Current peer review science, by attempting to explain away model failure, in fact confirms that the science is wrong
Guest essay by David M. Hoffer
It has become a favorite tactic amongst trolls to declare their belief in peer reviewed science. With this simple strategy, they at once excuse themselves from the need to know anything about the science, and at the same time seek to discredit skeptic arguments on the grounds that, not having been published in peer reviewed journals, they may be dismissed out of hand.
A retreat to authoritarian arguments in the face of dead simple observations is not new. It is a repeat of history. Not having learned from it, we appear to be condemned to repeat it. But both history and the current peer reviewed science are, if one steps back and looks at the big picture, on the skeptic side.
In the fifth century BC, Empedocles theorized that one could see by virtue of rays emanating from one’s eyes. Falsifying this notion required no more than pointing out that one cannot see in a dark room. Despite this simple observation, his theory enjoyed substantial support for the next 1600 years.
Galileo died while under house arrest for supporting the notion that the earth orbited the sun. His was convicted in part on the basis of peer reviewed literature of the time insisting that the movement of the planets as observed from the earth could be explained by the planets simply reversing direction in orbit from time to time. For nearly two thousand years, into the early 1800’s, when people fell ill, the peer reviewed literature confirmed that the best course of action was to let some blood out of them. The simple observation that death rates increased when this treatment was applied was dismissed out of hand on the premise that, if it was true, it would appear in medical journals. Sound familiar?
History is replete with examples of what seems today to be utterly absurd ideas. Ideas which stubbornly refuse to die, sustained in part by the equally absurd notion that evidence to the contrary was not to be accepted simply because it hadn’t appeared in the “right” publications. But is the notion of climate science today as easily falsified by simple observation? I submit that it is. We have the climate models themselves to upon which to rely.
For what are the climate models other than the embodiment of the peer reviewed science? Is there a single model cited by the IPCC that claims to not be based on peer reviewed science? Of course there isn’t. Yet simple observation shows that the models, and hence the peer reviewed literature upon which they are based, are wrong. We have none other than the IPCC themselves to thank for showing us that.
The leaked Second Order Draft of IPCC AR5 laid bare the failure of the models to predict the earth’s temperature going forward in time. In fact, if one threw out all but the best 5% of the model results…they would still be wrong, and obviously so. They all run hotter than reality. Exposed for the world to see that the models (and hence the science upon which they are based) had so utterly failed, the IPCC responded by including older models they had previously declared obsolete as now being part of the current literature:
Even with those older and supposedly obsolete models included, the models look to be complete failures. In other words, confronted with the data showing that thousands are dying from bloodletting, the IPCC is resurrecting old studies showing that three or four patients recovered once in an old study from a long time ago. They are point blank asking you to believe that planets reverse direction in orbit quite of their own volition. They’ve contrived a theory that you can’t see in the dark because the rays from your eyes must interact with light to work.
As ridiculous as that may seem, for the IPCC, it is (literally) even worse than that. For this we have the foremost climate scientists on the planet to thank.
Kevin Trenberth, arguably the most politically powerful climate scientist on earth, famously lamented in the ClimateGate Emails that we cannot account for “the missing heat”, a tacit admission that the models are wrong. Since then we’ve seen multiple papers suggesting that perhaps the heat is being sequestered in the deep oceans where, conveniently, we cannot measure it. If true, this also invalidates the models, since they predicted no such thing.
Dr Roy Spencer’s paper suggests that the heat is escaping to space. If he’s right, the models are wrong. More recently we have the paper by Cowtan and Way, which tries to make the case that the heat is hiding in places on earth where we have no weather station or satellite data. Pretty selective that heat, going where nobody can measure it, but not where we can. If they are right, then not a single model predicted any such thing, and so, once again, the models would be wrong. Spencer’s paper stands apart from the others because it doesn’t twist itself into absurd contortions in a blatant attempt to preserve the CAGW storyline. But make no mistake about it, all these papers are being published, not because the models (and the science they are predicted upon) are right, but because they are wrong, and obviously so.
No longer is the debate in regard to if the models are wrong. The debate is now about why the models are wrong. The models having fallen, the peer reviewed science they purport to represent falls with them.
But you need not believe me in that regard.
Just the peer reviewed science by the foremost climate scientists on earth.
