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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I find I strongly disagree with this article.
Back when I was in college in the 1970s, (showing my age) there was a defined method for science and every science textbook—biology, chemistry, physics—where I found a definition, gave the same one. At the same time, many “scientists” acknowledged that definition, and didn’t follow it. Hypocrisy. Yes, it was sort of cookie cutter, but amenable to all physical sciences. This method was still taught, in spite of over a century of people not following that method yet calling themselves “scientists”. In other words, “post-modern science” has its roots in the 19th century, if not earlier.
In short, that definition was based on repeatable observations, upon which were built hypothesis tested against more repeatable observations, if the hypothesis was not shot down by experimentation based on repeatable observations, it could become a theory, which could still be shot down by repeatable observations.
Taking that definition to its logical conclusion, science can study only present physical phenomena. That limit is politically incorrect, therefore many “scientists” ignore it. Instead they put their trust in plausible sounding stories and mathematical models, and call that “science”. In short, it appears that post-modern science is a return to pre-modern science.
What we live in is not a scientific age, but a post-scientiifc age which still has a strong memory of science. Part of that memory is the legacy of technology that that science gave us. That we’re in a post-scientific age is what’s behind much scientific fraud, the IPCC findings, Climate Gate, and so forth. We still have some of the trappings of science, and some old throwbacks like Anthony Watts who still do science, but I wouldn’t be surprised if most “scientists” don’t know what is science, according to the definition that made modern science. Instead they have some hand-waving about peer review and models, but nothing solid like the definition that made “modern science” what it was. And “scientists” have become a new priesthood of religious magic for a post-modern age.
Why did not my bread rise?
The yeast was too old.
There is a larger problem. In modern democracies, most people (I am trying hard not to make an aspersion) do not have sufficient grasp of the scientific details. How could they, when limited to mostly high school science? So they rely on MSM sound-bites, or organizations like the IPCC to interpret it for them. Therein lies a huge problem, documented in my last ebook. Unfortunately, my recommended solution (nullias in verbim, or Reagan’s trust but verify) won’t likely work with any political majority. A reason for some dispair, and perhaps some political mobilization.
Willis: “Then I hand around the 5-pound sledge hammers, and everyone else gets to see if they can destroy (falsify) my claim.”
It’s worth noting that falsifying a claim is a Reductio ad Absurdium. This is true both as a purely logical construct or a purely experimental construct. The important part here, for science, is that the proofs are incomplete. You cannot simply read the text and magic up an experiment as a consequence of your perusal. (Not that I suggest you are implying this in any manner.) To complete the argument, the proof, one needs to perform the experiment itself. With Euclid’s, previously mentioned, you have to construct the figures. But folks just don’t tend to have a Large Hadron Collider in the backyard. And some things are simply not replicable on demand; such as astronomical observations or climatological observations.
In such cases there will be always be an Expert Experimenter. In such cases, for each individual that does not have access or was not present at the right time and place, it will always be an issue of faith or prediction. The yay-sayers are all on the same side of the fence with respect to status and income implications. So they are hardly trustworthy of themselves. And the nay-sayers are all on the opposite side of the fence with their own shared status and income implications.
The only resolutions to requiring faith are Inquisitorial crimes (eg. ‘Climate heresy should be a felony.’) or validated prediction. If it’s a case of Expert Experimenters, then they can either satisfy to the results by putting their consequences on sale at Walmart, or by playing Jeane Dixon and letting the chips fall where they may.
my comment should have said no peer review prior to end of WWII
The competing studies abut salt and fat in your diet could make your brain hurt
They reached that conclusion by doubling (ROUGHLY) the error bar so much that the range encompassed by the 95% certainty actually includes cooling at the lower bound. Its ridiculous.
As Einstein so ably pointed out. A theory can NEVER be verified by experiment, it can only be nullified.
Our esteemed Sec of State displays his extreme political sensitivity when he makes a statement that includes the term ‘irrefutable’ with regard to science.
Many, many, interesting responses in this thread.
IMHO, the problem boils down to “is and ought.” The “ought” is the scientific method, sensu stricto, as described by Popper. The “is” of the scientific method, sensu lato, is “normal science,” as described by Kuhn. Both are real and cannot be denied by anyone who really cares about science. Moreover, all of this must be leavened by the insights of other excellent thinkers, such as Imre Lakatos and Paul Feyerabend, who put a lot of thought into the problem and tried to resolve the issue.
