Study: Bad science is survival of the fittest

Cut-throat academia leads to ‘natural selection of bad science’, claims study

Ralph Westfal submits this story Via the Guardian


Scientists incentivised to publish surprising results frequently in major journals, despite risk that such findings are likely to be wrong, suggests research.

Getting stuff right is normally regarded as science’s central aim. But a new analysis has raised the existential spectre that universities, laboratory chiefs and academic journals are contributing to the “natural selection of bad science”.

To thrive in the cut-throat world of academia, scientists are incentivised to publish surprising findings frequently, the study suggests – despite the risk that such findings are “most likely to be wrong”.

Paul Smaldino, a cognitive scientist who led the work at the University of California, Merced, said: “As long as the incentives are in place that reward publishing novel, surprising results, often and in high-visibility journals above other, more nuanced aspects of science, shoddy practices that maximise one’s ability to do so will run rampant.”

The paper comes as psychologists and biomedical scientists are grappling with an apparent replication crisis, in which many high profile results have been shown to be unreliable. Observations that striking a power pose will make you feel bolder, smiling makes you feel happy or that placing a pair of “big brother” eyes on the wall will protect against theft have all failed to stand up to replication.

Sociology, economics, climate science and ecology are other areas likley to be vulnerable to the propagation of bad practice, according to Smaldino.

Smaldino cites an experiment by the American psychologist Daryl Bem, who purported to show that undergraduates could predict the future and published the result in a prestigious journal.

“What he found was the equivalent of flipping a bunch of pennies, nickels, and quarters, asking students to guess heads or tails each time, and then reporting that psychic abilities exist for pennies, but not nickels and quarters, because the students were right 53% of the time for the pennies, rather than the expected 50%. It’s insane,” said Smaldino. “Bem used exactly the same standards of evidence that all social psychologists were using to evaluate their findings. And if those standards allowed this ridiculous a hypothesis to make the cut, imagine what else was getting through.”

Yes, imagine. Full story at the Guardian


In a paper published earlier this year, Smaldino sums up the problem:

Scientists often learn more from studies that fail. But failed studies can mean career death. So instead, they’re incentivized to generate positive results they can publish. And the phrase “publish or perish” hangs over nearly every decision. It’s a nagging whisper, like a Jedi’s path to the dark side.

“Over time the most successful people will be those who can best exploit the system,” Paul Smaldino, a cognitive science professor at University of California Merced, says. To Smaldino, the selection pressures in science have favored less-thanideal research: “As long as things like publication quantity, and publishing flashy results in fancy journals are incentivized, and people who can do that are rewarded … they’ll be successful, and pass on their successful methods to others.”

Many scientists have had enough. They want to break this cycle of perverse incentives and rewards.

 

 

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richard@rbaguley.plus.com
September 21, 2016 10:05 am

Romney did the same thing, and I’m sure Trump is doing so also
[Note: The mods STRONGLY recommend users do NOT use their email addresses in public as a login_id or name. .mod]

RACookPE1978
Editor
Reply to  richard@rbaguley.plus.com
September 21, 2016 1:46 pm

richard@rbaguley.plus.com
Romney did the same thing, and I’m sure Trump is doing so also

There is no such evidence of any comparable practice in either the Trump nor the Romney campaign.
Further, the Oboma campaign specifically and deliberately recommended its anonymous donors do NOT exceed the minimum donation level that triggers the “identified contribution limit”, and they specifically wrote their web-site to allow multiple contributions from the same donor with NO identification codes for each credit card nor a “live signature” verification process nor an address/zip code verification of the credit card billing address.
So, is this evidence that Oboma’s 2008 and 2012 campaign was encouraging donation fraud of illegal overseas political donations?
Was the Oboma administration sending government-funded advisors and election officials to Israel to interfere in that country’s election cycle against Israel’s conservative government?
Were the 400 million in foreign oil-country government/oil sheik “contributions” to Hillary’s “charitable” fund intended to influence her energy and global actions as Secretary of State and as a probable/promised future president?

richard@rbaguley.plus.com
Reply to  RACookPE1978
September 21, 2016 2:10 pm

Rumors and innuendo that you’ve read regarding credit cards and political donations are laughable.