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Seems to me that would depend on the computer, wouldn’t it?
And that is really the crux of the issue. The more detailed you make the model, the more difficult it becomes. But I do think there are some basic problems our models do not address. For example, you can not consider the atmosphere to be one monolithic thing. We have a barrier to convection at the tropopause that needs to be taken into account. So the troposphere should, in my opinion, be modeled more like a balloon. If you heat it up, it expands. If it expands, it increases its surface area and tries to cool itself down. Warming the troposphere raises the tropopause and thereby the tops of convective clouds in things like storm cells which allow them to rise above more of the atmospheric CO2. A greenhouse is not a good analogy for Earth’s atmosphere because it is a convective heat engine that carries a lot of heat beyond the LWIR barrier. Sure, if we had a dry atmosphere with no clouds with a smooth surface of the same composition across the entire face of the planet and no convection, it would be easy to model how much LWIR emitted from the surface from solar warming would be re-emitted downwards from atmospheric CO2 but that is not how Earth’s atmosphere works. If the surface shed heat only by radiation, sure, the models make sense but they don’t. They also shed heat by conduction. warming air in direct contact with that surface which then rises. As it rises, there is less CO2 above it than below it so a photon emitted upwards has a greater chance of passing into space than it did at the surface. Add water and now you have an active coolant introduced to the system. Water is evaporated, rises to altitude, condenses and releases that heat high above most of the CO2.
The current climate models in my opinion are basically baloney. They model a planet of Earth’s size and distance from the sun — just not a planet like Earth.
@climateace – so someone here talks about trolls and you jump right in and loudly protest, repeatedly …
This post is a jumble of nonsense. It is clear that Hoffer has no idea of what the peer review process is and what it is supposed to do.
As other commenters have observed, Galileo et al. have nothing whatever to do with the case.
In itself, the peer review process is nothing to do with maintaining an orthodoxy (although it may be misused as ‘pal review’ to do just that).
Nor does peer review – when properly carried out – make the conclusions of a paper right or wrong: other procedures of the scientific method do that.
Editors of learned journals cannot hope to subject all the articles that come their way to specialist scrutiny – most will be outside their direct subject specialities.
Peer reviewers do that job.
What is this specialist scrutiny?
1- Is the paper an important/worthwhile contribution to its field?
2- Does the paper accord with standard publishing practice (references, style, data etc.)
3- Does the paper make comprehensive reference to other relevant publications. Are these references correct?
4- Is the paper free of egregious errors?
This last point does not mean that the content of the paper is true, just that it is not obviously wrong in some matter of fact.
None of Hoffer’s windy statements about Galileo and orthodox science would survive if subjected to a peer review process. QED.
Dear,oh dear ,oh dear.
The working principles for determining the motions of the Earth for Copernicus who originally proposed them and those who followed like Galileo and Kepler relied on a core observation that the wandering motions of the other planets as they appeared to move in one direction against the background stars and then the other direction was due to the orbital motion of the Earth itself –
http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap011220.html
Least anyone decide to elevate Kepler over Copernicus in order to promote contemporary perceptions then the words of Kepler himself should be enough –
“. . . the ancient hypotheses clearly fail to account for certain important matters. For example, they do not comprehend the causes of the numbers, extents and durations of the retrogradations and of their agreeing so well with the position and mean motion of the sun. Copernicus alone gives an explanation to those things that provoke astonishment among other astronomers, thus destroying the source of astonishment, which lies in the ignorance of the causes.” Kepler ,1596, Mysterium Cosmographicum
The real problem for the Pope along with Galileo and most any astronomer at the time was whether the system which predicts astronomical events and the positions of celestial objects to each other can be used to prove the Earth’s motions –
“Better still, if someone wishes, he can assign to the sky those motions of the earth that [Copernicus] adds to the first two, and use the same calculation procedures. But that highly learned and intelligent man considered it inadvisable, on account of these undisciplined minds, to invert the entire system of his hypotheses, and he contented himself with having established
that which was sufficient for the true discovery of phenomena.” Gemma Frisius
It is still such a complex argument to discriminate between predictive astronomy based on the calendar system and the fairly simple arguments which determine that the Earth moves in an orbit between Mars and Venus.