The bottom line, from my point of view, is that we no longer live in the Enlightenment, when enlightened people like Franklin believed that Science was the one and true path. Instead, we live in an age of “irrational activism,” as my late and great Georgetown history professor Carroll Quigley described the “Intellectual” level of the 20th century hierarchy of abstraction.
So, alas, there is science (lower case s) and Science (upper case S). Unfortunately, when it comes to Climate Science, the upper case has the upper hand.
David Deming,
Thank you for teeing up western civilization.
Finally a post explicitly on the essense of western civilization, its philosophical heritage. If western civilization ( and its predessor cultures of which their are several important ones) is the sufficient cause of the creation of science in our modern world, then how did it come to be if there were no prior scientists?
Did scientists spring forth fully formed and mature from the forehead of the Ancient Greek God Zeus as did the Goddess Athena? Nah.
They came later from the heroic rejection of supernaturalism and superstition by normal reasoning men. By just normal reasoning men. Science as we know it also is nothing other than the work product of merely normal reasoning men.
I think Deming is implying that it is illogical to claim Aristotelian logic (from a mere philosopher Aristotle) is scientific by using Aristotle’s logic to prove his point.
Aristotle wins, yet again. That old rascal.
John
I have a 100% certainty that climate changed before humans were around and therefore have the same certainty it would continue to change even if humans were suddenly no longer around.
We are a ’cause’ of climate change; so are termites, so is every single living thing on the planet – so what? The question was never whether or not we have an affect on it, the question is how much affect do we have on it? More and more it appears that the current answer to that question is – “so small in relation to natural forces that we are unable to detect it and have wasted 100’s of billions of dollars for NOTHING”.
So what is your alternative?
To keep clear of science and base our decisions on unscientific methods?
Even if the history of science is full of mistakes, we have in reality no alternative but to use science as a guide to our decisions. However, a sound skepticism and a second thought can be a good addition
Nice article, but it’s even worse than you lay out. PS I am not anti-science.
Dear Dr. Deming:
While I’ve read and admire your History of Science this essay doesn’t cut it. In particular you confuse what “Science” is with science as practiced by people who, like you and I, make misteaks.
The point of science, however, is that realith and other people together correct those mistakes – and because your history of concensus errors is really the history of the correction of those errorsit is actually very positive about the faith we can put in scientific progress.
The bottom line that it’s science if the theory leads to real world predictions that are then verified, and politics or careerism if the predictions made do not stand up to real world scrutiny but are maintained anyway. Your indictment here, in other words, is not against science, it’s against weak minded people pretending to science.
The existence of corruption doesn’t mean there aren’t honest people around. This also goes for science.
Science is real, for the person who is willing to apply its method in a disciplined way. At the core science stems from a genuine curiosity and a willingness to discover new ways to look at phenomena and explain them. The reward for this kind of science is not power, or authority, or wealth, it is just discovering and learning. For the curious mind that reward is big enough.
And yes, this kind of science can be found everywhere, with any person, inside or outside so called “scientific institutions”.
Actually, the “scientific method” begins with the identification of some problem or question one wants to answer. A scientist then answers that question with an informed guess – a hypothesis, which is patently not a theory. One then tests that hypothesis with observations, measurements and/or experiment (in which one observes and measures). If the observations confirm the hypothesis, then the hypothesis (presumed answer to the original question) is vetted among other scientists to glean their own takes on your findings.
That is where it tends to break down. In a truly knowledge-based system within a competitive community of other scientists, your work is generally torn apart limb by limb as others try to see if you are right. The way it used to work is that if no one else could prove you wrong and they were able to replicate your findings, your answer to the problem was added to the body of knowledge in that field.
When enough answers were gathered around the same general set of questions, a theory could then be constructed – a theory is a general, overarching explanation of some system within the universe which is consistent with ALL findings and ALL data and observations.
Within that broad process, many different practices can occur, with many ways to observe, measure, calculate, deduce, report….. The whole idea, however, has been to put the idea out there with your own interpretation of your findings to allow others to either confirm it by replicating your work or coming up opposite findings.
so, it is true there is NO single method, but there is a general method. Science is knowledge. Knowledge which is supposed to be generated following a general method which would allow others to confirm or refute findings so everyone else would be confident that an answer added to the body of knowledge had been tested and stood the rigors of critical second-guessing – not just reviewed. Think about ‘cold fusion’. As soon as it was announced, a bevvy of scientists set to work to see if was correct – and of course it wasn’t, so it went away.
