’t you hear us say that? You must have missed it). As it happens, AGD has won out. In any case, its all due to our selfish self-indulgent use of fossil fuels. And of course, cooling causes as much disruption to the climate as warming, so we’re still responsible for all the bad things.’
Proof, in any science is required. A classic is the discovery of electrons (To prove certain observed behaviour). There were plenty of “theories” to support observations, but proof was eventually found.
With the theory of E=MC^2, that theory was proven by a Polish female Jew in Germany (Before use was made in bombs).
Perhaps Mann simply wants to use the no proof in science theory to show that 17 years of no temperature increase does not PROVE the models are wrong. Of course, those models are based on mathematics, so there is proof.
@milodonharlani et al.: Not to put too fine a point upon it (actually, it’s a very fine point I guess) the earth does not revolve around the sun, nor the sun around the earth. Both revolve around a common epicenter at some slight remove from the center of the sun.
As for apologizing to the creators of “Treasure of the Sierra Madre” for “we don’t need no stinkeen proof,” weren’t you actually riffing on a line from the Tuco character in “The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly?”
@Richie – The line is a famous one from Treasure of the Sierra Madre – “Badges? We don’t need no steenkeen badges!”.
But I am curious as to what line you are referring to in The Good, The Bad and the Ugly?
Heh, your both wrong and so was I before I looked it up!!!
The original version of the line appeared in B. Traven’s 1927 novel The Treasure of the Sierra Madre:
“All right,” Curtin shouted back. “If you are the police, where are your badges? Let’s see them.”
“Badges, to god-damned hell with badges! We have no badges. In fact, we don’t need badges. I don’t have to show you any stinking badges, you god-damned cabrón and chinga tu madre!”
The line was popularized by the 1948 film adaptation of the novel.[3] In one scene, a Mexican bandit leader named “Gold Hat”[4] (portrayed by Alfonso Bedoya) tries to convince Fred C. Dobbs (Humphrey Bogart)[2] that he and his company are Federales:
Dobbs: “If you’re the police where are your badges?”Gold Hat: “Badges? We ain’t got no badges. We don’t need no badges! I don’t have to show you any stinkin’ badges!”
In Mel Brooks’ 1974 Western Blazing Saddles, the line was delivered as “Badges? We don’t need no stinking badges.”
Yup, the Mel Brooks line is closest to what many people remember!!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stinking_badges
well, KuhnKat, since Blazing Saddles is one of my favorite movies, I can see my confusion, and I offer nothing but ignorance as an excuse. But I will bookmark your post – so I know in the future!
Thanks for the leg work.
Re The Royal Society’s credo:
(from http://starryskies.com/articles/spec/hooks.html – The Legacy of Robert Hooke)
Mann therefore is telling The Royal Society that it is not being scientific by depending on experiments.
Nice to know where you stand, Mike!
So these word magicians consider their CAGW hypothesis “credible” while neither offering solid evidence to support it, nor challenging – and even denying the opportunity – to falsify it? Proof or disproof don’t seem to matter. This displays a sheer disconnection from reality, at best. There must be factors of more importance to the magicians than the real world. So far for their “credibility”.
I think science is all about proofs.
Ok then next time you complain about some issue here on WUWT, I’ll direct commenters to address your concerns by just providing “best opinions” rather than any proof. Way to shoot yourself in the foot. – Anthony
I said “evidence”, not “best opinions”. And I could care less what your herds of insect-fart true believers have to say about most of my comments. You know who trumps around the Internet demanding “proof” of mainstream scientific conclusions all the time? Creationists. Such demands say more about the person making them than the field they are at odds with. It says they don’t have a grasp on even the broad strokes of the processes of science.
REPLY: “And I could care less what your herds of insect-fart true believers have to say about most of my comments.”
Thanks for saying that. By your position then, there’s certainly no reason for you to leave any further comments here. Now you can just watch. Enjoy. – Anthony
I think Ryan shot himself in both feet, so he has more problems than posting here. LOL
Although Mann certainly deserves his share of derision, I think most of the vitriole aimed at Dr. Mann in this comment thread rightly belongs to Peter Guest, the author of the article referred to herein, which merely quotes Mann’s already established canards from his vitriolic book on the political campaigning and pimping of CAGW by Big Climate Science.
Guest’s article is all that’s new here, and clearly, he’s jumped headfirst into the cesspool of Michael Mann’s dodgy scientific and legal assertions. But to his credit, though, Guest candidly admits that he’s a misanthrope and (in so many words) a leftist, progressive, watermelon, greenie journalist. I don’t think he’s a very GOOD leftist, progressive, watermelon, greenie journalist, though. Because if he were, he wouldn’t repeat himself like that.
