The failings of Climate Science are not exceptional – nor unique |
Guest essay by Eric Worrall – One of the most common arguments against suggestions that Climate Science is dysfunctional, is an attack on the credibility of the suggestion, that a large group of scientists are wrong. Why, of all the fields of science, is Climate Science special? Why is it different? How can it be credible to believe that mainstream Climate Science produces defective results, when the scientists involved are as much a part of the scientific establishment as any other mainstream branch of science?
The answer, of course, is that the failings of Climate Science are not exceptional.
“The Trouble with Physics” is a controversial book by one of the giants of Quantum Physics, Lee Smolin. In an eerie parallel to the failings of climate science, Smolin argues that a fundamental error at the heart of String Theory, and rampant groupthink, has diverted uncounted scientific man hours of effort down a blind alley. Physicists are wasting lifetimes of effort constructing ever more elaborate mathematical models, models which can never hope to be reconciled with real world observations.
From: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Trouble_with_Physics
The fundamental error, according to Smolin, is that String Theory is background dependent. String Theory assumes a Universe in which time and space is constant – a Universe in which Einstein never discovered General Relativity.
The reason for this error goes back to the origins of Quantum Physics. The pioneers of Quantum Physics had to do their calculations by hand – horrendous mathematical transformations, which in some cases took weeks of effort to perform, even when attempted by the most capable mathematicians and scientists on the planet. Adding General Relativity to the mix made the equations impossibly difficult – and for most purposes at the time, for say calculating the shape of the electron field around a hydrogen atom, or designing a transistor, the effect of Relativity on the calculated result was so small that it simply didn’t matter.
The problems with this convenient simplification only emerge when you attempt to reconcile Relativity and Quantum Physics – when you try to create a theory of everything, to calculate what happens in the vicinity of a black hole, to work out what really happened during the Big Bang, to understand why physical constants have those particular values, or say try to build a wormhole – a gateway through time and space, and a possible solution to interstellar travel. In these extreme conditions, a background dependent theory simply doesn’t work.
It is at this extreme edge of reality that String Theory begins to break down – it produces (or fails to produce) solutions which have no applicability to the real world. Trying to eliminate the paradoxes it yields spawns the need to pile on ever more complicated additional dimensions and forces, artefacts which, so far at least, cannot be reconciled with observations.
So String Theorists go model happy. They play with the giant atom smashers when they can, but at the end of the day it doesn’t matter that the String Theory models cannot be reconciled with observations, because String Theory is almost infinitely adjustable. Somewhere, researchers hope, in the unimaginably vast landscape of possible adjustments, at the core of this gargantuan edifice of ever more intricate and complex theory, is the kernel of truth which will unlock the final secrets of the Universe.
One of the themes of Smolin’s book, is the unfortunate way that String Theory has choked off other and potentially more profitable lines of inquiry – efforts to go back to the foundations of Quantum Physics, and try to incorporate Relativity into the fundamental assumptions. Because String Theory utterly dominates the Quantum Physics effort, because so many senior professors built their reputations on their contribution to String Theory, anyone who questions String Theory, or challenges it, is looked on as a crank, an outsider. It is much easier to secure tenure and funding by enthusiastically embracing String Theory, than by challenging it, or by pointing out that for the last few decades, Theoretical Physics has stalled.
The truth is, scientists are human, they have the same triumphs and weaknesses as the rest of us. The image of science and scientists as objective seekers of truth was only ever an ideal. Science, it is true, has mechanisms for self correction which are unique in human endeavour – but those mechanisms rarely work smoothly.
For example, scientists were aware of the paradoxes which produced the need for Einstein’s Relativity since at least the 1860s, when Maxwell formulated his famous equations – equations which implied the speed of light is constant, no matter what the location and velocity of the observer. Scientists ignored this issue, or tried to disprove this implication, by testing whether the speed of light varied if you were moving towards or away from the source. It took Einstein, working in the early 1900s, to resolve the paradox, and finally lay the issue to rest.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maxwell’s_equations
Climate Science will eventually become a science again. The wider world of academia is becoming increasingly aware of the embarrassing failures and poor practices. Sooner or later students will tire of producing the same defective results, year after year, and someone, somewhere will make the leap – will find a way to produce a model which works, an Einstein moment which transforms our understanding of global climate.
OK. I stopped reading when I hit “one of the giants of Quantum Physics, Lee Smolin.”
Ever hear that guy talk? He’s a certified crackpot.
Ever hear Stephen Hawking talk, does that make him also a certified crackpot.
The crackpot certification authority is John Baez at UC Riverside. You might see what he has to say.
While I like Baez’s music … oh wait … that’s Joan Baez. Sorry. 😉
Yeah, Baez certainly would be an authority on what is a crackpot. He pegs the loon-o-meter himself.
Brian,
That Joan Baez comment — perhaps funny to you — reveals a anarchistic arrogance
DEEBEE – No, it reveals that I have a sense of humor. Your comment is also quite revealing.
Personally, I think Stephen Hawking is not all there. I think his “assistants” are giving us their thoughts and attributing them to Hawking. No one could decipher the gutteral sounds Hawking makes.
Phony Joanie will always remain just that.
Well Joan Baez, was just a re-incarnation of Irish folk singer, Mary O’Hara. Even sang a lot of the same, or same sounding songs. I guess she hoped there would be nobody around, who ever heard, or heard of Mary O’Hara. She played a real Irish harp too. Well imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.
I think Ghandi never went to a Steven Hawking lecture.
He makes no sound at all.
