Guest essay by Eric Worrall
Does a scientist crying about apocalyptic predictions make their science more convincing?
According to The Guardian;
Should scientists show emotion while discussing their science? I ask because a professor of ocean geology wept as she discussed with me the impact carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions are having on the sea.
She fears we are acidifying and heating the ocean so fast that her young daughters may no longer enjoy coral reefs and shellfish by the end of the century.
And as we pondered the future, her passion for the oceans triggered tears.
I have no doubt that the tears are genuine. But tears and displays of intense emotion are not the hallmark of an objective observer.
Science is fragile – it is incredibly easy to inadvertently contaminate your results with preconceptions. This fragility is why laborious techniques such as the double blind experimental protocol were developed. Nobody would bother with all the extra work needed to set up a double blind experiment – if bitter experience hadn’t taught the scientists who practice double blind, how easy it is to make a mistake.
The first principle is that you must not fool yourself — and you are the easiest person to fool. – Dr. Richard Feynman From “Cargo Cult Science“, adapted from a 1974 Caltech commencement address; also published in Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman!
If a scientist feels so emotional about their work that they burst into tears, how can we possibly trust that same scientist can successfully set that strong emotion and potential bias aside, when they evaluate whether the evidence supports their theories?
Climategate contains numerous examples of questionable scientific practices, such as the infamous hide the decline email, and the Oroko Swamp email – but it doesn’t in my opinion contain evidence of a systematic conspiracy to deceive the world. Instead, my impression is that the people who wrote the climategate emails very much believe in what they are doing. But they believe so strongly in their mission to save the world, in my opinion they seem to have no problem with bending the rules, to deny skeptics an opportunity to impede their mission. And that willingness to reframe bad news, that apparent lack of commitment to objectivity and scientific best practice, is what in my opinion opens the way for unscientific bias.
This isn’t the first time climate scientists have tried to win us over by showing us their “feelings”. It didn’t work last time, and I don’t think it will work this time.
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My emotion related to CC is disgust. Disgust at the dishonesty being hurled out of supposed science regarding imminient catastrophic claims of higher CO2.
Dishonesty?
That’s all they know.
Isn’t this what Nobel Laureate Professor Tim Hunt lost his entire future for jokingly articulating?
Women scientists can be emotional and cry.
Evidently, the professor was correct.
Often I find it just incredibly insulting that so much bullshit is flung around with impunity by the climate cultists.
That is a really good point
Richard Telford is a pretty serious scientist but he is ready to throw in the towel and wait for the world to end. https://quantpalaeo.wordpress.com/2015/06/16/alea-iacta-est/
Poor Richard. Maybe he’s received a dispensation from on high that we’ve passed The Tipping Point, and the oceans will boil in mere months. I wish I had a nickel for every dire prediction that didn’t come true – I’d be richer even than Al Gore.
It is all emotion-based, even the so-called “science” of manmade warming. Strip away the emotion, and you’ve got very little they are basing spending $trillions on. Imagine the next COP hand-wringing finger-pointing clown-fest without emotions set to high. You can’t.
You’re too kind. If it’s all emotion it’s all avarice. Follow the money. Emotion as a scent trail is worthless.
As far as I’m concerned you’ve lost your social license to practice in your professional field when fear dissolves you into a puddle. Do I want to see a heart surgeon on a crying jag before he or she operates on my child? Do I trust my defense lawyer weeping in the halls before we go into the courtroom? No and no. There’s a competency question left hanging n the air and I would back away as fast as I could.
“As far as I’m concerned you’ve lost your social license to practice”
I think this does not pertain to this article since context is critical. I would have no problem with a surgeon who cries when recalling a child she could not save or with a defense attorney getting angry over an innocent client whose execution he could not stop.
There is no indication, at least from what was quoted, that the scientist was letting “fear” dissolve her into a “puddle”. It sounds much more like emotion triggered by a sense of loss.
Perhaps this individual lets her emotions cloud her judgement, perhaps she doesn’t. The salient point is the one Worrall draws from this: the risk of a general bias in the field as a whole.