Today it is even possible to partition the resolutions for apparent retrogrades between the outer planets and the faster moving Earth from the entirely separate resolution for the faster moving inner planets.
“Of all the comments critical of my article, not a single one even attempted to refute my main assertion; The climate models are wrong, demonstrating that the science upon which they are founded is wrong, and the biggest proponents of the CAGW meme in the climate science community are now reduced to increasingly implausible explanations as to why.”
1. you assert it but do not show your work.
2. Of the 43 models which did you test? what test did you use?
3. You realize that some of the models perform better than others. Which performs the best?
and on what tests? Of the 2 or three models that cannot be rejected by statistical tests
how did you “falsify” them?
4. The experiment has only been run once. How did you do your statistics?
5, Dont make the mistake of averaging the models. That approach has been discredited here.
6. If a model doesnt match observations this is all you know.
A) the observations are wrong, do the experiment again.
B) some inputs may be wrong. you need to find out which ones
C) some portion of the model is wrong. Which part? models and theories are never
rejected in total because every model relies on multiple interconnected parts including
laws of logic and math. See Duhem- Quine
D. some or all of the above.
7. The models are found on known physcial laws ( gravity for example) and radiative physics.
They also have physics that is less well known. When you reject the science in the models do you reject it all or only a part? how did you decide which parts? or do you reject it all?
climateace
I have a question for you, what do you believe or think the peer science says about the temperature increase comes from doubling the CO2 in the atmosphere? Is it 4C, 2C, 1c or .5C there has been peer reviewed papers that have said any one of those numbers, Secondly what the observation telling us in your mind? I know what the data is tell me, that at best it is .5 and at that we have seen most of the warming already. As to you 5 meter rise in the oceans well the sophistry does not even warrant a retort. As far as the temperature in Chicago, well since have spent most of my life in the Fargo, western Minnesota and western North Dakota area I know cold and heat the temperature extremes of the region is well over 150 degrees, As to the cold in that region I knew a young man from Chicago whom had come up to Moorhead Minnesota for collage education, when i had ask him how he spent his first winter in Moorhead he said indoors. Yes I do believe Fargo could use some global warming all though I no longer affected by it since I now live in Arizona and yes 116 is a lot better the -50 and mind you I have experience both and the -50 was not a wind chill temperature, I consider wind chill an idiots measurement of temperature since only and idiot would stand out in the direct wind. I do believe from your post you and such and idiot would have much in common.
Hoffer: “…my main assertion; The climate models are wrong…”
Silly me! Thanks for clearing that up, that out of the 20 or so rambling assertions in your piece titled ‘peer review’ that was your main one.
Stakhanov medal to @climateace, for plugging on! But it is futile – you won’t get through to him, nor all the others here writing learned tracts on Galileo.
“climateace says:
December 30, 2013 at 12:36 am”
You pretty much answer your own questions. Hey, I’ve been called a troll, or similar, by people in very influential positions, even here at WUWT. As for name-calling, I wouldn’t worry too much about it. If you don’t like it, don’t respond nor take the bait and respond likewise.
We (Scientists) are either wrong or right (Tecnically speaking when talking about the effect of ~3% of CO2 has on climate) however, so far there is no testable, measureable, empriacle evidence to support the claim that that amount of CO2 is driving climate to change in a bad way. None!
There are more important issues, as you point out, facing Aus, like native soil, plant and animal degredation. Reducing CO2 emissions (The greens want 30% of ~1.5% – LAUGH).
I have been called a troll in other blogs for stating that it is completely rediculous to suggest that any reduction to the ~1.5% (Australian contribution) of the ~3% (Annual IPCC estimated total human contribution) to ~400ppm/v CO2 (Given we know certain facts about CO2 like time lag and effect at concentration) is going to change anything other than our economies for absolutely no benefit at all to climate, the environment or anything. This is the whole agrument!
GlynnMhor says:
OldCrusader is quite right.
The Copernican-Gallilean heliocentric system offered exactly zero improvement over the Ptolemaic geocentric one in predicting planetary positions. It gave the exact same errors for the exact same reasons.
Kepler’s revolutionary heliofocal system, in contrast, yielded planetary positions more accurate than the margin of measurement error of the time.
Yet Kepler gets very little credit or fame, while the other two bask in historical glory for their failed hypothesis.