And just who could collect their thoughts, while having brain dead news photographers standing right in front of them, and firing off flashbulbs in their face, while they are trying to direct their eyes at a single character on the screen, so that the camera system, can decide which character, they want to type, into their message.
And talking of collecting one’s thoughts; Hawking does have to do and remember in his head, every line of reasoning, he has to go through to come up with some equation, that he wants to relay to other in his field, for them to read.
So who do YOU know, who deals with such adversity.
And that “guttural sound” is universally recognized as “the voice of Steven Hawking.”
They could make him sound like Bo Derek, or Brigitte Bardot, any time he wanted them to.
It’s worth noting that Lubos Motol (http://motls.blogspot.com/), a competent quntum physicist, (a) is a well known warming skeptic and (b) has long called Lee Smolin a crackpot.
It should be noted though that Motl is a string theorist.
It does not speak well of those physicists to engage in ad hominems against those who propose a different theory.
Bob Clark
Smolin is a crackpot. He simply lies.
Argument ad hominem, the first resort of someone without facts or argument, like most climate scientists.
Hmm, ignore his thoughts and attack the man. Sounds quite familiar here.
I could help out the Quantum Physic guys but I would probably be labelled a certified crackpot or even uncertified crackpot and worse so I won’t even bother.
Brian, You comment is a good example of the problems described by the Author. To quote: “…anyone who questions String Theory, or challenges it, is looked on as a crank, an outsider”.
Lee Smolin is a top scientist. A member of the Canadian Perimeter Institute and an independent thinker. Apart from countless papers, he has four books published. His objections to string theory are well known and well justified.
Physicists, unlike their “climate science” colleagues, do know the importance of experimental verification of their theories and so, even those working on string theory, are open to the possibility that the theory may be wrong. So far it has not made a single prediction that would have been experimentally verified. Furthermore, in physics, there are no banned theories. To this day people publish papers on Einstein’s non-symmetric field theory, sometimes in top physics journals even. A theory of physics has to be shown to be incorrect, by making a verifiably false prediction, to be discarded.
But by the same virtue, a theory is not accepted, even a theory as strong as the theory of electro-weak interactions, until all its predictions are verified experimentally.
Lubos Motl, mentioned here, a fine chap that he is and an incisive writer of climate stories, I think, is too hasty in some of his comments about alternatives to string theory, and people working on such alternatives. Until string theory is confirmed by experiment, which is far from being the case today, or ever, all alternative ideas are just as valid.
My favorite regarding gravity is Verlinde’s theory: it’s neither strings nor loops, incidentally, instead gravity is seen as an entropic force, that is, not a fundamental interaction.
I have a natural reluctance to consider anything that wiggles as somehow fundamental.
To wiggle, you have to be constructed of even more fundamental pieces, that are assembled to make one of your gizmos; in this case a string.
So nyet on strings for me.
But I’m open minded. So I will await the experimental evidence, before rejecting it outright. I feel the same way about multiverses, or parallel “universes” or hyperdimensional physics; whatever that is. There seems to be something singular about the concept of “UNI” verse, as if there can be only one. (that we can observe)
There are enough crazy ideas to go around, for everybody to have a favorite one. Not that it matters, if an idea is crazy. It just has to explain the observable facts; that’s all.
It is not possible for gravity to be an entropic force. Learn Physics.
Former Cern physicist Dragan Hajdukovic is not, however, and as the former NASA scientist who discovered active volcanism on Jupiter’s moon Io, my most recent paper, which is synergistic with Eric’s says the very same thing. Don’t stop reading this one. http://www.lindamorabito.com/research.html
Smolin is just another mystic; no different to Hawking. Here are recent releases that expose the mystics:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nXF098w48fo
It’s an interesting book but a bit heavy going on string theory itself IMO.
Looking around, there may well be other branches of physical science that have been, let’s say, ‘struggling’ in recent times.
Recently in the news: Red meat and butter are not so bad for us after all.
Very interesting. In the TV show The Big Bang Theory, Sheldon recently abandoned his pursuit of String Theory and became a travelling hobo. Maybe we should get more TV network executives into theoretical physics 😉
Even the Theory of Everything presupposes that it’s relativity and quantum mechanics that need to be unified. There may be an unknown number of other fields of science to be discovered first before they can be unified.
Also amusing on that show is that Sheldon’s nemisis is a loop quantum gravity expert. Whenever they see each other they just exchange insults.
Bob Clark
Apparently Maxwell was troubled by another flaw in classical physics: the specific heats of gases didn’t make sense. It was Planck’s advance that explained that.
Having been through electronic engineering I remembered the “4 Maxwell equations” but was later shocked to learn that those 4 were derived from his work which had 20 equations. One of the people was a self taught electrical engineer, mathematician, and physicist named Oliver Heaviside.
He also adapted complex numbers to the study of electrical circuits, invented mathematical techniques for the solution of differential equations (later found to be equivalent to Laplace transforms), reformulated Maxwell’s field equations in terms of electric and magnetic forces and energy flux, and independently co-formulated vector analysis.
Quite the pair he and Maxwell were. We have a lot to thank them both for.
Have you lost your mind? I took pchem and you think I am going to thank Maxwell for ANYTHING?
Oliver Heaviside has been my hero ever since as a 1st year undergraduate I was trying to understand Laplace Transforms and somebody introduced me to Heaviside’s idea of Operational Calculus.
Amen to that. I absolutely love the Laplace transforms. I once wrote software that given an S-domain system function, would perform an inverse Laplace transform, and plot the time domain function.
We must read the same books.
I seem to recall, in my Physics classes, that we studied Sir James Jeans derivation of the specific heat of solids; I think maybe at low Temperatures. As I recall, to simplify the math, he cancelled out a factor that was the square root of Avogadro’s number; and simply called it approximately one.