For example, many banks issuing credit cards don’t support AVS.

Please cite your sources for your “accusations”

Richard Baguley
Reply to  RACookPE1978
September 21, 2016 2:39 pm

Mods, is this better?
[Highly recommended. Though it may close the barn door after the horses have been stolen, should we delete the earlier email address-ed ID’s? .mod]

MarkW
Reply to  richard@rbaguley.plus.com
September 21, 2016 3:06 pm

Do you have any evidence to back this claim? Or are you just desperate to protect Hillary regardless of the cost to your integrity?

September 21, 2016 10:08 am

This is amusing, in a sad way.
The Guardian article had a “teaser” link on the left to a previous Guardian article, with the provocative (though inaccurate) title, Science that isn’t transparent isn’t science.”
That article says:
“…Together with 37 colleagues we have published the Transparency and Openness Promotion (TOP) Guidelines, a set of criteria that scientific journals can adopt to enhance the transparency of the research they publish.”
That sounds wonderful! The link goes to this paper, which was published in Science magazine, in June, 2015:
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/348/6242/1422.full.pdf
It is entitled, “Promoting an open research culture.” But to read it, the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) demands a paywall ransom. That’s despite the fact that the article is 15 months old, and they promise free access after one year. Here’s an annotated screenshot:
http://www.sealevel.info/aaas_promoting_open_research_culture.png
Way to promote an “open research culture,” AAAS!
I wrote to the AAAS this morning, complaining:

Dear AAAS,
I understand the need to keep the lights on, but if you’re going to claim that access will be free with registration “one year” after publication, you should not be demanding a paywall ransom 15 months out. It is particularly ironic that you are doing so for an article entitled, “Promoting an Open Research Culture.”
Disappointedly yours,
Dave Burton

No reply so far, but it’s only been six hours.

craig
Reply to  daveburton
September 21, 2016 1:57 pm

Probably in bed still

Reply to  daveburton
September 21, 2016 2:55 pm

Well, the AAAS / Science hasn’t replied, so, in the interest of promoting an open research culture, and because the “Promoting an open research culture” paper is supposed to be available for free, here’s a SciHub link to the article, which is usable from the Tor Browser:
http://scihub22266oqcxt.onion/http://www.sciencemag.org/content/348/6242/1422.full.pdf#
If that doesn’t take you straight to the article, the paste the article’s DOI into the SciHub search box:
doi:10.1126/science.aab2374
Then click the big “Open” button,
Then click the “ сохранить статью” button on the left.

Reply to  daveburton
October 2, 2016 2:57 am

Well, they replied.

From: Media
To: David Burton
Subject: FW: AAAS — Promoting Open Science, with paywalls?
Date: Fri, 30 Sep 2016 17:58:14 +0000
Dear David,
Thank you for reaching out to us. We greatly appreciate the feedback. We are taking a look at the form that you and other free registrants fill out to ensure is lays out the rules as clearly as possible. I am sorry but only content labeled as “Research Articles” are available for free one year after their publication to free registrants.
The “policy forum” piece you were seeking is not content that is available to registrants for free. Policy forums are not “research articles.”
I hope this helps.
Anne

September 21, 2016 11:46 am

Perhaps it’s time to get rid of the elite journals. Open online sites where anyone with minimal qualifications can publish their research. Allow anyone to comment on the published papers, using their real name or a pseudonym. This becomes the “peer review.” Moderators can only reject comments on the basis of rudeness, profanity, or ad hom attacks. Genuine scientists would flourish, the hacks would get booed off the stage. Hmm…. sounds like WUWT.