===
Kepler’s modification of circular orbits to slightly elliptical orbits was a valuable scientific improvement. However, it is incomparable to the total change of mentality and belief that is required to accept that the Earth and the human race, as God’s creations, is not the centre of the universe.
That is what makes the earlier discoveries so much more important, not the mathematical precision.
There was no theological requirement for any intelligent Christian to believe the Earth was the center of anything and in fact the opposite as the great Christian works were then promoting the belief in God everywhere. The views certainly changed around the juncture of the Galileo affair but this was a political maneuver with little to do with the astronomical culture preceding the discoveries of Copernicus.
I wish the modern reader would grow up and not demote the reasoning our ancestors applied to observations for, like any great discovery, it is not just proving the Earth moves,it is finding just the right arguments to satisfy observations and experiences.One of the old arguments is spectacular in that it tries to account for the dual motions of the Earth but falls short with annual solar declination –
“..just as Cleanthes thought it right that the Greeks collectively should impeach Aristagoras the Stoic, of impiety, for overthrowing the altar of earth, because the fellow attempted to account for visible phenomena by supposing that the sky remains fixed, and that the earth rolls round down an oblique circle, turning at the same time upon its own axis.” Plutarch
Galileo knew himself it was political even if he inflicted it on himself so he is caught between two stools although he tries to accurately present the historical position of the Church before things went sideways –
“At that time the calendar was defective because the true measures of the year and the lunar month were not exactly known. The Bishop of Fossombrone, then in charge of tills matter, assigned Copernicus to seek more light and greater certainty concerning the celestial motions by means of constant study and labor. With Herculean toil he set his admirable mind to this task, and he made such great progress in this science and brought our knowledge of the heavenly motions to such precision that he became celebrated as an astronomer. Since that time not only has the calendar been regulated by his teachings, but tables of all the motions of the planets have been calculated as well. Having reduced his system into six books, he published these at the instance of the Cardinal of Capua and the Bishop of Culm And since he had assumed his laborious enterprise by order of the Supreme Pontiff, he dedicated this book On the celestial revolutions to Pope Paul III. When printed, the book was accepted by the holy Church, and it has been read and studied by everyone without the faintest hint of any objection ever being conceived against its doctrines. Yet now that manifest experiences and necessary proofs have shown them to be well grounded, persons exist who would strip the author of his reward without so much as looking at his book, and add the shame of having him pronounced a heretic. All this they would do merely to satisfy their personal displeasure conceived without any cause against another man, who has no interest in Copernicus beyond approving his teachings.” Galileo
http://inters.org/Galilei-Madame-Christina-Lorraine
There was no requirement that the Earth be at the center of creation and the Pope to be at the center of that power which is obviously the story we have inherited for those today who are hostile to Christianity and think it a political entity based on myth.
The technical issues which were brought up at the juncture of Galileo and the Pope before it all became crude and remains so are as valid today as they were back then as the objections have never been resolved.
Peer review has its shortcomings, sometimes bad papers are published and they gain traction. Andrew Wakefield’s paper on dangers of vaccines, Seralini’s rat study paper, to mention two. Both gained huge popularity and fame among anti-vaxxers and anti-GMO crowd.
Both papers were later found faulty and were retracted. That’s how science works.
In both cases, the overwhelming majority of peer-reviewed studies contradicted the findings.
While peer review is not perfect, it acts like a fence that keeps all kinds of lunatic theories from being touted as “science” and gaining support.
Just as a test, how many of you would like to be treated for the rest of your natural lives according to peer-reviewed medicine? How many would like to put their lives in the hands of alternative medicine (not based on scientific method and peer-reviewed studies)?
What your dealing with here is one of the ‘dirty secrets of science ‘ for the public have for a long time be sold the line that peer review acts a ‘perfect ‘ way to check work, therefore if a paper passes through peer review it must be honest and valuable.
The trouble is that is dead wrong , pal review , self review , missing data , and even outright lies have all be found in many papers which have passed through peer review over the years. And that is before we get to the problem that the majority of scientists working in area can actual be dead wrong and its the minority who hold different views , who are actual right.
Peer review has become the sacred cow which can never be questioned , the trouble like any cow it still produces its fair share of shit . In some areas you could even suggest that is what it mostly does.