Well the expression that it was a factor of, included the quantity; factorial of Avogadro’s number.
I guess almost any number approximates unity, compared to that number. Had to do with computing the number of degrees of freedom, in a mole of substance, to assign an equi-partitioned kT of energy to.
It was Einstein, I believe who suggested that the specific heats of all solids must go to zero at zero K.
Lets see what group think does with this…. In addition there is the MIT program with JET energy. And I personally think there are cheaper and higher density energy sources than oil out there waiting to be discovered…
It just wont go away….
Cold fusion reactor verified by third-party researchers, seems to have 1 million times the energy density of gasoline
http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/191754-cold-fusion-reactor-verified-by-third-party-researchers-seems-to-have-1-million-times-the-energy-density-of-gasoline
Check out my post and links at http://notrickszone.com/2014/10/09/rossis-e-cat-verified-but-mystifies-independent-reviewers-the-dawn-of-an-energy-revolution/
The new report was done by the same crew who did the last one, so it’s not as independent a report as I would like to have seen. The power output is old hat by now, the assay of the fuel in and the ash out is new and interesting – and there are claims that Rossi recently bought some 62Ni, one of the key finds in the ash….
@Ric
I still don’t see Rossi’s e-cat as credible. There is still a lack of truly independent review IMHO. It still looks waaaay too much like some of the laughable claims of the past. I’m skeptical.
A commenter on E-Cat World said that if Rossi’s E-Cat is a hoax, it’s as great an achievement as if it is the real thing!
“if Rossi’s E-Cat is a hoax, it’s as great an achievement as if it is the real thing!”
Yeah, Houdini’s achievements were pretty darn spectacular too.
While I’m still sceptical of Rossi I’m much more inclined to accept that there is something worth pursuing in the LENR field. Others like Brillouin seem to have much better control of the reaction (or whatever) as they can turn it up or down in a controlled fashion. Very interesting field.
2 MIT profs have been putting on conferences for 3 years now going over the theory that prof Hagelstein has come up with (no new physics required!!) and the demos that are put on by prof Schwartz that have worked repeatedly showing massive excess heat.
Now can they or someone make it into a workable product? That is the acid test. How much electricity in and out. We shall see.
My biggest problem with e-cat is the way they try to explain the lack of neutrons from the tritium fusion they claim to be inducing.
Normal deuterium tritium fusion creates a blizzard of neutrons – around 100x the neutron flux of an equivalent fission burn. So much that finding a core construction material which won’t crumble into dust under normal use is one of the big unsolved problems of the ITER project.
Rossi’s e-cat experiments, in which he claims calorific gain, should be killing everyone in the demonstration hall from radiation poisoning, and possibly people in the street outside.
When you look at Los Alamos criticality accidents, the brave scientists who pulled the accidentally critical nuclear cores appart with their hands described the core material as “warm”. It disn’t even get hot enough to burn them with heat, only with lethal doses of radiation.
Rossi’s explanation that the lack of neutrons is due to a “new kind” of fusion is IMHO barking.
There have been many experiments over the last 25 years that demonstrate: excess heat; transmutation products and, occasionally, radiation but at levels far, far below anything that “conventional physics” can explain. The sheer number of these experiments, and the wide variety of laboratories that have conducted them in many different countries, put beyond reasonable doubt that some form of unexplained reaction can occur in solids, be it in palladium/D2O in electrochemical cells or in nickel/hydrogen systems.
And yet, despite what Richard Feynman suggests – if experiment contradicts your, it’s your theory that is wrong – we still hear the need for vast quantities of radiation to accompany these unexplained reactions: no radiation must mean that all these experiments are wrong.
As a sceptic of catastrophic human-caused global warming, I look to the observations rather than the theory (again not understood). Similarly with cold fusion – observations tell us more than any theory which does not fit.
The true test of Rossi’s E-Cat will be a working system providing a company with a return on their investment – no number of laboratory tests will convince the “sceptics” who (a) use theory to discount observations, (b) use ad hominem attacks against the inventor or (c) unjustifiably criticise the experiments performed.
Very well put.
The critics invoke an unexplained scam and so decry the experiment. I would be far more interested in an explanation of how such a scam could be pulled and then a redesign of the experiment to exclude any such trickery.
Regardless of Rossi’s claims and performance, there is quite a lot of real science and experimentation happening in the cold fusion arena. It’s a real slog, but Edmund Storms has complied several hundred references in his “The Explanation of Low Energy Nuclear Reaction.” The book catalogs both experimental results and proposed theories on what is happening. Rossi is included, but only as one of many different sources. Unfortunately, researchers in this field cannot get published in mainstream science journals for the same reasons that skeptics of String Theory cannot.
So Eric (Worrall)
Just where does anybody in the fusion energy camp, imagine they are going to come up with the tritium, to run a tritium-deuterium fusion reactor ?
Isn’t D-D the only reaction for which there is fuel available.
Way back when we (not me) fired deuterons at a heavy ice target, frozen on a rotating copper substrate, in a 600 kV Cockroft-Walton accelerator, and generated beams of polarized neutrons, and I think protons too, with about 14 MeV energy. I had to build a tissue equivalent neutron monitor, to keep track of those neutrons, even as they got down to thermal energies. I also built a scintillation neutron detector, based on a Stilbene crystal. Unfortunately, it also detected gamma rays (from electrons), so I developed an electronic discrimination system, that compared total pulse charge, to pulse peak voltage, because the scintillation pulses had different pulse shapes, depending on the particle (electron /proton/alpha).