Editor
September 21, 2016 12:19 pm

Walter’s Universal Theorem of the Evils of Performance Quotas/Targets
Perfomance/results quotas are evil because the fear of getting fired for missing performance/results quotas will make many people bend the rules, lie, cheat, commit outright fraud, and do other evil stuff in order to meet their quotas/targets
What you see here is *NOT* restricted to one area of human activity. The theorem applies in all areas of human endeavour…
1) You’ve probably heard about the (in)famous 18-minute call when someone wanted to cancel their Comcast cable service. Virtually all public-facing employees of Comcast have sales quotas, even if they’re nominally "help-desk" or "tech-support" http://www.theverge.com/2014/7/28/5936959/comcast-confessions-when-every-call-is-a-sales-call At the end of the month, employee sales are counted up. Any cancellation is a negative against their monthly quota. Miss your quota often enough, and you get fired.
And it wasn’t just difficult cancellations. When the 18-minute-call story hit the web, many people had stories of being lied to by reps who claimed to have cancelled their service. But the bills kept coming and people ended up being hounded by collection agencies for continuing cable service, at a previous residence.
2) Wells Fargo set sales quotas for employees to upsell current customers. When customers didn’t buy enough additional services to meet quotas, many employees fraudulently created new accounts in the customers’ names http://money.cnn.com/2016/09/08/investing/wells-fargo-created-phony-accounts-bank-fees/index.html
3) This doesn’t apply to just Comcast and Wells Fargo, it applies to businesses in general. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-09-14/how-sales-targets-encourage-wrongdoing-inside-america-s-companies
"Indiscriminate goal-setting" can lead to increased unethical behavior, "distorted risk preferences," and "corrosion of organizational culture," the authors of a Harvard Business School paper, "Goals Gone Wild: The Systematic Side Effects of Overprescribing Goal-Setting," have argued.
What they say is true, but it doesn’t go far enough. "Goals Gone Wild" can be a problem in any human activity.
4) When a cable rep or bank rep hits your credit card, it can damage your credit rating, and possibly even your employment prospects. Police have the ability to totally destroy a person’s future. You’ll never get a police officer to publically admit that they have a traffic-ticket quota, let alone a felony-conviction quota. But even where there isn’t an explicit quota, there is still intense pressure to “close cases”. To do this, they need a conviction of somebody… anybody. The result is bending of the rules, pressure by police for witnesses to change their stories, etc. The waste of several years of Guty Paul Morin’s life https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guy_Paul_Morin is a prime example.
Police are extremely adept at bending the rules to get people to incriminate themselves. See the classic "Don’t Talk to Cops", Part 1 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i8z7NC5sgik and Part 2 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08fZQWjDVKE The details vary from country to country, but the general principle is the same. They want you to speak to them, before speaking to a lawyer, in the hope that you’ll convict yourself.
5) And finally we get to the current article. "Meet you quota or get fired" is translated as "Publish or Perish" The same rewards for producing exist, and the same consequences for failure exist. This is not specific to academia, but is similar to how people react to quotas in all areas of human endeavour.

BCBill
September 21, 2016 12:51 pm

Welcome to the Conman Theory of Human Evolution. The cold hard reality of evolution is that any strategy which produces more viable offspring is successful. Some altruistic behaviours do that but a lot of destructive behaviours do as well. When the first conman shook a rattle to make it rain, the die was cast. If it rained he was rewarded, if it didn’t, they burned some poor old women at the stake until if did rain. Then “Doctors” figured out the same scam. People often get better on their own so all “doctors” had to do was figure out how to take credit for healing. This fundamental con perpetuates its way into modern times where medical studies still refuse to look at healing as a normal body function but rather attribute it to the placebo effect. That is, “My medicine may not have cured you but my powerful persona did”. The original studies on placebo effect were all flawed by ignoring natural remission. After Doctors got in on the scam, so did priests and kings and salesmen. The whole history of humankind is one of perpetual fraud. And it is that way because fraud works at an evolutionary level. At least it works until the burden of fraud becomes so great that societies collapse and have to start again.
Science was a better way to make a living than digging ditches and so naturally it attracted conmen. The hubris of the scientific community was that somehow scientists had magical powers to spot fraud (See the Amazing Randi for many examples). The arrogance is so high that people entering fields of science are not even properly trained on how to keep bias and cognitive dissonance out of research. We are taught some moronically simplistic tools like control, replication and double blind, but these only cover off the tip of the iceberg. Statistics provide a million ways to self delude. The peer review process does not include the rigorous review of data and laboratories needed to detect charlatans. There was perhaps a brief period when science had a lower than normal number of conmen but initiatives like the money laden Global Warming Scam quickly made up for that. Now science is no better than medicine, cosmetics, vitamins, patent medicines, politics, sporting goods, and so on and so on, in the number of unsupportable claims. Science is dead. Long live the few remaining true scientists.