Jarmo
Let’s be honest,peer review is there to keep the reviewers in salaries and reputations and not the person writing an article.It is like the principle of why people smoke where the craving caused by the last cigarette justifies the lighting up of the next one hence the craving is relieved – the only reason people do harm themselves in the first place.I read that from Allan Carr and peer review ,at least as it exists presently, is just as insidious in the way it goes about its business .
Do you really think a person is going to get a salary in their given field without a certificate mounted behind them given by people who only approve ideas that they themselves subscribe to. Wayward notions, and human control over planetary temperatures is among them, would normally fall by the wayside in a world that truly held interpretation as the stable foundations for terrestrial sciences but unfortunately a vicious empiricism is a speculative/predictive animal so they get into trouble when their predictions don’t pan out.
I loved the commentaries on the ‘Piltdown man’ affair where they waited until everyone died before they admitted a hoax so don’t tell me about the honesty and dignity of mainstream agendas –
” Anthropologists refer to the hoax as ‘another instance of desire for fame leading a scholar into dishonesty’ and boast that the unmasking of the deception is ‘a tribute to the persistence and skill of modern research’. Persistence and skill indeed! When they have taken over forty years to discover the difference between an ancient fossil and a modern chimpanzee! A chimpanzee could have done it quicker. Far from being a triumph of Science the hoax points to common and
dangerous faults. The hoax succeeded in large part because of the slipshod nature of the testing applied to it; careful examination using the methods available at the time would have immediately
revealed the hoax. This failure to adequately examine the fossils went unmarked and unnoticed at the time – in large part because the hoax admirably satisfied the theoretical expectations of the time.” Daily Sketch on Piltdown Man hoax
People hellbent on conclusions and filling in the details can be a lovable bunch but it has got out of hand lately and is now mainstream policy in trying to put speculation ahead of interpretation,not just with climate but most everything where terrestrial and astronomy are involved.
I enjoyed my few days here but it is time to go.
‘ Gerald Kelleher says:
December 30, 2013 at 1:47 am
There was no theological requirement for any intelligent Christian to believe the Earth was the center of anything and in fact the opposite as the great Christian works were then promoting the belief in God everywhere.’
The safest way to go about this, IMHO, is to separate science and faith-based religion completely. It really does not matter whether faith is ‘intelligent’ or non-intelligent because faith does not require an IQ; nor does it require reason. It requires faith which is a different cognitive domain entirely.
This separation would save lots of confusion. We have even had Lord Monckton, Third Viscount of Benchley, Noble Prize Winner, Birther, Climatologist, Health Scientist, Classicist and Mathmatician muddy these very waters a few strings ago.
That apart, the practical problem for Galileo seems to be that you were not running the Vatican in Galileo’s time.
Mark Luhman says:
I was about to respond to your post when I came upon the last line. You lost your cedibility there, buddy.
knr & Gerald Kelleher:
You discredit the scientific method (peer review is part of it) because you disagree with results it has produced in a certain field (climate science) during a relatively short time period (1990-2013).
Gentlemen, you are throwing the baby out with the bathwater…
Many thanks, excellent post.
Very good article, David. I agree with Theoldcrusader that Galileo is not a good example. In those days they did not yet have the theory of relativity. The article could use a reference to Karl Popper, who considered falsification the hall mark of science. This principle is rooted in the logical asymmetry that a false theory implies both true and false statements but a true theory only implies true statements. One falsification suffices to declare a theory false. As simple the principle is, people have enormous difficulties with believing that a false theory may imply true statements. Just take the false flat-earth model. It implies millions of true observations to be done on the beach. All those confirmations are worthless compared with one falsification. AGW is falsified several times and so it is already more dead than dead. (i’m late in the discussion because of time zones)
Jarmo the problems of peer review are ones you admit to yourself , but then you see highlight them as discrediting the scientific method ! And that is why its a ‘dirty’ secrets , the fear that is if the public know about this issues than there much too lose. The irony is pal review , missing data , and outright lies etc do far more to undermine the scientific method than mentioning some of the issues with peer reviewer , and there are more , will ever do.
At the base of this is the fact your dealing with humans , who like anyone else can be self serving lairs, greedy , arrogant or just afraid to lose face. And its not just climate ‘science’ , although for political and funding reasons issues seen there quite often, that has this problem its all science. Be careful of who you make gods for they may turn to be very human after all.