So apparently D-D fusion would also generate screeds of fast neutrons. Don’t quite understand why, but we got plenty of them.
LOL Ad homina much?
The contrast between Lee Smolin and Leonard Susskind must not distract from their principled positions. Susskind is a fantastic lecturer, which I have attended tens of hours. He is also an accomplished explainer and narrator of his position. Contrariwise, Smolin asks where are the Emperor’s new clothes, no longer new as string theory is twenty years mature?
Lee Smolin and Roberto Mangiebera Unger have The Singular Universe and the Reality of Time: A Proposal in Natural Philosophy due out in six weeks that will hopefully address the effect of the Higgs Field on his advocacy of a background-independent physics.
Interesting article and I’m sure it describes an phenomena that applies to many fields of human endeavor. However, in recent history such a miscarriage of science has never had such an enormous effect on the direction of western government’s allocation of resources, restrictions of freedoms and quests for centralized power as the man-made global warming hoax has done. Not all erroneous scientific theories are equal.
Absolutely apropos theory in climate science.
Same for plate tectonics which replaced the theory of geosynclines that was formerly used to explain mountain building.
Plate tectonics is a better theory but the impact of that revolution in Earth science has had little impact on society compared to the theory of AGW which has overthrown the idea that nature determines climate rather than mankind.
Fred, you still need a basin to accummulate kilometres of sediments to buckle up into mountains.
Amen. The arguments surrounding resources given to String Theory supporters or skeptics don’t keep billions of human beings living in the Stone Age because of the politicization of Quantum Physics. Climate “science’s” flaws and “fixes” are really killing people as I type this. There is no comparison. I would argue that if Africa had been “allowed” to build power plants and use their own natural resources that Ebola outbreak would have been far smaller than it currently is. Advanced societies deal with crisis better and global policy, driven by the false “science” of the Climateers has done a fine job of preventing those “third world” societies from advancing. It makes me sick!
Preventing the Third world from progressing is the intent of politicians. CAGW theory is the means to that end. Science in this case, Climatology, has been co-opted. The phenomena of scientific group-think elucidated in this post is being used by politicians. The CAGW meme was paid for by governments. The consensus is needed to further the ends of Central Planners. The actual science is irrelevant.
Here are Smolin’s articles on arXive http://arxiv.org/a/smolin_l_1 I recommend number 4 Temporal Naturalism
Here are Susskind’s 104 articles at arxive http://arxiv.org/find/hep-th/1/au:+Susskind_L/0/1/0/all/0/1
I have posted this link on WUWT before and will continue to do so where applicable. I doubt that many can read all of the posts and there are always new visitors so it is worth re-posting. The article below does the equivalent of an autopsy on the scientific method, science funding and peer review using the second-generation antipsychotics (Abilify, Seroquel, Zyprexa…) to reveal how our current approach to science has insufficient protection from human nature. While climate science is never mentioned, it’s relevance is obvious.
It is a lengthy but worthwhile read called “The Truth Wears Off… Is there something wrong with the scientific method?” from the New Yorker, December 2013 that I archived at webcitation. It begins…
“On September 18, 2007, a few dozen neuroscientists, psychiatrists, and drug-company executives gathered in a hotel conference room in Brussels to hear some startling news. It had to do with a class of drugs known as atypical or second-generation antipsychotics, which came on the market in the early nineties. The drugs, sold under brand names such as Abilify, Seroquel, and Zyprexa, had been tested on schizophrenics in several large clinical trials, all of which had demonstrated a dramatic decrease in the subjects’ psychiatric symptoms. As a result, second-generation antipsychotics had become one of the fastest-growing and most profitable pharmaceutical classes. By 2001, Eli Lilly’s Zyprexa was generating more revenue than Prozac. It remains the company’s top-selling drug.
But the data presented at the Brussels meeting made it clear that something strange was happening: the therapeutic power of the drugs appeared to be steadily waning. A recent study showed an effect that was less than half of that documented in the first trials, in the early nineteen-nineties. Many researchers began to argue that the expensive pharmaceuticals weren’t any better than first-generation antipsychotics, which have been in use since the fifties. “In fact, sometimes they now look even worse,” John Davis, a professor of psychiatry at the University of Illinois at Chicago, told me”
http://www.webcitation.org/6SgCvSc3w
Michael Crichton discusses this as well and provides at least part of the solution in his “Aliens Cause Global Warming” speech, another extremely worthwhile read that can be downloaded here: http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/commentaries_essays/crichton_three_speeches.html
I’m rereading the New Yorker article for the first time in a while and must first say that there are many examples beyond pharmaceuticals where “the decline effect” is found. But mostly I wanted to provide this quote from the article:
“[Publication bias] was first identified by the statistician Theodore Sterling, in 1959, after he noticed that ninety-seven per cent of all published psychological studies with statistically significant data found the effect they were looking for. ”
How about that? 97% find the effect they are looking for. Take that John Cook and others !!!
Perhaps climate science qualifies as a subdivision of psychology? Maybe Lewindowski is a bona fide member of the Team after all.
NZ Willy says: October 12, 2014 at 11:07 am: “Perhaps climate science qualifies as a subdivision of psychology?”
Or perhaps climate science qualifies as a subdivision of psychosis?
