Edward Ferrara writes:
If your Facebook feed is anything like mine, you may have recently heard about how Bill Nye–the Science Guy himself–“slammed” Tucker Carlson on the latter’s evening show on Fox. THIS. (If you live somewhere else you may have been treated to an equally smug reaction from people claiming that Carlson “won.”)
However you feel about it, the timing, coupled with Nye’s reliance on scientific consensus as a proxy for objective correctness, is somewhat serendipitous. Mounting evidence that the results of scientific studies are often not replicable has caused Nature, one of the most prolific scientific journals, to very publicly tighten its standards for submissions as of its latest issue.
In May of 2016, a survey by Nature revealed that over two thirds of researchers surveyed had tried and failed to reproduce the results of another scientist’s study. Over half of them had been unable to reproduce their own results. Fifty two percent of researchers polled said there was a “significant crisis” of reproducibility.
This is a big deal. The ability to replicate the results of studies is crucial to both scientific integrity and progress. Clinical researchers, for example, depend on reliable results from prior trials to form the building blocks of new drug advancements. In the field of cancer biology, merely 10% of results from published literature were found to be reproducible. Meanwhile, the credibility of scientific literature is understandably compromised by dubious, often sensational findings.
The root of the problem, according to Dame Ottoline Leyser, director of the Sainsbury Laboratory at the University of Cambridge, stems from today’s scientific culture. As quoted in BBC, she cites “a culture that promotes impact over substance, flashy findings over the dull, confirmatory work that most of science is about.”
Others blame a pressure to publish. There has also been, in recent years, doubt cast on the integrity of the peer review process, especially with regard to climate science. Whatever the culprit, plans to combat issues of reproducibility are emerging. Nature has developed a checklist to serve as guidelines for authors submitting writing to the publication. Efforts shouldn’t end there, the journal argues. Reform at all levels of the scientific process could go a long way:
“Renewed attention to reporting and transparency is a small step. Much bigger underlying issues contribute to the problem, and are beyond the reach of journals alone. Too few biologists receive adequate training in statistics and other quantitative aspects of their subject. Mentoring of young scientists on matters of rigour and transparency is inconsistent at best. In academia, the ever increasing pressures to publish and chase funds provide little incentive to pursue studies and publish results that contradict or confirm previous papers. Those who document the validity or irreproducibility of a published piece of work seldom get a welcome from journals and funders, even as money and effort are wasted on false assumptions.
Tackling these issues is a long-term endeavour that will require the commitment of funders, institutions, researchers and publishers. It is encouraging that NIH institutes have led community discussions on this topic and are considering their own recommendations. We urge others to take note of these and of our initiatives, and do whatever they can to improve research reproducibility.”
More https://eddiethoughts.com/2017/03/03/science-reproducibility-crisis/
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Anyone claiming Bill Nye “won” is relying on his readership not having seen the exchange with Tucker Carlson. Similarly, I have encountered global warming advocates who give links to articles that in no way actually reinforce their point, again relying on someone not bothering to check their assertion.
A lot has to do with the ways Universities attract funding, which often leads scientists into directions they don’t want to follow for the sake of their careers. The nature of Universities has changed a lot in the last 50 or so years as they have become more exposed to market and political pressures in order to obtain funding.
Do you think Universities have just become smarter at obtaining funding?
I recently walked the grounds of the U of MN and was in awe of all the new buildings that have cropped up in 20 years. It was crazy. There are buildings where I didn’t think it was possible to put a building.
“The root of the problem, according to Dame Ottoline Leyser, director of the Sainsbury Laboratory at the University of Cambridge, stems from today’s scientific culture.”
I think the plant anatomy is a bit mixed up there.
Was that a pal-reviewed joke?
Hypothetically.
Hmm, so this “fake science” should be deflowered!?
The fractious mainstream global warming debate is primarily focused on the magnitude of climate sensitivity to increasing atmospheric CO2 (“ECS” or similar).
Since “CO2 lags temperature at all measured time scales*” (References 1, 2 and 3 below), this mainstream debate can be stated as: “BY HOW MUCH CAN THE FUTURE CAUSE THE PAST?”.
My proven observation* is still at the periphery of climate science, yet it is the fatal flaw in BOTH sides of the global warming debate.
On Reproducibility:
There is NO evidence that increasing atmospheric CO2 has any significant impact on global temperature.
The global cooling that occurred from ~1940 to ~1975, during the time that fossil fuel combustion (and allegedly atmospheric CO2 concentration) strongly accelerated, essentially DISPROVES the catastrophic humanmade global warming (“CAGW”) hypothesis.
