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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Kev-in-Uk says:
October 1, 2013 at 12:39 pm
apologies for not noticing/realising Dr Deming’s very last sentence ”Count me out” – but the meme struck me as being somewhat supportive of post-normal science!
Although Richard Feynman famously said “philosophy of science is as useful to scientists as ornithology is to birds,” he actually was a brilliant philosopher of science, and he summarizes the “key to science” beautifully in this one-minute video:
Maybe they’ll play this video at future IPCC confabs, but I doubt it. It’s much to simple.
What makes climate science – or any science – fallible is the propensity of scientists to be taken in by and/or diverted from honest inquiry by ideological dogma. Dogmatic belief causes many aspects of a subject of scientific investigation to be disregarded or misinterpreted, and AGW is the perfect example of this – obsession with carbon dioxide, essentially a non-factor in climate change, while disregarding the actual drivers of climate, starting with the Sun.
AGW is rather like phrenology – the factor it considers most important has no more relevance to climate than the bumps on a person’s head have to his or her intelligence or character.
“Both inductive and deductive logic are employed.”
This is true, but I’ve met very few academic scientists who can accurately reason inductively with respect to even the simplest of everyday problems. They are always shocked to hear this.
Great essay, by the way.
So the difference between Philosophy and Science is given by some definitional claims about Philosophy and a collection of various shenanigans that people employed as Scientists have done?
One could, I suppose, consider this a personal demonstration by Dreming about the lack of logic in Science.
But there are definitions both to Philosophy and Science. The former Dreming presented in part and incorrectly, while the latter he refuses to acknowledge. Despite which, there are also the things that Philosophers have done that is not Philosophy. And there are the things that Scientists have done that are not Science.
The problem with both Philosophy and Science is not that they lack definitions, it’s that the people employed in those professions lack the will to call bullshit on their colleagues that are doing something that doesn’t fit under those definitions, while pretending it does.
It isn’t long thereafter that the foul-players start stating that there is no definition of Philosophy or of Science. And therefore everything is Philosophy, unless they don’t want it to be. And everything is Science, unless they don’t want it to be.
Science usually eventually gets it right. It needs time. Arguments, counter-arguments, which usually leads nearer to the truth. That`s why we have to be more careful about climate science: it`s a young science, and needs time to mature.
@John Campbell –
Your understanding is correct and very neatly and concisely stated. Kudos to you for it.
Now, if only the ideologues in the AGW crown could be made to understand this..
Bollocks on the claim that there is no scientific method. Philosophers disagree on the definition of philosophy but we don’t conclude from that fact that philosophy doesn’t exist. Biologists employ differing definitions of evolution but we don’t conclude that the theory of evolution doesn’t exist. Lack of agreement on the precise definition of the scientific method is not in itself reason to conclude that no such thing exists. Abundant evidence to the contrary exists, such as monographs devoted to the topic, articles and other discussions in periodicals, and sections in science textbooks.
I much prefer Karl Popper’s five hundred pages on The Logic of Scientific Discovery. If it was so easy as a thousand word essay then we might all do it. Dr. Deming immediately throws supernaturalism out, but how do we detect supernaturalism? That is the Problem of Demarcation which is relieved by the criterion of science, falsifiability. Much of what post-moderns regard as science is no more than technology where even a Witch Doctor can play.
Benoit Mandelbrot and Nassim Nicholas Taleb caution against the careless induction that blinds us to The Black Swan that hides in our amazingly complex reality.
Based upon the history of man, one could easily surmise that “consensus” and “certainty” are the enemies of truth in science. Perhaps our problem is not in what we know, but in how much we have yet to learn.
I hope it does not take a century to bring sanity back to science. But the patterns set down in the past are not conducive to “certainty” being let go of easily.
Hi all!
Good points raised by Dr. David Deming. I’d just like to add that the Scientific Method could be ambiguous for doing Science, during the process itself, but it is the cornerstone in verifying the validity of that science. Reproducibility, falsifiability and empirical validation are concepts that remain central to the credibility of the theories, much as certain groups seek to forget its meaning, and look away.
This is especially true in the case of the hard sciences, and Climatology is a hard science, at least until it is mixed with politics, economics and other social sciences. So I think we should not fall into the trap of neglecting the Scientific Method, rather we should tirelessly demand that is met.
One of the best methods in science is letting the rearch done by competing research groups who try to tackle their concurrents.
This works the better if the groups have equal opportunities.
Science is not an individual affair and the properties of individual scientists almost do not matter.
Several famous scientists were also active on terrains of alchemy and astrology. The scientist as a rational saint is a convenient myth.
Far from being settled, science is a diffuse process receiving contributions from many fields which often contradict previous research. An example is the Hockey Stick, which could not discern temperature from other environmental influences on tree growth, and lost both the Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age, both well established historically and globally, in the “noise” of competing environmental tree growth factors. Now from a previously uninvolved segment of the climate change controversy comes an eastern Mediterranean study of trees that follows a different path towards restoring the Medieval Warm Period and Little Ice Age, and adds to their geographical spread and influence. http://www.heritagedaily.com/2013/09/first-long-temperature-reconstruction-for-the-eastern-mediterranean-based-on-tree-rings/99100?
The use and abuse of “unprecedented” by the anthropogenic warming side has been allowed to stand because, as Dr. Deming notes, it is abetted by avarice and ignorance. And religious fervor. Scientific proof of earlier, greater warming during the past 10,000 years of the current Holocene interglacial – the Greenland ice cores – were dismissed by Dr. Trenberth in an email to me as being caused by “a Greenland hot spot.” And now he’s found the hidden warming in the deep oceans, where it hasn’t been and can’t be measured with precision, and which as Bob Tisdale and others have so clearly explained, is a physical impossibility.