THIS! Is precisely why I read this blog every day. The minds that aggregate at this site are truly amazing. The rule that generally all non ad hominum comments are allowed to procede to the page is precisely why this is such a great blog. The links in the comments have led me to many great avenues of thought. ( Simon Shnoll ) For me, science is all about the pursuit of truth, and hopefully the understanding of it Unfortunately many in the professions discover that the more esoteric ones’ field is, the easier it is to rule by perspicacity in the use of a gallimaufry of obfucatory arcane terms of reference. Untruths are the lingua franca of the media. Watch the news on any channel and you will see the force of the implementation of McLuhan. We are driven to an industrial analogue of tribal mentality, what he termed “the global village”. From experience I know that everything, and I mean everything that you experience from the media has been manipulated to alter the lede and the takeaway. Fear is the great driving force for humans, when all is well we lounge on the couch with a beer, when the wolf is at the door, lookout! ” We live in a single constricted space resonant with tribal drums “. These drums may be used to stampede the herd to the exits, letting them jump off the buffalo jump, and then check the pockets for loose change. Terror science enthralls the media, if it bleeds it leads. If you may have a subject that is so insainly complicated that it is impossible to fully describe or understand, all the better. There is no one to disprove your hypothesis. All it has to do is threaten the children. We will throw all manners of wealth at those who profess to protect ouselves from ill fate. Power, profit and wealth, great motivators. When your field of science is the news story flavour of the day the dollars flow, damn the hard work, there is money to be made and one has to make hay when the sun shines. The factual basis for the physics of the phenomena can wait, we all know that ” without bucks there is no Buck Rogers “. Basic science is usually dry and dusty, very hard work, with many nights spent on a cot at the lab to make sure the experiment did not conclude at an unseen hour. Not much newsworthyness or fame there.
Bill, there is science and then there is institutional science. The first is pure, the second is bought and paid for.
I read somewhere a long while ago that Communism is a much better framework for pure science than Capitalism since there is no profit motive to contend with. There is still of course the desire to be right and to contribute something of consequence which is sufficient to skew results. And no, I’m not advocating that we should swap out capitalism for communism but I think there is truth to that statement.
Somehow we need to separate science from science funding and Crichton (see link above) has proposed the best solution I’ve seen – independent teams each working on a different aspect of the experiment or study, none know what the other teams are doing or who is on them or the purpose of the study or experiment. In this framework I think only the funders would know the purpose and they would need to be hands-off, delegating every aspect of the experiment or study to a different team lead with one team designated to gather and report the findings, still unaware of the purpose.
This, or something like it, would keep the bias out of the experiments and those results. As for the gatekeepers, I think the new open review process that was posted here last week or so may be the answer to that…
@thallstd October 12, 2014 at 11:43 am:
You are assuming that the “profit” in the “profit motive” is financial. People act when they believe that their actions will gain them, for lack of a better term, psychic or emotional profit. This effect is universal and it makes no difference whether the umbrella system is capitalistic or communistic or anything else you might suggest.
The problem here, as it is in many human problems, is one of motivations. What are we trying to achieve, and what methods do we see as suitable to achieve our goals?
thallstd
October 12, 2014 at 11:43 am
“I read somewhere a long while ago that Communism is a much better framework for pure science than Capitalism since there is no profit motive to contend with. ”
This has been disproved by Lysenko. (Lysenko’s existence sufficed to disprove it)
“I read somewhere a long while ago that Communism is a much better framework for pure science than Capitalism since there is no profit motive to contend with. There is still of course the desire to be right and to contribute something of consequence which is sufficient to skew results. And no, I’m not advocating that we should swap out capitalism for communism but I think there is truth to that statement.”
Anyone thinking this should read Alexandr Solzhenitsyn’s “The First Circle”.
Another popular delusion.
http://notrickszone.com/2014/09/29/climate-change-delusion-has-always-been-popular-and-a-money-making-scam/
The author:
The first commenter:
I’d say that made the author’s point pretty well.
Exactly. Even Smolin realizes he’s a crackpot, but he’s making too much money selling books that appeal to crackpot-wannabes to stop now.
If you actually read his books, you’ll realize that he’s also a climate-change alarmist. It’s just not his main thing.
Did you re-read your comment. It at best is juvenile. Smolin would be less a “crackpot” as he was a skeptic?
DEEBEE – It’s just additional information. I figured that such information is relevant to an article that begins, “the failings of Climate Science are not exceptional.” The irony that Lee Smolin, given his opinion of climate science, is the main person highlighted by the article is quite amusing.
I guess what is “failing” depends on whom you ask.
I wonder how much of group think is a product of funding. The more united you are, the more funding you get.
The article I post to above (Oct 12 @ur momisugly 7:19) goes into this subject at great length…
String theory puts all unknowns in another dimension. So it’s not science, it’s the easy way out.
A good point, but that may be dismissed as falsificationism. Popper’s falsification (Smolin cites Popper) being the demarcation between science and supernatural non-sense. What is the differentiation between universes but causal disconnect and unfalsifiability.
Smolin maintains that no string has been observed and no test that can be performed has been proposed.
http://edge.org/3rd_culture/smolin_susskind04/smolin_susskind.html
http://edge.org/3rd_culture/smolin03/smolin03_index.html
http://edge.org/3rd_culture/susskind03/susskind_index.html
The narrative fallacy is the witch doctor’s tool.
The link between funding and conventional wisdom/conventional career paths is an essential point in Smolin’s argument.
Steven Hawking says that infinity has an infinite number of centers. I say show me infinity.
Now tell me, which viewpoint is correct?
When I was a student a century or so ago, I read an essay that identified a dichotomy in science: those scientists who thought mainly in theoretical terms and those who gave precedence to empirical observations . His point as that many scientists were stuck on theory and had difficulty assimilating observations to their views.