But the fact is there have been no disasters in the ocean attributable to CAGW.
So she is crying about her perception of catastrophe based on something which there is no evidence for.
The oceans are not acidic, cannot become acidic, and the pH of the ocean can not be objectively shown to be on any trend towards lower pH values.
To me, her tears mean she has swallowed the CAGW meme whole, to the point that she is convinced her daughter is growing up in a dying world.
I wonder if she gets out in the field much, and if so, where?
Must not be any of the beautiful ocean locations that
I visit.
I get what you’re saying. However, the context of my post is ‘a before the fact’ undertaking of their job, not recalling a painful loss in retrospect. Those are two separate issues.
The question is whether emotions and science mix. This scientist crying over the ocean acidification is projecting into the future. That does not give me any confidence in her objectivity in seeking and analyzing data in a way that allows for any other conclusions other than that on which she has already emotionally staked her claim. When you are in a profession, in the eyes of the public you become an expert even if you are speaking informally. The whole issue of AGW has been spinning on far too much emotion as it is, I cannot endorse more of the same.
In the article, the female scientist asks them to stop the interview when she gets emotional, but the interviewer thinks it’s more convincing to the audience if she lets her “passion” for the oceans show. Nice.
The context is after viewing coral reef cores in which NATURAL rapid heating of the ocean took place in the past, the NATURAL devastation was compared to future, POSSIBLE acidification from human CO2 emmissions, and weeping ensued.
So, your surgeon is not crying about a child she could not save, she’s crying because a child MIGHT die in the future…whether that doctor could save it or not. The lawyer is crying because some innocent person MIGHT be executed in the future, whether a client or not.
This scientist is weeping over a future, theorized event that may or may not happen due to human activity, because of something that did happen in the past without any human involvment at all.
Mikie- “There is no indication, at least from what was quoted, that the scientist was letting “fear” dissolve her into a “puddle”. It sounds much more like emotion triggered by a sense of loss.”
Seems like a misplaced fear and and her worries are idiotic.
From http://www.bikiniatoll.com/BIKINICORALS.pdf
In the northern atolls of the Marshall Islands, 23 nuclear tests with a total yield of 76.3 megatons (TNT equivalent) were conducted across seven test sites located either on the reef, on the sea, in the air and underwater between 1946 and 1958. Five craters were created, the deepest being the Bravo crater at 73 m depth (Noshkin et al., 1997a) (Figs. 2, 3). Post-test descriptions of environmental impacts include: surface seawater temperatures raised by 55,000 C after air-borne tests; blast waves with speeds of up to 8 m/s; and shock and surface waves up to 30 m high with blast columns reaching the floor of the lagoon (approximately 70 m depth)
The results of our 12 year long nuclear war on coral. After less than 50 years, a total of 183 scleractinian coral species were recorded, compared to 126 species recorded in the pre-bomb study.
There are more species now than then.
And from http://www.co2science.org/articles/V15/N7/EDIT.php
And in reporting the results of a study of a large brain coral that lived throughout the 17th century on the shallow seafloor off the island of Bermuda, Cohen and Madin (2007) say that although seawater temperatures at that time and location were about 1.5°C colder than it is there today, “the coral grew faster than the corals there now.”
Other studies have shown earth’s corals to be able to cope with climate-induced warmings as well as coolings. In a study of patch reefs of the Florida Keys, for example, Greenstein et al. (1998) found that Acropora cervicornis corals exhibited “long-term persistence” during both “Pleistocene and Holocene time,” the former of which periods exhibited climatic changes of large magnitude, some with significantly greater warmth than currently prevails on earth; and these climate changes had almost no effect on this long-term dominant of Caribbean coral reefs. Hence, there is good reason to not be too concerned about long-term changes in climate possibly harming earth’s corals. They apparently have the ability to handle whatever nature may throw at them in this regard.
In a reply to her weeping an unofficial spokesman for the Allied Coral Species Association is thought to have stated – We have survived nuclear war, climate temperature changes of over 10 degrees, planetary magnetic shifts, giant undersea lava flows and plate tectonics for over 400 million years. We are personally more worried about you.
