Guest essay by Dr. David Deming
We live in a scientific age. The sciences are viewed as the only real sources of authoritative information. Knowledge derived from other epistemological systems is regarded as having less credibility. The conclusions of philosophy are untestable, and religion is often cynically interpreted as nothing more than superstition and myth. Public policy decisions made upon the basis of scientific recommendations may have economic consequences measured in trillions of dollars. Yet few people realize how unreliable scientific authority can be.
The popular conception is that scientists dispassionately discover truth through a foolproof technique called the scientific method. In some simplistic views, the scientific method reduces to a series of procedural steps analogous to instructions in a cookbook. The results produced by this hypothetical scientific method are verified by something called peer review, a process that allegedly certifies reliability.
But the common understanding of science is largely an ignorant misconception.
Although most science is based on observation and reason, there is no such thing as an agreed upon scientific method. It doesn’t exist. With the exception of supernaturalism, almost everything is allowed in the sciences. Both inductive and deductive logic are employed. Analogical reasoning is alright. So are speculation and hunches. Serendipity plays a role in scientific discovery. Both radioactivity and penicillin were discovered accidentally. Objectivity is not required or taught, nor are there any totally objective human beings. Bias is ubiquitous and fraud occurs.
Peer review is a highly unreliable process that produces nothing but opinion. A study conducted in 2010 concluded that reviewers agree “at a rate barely exceeding what would be expected by chance.” Furthermore, the peer review process may be, and usually is, cynically manipulated. Scientists aggregate in social cliques that facilitate orthodoxy and suppress dissent. When manuscripts are submitted for review authors are commonly asked to suggest reviewers. Invariably these tend to be acquaintances holding the same views. Thus peer review often amounts to pal review. Neither does peer review detect fraud. In 2011, Tilburg University in the Netherlands suspended psychologist Diederik Stapel for publishing at least 55 scientific research papers based on fabricated data.
US Secretary of State John Kerry has said that climate science is “irrefutable.” He is categorically wrong. There is no certainty in science. The very notion of scientific consensus implies that the validity of scientific knowledge is subject to human judgment and therefore inherently problematic. No one speaks of consensus when discussing geometrical proofs. Scientists are not philosophers trained to avoid intellectual fallacies, but technical specialists possessing ideological and political persuasions that influence their scientific activity. Like other human beings, they tend to take note of what is consistent with preexisting beliefs and filter out what contradicts preconceptions. The influence of money can be corrupting. A group of people offered billions of dollars to investigate climate change is unlikely to conclude that it is a benign, natural process unworthy of further attention.
The history of science is a chronicle of revision. For two thousand years, physicists maintained that heavy objects fall faster than light ones. Astronomers thought the Sun moved around the Earth. Physicians supposed that plagues were caused by bad air and treated their patients by bleeding them to death. The icons of the Scientific Revolution, Galileo, Kepler, and Newton, all made serious errors. In the late eighteenth century, Neptunists formulated a theory to explain the origin of rocks. They described their conclusions as incontrovertible because everywhere they looked they found evidence that supported their theoretical conceptions. The Neptunist theory turned out to be completely erroneous. At the end of the nineteenth century, geologists thought the Earth was less than 100 million years old. Radioactive dating in the twentieth century showed they were in error by a factor of 46. In the 1920s, American geologists rejected Alfred Wegener’s theory of continental drift with near unanimity. They were all wrong. The history of science is a history of error. Has the process of history ceased? Has human nature changed?
We are now asked to change the world’s economy on the basis of yet another scientific theory. The fifth assessment report of the IPCC has concluded that there is a 95 percent probability that humans are responsible for climate change. We are induced to accept this conclusion on the basis of naive faith in scientific authority. But this faith can only come from an ignorance of how science really works. Count me out.
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David Deming (ddeming@ou.edu) is a geophysicist and author of a three-volume history of science, Science and Technology in World History (McFarland, 2010, 2012).