Mathematicians are prone to this affliction, I believe, because the study deals not with empirical data. Empiricism is a matter of approach, a habit of thought that comes with practice. Yet it depends on the individual and many mathematicians are also fine empiricists. Many phycisists likewise espouse the empirical approach. But I have to believe that most of the modeling fraternity abhors empiricism because they seem to hate the idea of accommodating their theory to observations.
Michael Faraday is worth quoting in this regard:
“When my observations are contrary to what my theory predicts, I modify my theory to accomodate those observations. What do you do, sir?”
Faraday once wrote a treatise that presented over 50 discrete observations he recorded in the study of a candle flame.
By the way, Faraday was no mathematician. His theory was formulated mathematically by a sucessor, Maxwell, another great name in electromagnetism.
If, as Einstein said, the Universe is a sphere of infinite radius, everything is at the centre of its own universe. Each one of us is at the centre of the universe as it applies to us. This is just one of what I expect are many intriguing consequences of Einsteinian physics.
Hence the meocentric generation, a social phenomenon.
Variations of that Faraday quote have many other attributions.
See http://quoteinvestigator.com/2011/07/22/keynes-change-mind/
That may all be true. The difference is that no agency as of yet is trying to shove a crippling economic or liberty killing policy down our throats based on a string theory model. So while physics may have its groupthink troubles and therefore inefficiencies, it has no real world impact on the rest of us other than we may have to wait longer for interstellar travel or hovering skateboards.
It has an impact. It conforms to the general atmosphere of fundamental dishonesty in academia, which, in turn, contributes to ignorance and dishonesty in politics, which, in turn, gives us obamas and kerrys, which, in turn… hey, where’s my wallet?!
academia!
“What we haven’t had is an original Einstein-class theory emerge from academia for nearly four decades. It’s all been refinements. Given an agreement with that assessment, you either assume we’ve discovered every one of the big secrets of the universe, which would be a first in the whole history of science, or something is very seriously wrong.”
http://thepointman.wordpress.com/2014/05/22/the-age-of-unenlightenment/
We’re reduced to social science making Earth shattering discoveries in the mensurate disciplines and calling it progress. Give me a break …
Pointman
Only 4 decades? What was it?
Well to be fair, the time span between Newton and Einstein was also a tad more than four decades.
On the subject of “groupthink”, a friend told me years ago about the search for the value of a particular constant; he was studying physics at the time at McGill University and I trusted what he told me . (And at this point I have to say that my friend does not recall the story from nearly 50 years ago and cannot say what the constant was; I suspect that it was the Hubble constant.) According to the friend’s story, one famous person came up with a value (presumably determined experimentally; we’ll call it “A”); this was followed by a number of other workers in the field who determined a value similar to “A”. But then another worker, more famous than the first, came up with a different value of the constant; we’ll call it “B”. This was followed soon afterward by a cluster of determinations close to value “B”. I don’t know how many “C”, “D”, and other values appeared over time. Presumably the value now in use has been checked!
If anyone is familiar with this story and can confirm if it, please help me out!
Ian
I have o knowledge of this particular example but if interested in a thorough discussion of it and other human nature related problems with science, the article I post to above (Oct 12 @ur momisugly 7:19) will be an interesting read for you.
Sounds like it could be the Millikan oil drop experiment to measure electron charge. He was a ‘name’ so his value was accepted. It was innacurate. But the currently accepted value was only arrived at by gradual changes, nobody was prepared to stand up and point out his error so it was corrected little by little.
Irving Langmuir gave examples of experiments that were accepted based on the name of the experimenter or other irrelevant criteria. I don’t feel like looking through this link again to find them, but they are under the general heading of “pathological science”. One of the links at the bottom of the page has the info.
I saw a program several years ago where it was claimed Millikan’s own notebooks indicated he was fudging his observations until he came up with the value he was looking for.
I can’t speak to that one way or the ‘tother, but it was interesting.
Constants are so much fun. The glorious fudge factor is all science. This is my favorite:
“The speed of light in vacuum, commonly denoted c, is a universal physical constant important in many areas of physics. Its value is exactly 299,792,458 metres per second because the length of the metre is defined from this constant and the international standard for time.[1]”
~ Wikipedia
“The metre (BIPM spelling), or meter (American spelling), (SI unit symbol: m), is the fundamental unit of length (SI dimension symbol: L) in the International System of Units (SI).[1] Originally intended to be one ten-millionth of the distance from the Earth’s equator to the North Pole (at sea level), its definition has been periodically refined to reflect growing knowledge of metrology. Since 1983, it has been defined as “the length of the path travelled by light in vacuum during a time interval of 1/299,792,458 of a second.”[2]”
~ Wikipedia
No no no . . you are just taking the p . . surely. They define the speed of light by using the defined speed of light. That isn’t very . . . scientific is it?
The metre isn’t a constant. More precisely, it hasn’t been a constant, it’s been adjusted over time from a specified fraction of the distance between the North Pole and equator to the current definition. It has to be defined in a manner that allows it to be reproduced anywhere on the planet, and the speed of light is an easy way to do that.
Sure, they could have shrunk it to make it 1/300,000,000 of the speed of light, but that change would be big enough to cause all kinds of incompatibilities with existing metric measure. So we’re stuck with this clunky version unless the speed of light changes.
So can we use the speed of light to find the length of a meter? ☺
This made me laugh (a rare event, with a far-stretched event horizon). Thank you.
Actually it was quite sensible to redefine a meter in this way since we can measure time with vastly greater precision than length, and the speed of light in vacuum is the most fundamental constant of all.
Neither the pace of time nor the speed of light in vacuum are certainties.
tty
October 12, 2014 at 11:50 am
“Actually it was quite sensible to redefine a meter in this way since we can measure time with vastly greater precision than length, and the speed of light in vacuum is the most fundamental constant of all.”