Now I can’t stop imagining mutant radioactive corals. >¿<
I ‘weep’ for the current demise of science. I hope for the return of an impassionate scientific method.
Recall Lawrence Summers, then Harvard president, opining in 2005 at the Conference on Diversifying the Science & Engineering Workforce about why women are unrepresented at the highest levels in science. He was accused of sexism. A woman in attendance later said when she heard Summers she almost swooned in distress. Q.E.D.
Stolen from another website:
Womyn’s Studies Student: Not enough women in STEM because misogyny.
Actual Woman in STEM: If “more women” means more of you, please stay the hell out.
Men in STEM: *applause*
The guardian is unfortunately a toilet bowel or in other words a place where human waste product ends up.
On a positive note, fortunately the weeping scientist is not a surgeon.
Or a person anyone with a working brain should waste time on listening to, or discussing on any serious subject.
Being overcome by emotion, as a scientist, renders her irrelevant.
She reminds me of the young English woman who was so propagandized by CAGW hype that she neutered herself so she wouldn’t contribute to the problem(have kids).
These two both are victims, not perpetrators.
Imagine the pilot of your jet crying because he screwed up the approach. The last thing that should be present in the cockpit is emotion – emotion kills (because it is a distraction). Likewise, I should think surgeons would be better if they managed to control their emotions.
The blubbing professor needs to get another job (acting?) or get some counselling as to the difference between experiments and reality.
Guess they remember being a baby and getting what they wanted when they cried.
+1, but remember even now they are using that tactic everyday and in every facet of our lives, I may add with (disgusting) success.
Are they getting emotional about the Catastrophes that they are predicting? You know the “C” that Joel D. Jackson claims doesn’t exist in warmist science.
Yes, but now the alarmists must have their C, and eat it too!
Oh the bullcarp is flowing strong and fast. This sort of “article” drives me to disgust. Scientists? Nah…bullshit artists more like!
“She fears we are acidifying and heating the ocean so fast that her young daughters may no longer enjoy coral reefs and shellfish by the end of the century.”
Let’s do the math: “young daughters” plus 85 years to the end of the century = dead by then.
Yup, she’s right they certainly won’t be able to enjoy coral reefs and shellfish nor anything else by the end of the century.
If you think it rude of me to bring in her daughters, it was she that opened the door by bringing up her own daughters in some sort of false demonstration of concern for others.
The daughter will not enjoy the coral reefs if the economy is so shattered that luxury vacations to tropical places are a thing of the past.
There are many in the world who don’t get to see two meals a day, let alone coral reefs.
Emotion is a great tool when trying to rally political support for your “cause”. When that political support has a direct impact on future research funding is it unreasonable to suspect that results will be bias? As stated bias has no place in scientific research.
I think the real solution is to find a better and more impartial way to fund research.
Like “Scared Scientists”
It would seem that we are about to lose the Bumble Bee.
For this humble bumble I shed a tear or three.
I quote:-
A strong correlation was found between what was happening to the bees and climate change.
Lead scientist Professor Jeremy Kerr, from the University of Ottawa in Canada, said:
“Global warming has trapped the bumblebee in a kind of climate vice. The result is dramatic losses
of bumblebee species from the hottest areas across the two continents.”
“For species that evolved under cool conditions, like bumblebees. global warming might be the kind
of threat that causes them to disappear for good.”
No drama there then?
Yeah, so one day, when it was 102F, with a heat index of 110F, I was outside for 10-15 minutes and guess what I saw? Birds and bees and all form of wildlife going about their daily business, while we fragile humans huddled around out ACs, waiting for the global warming to end.
That bumble bee study was utterly insane.
Bumble bees and other bees have been around since flowers evolved. Hideous extinction cycles didn’t bother bees one bit over time. They also adapted just fine to periodic, sudden Ice Ages, too.
And they love warm weather so how on earth is warm weather hurting any bees???? I, by the way, used to raise bees and sell honey. Hive collapse caused by modern agricultural methods such as transporting bees all over the place, has killed off my hives, not warm weather.
Make it has more to do with habitat loss than temperature, hmm?