jstanley01
September 21, 2016 6:39 pm

America’s Ruling Class — And the Perils of Revolution
American Spectator
ANGELO M. CODEVILLA
“…[T]he ruling class is united and adamant about nothing so much as its right to pronounce definitive, ‘scientific’ judgment on whatever it chooses. When the government declares, and its associated press echoes that ‘scientists say’ this or that, ordinary people — or for that matter scientists who ‘don’t say,’ or are not part of the ruling class — lose any right to see the information that went into what ‘scientists say.’ Thus when Virginia’s attorney general subpoenaed the data by which Professor Michael Mann had concluded, while paid by the state of Virginia, that the earth’s temperatures are rising ‘like a hockey stick’ from millennial stability — a conclusion on which billions of dollars’ worth of decisions were made — to investigate the possibility of fraud, the University of Virginia’s faculty senate condemned any inquiry into ‘scientific endeavor that has satisfied peer review standards’ claiming that demands for data ‘send a chilling message to scientists…and indeed scholars in any discipline.’ The Washington Post editorialized that the attorney general’s demands for data amounted to “an assault on reason.” The fact that the ‘hockey stick’ conclusion stands discredited and Mann and associates are on record manipulating peer review, the fact that science-by-secret-data is an oxymoron, the very distinction between truth and error, all matter far less to the ruling class than the distinction between itself and those they rule.
“By identifying science and reason with themselves, our rulers delegitimize opposition…”
http://spectator.org/39326_americas-ruling-class-and-perils-revolution/

Mark
September 21, 2016 6:43 pm

Real scientists are still out here, from the air conditioner engineer to the aviation engineer to the IT engineer,
everyone who studies not ”some” part of GHE ”theory” finds it utterly false, but all of it.
It’s believers can’t tell you what direction a thermometer will go if you prompt them ahead of time with the answers.
If you ask them what happens when less light hits a thermometer, their answer is that more light comes out of it.
If you ask them why their ”GHE” disappears when the temperature of the atmosphere is calculated using the same equations as those used to derive the international Standard Atmosphere, they have no excuse. It just so happens that the compression warming of the atmosphere is identical to their GHE.
It just so happens that there’s no field of endeavor on earth that uses the same kind of mathematics to ”just happen” to get a magical ”effect” that also ”just happens” to
match the compression warming of the atmosphere.
Everyone can see the transparent physical and mathematical fraud that has come from the invaders of science who believed there is a GHE.
If there was one, far smarter men than these incompetent oafs would have discovered it.

Reply to  Mark
September 22, 2016 1:45 am

Mark wrote, “It just so happens that the compression warming of the atmosphere is identical to their GHE.”
That’s nonsense. In fact, it’s gibberish.

Mark
Reply to  daveburton
September 25, 2016 12:56 am

I’m the lifetime atmospheric chemist and atmospheric radiation professional,
you’re the computer programmer blogger who never measured anything related to atmospheric chemistry or radiation, for money, in your entire life.

Reply to  daveburton
September 25, 2016 2:08 am

I don’t know who you are, “Mark,” but saying “the compression warming of the atmosphere is identical to [the supposed greenhouse effect]” is saying gibberish.
It is, however, quantitative gibberish. You’ve claimed that two quantities are identical. So, you are claiming to have compared the numbers.
I challenge you: show us. Give us the numbers. Show your work.
Here’s something to start with. It’s MODTRAN’s calculated greenhouse effect from various levels of CO2 in a tropical atmosphere, with & without clouds, and with & without water vapor amplification, but with no other feedbacks:
http://www.burtonsys.com/climate/MODTRAN_etc4c.html
For instance, taking the simplest case, MODTRAN calculates that for a clear sky and constant water vapor pressure (i.e., no water vapor amplification), 392 ppmv CO2 yields 7.47 °C of “greenhouse warming” at the surface, compared to an otherwise identical atmosphere with no CO2 at all, or 0.34 °C of warming compared to an otherwise identical atmosphere with just 300 ppmv of CO2.
Now, please show us how that compares to “compression warming.”