And if it isn’t we’ll never notice.
Reminds me of the glossary entries I once found in a text book:
CIRCULAR REFERENCE: see REFERENCE, CIRCULAR.
…
REFERENCE, CIRCULAR: see CIRCULAR REFERENCE.
I believe the constant was the charge on an electron. Millikan’s original oil drop experiment included an error that was only gradually eliminated over time as later experimenters found ways to include Millikan’s result within the error bounds of their own results.
Well let me take a guess, Ian at your puzzle.
My guess, is that the missing constant, was the “fine structure constant”, an important fundamental constant of physics, that is involved in atomic spectra. Usually designated by alpha, the fine structure constant has the value : e^2/(2hc[epsilon nought]) = 7.29735308E-3 (a number), where (e) is the electron charge, and epsilon nought is the permittivity of free space, that shows up in the value of (c).
Alpha is usually stated as 1/alpha =137.0359895 (0.045ppm)
So it used to be that the best experimental measures of 1/alpha were quite close to 136.
So Arthur Eddington, did a computation from a theory of his own creation and “proved” that the value of 1/alpha was indeed “exactly” 136. Nobody really could say they understood his theory, but it did compute 136 exactly.
Well the trouble was, that as measurements of alpha, or its other fundamental constituents, got more and more accurate, the value of 1/alpha drifted a lot closer to 137, than it was to 136, and Eddington’s 136 could not be sustained.
Then Eddington did a re-evaluation of his theory, and revised it, to another still not understandable idea, but it predicted a value of exactly 137, instead of exactly 136. But the experimental errors were not large enough to sustain 137 either.
So The poor chap ended up with egg all over his face, and they started referring to him as “Professor Adding one”
In the 1960s, there was another fine structure brouhaha, where somebody claimed that he calculated 1/alpha from a form (pi^a.b^c.d^e.f^g)^0.25 where a through g were small integers, not necessarily all different.
His expression calculated 1/alpha to about 2/3rd of the best experimental standard deviation (about 30 ppb), so it clearly had to be a correct theory. But nobody could figure out how the theory connected to the physical universe. No observable quantities went into the theory. It was all mathematical. But oh so accurate.
The furor lasted a month or so; I think it was in “Applied Optics”, or the Journal of The Optical Society of America.
Then some computer geek, got hold of it, and he did a search of all of the possibilities, in that form with parameters a through g, for all integers up to about 19.
He came up with a list of about 8 combinations, that were all less than the standard deviation away from the best experimental value, and one of them was about half the error as in the original paper.
There was a more scholarly execution later,that I won’t bore you with, but everybody had egg on their faces, for believing something, that relied on no observable input measured data.
So I guess you can get ANY answer you like, by simply ****ing around with numbers.
So watch out.
But your friend’s story, might be a different one.
Anyone remember the movie “Awakenings” with Robin Williams?
Dr. Sayer: “I was on a project for 5 years. I was the only one who believed in it. Everyone else said it couldn’t be done.”
Dr. Kaufman: “It can’t.”
Dr. Sayer: “I know that now. I proved it.”
I think this happens more than we suspect in science.
Yes, Mr. Kramden, I do. Powerful, tragic, movie. I don’t want to watch it again, but, I’m glad I saw it. I can still see that big male patient catching that ball… .
Good point. There is an enormous difference (usually years of blood, toil, tears, and sweat) between:
A. “I say it can’t be done.”
and
B. “I know it can’t be done.”
It certainly happens more often than it’s reported. Science is also about what we tried that didn’t work.
Trial and error will usually have more errors than successes. That’s trial and error.
Climatology and physics are pikers in terms of group think when compared to medicine and nutrition. For 60 years millions of people have needlessly died young or had terrible quality of life because of science’s focus on cholesterol as the buggaboo that causes health problems. Fortunately the truth is emerging but I shudder to think of the cost in lives and money that’s been wasted.
I ran across this video yesterday, I think it clearly demonstrates the problem.
That is not a sensible summary of the situation. The metabolic aberrations that lead to type 2 diabetes and to atherosclerosis are not yet fully understood, and most scientists in the field would acknowledge that. At the same time, the significant role of cholesterol is evident from the greatly increased atherosclerosis risk in familial hypercholesterolemia, a gene defect that leads to the accumulation of cholesterol-rich LDL particles in the blood, and from the success of cholesterol-reducing therapies (particularly statin drugs) in these and other patients.
Paradigm changes are easier to accomplish in medicine than in physics not because MDs are smarter, but because their theories are not the same breed of all-encompassing first-principles affairs as in physics. Changing one or two dogms at a time is easier than to tear down the entire building and start from scratch.
Paradigm changes are more common and profound in medicine because so much medical research has been poorly designed, poorly controlled, poorly interpreted due to lack of math skills, garbage. There are many, many examples.
While being all positive aobut how great those cholesterol focused M.D.s are: Please remember that for a few decades they propagandized everyone to eat margarine and avoid butter. Margarine that was about 1/3 or so Trans Fat. Stuff that is now known to be much more causal of heart disease than saturated fats (that are neutral).