In reply:
oakwood says:
August 2, 2013 at 5:36 am
@ur momisugly William Astley:
“I am truly curious how the warmists, the media, the public, the politicians, and the scientific community would react to significant cooling. ”
They will blame it on ‘anthropogenic global dimming’ (AGD), caused by aerosols emitted by fossil fuels. They will say:
‘It was always a balance between AGD and AGW. We always knew that (Didn’t you hear us say that? You must have missed it). As it happens, AGD has won out. In any case, its all due to our selfish self-indulgent use of fossil fuels. And of course, cooling causes as much disruption to the climate as warming, so we’re still responsible for all the bad things.’
William:
Come on man. Global cooling would be a game changer, a logical reason for western governments to abandon green scams which they cannot afford and which do not significantly reduce carbon dioxide emissions. There are still independent, honest, hardworking, climate scientists who will work and who will now have funding to answer the question why is the planet cooling.
The AGW fanatics and the silly uninformed media have been pushing a painless change to a fantasy low carbon emission world which is ludicrous, a lie, a fantasy. There is zero chance any democratic government will be able to get support for a massive reduction in standard of life forever, unless there is end of the world climate warming. There was been 16 years with no warming and then the planet cools at the same time as there is major change in the solar magnetic cycle.
Western governments have run out of funds to pay for green scams and to pay for entitlements. Western governments will be forced to cut expenditures or face bankruptcy. The climate war is fizzing out due to a lack of funds, engineering reality, and the fact that the developing countries (China, India, Indonesia, African countries, Vietnam, and so on) will not sign on to a tripling of their energy costs for no benefit.
The EU will face economic collapse if they persist with trying to meet the EU mandated carbon dioxide emission reduction goals they have set using ‘green’ energy. To reduce carbon dioxide emissions by more than around 10% to 20% (without using nuclear energy) using green energy (wind and solar) requires energy storage (no viable options and a ball park cost for the increase in the cost of power factor of three to four times) and a super high tax on the estimated carbon emission for all goods and services purchased is required to stop carbon leakage. The super high carbon tax and the super high cost of energy will require and cause a permanent war time like reduction in standard of life and sacrifices for all citizens of the world.
There is cooling observed in the Southern Hemisphere. Aerosol emission in the Northern Hemisphere cannot explain cooling in the high latitude regions of the Southern hemisphere.
http://www.nature.com/news/climate-forecasting-a-break-in-the-clouds-1.10593
In the end, Booth says, the changing output of industrial aerosols explains two-thirds of the long-term swings observed in sea surface temperatures (William: The reduction in aerosols explains two-thirds of the warming) in the North Atlantic. “It’s only in the current generation of models that we can see that relationship physically,” says Booth.
Richie says:
August 2, 2013 at 6:17 am
True, orbits are around barycenters, but that’s a refinement to or development of the heliocentric theory, similar to refinements & developments in universal gravitation, the Big Bang, evolution & other well-established theories. What started the Scientific Revolution was Copernicus’ recognition that earth is a planet, & that it & other planets go around the sun, not the sun & planets around the earth. (Also the work of Vesalius in life science.) Copernicus carried over from Aristotle the conviction that orbits were perfectly circular, but he was right on the big question, ie whether earth lies at the center of the solar system or not (or the universe as then conceived, a series of concentric spheres).
GlynnMhor says:
August 1, 2013 at 9:44 am
Maybe ‘proof’ isn’t for Science, but ‘disproof’ certainly is.
As in when the predictions of a hypothesis are not substantiated by the observations, the hypothesis is usually deemed disproven..
Since science is an approach to a controlled epistemology, that is, science is an attempt at a fully accountable chain of argument that always begins with empirical fact, that ought to be true. It isn’t, however, because 1) people do science, 2) people are inherently lazy, and 3) because of 2, will tend to lean on “trusted” authority rather than rework a “reasonable” chain of reasoning by testing the physical assumptions. Ideally science should approach explanatory ideas sceptically, but there is a serious investment in time, labor and learning in the “body” of of scientific knowledge. So, method and appropriately sceptical views and hedges (qualified addenda to arguments) are frequently short cut out of the loop. The entire climate debate can be reduced to a dispute over the issue of what authority to trust.
Not even experimental arguments are safe here because the experiment itself will be interpreted (experimental results will be “explained”) according to multiple theoretical views, and the choice of explanatory model is to a degree governed by how much Occam’s Razor influences the choice of explanation. Occma’s Razor doesn’t insure “true” explanations, only shorter, more elegant ones, which would be more easily handled mathematically.
I posted a response to Trzupek’s article here:
http://bbickmore.wordpress.com/2013/08/02/heartland-knows-squat-about-science/
REPLY: I quit reading after reading this in the first paragraph:
“Instead, we should be MILITANTLY trying to get our students and the public to understand that science is always tentative, involves creativity, and so on. “
Militantism and science have no place together. Your article fails right there. – Anthony
Anthony,
You said, “Militantism and science have no place together. Your article fails right there.”