Gary Palmgren
September 21, 2016 7:16 pm

I do hope people see that science does work in industrial research and development. This is especially true for companies selling to other companies. One cannot sell non-working microprocessors no matter how many peer reviews have approved a paper on semi-conductor research. Nobody in business buys essential materials without testing them. I’ve work in industrial R&D for about 39 years and I estimate that fraudsters have about a 18 month half-life inside a company.
One guy did not report some bad experimental results and his project actually blew up in front of a bunch of prospective clients. A sudden short circuit in a high voltage high power circuit makes a big badda boom. When you tell the boss that you have only good results they want to start selling the product to said clients. That was the end of that project (and that guy). (His job, not him physically. There was no danger of anyone getting hurt.)

September 22, 2016 1:40 am

Most folks here realize that climatology has been overwhelmingly politicized and massively corrupted, to the point that much of the “science” published in the field is really political propaganda masquerading as science. But It’s not just climatology which is so afflicted, it’s a great portion of the broader field of environmental sciences. For example, here’s an article from the USGS, from earlier this year:
USGS: Comprehensive Study finds Widespread Mercury Contamination Across Western North America
The USGS devoted 2500 words and eight lovely color photos to this article. (Your tax dollars at work!) That would appear to be quite an in-depth story, right?
The word “levels” occurs 14 times, and the word “concentration” or “concentrations” occurs 9 times, in sentences like this:
“Soil mercury concentrations in these forests are on average 2.5 times higher than those in dry semi-arid environments.”
But what, exactly, are those “contamination” levels?
Somehow the USGS did not get around to mentioning any actual levels, anywhere in the entire story.
That’s actually a rather impressive feat of avoidance. It’s not it could be accidental. I would find it a challenge to write an article which discusses contamination levels for 2500 words without ever mentioning what those contamination levels are.
Take a guess: why do you suppose they avoided mentioning any actual mercury levels, in that article?
I can think of three possible reasons:
1. Perhaps it is because the levels are so very, very low?
2. Or perhaps it is because they want you to pay Elsevier a whopping US$41.95 for each of the 17 papers in the series?
3. Or both?
BTW, the Russian SciHub “pirate science” site & Tor can probably retrieve most of those papers for free. You’d need to examine the information about all the articles, and find the DOI references. Then for each article run the Tor browser, go to the SciHub site, and search for the DOI reference.

September 22, 2016 11:57 am

Particularly amused by this quote
“Once we think we know in advance which effects are real and which are illusory, true scientific objectivity flies out of the window.”
Seems the Grauniad doesn’t read their own paper…