Then tell that to my friend who had a heart attack (survived with stents) after following that advice… while me, taking my Dad’s lead and thinking margarine tasted of road oil…, have had a life time of delicious butter and joined the French in being an “anomaly” with no cholesterol problems while eating the “bad” diet…
The simple fact is they ‘screwed the pooch’ by classing Trans Fats in with other solid (saturated) fats during the tests and trials and were flat out wrong about animal fats and horridly wrong about tropical solid oils (coconut and plam oil – where islanders were living long and happy lives eating lots of them… short chain length makes all the difference…)
I’m still waiting for the ‘medical establishment’ and related folks to stand up and say “We were wrong, margarine was killing people, and butter was just not a problem.” (Butter also has short chain fatty acids that bypass that cholesterol process. Thus both the French and Islander ‘anomalies’ and thier health and longevity.)
Yes, I’m a bit grumpy about this since it has killed off a couple of my friends. (While my Amish high animal fat loads of butter familial diet has left me just fine… Plastic Fats? Just say NO!)
@ur momisuglybarchester – there is enough poorly designed and executed research for all disciplines to go around. Some of the worst I encounter as a journal reviewer is from physicists who work on some biological problem. A common error committed by these physicists is to make unjustified simplifying assumptions in order to make complex system tractable with simple math. Another common mistake, committed by both physicists and chemists, is to not even bother to properly understand the problem in the first place. I can’t begin to tell you how much absolutely inane “research” I have seen from both disciplines on the fashionable topic of “drug delivery”.
@ur momisugly E.M. Smith – Notice that I did not comment on margarine vs butter. The main source of cholesterol in our bodies is not the diet, but our endogenous biosynthesis. Accordingly, the most effective drugs available so far are inhibitors of HMG-CoA reductase, the key regulatory enzyme of this pathway. Limitation of cholesterol intake is of secondary importance. Its significance may have been overstated before synthesis inhibitors became available. However, I did not witness any “margarine propaganda” at med school or during my limited clinical experience. Hint: The interested party in such propaganda might be those with a product to sell. MDs typically don’t run grocery stores on the side.
You overstate the significance of short chain fatty acids. The trans-fat scare is also unfounded. Again, who might be the interested parties …
String Theory assumes a Universe in which time and space is constant
________________________________________
Same with Dark Matter. As I understand it, if you make gravity (g) vary with distance, then the need for Dark Matter dissappears in a puff of revised logic.
Lief alert……….
Ralph
Yes, assuming that G changes with distance, there is no need for “accelerated expansion”, “dark matter” or Creation of the Universe out of nothing. Sounds crazy but it may very well be that Vatican played an important role in stalling the development of physics. Old traditions die hard in Rome…
If you don’t assume that gravity is the driving force in the universe, and use something like, say, electricity, dark matter also disappears.
You might want to see what Lubos Motl has to say about Smolin, if you can tolerate strong language.
.http://motls.blogspot.com/2009/08/why-lee-smolin-is-immoral-double-faced.html
I would never ask Lubos Motl about anything, after he professed that he is a spineless coward and Putin’s back-kisser.
In this case I think it was entirely reasonable to expect that light, behaving as a wave, should have some medium through which the wave propagates – an æther. All waves travel through a medium – sound travels through air, waves on water, stadium waves travel through, well a stadium. But the particles have very little movement. So why would light be any different? No such æther was found of course, but sometimes I wonder if we are still missing something fundamental.
I have always liked the idea of an aether too. Just because we cannot detect it, does not mean it is not there.
And of course if the aether manifested itself as mass in some manner or other, we could give it a better name. We could call it —- errrr —– Dark Matter.
😉
Ralph
ralfellis, look at this:
http://www.ne.jp/asahi/tamari/vladimir/bu1.html
It’s more than one page, so page thru to see it all. It is a type of “aether” theory.
Add me to the list as another one who suspects that there is a medium through which light travels…
People have to realize that it is the lorenz transformation incompatible aether that the Michelson Morley experiment debunked. In particle physics second quantization has introduced the vacuum , teeming with virtual particle antiparticle pairs. This vacuum is lorenz compatible but can be considered as another reincarnation of “aether”, though it is not a useful concept. Most of you know it from the Hawking radiation coming from a black hole horizon .
“What is truth?” (Pilate, Procurator of Judea, c. 33 A.D.)
Albert Einstein was theoretically crucified by his fellow German physicists (Einstein refused to be known as a German, but, rather as Austrian)…. because he challenged the status quo and…. I daresay, because he was Jewish…. .
Ego and lust for power and or money trump truth….
… in the short run.
In the end, HOWEVER!
TRUTH TRIUMPHS!
To wit: We are discussing “Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity,” not
“Deutsche Physiks Version of Reality.”
Truth wins.
In the end, truth wins. Every — time. Time after time…. after time….
#(:))
***************************************************
Lesson: HANG IN THERE, AN-TH-ONY and all of you wonderful WUWT scientists for truth! Your message IS getting out and, in the end, will save the PEOPLE of the planet from the solar panel-windmill investors’ greed.
Einstein was pilloried in 1921 after the Nobel committee announced Einstein would get the the prize for discovering the theory of relativity. This is completely documented in letters to the editor, and in articles, in The Times of London, now under a paywall.
Scientists from across Europe (Jew and Gentile alike) raged at the Nobel committee that Einstein’s 1905 paper failed to present the proper references to Poincaré and Lorentz, that Poincaré was not only the first to enunciate the principle, but that Poincaré discovered in Lorentz’ work the necessary mathematical formulation of the principle…all available in papers before Einstein’s paper appeared. The Dutch physicist Lorentz has already received a Nobel in 1902.
The uproar caused the Nobel committee to put off giving Einstein the prize that year, but since they had announced the prize, they had to poke around to find a reason to give him one. They settled on
And he got it in 1922.
Einstein’s nationality and religion had nothing to do with it.
It’s always been easier to write fiction than nonfiction.
Oops. Hit enter too soon.
… and science is no exception.