This is one of the problems with warmistas, and CAGW in general.
Everyone seems so focused on CO2 it has reached the point of actual delusion.
Rather than being able to study actual events and effects, fear of and focus on warming has left a large part of the “scientific” world with a blind spot as wide as planet Earth.
They have become useless and irrelevant as investigators.
*sigh* Another typo.
“Make it” should be “Maybe it”.
I’m trying to remember who that butterfly researcher was who put out a paper about global warming causing extinctions in certain butterfly populations in CA. Turns out that the area she studied had been clear cut, and these butterflies don’t do well in open areas. A number of nearby populations, in areas that hadn’t been clear cut were doing fine. But she left that fact out of her paper.
Mark W, July 11, 8:06am
You are thinking of Camille Parmesan. This is an essay by Jim Steele, exposing her methodology.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/07/14/fabricating-climate-doom-part-1-parmesans-butterfly-effect/
Or it might correlate with the use of herbicides and other factors that are affecting the food source of the bees, but that wouldn’t be useful for the alarmists…
There were no herbicides in the forest/field grazing area I live in Upstate NY.
Crying over an acidifying ocean? Hardly. Over her chances of scamming and stealing more “research” bucks is closer to the truth. And just will the research come from that will allow her daughters to extend their lives over 110??
She can buy her own bloody kleenex.
I for one would prefer that my kleenex be free of blood when I use it.
Evolution baby! If these fishes and coral reefs can’t adapt, than why are you weeping lady. Because of your selfish need to self preserve this animals and objects for your own enjoyment? I really don’t care if i won’t see a panda or coral reef again, surely i will see other animals that emerge from adaption to changing climate.
I can imagine a crying Neanderthals making doom prophecies, about their daughters and sons, never again seeing animals with fur, because of ending ice age. [snip -language -mod]
Your language is unacceptable.
[agreed, snipped, mod]
Tears are often a last resort when you haven’t gotten your way.
We mommies call these ‘temper tantrums’.
Yes, the subliminal message is: “You are hurting me by not doing what I ask.”
Definitely not an appeal to reason.
Eric Worrall wrote: “it doesn’t in my opinion contain evidence of a systematic conspiracy to deceive the world. Instead, my impression is that the people who wrote the climategate emails very much believe in what they are doing. But they believe so strongly in their mission to save the world, in my opinion they seem to have no problem with bending the rules”
Spot on. It is noble cause corruption, not fraud.
Mike M. July 10, 2015 at 7:48 am
“Spot on. It is noble cause corruption, not fraud.”
Is “noble cause corruption” or “good intentions” a mental disease rivaling legal “insanity”? How do these qualities prevent people with them from defrauding other people, which also doesn’t require a “conspiracy”? Or from doing anything else which is manifestly illegal? I think these mental states would only be involved in the “sentencing phase”.
Maybe…but knowing a tad about humans and human history, I’ll go with purposeful fraud. After all, it is only money and ideology – humans have killed millions for the same.
Noble cause corruption can certainly lead to fraud – and this seems to have occurred repeatedly in this area – by NASA/GISS, by NOAA, by the Australian BOM, etc.
With one exception, I can agree with you.
That was when they gave the “Delete Everything” order in response to a Freedom of Information Act request. That was where they crossed the line from noble cause to inexcusable.
I can see a medical version of myself twisting data to get homeopathy banned or a legal version of me stretching the law to get Wakefield’s medical license revoked or Ken Lay imprisoned (remember, this is what they think the skeptics are, so we have to judge their actions from that twisted light).
However, whatever your line of reasoning, there is no valid reason to ever issue a delete everything order. There is no noble justification for hiding everything. If they thought themselves justified, then they would have stood firm and shown off their work.
All corruption is inexcusable, even that done for a “noble cause”. However the delete all order crossed the line from inexcusable to illegal.
Ona related note. This article in the Guardian was written by Roger Harrabin. But Roger doesn’t work for the Guardian. He’s paid by the BBC license fee.
Bit of moonlighting? Or have the Guardian and the BBC officially merged now?