September 22, 2016 5:47 pm

Re: Study: Bad science is survival of the fittest
Whoa! Not even evolution is survival of the fittest, but that’s for another thread. (Hint: fittest is a deified, subjective notion, supernatural selection. Natural selection is survival of the (net) most prolific, the Crowding Principle.)
From time to time these conjectures arise about what academia is doing or not doing in the name of science, and from time to time the reasons get posted, so far always to be ignored. Nothing converges in blogger space.
The problem is that there are two kinds of science practiced in the world today, one in academia and its handmaiden, the professional journals, and the other in industry, where products demonstrate ever-increasing reach and performance, tested by market forces. The latter is Modern Science, originated by Francis Bacon in 1620. The former is Post Modern Science created by Karl Popper in the decades of the ‘30s and ‘40s. PMS is what philosophers call a deconstruction of MS.
In the early ‘90s, the US Supreme Court undertook the task to determine what science was in order to set guidelines for expert testimony in US courts. Dauber v. Merrell Dow, ’93, 509 US 579. With the advice of a superabundance of academic friends of the court, the Court discovered and set forth for all of us five tenets, unwittingly of PMS, not MS. The High Court accepted four, and explicitly rejected the fifth. The Court attributed one of the five tenets to Karl Popper, never discovering that each of the five was his creation.
Because the tenets of PMS are important to understand as a set, here are the five, assembled as Popper codified them:
1) A scientific proposition must have a falsification clause;
A scientific proposition is valid provided it is passes three intersubjectivity tests:
2) A scientific proposition must pass review by a (certified) group of peers;
3) A scientific proposition must be published in a (certified) professional journal; and
4) A scientific proposition must be supported by a consensus of (certified) practitioners; and
5) The conclusion of a scientific proposition must be ethical with respect to its effect on the public.
Some observations: (1) No scientific proposition is known that has a falsification clause. The sole use of this tenet is to provide justification for debunking non-conforming propositions: failure to sport a falsification clause. Popper derived this tenet from his (shared) erroneous view that scientific propositions were universal generalizations (UGs), which could be affirmed only by the infinite regression of induction, an impossibility, but could be disproved by a single experiment. In fact, scientific propositions are not truth valued, but are mappings of existing facts onto future facts by experiment. Modern Science predicts not by induction to UGs but by Bacon’s “real induction”, in today’s language, deduction.
(2) Modern science validates its models by showing experimentally that their predictions are statistically correct. Popper dismissed all vestiges of pragmatism, replacing that criterion of Modern Science with his three-pronged social interaction of the society of scientists.
(3) The Fifth tenet is tantamount to saying that scientific conclusions must be politically correct. That was dismissed in Daubert, not because the Court suffered any discomfort with political correctness, but because determining how science influences the facts of a case is an irrevocable duty of the trier of fact, and that touched home. So Tenet 1 is a misfit, and Tenet 5 is out of scope, so PMS effectively has just three tenets.
(4) With the five tenets, Popper’s model of science eliminated all vestiges of the original requirement of Modern Science that scientific models actually work. Saying that studies fail is to hold them to an alien standrd, an MS criterion. They don’t fail because they are sufficient, conforming to the dogma of the day, tested by passing peer review, publication, and the bar of the consensus, all within the hierarchical community.
(5) The five tenets are perfect for academia. Not only do models no longer have to work, but intersubjective testing is perfect for control of the science by the power structure of academia. Rather than academic science being a cut-throat practice, it is an elementary belief system with all the trappings of a formal religion, from the flock to the ministers, from the nonbelievers and sinners to the evangelists, from the apostles to the papal council, and complete with a path for advancement. And don’t overlook the Earthly rewards of government grants and tenure, and the professional honors of authoring scripture under the shield of academic freedom.
The bottom line, clear from the cherished tenets, is just this: Publish or Perish. Keep score by counting: load each paper with authors, and cite everything, especially all the keepers of the faith.

Zeke
September 23, 2016 12:17 am

ON THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES.
OR THE PRESERVATION OF FAVOURED RACES IN THE STRUGGLE FOR LIFE.
By Charles Darwin, M.A.,
Fellow Of The Royal, Geological, Linnaean, Etc., Societies;
—-
This idea that the cleverest elites create myth in order to control the commoners, and that a superior caste orders society and culture by force and to their own liking is written into countless articles and history books.
Social Darwinism is an ugly historical paradigm, but it is so pervasive and so universal that I think everyone is blind to it in the history books and in press releases. It is being played out in the realm of science. Scientism is the equivalent of a superior caste that cannot resist telling everyone else the origin of the universe, and loves the power it wields, because ultimately science answers questions about what is and is not possible.

Zeke
September 23, 2016 12:42 am

Getting stuff right is normally regarded as science’s central aim. But a new analysis has raised the existential spectre that universities, laboratory chiefs and academic journals are contributing to the “natural selection of bad science”.

No, “getting stuff right” is not the aim of science in a Kuhnsian paradigm shift. Science only moves away from some previous paradigm.
And once these science practitioners decide the duck is really a rabbit, then the history books get rewritten according to the new scientific paradigm. Climate science is only one example of what a scientific paradigm shift really looks like. Kuhn was very influential with the Boomers.
ref:comment image

Reply to  Zeke
September 27, 2016 3:23 am

Ha! I just noticed what that drawing does, Zeke. Nice!