When the subject is being militant (figuratively speaking) about telling the unvarnished truth, I have to disagree with you. Relax and keep reading.
REPLY: I knew you’d disagree, rather than choose a more appropriate word. If it turns me off, so it will with others. There’s no loss in making your article more appealing to a broader spectrum of people. – Anthony
Anthony,
You said, “I knew you’d disagree, rather than choose a more appropriate word. If it turns me off, so it will with others. There’s no loss in making your article more appealing to a broader spectrum of people.”
If you would care to look up the word “militant” on dictionary.com, you will find that its FIRST definition as an adjective is, “vigorously active and aggressive, especially in support of a cause.” Now, are you really finding fault with me for saying that I think scientists should promote a realistic understanding of the nature of science in a “vigorously active and aggressive” manner? You couldn’t possibly have been interpreting my comments to mean that I think scientists should physically attack people who believe naive accounts of the nature of science, could you?
Why should I change my post to accommodate people who either 1) don’t understand common English, or 2) willfully misunderstand me so they can take offense? If your threshold for taking offense is that low, I’m sure you would find something else to latch onto in the next paragraph or two.
kuhnkat & michael moon,
Recently I ran across this interesting article. Ike was no saint.
Thank you. I read AT, but, missed that one.
Brings to mind what an an esteemed (/sarc) former Prime Minister of Canada Jean Cretien said – that may be apropos for the CAGW position….
“A proof is a proof. What kind of a proof? It’s a proof. A proof is a proof. And when you have a good proof, it’s because it’s proven.”
Mann is using a logical fallacy by blurring the definition of the word ‘proof.’ Prove scientifically that George Washington existed? Legal, historical, scientific and mathematically proofs have always been different. Science used to require repeatable experiments but with the expansion of the social ‘sciences’ assertion followed by volume has become the new modus operandi.
Mann also faces the logical difficulty that ‘there is no proof in science’ and ‘the science is settled’ cannot both be true.
From time to time we refer in our comments to Richard Feynman and his postion that no matter how good the theory, if observations show that the real world does not correspond with the theory the theory must go. This is a restatement of Karl Popper’s view that science never proves anything; science merely disproves theories that do not fit the real world.
I suggest rereading what Michael Mann has said. It looks to me the same as what Popper and Feynman have said.
Now if Professor Mann would practice what he preaches, we might be more willing to accept the substance of his scientific work. For a start, he should rerun the hockey-stick experiment omitting the dubious data, adopting a valid statistical methodology, and publish both the data and the computer code.
I work with research scientists from varied institutions and disciplines in the course of their fieldwork. I cannot say that any of them would accept Dr. Mann’s assertion that a “credible theory” is merely a “best explanation”. To a man they would insist on a testable hypothesis followed by testing it. (The women too, but it scans better using the Germanic ‘man’ for the plural third person. ‘Man ist was man isst’ ) Of course, this is a self-selected sample of experimentalists, so it would be surprising to get any other result.
Re: Barry Bickmore’s disputatious bickering.
I presume you also reject the “catch more flies with honey” aphorism, and seek to replicate the old “hellfire & brimstone” revivalist of yore, yes? Elsewise, whyever would one start by calling upon folks to be militant before having properly laid a foundation (rhetorical or evidential) to support the call. Surely any reasonable auditor must, as Anthony did, reject your opening exhortation sans a properly supported argument.
It does you no good to protest that you will justify it later. Absent a reasoned presentation, your alleged reasoned argument will not be heard. That leaves you preaching to the choir and the rabble.
JohnC,
The irony here is that I was encouraging people like Al Gore to stop saying things like “the science is settled,” because people tend to interpret that in absolute terms. I said that scientists should “militantly” (as in vigorously and aggressively) insist on telling the truth about science, instead of pretending that it is more cut-and-dried than it really is. That Anthony or anyone else would object to that, I never would have anticipated.
Consider, for example, that just a couple years ago Anthony approvingly posted the news that a Nobel Laureate in physics, Ivar Giaever, had resigned from the American Physical Society because the society had released a statement that “The evidence is incontrovertible: global warming is occurring.” Giaever further commented, “In the APS it is ok to discuss whether the mass of the proton changes over time and how a multi-universe behaves, but the evidence of global warming is incontrovertible?”
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/09/14/nobel-laureate-resigns-from-american-physical-society-to-protest-the-organizations-stance-on-global-warming/
While I regret the mileage climate change contrarians got out of this episode, I have to admit that the APS was asking for it by using such absolutist language. Why? Because I make some attempt at intellectual consistency… unlike some.
I had mentioned in the tips thread that warmist Phil Plait defended Mann in his blog recently, and is on the record denigrating skeptics as “deniers”. It’s rather sad that a “scientist” who specialises in astronomy can buy into the “CO2 is bad, mkay” mantra.