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If the current CET trend continues, people in the UK have reason to be less pessimistic than usual
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/CET-Dmax.htm
But no-one is actually DOING anything about it. There are lots of words, but absolutely no action whatsoever. Who is going to “Bell the cat”.
from Wiki…
The debate was not just between scientists. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, one of the most respected authors of the day, took sides with the neptunists. The fourth act of his famous work Faust contains a dialogue between a neptunist and a plutonist, the latter being Mephistopheles, the antagonist of the play who is a devil. Doing so he implicitly expressed his favour for the neptunist theory, though he also did so explicitly and sometimes even harshly elsewhere.
…
Perhaps an extension of the historical accounts of history could include some documentation as to the propensity or frequency of demonizing tactics against skeptics in defending a science theory. That may be asking too much on historical granularity though.
That is a hard question to answer. Our leading politicians are no longer accessible by the public-at-large. Our emails and phone calls go to dead files, never to be read or heard. It is no longer possible to even speak with one in person, they are covered by their minions who do their bidding using our tax dollars.
A tax revolution where everyone stopped paying taxes to their government would do it but who is the first to start that roller coaster?
“Scientists are not philosophers trained to avoid intellectual fallacies”
Yes they are. Or, at least they were. Most good scientists are well aware of many existing intellectual fallacies. That’s why there is a distinction between “hard” and “soft” sciences.
Thank you Dr. Deming; very good article. Any suggestions on how to fix our current situation?
I’m 95% certain that Dr. Deming is correct.
If by “method” one means a deductive procedure, there is no such thing as “the scientific method.”
When C.S. Peirce wrote about “the method of science,” he didn’t mean a cookbook recipe. He meant that kind of inquiry which, by its own account, can go wrong (investigatorial fallibilism, the independence of the real) as well as right (no radical skepticism, the discoverability of the real), and which puts those ideas into practice: self-checking, self-criticizing, self-correcting. That requires whatever it takes to expedite time’s slow tell – (well-prepared) guessing as well as deduction and inductive testing, not to mention alertness to serendipity. That’s kind of a method, albeit not the cookie-cutter variety.
Excellent article.
One minor quibble re your statement that: “[a]t the end of the nineteenth century, geologists thought the Earth was less than 100 million years old. Radioactive dating in the twentieth century showed they were in error by a factor of 46.” In fact, most 19th century geologists (except those who bought into the Biblical account), following Lyell, realized that the Earth must be 100s of millions of years old, whereas it was the physicists who denied “deep time.” Quoting Wikipedia here: “The last estimate Thomson [Lord Kelvin] gave, in 1897, was: ‘that it was more than 20 and less than 40 million year old, and probably much nearer 20 than 40’. In 1899 and 1900, John Joly of the Trinity College, Dublin calculated the rate at which the oceans should have accumulated salt from erosion processes, and determined that the oceans were about 80 to 100 million years old.” Unfortunately, as you note, the physicists failed to take into account radioactivity, which was discovered in 1896 by the chemist Becquerel. In the history of Earth science, it is often the case that the physicists are the last to come around.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-09-27/ex-epa-official-admits-to-faking-cia-job-for-unearned-pay.html
…….Aren’t they all
Bravo.
Excellent article that tells it like it really is. I am sure that most scientists would recognise the truth in it, but they have mortgages to pay and families to support after all, and just because they are scientists it doesn’t make them moral Supermen.
I would love to see it published in the Guardian, but I won’t be holding my breath!
David Deming,
Excellent summary. The readers here know this but how to reach the general population is the real question from this point forward.
I thought the scientific method was as follows: (1) someone comes up with a theory (perhaps expressed by a computer model). (2) The theory makes predictions about reality. (3) If measurements of reality differ from the predictions, then the theory is invalidated; if they do not differ, then the theory is cautiously accepted as not being wrong so far.
Is my understanding wrong?
„Although most science is based on observation and reason, there is no such thing as an agreed upon scientific method. It doesn’t exist. “
To claim no thing is senseless. It only has sense to argue on things.