Zeke
Reply to  daveburton
September 30, 2016 10:28 am

HI Daveburton,
I was away at Hell’s Canyon checking out the whole dam operation, and just saw your remark.
Yes the Duck Rabbit diagram really convinced a lot of people.
Personally I think people should be more careful what they smoke! (:

thingodonta
September 24, 2016 9:30 pm

It is the old problem with natural selection, it selects what works at the time, it doesn’t necessarily select what works over the longer term, or what might be best overall, or in a social context, what is necessarily true. It sometimes produces some monstrous, cobbled-together works.
Charles Darwin :
“What a book a devil’s chaplain might write on the clumsy, wasteful, blundering, low, and horribly cruel work of nature!

Mark
September 26, 2016 2:17 am

[SNIP, fake name, newly created fake email, address, comment submitted by proxy server to hide location, rantings about planetary gas compression. Likely to be the forever banned but still trying Doug Cotton – Anthony Watts]

Reply to  Mark
September 26, 2016 6:03 am

Mark:
1. If, in the future, you use the “reply” link at the end of the comment to which you’re replying, your reply will be shown where it belongs, beneath the comment to which you replied.
2. Your claimed credentials are unpersuasive as long as you hide behind an anonymous handle. Who are you?
3. You wrote, https://goo.gl/nSkg5
Clicking that link yields: “https://goo.gl/nSkg5 – this goo.gl shortlink has been disabled. It was found to be violating our Terms of Service.”
4. I wrote, “…For instance, taking the simplest case, MODTRAN [tropical atmosphere] calculates that for a clear sky and constant water vapor pressure (i.e., no water vapor amplification), 392 ppmv CO2 yields 7.47 °C of “greenhouse warming” at the surface, compared to an otherwise identical atmosphere with no CO2 at all, or 0.34 °C of warming compared to an otherwise identical atmosphere with just 300 ppmv of CO2. Now, please show us how that compares to ‘compression warming.'”
You replied, “You’re past redeeming your intellectual reputation. You’re busted not having the first clue what you’re talking about. Your church teaches there is a 33 degree GHE. The fact you don’t know what your church teaches is your problem. You’re done with the ankle bite attacks…”
First, you mistake my religion. I am a follower of Christ. My allegiance is to Truth.
Second, do you really not realize that “the simplest case” of tropical atmosphere, clear sky, and no feedbacks is not equivalent to the actual, globally averaged greenhouse effect of 400 ppmv CO2?
5. You wrote, “the compression warming of the atmosphere is identical to [the supposed greenhouse effect],” which is nonsense.
I challenged you to “show us. Give us the numbers. Show your work.”
You replied, “33.”
Is that what you call showing your work? Really?
No wonder you don’t want to admit your identity.

Reply to  Mark
September 27, 2016 3:14 am

“Mark,” are you Doug Cotton?

Reply to  Mark
September 27, 2016 3:17 am

Mark, is that really your name, or is your real name Doug?
And is your surname Cotton?

Vance
September 27, 2016 11:59 am

The main thing is whether gas law calculations predict the earth’s temperature properly and accurately.
They do. The proper calculations for standard gas chemistry d o in fact cover precisely 33 degrees of planetary temperature.
There is a thread about this here on wuwt.
the author is named Steve Goddard and the thread is named ‘hyperventilating on venus’ with a following thread named ‘venus envy’.
Im on my phone or id provide links but anyone can look those threads up.

Mark
September 28, 2016 1:11 pm

My name is not Doug Cotton I’ve seen that name but I don’t know who that is. The link is simply the return on search for ”33 DEGREES GREENHOUSE EFFECT”.
Mark is my anonymous blog handle it’s not connected to me. GHG nuts’ reputation for stalking is legendary. It is one of the major revelations about Climategare: character assination instead of quality science.

October 2, 2016 3:08 am

Maybe I missed it, but I don’t see the link to the actual study paper. So here it is:
http://rsos.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/3/9/160384
There’s also a preprint on Arxiv:
https://arxiv.org/abs/1605.09511