Volcanos and aerosols, oh my.
Willis Eschenbach has done admirable work in taking volcanos out of the excuses, and aerosols are a desperate attempt to distract attention from natural climate variability. The farcical abuse of science by consensus is coming to its deserved end, as a monument to wasteful futility.
A very well written summary I agree, but I think that it may be disingenuous to mention that “No one speaks of consensus when discussing geometrical proofs”.
Many areas of science have to be taken on trust by lay persons, as simple self-evident proofs like those of plane geometry aren’t available. I take many areas of Quantum Mechanics on trust because they go far beyond my physics degree. I’m prepared to do the same with Geophysics as it isn’t my area at all.
The difference with ‘climate science’ is perhaps:
1/ That it doesn’t seem to be as vigorously debated within its peer group as ‘hard’ science is. I expect competing physical theories to be thrashed out in daily debate scrutinised by highly competitive specialists unwilling to accept anyone’s word. The professional climate science community seems to be much cosier – a form of consensus which may be suspicious in itself.
2/ That it is so politically ‘hot’ – government policy isn’t much affected by string theory yet…
“The sciences are viewed as the only real sources of authoritative information. Knowledge derived from other epistemological systems is regarded as having less credibility.”
As a method of understanding the world and its systems, science claims to be more reliable because it restricts itself to what can be observed, measured, replicated, controlled for, etc. But it routinely concerns itself with what cannot be observed, measured, replicated or verified by experiment. It claims to have limits, but asserts its greatest authority on matters outside of those limits.
“Of course, from the very beginning of the modern scientific enterprise, there have been scientists and philosophers who have been so impressed with the ability of the natural sciences to advance knowledge that they have asserted that these sciences are the only valid way of seeking knowledge in any field. A forthright expression of this viewpoint has been made by the chemist Peter Atkins, who in his 1995 essay “Science as Truth” asserts the “universal competence” of science. This position has been called scientism — a term that was originally intended to be pejorative but has been claimed as a badge of honor by some of its most vocal proponents. In their 2007 book Every Thing Must Go: Metaphysics Naturalized, for example, philosophers James Ladyman, Don Ross, and David Spurrett go so far as to entitle a chapter “In Defense of Scientism.”” Austin L. Hughes
http://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/the-folly-of-scientism
DirkH says:
October 1, 2013 at 12:24 pm
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.
That says nothing, because it includes the claim that the basis of logic do not has a foundation.
“We use boolean logic because it works.
That’s not the point. The point is whether logic exist or not exist, also if logic cannot be proved. If you make use of logic, this is an important thing. If logic is superstition you make use of superstition. If logic exists, it is part of the nature, like colour, or intensity of light, without a physical force.
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?).
Agree.
V.
Oh, the insidiousness of monopsony! Many sellers (scientists) and only one buyer (government) choosing that which increases it’s control.
“Science is the belief in the ignorance of the experts”- Richard Feynmann
When Einstein developed the theory of Relativity and Heisenberg,etc Quantum Mechanics
there was formal peer review such as we have today. Everybody tested everybodies ideas
except for the Nazis. Only after the use of SCIENCE in WWII was peer review instituted.
Peer review was implemented because science became institutionalized, and the powers-that-be needed some means to decide which research to fund and which to not. Newton was never peer reviewed because it didn’t need funding. More importantly, his work stood on its own (except, maybe, his alchemical work, and his biblical research).
But was that study peer reviewed?
Dr. Deming, thanks for your post. While I agree with almost everything you say, I disagree that there is no “scientific method.” Indeed there is one, and it depends on two things—transparency, and falsification.
The method is as follows: I make a claim, and I put forth in a public, transparent manner every bit of evidence I can adduce that my claim is true. This may include inductive or deductive logic, argumentum ad absurdum, data, historical accounts, computer code, or anything else that supports my claim.
Then I hand around the 5-pound sledge hammers, and everyone else gets to see if they can destroy (falsify) my claim. If they can, if they can show my claim is wrong, then it goes into the trash-heap of history, along with phlogiston and lots of other things we no longer accept as valid.
But if nobody can falsify my claim, then it is accepted as tentatively valid, or as it is often known, a “scientific truth”. I say “tentatively” because as happened with Newton, even hundreds of years later someone may come along and show that some aspect of what someone has done is not valid. So all science is only ever tentative.
I claim that that is the one and only “scientific method”, the method of transparency and falsification.
Unfortunately, as you point out … that method has nothing to do with the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report …
w.
Even in mathematics where one would think there is less room for arguing the validity of some newly proposed mathematical idea/concept, history shows contention between the new and the established. -e.g. Cantor and Kronecker – which is somewhat explainable by one of the ‘softer’ sciences – sociology. But if every idea ‘out there’ had an easy ride to acceptability, there would be such a mish-mashed smorgasbord that one would hardly know where to begin to construct a philosophy of anything. Ultimately consensus does play a role in what a community accepts and rejects – hopefully employing as much scientific and logical argumentation as possible.
My only quibble is considering ‘climate science’ a real science.
It might have been without political interference and being awash with oceans of money from politicians seeking to prove their commitment to “saving the planet”.
A thoroughly enjoyable read.
We do not live in a “Scientific Age”, we live in times that are just the opposite. Life was so much more simple when we believed what we were told and never questioned a thing…However the internet has changed all that.
We can now check things out for ourselves especially in the two biggest issues of our age…the climate and 9/11.
When we point out obvious falsehoods we are ignored or mocked as the truth is often too difficult to comprehend to the man in the street.