As for not liking the the results , not that is not it , want I do not like is those that seek to speak for the data rather than let it speak for itself and those that kick the crap out of the ‘scientific method ‘ for their own ends but try to hind under the name of ‘scientists’
Think about way any area of science should need to take views expressed by Jones infamous words ‘ why should I give you the data when you only want to find something wrong with it’
Jarmo – Just as a test, how many of you would like to be treated for the rest of your natural lives according to peer-reviewed medicine?
= = = =
1/2 a million Americans had their natural lives terminated prematurely thanks to peer-reviewed Vioxx. Evidence-based choices, not peer-reviewed prescriptions for me.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
“It appears to me that those who rely simply on the weight of authority to prove any assertion, without searching out the arguments to support it, act absurdly. I wish to question freely and to answer freely without any sort of adulation. That well becomes any who are sincere in the search for truth.”
– Vincenzo Galileo
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Climateace; you say that ‘D Hoffer defines a troll as ‘someone who declares their belief in peer reviewed science’.
No, what he says is “It has become a favorite tactic amongst trolls to declare their belief in peer reviewed science. With this simple strategy, they at once excuse themselves from the need to know anything about the science, and at the same time seek to discredit skeptic arguments on the grounds that, not having been published in peer reviewed journals, they may be dismissed out of hand.”
I notice that in a typical troll posting, reference is often made to video clips, Wikipedia, and indeed ‘peer reviewed science’. Rarely are actual figures produced and discussed – in other words, precious little to indicate that they’ve actually bothered to obtain any original papers and read them.
On the subject of peer review, having spend many years in science and technology, I’ve seen examples of peer-reviewed rubbish because those concerned didn’t have detailed knowledge of certain aspects of the paper they were looking at.
Science also throws up surprises, and an open mind to all possibilities is essential. Peer review is no guarantee of truth.
Fra Giordano Bruno had it all over over Galileo both in awareness and guts. It was Bruno’s death by burning at the stake in February 1600 AD that convinced Galileo to shut up and not risk Bruno’s end. Cardinal Roberto Bellarmino, Bruno’s torturer and prosecutor, used Bruno’s death to convince Galileo not to risk it.
Giordano Bruno correctly stated that the earth and the planets orbited the sun. He also believed that the Sun was simply another star in an infinite world of infinite solar systems, and he believed (wrote) that the universe contained an infinite number of worlds inhabited by intelligent beings. Bruno maintained that this infinite universe was constructed by love and he called that God. His written arguments denying the existence of planetary spheres à la Ptolemy predate those of Tycho Brahe. The theosophical ideas that also got him in trouble was the belief that God existed as plainly on Earth as it did in the heavens; he had no use for a heavenly God that lived up above and who would administer The Last Judgment; further he did not believe in the absolute divinity of Jesus Christ.
I can’t remember his exact ideas on human beings existing as atoms in God’s infinite universe, but Bruno’s ideas only saw scientific confirmation in the 20th C with the discovery of quantum physics. To this day, the Catholic Church refuses to exonerate him.
Bellarmino worked on him for eight years to get him to recant before his death in 1600. But he wouldn’t.
Ingrid Rowland wrote one of the definitive biographies about Bruno, using his writings and the court docs about his time in jail. Some of it is pretty raunchy. His cell mate (at the promise of a pardon) said in court docs that Bruno called Jesus a dog and a c**t (Rowland’s word). The book is Giordano Bruno.
@Eiting
‘This principle is rooted in the logical asymmetry that a false theory implies both true and false statements but a true theory only implies true statements.’
You need to re-read Popper before you start expounding on his ideas.
In the Popper-world, there aren’t any ‘true theories’, just hypotheses waiting to be falsified.
“It has become a favorite tactic amongst trolls to declare their belief in peer reviewed science”.
In the unlikely situation where we are experts in every field of science and study, do we have any option other than to trust peer reviewed papers in areas beyond our own knowledge? If the peer reviewed paper supported a sceptical viewpoint, be honest here, would you be so quick to dismiss it using the same philosophy?
The “peer reviewed” mantra was demolished by the climategate emails. Of course it continues to be used to avoid the question of correctness. A heap of expensive crap with the official seal of approval.