Everything else said herein about the loss of science in climate hypothesizing is correct and needs no reiteration by me. I just wanted to make a little clarification
“few people realize how unreliable scientific authority can be”. but some people do and many of those people will be lawyers who’ve seen trials with scientific evidence. And who forms the bulk of our politicians – lawyers. And politicians know that truth is only determined by the ballot box. Hence the need for a consensus (or at least majority) of those entitled to vote..
“Even if the history of science is full of mistakes, we have in reality no alternative but to use science as a guide to our decisions.”
The alternative I suggest is that scientists study the recent, shameful history of science during the 1900’s in Russia, Germany and China. In particular, pay attention to Lysenko, China’s Great Leap, eugenics/population control, etc.. The destruction of agriculture, the killing of unarmed citizens, and the forcing of the rest off of their land to face starvation was done through the agency of science by government.
And a further alternative is to admit the fact that “health” – as determined by the current cabal of progressive scientists – is not the highest value for society, but many other values exist, such as liberty, independence, individual rights, and virtue.
Thomas Kuhn and Paul Feyerabend would love this article. That is a good reason to throw it in the trash. Carl Hempel, Israel Scheffler, Wolfgang Stegmuller, Isaac Levi, and many others would throw this article into the trash. That is a better reason to throw it in the trash.
I do not mean to condemn Dr. Deming’s body of work. My criticism applies only to this article.
Pardon me for not taking the time to note who among the philosophers of science listed are deceased.
To soften my criticism a bit, I will quote:
hoyawildcat says:
October 1, 2013 at 3:08 pm
“IMHO, the problem boils down to “is and ought.” The “ought” is the scientific method, sensu stricto, as described by Popper [substitute my list]. The “is” of the scientific method, sensu lato, is “normal science,” as described by Kuhn. Both are real and cannot be denied by anyone who really cares about science.”
Scientists have only a hand waving acquaintance with philosophy of science. And they certainly do not attempt to practice in accordance with scientific method. Except the occasional Feynman or Dyson who are both. But philosophers of science have done a fabulously good job of explaining that the purpose of scientific theory is to specify the evidence and explaining how scientific theory must always be held to the test of specifying the evidence. In non-philosopher’s terms, this is just what Willis Eschenbach describes above.
hoyawildcat: “So, alas, there is science (lower case s) and Science (upper case S).”
Not that I don’t understand your point, or your general is/ought issue. But if a CEO occasionally cleans the mirror in his office bathroom we don’t then say that each janitor is a cEO. Science is no more than the shotgun wedding of Philosophy and Engineering. How scientists behave is the same as how people do. But we do not call the general and normal behaviour of people ‘science’ (lower case s).
DirkH says
Connie was educated?
DaveE.
John Campbell says:
October 1, 2013 at 12:08 pm
You are correct.
Gary Pearse says:
October 1, 2013 at 12:29 pm
“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!”
Spot on! Your comment clearly reveals the absurdity of Deming’s claim. On this point, Deming’s little essay is downright childish.
The universe only works one way. Since no-one has a perfect understanding of any part of the universe, everyone is wrong to varying degrees. Accepting that you are wrong is where science starts. Those who “know they are right” have stopped doing science. The scientific method as defined by Willis and others is the the method we have come up with to try to get as close to the way the universe actually is as possible.
Since the universe is not a democracy, any argument based on how many votes a theory gets is inherently flawed, as we all know.
> The sciences are viewed as the only real sources of authoritative information. Knowledge derived from other epistemological systems is regarded as having less credibility.
Sorry, but what planet are you living on? Besides the still-vast influence of religions old and new, with varying levels of credibility (and staying power), huge numbers of people read horoscopes, consult astrologers, and believe snake-oil salesmen of all kinds. Or check out what’s on popular TV. “Ancient Aliens”? Yikes!
Science has the appearance of being widely accepted as authoritative. But if current trends continue, and the system continues to discredit itself politically, economically, and morally, many people will look at scientific blunders such as the IPCC reports and lump them in with it.
Make no mistake: the reputation of science is on the line every day. And, if people sense fraud, they may just as easily look somewhere else for authoritative pronouncements. Scientists (of which I count myself one) had better clean their game up.