Alarmism is (ironically considering their accusations) no stranger to conflict of interest.
curiously WE have the same issue in Aus the ABC run their items like clockwork, and first dog on the moon gets his own spot on sunday radio weekly
amused cos he used to support Labor n gillard a lot, hated Libs
recently the labor mob upset him
oughta see the hate spew forth now for them too.
Eric’s take on the dangers of “passoinate” science is spot on! It’s easy to become an “activist” and science suffers as a result. With so many issues facing the human race (terrorism/extremism, economic uncertainty) to have scientists have us believe that global warming is the most important problem facing humankind is rather pathetic.
There is not much point in being a scientist if you are not passionate about it. But that passion has to contain a dedication to the truth.
Those other problems are important and when they can finally lie enough and trick everybody into putting the UN in charge of the world they will have the power to address all of mankind’s problems.
Though, you may not like their results.
The UN always make things worse.
Where is the UN on Islamic terrorist groups like ISIS?
Behind Obama making sure Iran gets nuclear weapons to exterminate the rest of the Jews?
“Activist” == Today’s self-serving, moral superiority-signalling busybody
Eric I seems to me that the same idea that you are talking about in conformation bias is evident in the dismissive way that many on the AGW treadmill treat alternative ideas as well. Didn’t Albert Camus say something like “one does not think to believe”
If she were a skeptic of CAGW, the feminists would be all over her for crying.
No, they’d blame the reporter for being a bully.
Ha ha, cuz us wominks can’t defend ourselfs!
Leftists are funny that way. In one breath they will condemn anyone who states that women need to be protected. In the next breath they will condemn anyone who “bullies” a woman.
Same goes for pretty much any minority, unless you are a conservative member of a minority.
Such emotionally fragile people are, I presume, particularly vulnerable to scaremongering. She may well be yet another victim of the odious promotions of acute alarm over the notion of a climate system driven by our CO2 emissions towards catastrophe. Junk science sure makes for good headlines and research-grant opportunities. The vulnerable ones are liable to the the first to take it seriously at a personal level.
I think you should be very cynical about this case of “emotional fragility”. Look at the context – a Guardian interview, the lack of traction of this AGW thing with the general public, (and possibly) the expectation of narcissistic scientists that the world should follow their every pronouncement. I’d call this the break-out-in-tears strategy (sociobiological strategy #586) – at least that’s a viable hypothesis.
In fact, I think I can demonstrate that this woman is a phony (as well as her colleagues who are prone to the same excesses). How many tears have been shed by such people over the knownI/i> victims of green energy policies – the tens of millions of birds and bats killed, the species that are threatened with extinction (as documented on the Save the Eagles website), the pensioners in places like the UK who are dying of cold because they can’t afford proper heating? Not a one as far as I know. But they will shed torrents of tears over imaginary future effects on shellfish and coral reefs. That means that none of this is for real.
In fact, my Pod Person detectors are now going off like crazy.
Can we please stop calling these people Scientists?
I doubt her young children will be enjoying shellfish and coral reefs at the end of the century (85 years from now)…where is the concern for aging…lol! Now that would be a fountain of youth for federal funding if we could market it!
Pure distilled drops of propaganda targeting the technically ignorant. Nuff said. GK
Knee jerk emotionalism is infecting our entire society and it is a disastrous evolution.
Pragmatic common sense seems to be in decline among the leaders of the western world along with increasing numbers of the population.
In this febrile atmosphere wisdom and truth become unwelcome annoying obstacles to emotionally driven actions, and once this has become the norm our civilisation will fall.
“Knee jerk emotionalism is infecting our entire society”
Amen brother, amen.
“Stephanie Clague July 10, 2015 at 8:38 am”
Thumbs up!
Aye, Stephanie, you’ve nailed it. Dunno about the rest of the West, but here in Britain the death of Lady Di was a tipping point. Mass hyseria. Grown adults weeping about a woman they’d never even met. Tsunamis of flowers. BBC news coverage is loaded with emotion. In one such example, the EU Finance Ministers were said to have “hated” the outgoing Greek minister. Never mind the drachmas, feel the drama.