“Both inductive and deductive logic are employed. “
What IS logic? If you employ logic, there may be some reasons. One reason is that you belief in the ‘religion’ of logic. Another reason may be that logic exist. Logic starts with the recognition: ‘It is impossible that some thing is true and in the same time untrue.’
The method of science is inseparable bound to the ability of a living consciousness to recognize. There is nothing to show and/or nothing to prove. All is to be recognized.
Climate science is not fallible; there may be imperfection in the recognition of the truth of climate scientists. You cannot prove why climate science is fallible. You only can recognize it.
“The conclusions of philosophy are untestable“
Yes. But that doesn’t mean that sophia is not to be recognized. Philosophy is the basis of science.
This scientific age is not really a scientific age; it is an age, people believe in the sayings of scientists.
I’m sorry to say that. A major output of claims in today science make use of the same error as your claim on no thing.
If people are agree on that what IS including logic that exist as immaterial structure of nature, they can agree on a method.
“The fifth assessment report of the IPCC has concluded that there is a 95 percent probability that humans are responsible for climate change. We are induced to accept this conclusion on the basis of naive faith in scientific authority.”
Look to the basis:
” Argumentum ad numerum: This fallacy is closely related to the argumentum ad populum. It consists of asserting that the more people who support or believe a proposition, the more likely it is that that proposition is correct. For example: “All I’m saying is that thousands of people believe in pyramid power, so there must be something to it.”
Argumentum ad verecundiam (Appeal to authority): The Appeal to Authority uses admiration of a famous person to try and win support for an assertion. For example: “Isaac Newton was a genius and he believed in God.”
V.
All very true.
However, in the case of the IPCC and climate science, I would point out that the monetary stakes are higher than they have been for any scientific endeavor, ever.
Do you think that might explain the record breaking bias and fraud?
Old’un says:
October 1, 2013 at 12:01 pm
“I would love to see it published in the Guardian, but I won’t be holding my breath!”
The Guardian abhors logical thinking.
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2012/08/15/liberal-writer-i-wish-id-been-aborted/
Correlation and cause and effect – since atmospheric CO2 concentrations have been continually arising for the past 15 years, and the warming of the earth has paused, should one conclude that increasing levels of atmospheric CO2 has a cooling effect on global temperatures? Why does the previous 20-year warming period from 1979-1998 set the precedent that increasing CO2 levels causes warming?
So, warming or cooling can happen with rising CO2 levels. Hmmm, maybe CO2 is not such a big factor when global temperatures are concerned. But don’t innudate me with logic and facts. Let me devise my own little theory and call it established science, and declare that it is settled.
Volker Doormann says:
October 1, 2013 at 12:13 pm
“What IS logic? If you employ logic, there may be some reasons. One reason is that you belief in the ‘religion’ of logic. Another reason may be that logic exist. Logic starts with the recognition: ‘It is impossible that some thing is true and in the same time untrue.’ ”
Any Logic is an axiomatic system. We use boolean logic because it works. But we also use bayesian probability for expressing degrees of certainty.
Aristotle’s fallacies are merely examples of non sequiturs. One often gets the feeling that journalists are taught the fallacies in journalism school as a rulebook of what to use in their propaganda; IPCC directors probably as well (Is it a coincidence that the EU’s eternal climate commissioner Connie Hedegaard is a journalist by education?)
The scientific method is indeed only a ‘loose ‘ set of guidelines – but there are guidelines that an enquiring mind should follow. The real thrust of the scientific method, including the proposition or theory, methodology, data analysis, conclusions, etc, etc is that it provides a ROBUST REPEATABLE RECORD of the ‘work’. The post-work REVIEW (peer review) serves to demonstrate to others the effectiveness of both the work AND the communication/description of the work so that it can be then accepted as ‘valid’ – Note that ‘valid’ does not mean it is necessarily ‘correct’ !
Saying there is no such thing as a ‘scientific method’ is misleading, and I discourage such a stance. Sure, scientists should follow the generic ‘guidelines’ and for that I fully accept that these guidelines are called ‘The scientific method’ – but the popular conception is indeed how it SHOULD be done!
“We are induced to accept this conclusion on the basis of naive faith in scientific authority.”
David, you have slipped a bit away from real science into post normal science, where everyone can have a go if they feel like it. Or even have a discussion group of psychologists, sociologists, butchers, bakers and candlestick makers to discuss the terrible mistakes made by Newton. This is the new paradigm it seems. Classically, falsifying a theory requires more than opinion. You are right about peer review, especially in this modern age – someone’s mere opinion can hold sway there – look at how the summary for policymakers is “negotiated” by politicians – how can that be a summary of science – that is what you appear to be describing.
Your admonitions that Newton made mistakes (and neglecting the fact that he virtually made the universe for us and invented real mathematics and science while he was at it) is egregiously condescending to one of the few dozens of real scientists who did real science in the history of all humankind. He made mistakes! If you want to call a 17th Century, unparalleled genius, using his gray matter, and largely tools he invented, along with several branches of physics and astronomy, a man to be remembered for his mistakes, the mistakes must have been whoppers!! And pray, how do we know he made mistakes (although I might call them near approximations)? We know it because another scientist fixed them (not just had an opinion) and we all know it was the bumbling Einstein who stumbled into it. And geologists were all wrong about continental drift until other scientists fixed it. Are you seeing a pattern on how science works here? Dare we have enough naive trust in scientific authority to venture off to the moon? Or even get in an airplane? Is your computer magic or a product of good science? In post normal science we are to put our trust in philosophers. Most likely young Isaac read the philosophies of the moderns and classics in their original languages but I don’t think that would have been much help to him.
Dave, you can be excused as a young man having come into an era of anti-science that you’ve mistaken for the real thing, the likes of which we old guys are fighting against on WUWT. Don’t take what you see going on as science in the climate synod. You certainly can’t trust what the IPCC are doing, but don’t tar science with the same brush.
Ben U’s post reminds me of an excellent essay I found some years ago by Peter Medawar called ‘The Art of the Soluble’. Written in the 1960’s it comes from a time when scientists, and Medawar was a nobel prize winner, had a different self perception based on a different understanding of the pursuit of knowledge.
In it, he begins by quoting Arthur Koestler from the book The Act of Creation’:
‘No scientist is admired for failing in the attempt to solve problems that lie beyond his competence. The most he can hope for is the kindly contempt earned by the utopian politician. If politics is the art of the possible, research is surely the art of the soluble. Both are immensely practical minded affairs.’
Medawar goes on to write
‘Good scientists study the most important problems they think they can solve. ….That is why some of the most important biological problems have not yet appeared on the agenda of practical research.’
What seems to have been lost sight of by many climate scientists, by their government sponsoring bureaus and by many politicians, is this mind set of ‘the soluble’ and the concomitant humility when tackling transparently insoluble problems, as well as the concomitant common sense in not promising/assuming results when taking on such problems in the first place.
Gary Pearse says:
October 1, 2013 at 12:29 pm
I agree. This essay has actually quite annoyed me – but maybe that’s because I am ‘old school’ and was taught by real scientists with a very high degree of honour and integrity and indeed pride.
If the author is young, as you say, he can be excused, but at the very least I think he needs to grasp that such thinking (i.e. that there is no defined method – though granted, it’s not present in the IPCC rubbish!) is really no way for a genuine scientist to think !
Is this Dr Deming any relation to this person?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._Edwards_Deming
Thanks
Gary Pearse says:
October 1, 2013 at 12:29 pm
“In post normal science we are to put our trust in philosophers. Most likely young Isaac read the philosophies of the moderns and classics in their original languages but I don’t think that would have been much help to him.”
Ravetz, the inventor of Post Normal Science, is surely not a noteworthy philosopher. Next you’ll call Adorno an imporant philosopher. They are similarly incoherent; and both Marxists.
To the opposite; current scientific thinking (not the IPCC kind) owes a lot to philosophers like the early Wittgenstein who founded logical positivism. (Even though, as Gödel proved, it has its limits)