Consider IF we had a similar situation starting about now:
Hypothetically, let’s say from 2020 to 2055 there was continued fossil fuel combustion and a significant increase in atmospheric CO2, and yet average global temperature cooled by ~0.5C.
What would this say about ECS and the CAGW hypo? It would say that ECS is near ZERO and that the CAGW hypo is false.
But this has already happened, which is why the warmists have “adjusted” the temperature record in order to minimize this ~35-year past cooling.
In fact, we already have a good bound on the magnitude of ECS, which is NEAR ZERO, and strong evidence that the CAGW hypothesis is false. Do we need another 35 years of data to reproduce this same result? We don’t.
For clarity, I reiterate my central hypothesis, for which there is strong evidence:
“GLOBAL TEMPERATURE DRIVES ATMOSPHERIC CO2 MUCH MORE THAN CO2 DRIVES TEMPERATURE.”
My hypo does not preclude other major possible major drivers of CO2, such as deforestation, fossil fuel combustion, etc. They just do not significantly impact global warming.
Furthermore, there is strong evidence that increasing atmospheric CO2 is beneficial to humanity and the environment. Atmospheric CO2 is not dangerously high, it is in fact dangerously low for the continued survival of carbon-based life on Earth.
There is strong evidence that “global warming” is the most expensive false scientific crisis in history, and strong evidence of academic and criminal misconduct by its leading warmist proponents.
Here is my challenge: Prove my central hypothesis wrong, with real evidence.
(Practitioners of arm-waving, strawman arguments (e.g. the “Mass Balance Argument”) , appeals to authority and other such nonsense need not apply.)
Regards to all, Allan 🙂
* References:
1. MacRae, 2008
http://icecap.us/images/uploads/CO2vsTMacRae.pdf
2. http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/esrl-co2/from:1979/mean:12/derivative/plot/uah5/from:1979/scale:0.22/offset:0.14
3. Humlum et al, January 2013
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0921818112001658
******************************
Bill Nye knows nothing of Climate Change Science. A Limerick.
The Roman Northamptonshire wine
was good, not excessively fine.
So it just goes to show
that Bill Nye does not know
of Climate Change past, that’s my line.
During the Roman warm period wine grapes were grown almost up to the Hadrian Wall, The the dark ages came and grapes no longer ripened in England. During the Medieval Warm Period there was at least one cheese farm on Greenland “Gården under sanden”, abandoned as the glaciers regrew, starting the “Little Ice Age”. We are still recovering from the little ice age. 2016 may have been a warm year, but most years since the ice age were warmer. See Chart.Greenlandgisp-last-10000-newWe are still in the sweet spot of a remarkable stable Climate, only more CO2 will save us from a new Ice Age.
https://lenbilen.com/2017/02/28/bill-nye-knows-nothing-of-climate-change-science-a-limerick/
No amount of atmospheric CO2 will prevent the next, inevitable, ice age. If only it was that simple …
You are right, a doubling of CO2 may delay the onset by 1000 years, no more
To defer the next Continental Ice Age:
Adjust the albedo of the planet: Load water bombers with carbon black, and dust the ice.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2016/10/26/claim-why-ice-ages-occur-every-100000-years/comment-page-1/#comment-2328336
Some irony here:
Much-maligned “carbon” in the form of carbon black (powder) sprinkled on the ice sheet, could save all of us from the next Continental Ice Age.
This would be the final rebuttal of the scoundrels and imbeciles who have tried to incite widespread fear of manmade global warming.
This already happens when soot from fires and dirt gets on the snow and accelerates the melting. As snow melts, the dirt gets concentrated on the top layer which becomes darker and melts even faster. You will need to dust with carbon after every snow storm which will quickly become impractical.
“Impractical” is a relative term, isn’t it.
Impractical compared to say, another continental glacier covering much of Europe, Asia and North America?
Nothing says “There goes the neighbourhood!” like a mile of ice over your head.
I’m all for a perpetual ski season. Glacier skiing can be fun, especially in the summer. Let the next ice age begin …
I ain’t no scientist, but from where I sit, as a science consumer, it DOES seem logical that, while experiments that ultimately fail are a necessary part of the science building process (isn’t that the definition of ‘experiment’?) any ultimate conclusions drawn must be testable, provable and reliable. For Nature magazine, what is the point in publishing a ‘conclusive’ study that cannot be verified by others? Thanks, but no thanks.
“If you live somewhere else you may have been treated to an equally smug reaction from people claiming that Carlson won.”
I’ve seen the interview on FOX as no American (German). And I found that the claim that Tucker Carlson had “cornered” Bill NYE was really true. In addition to stereotyped assertions that science is solidified and what agony we should endure in the future because of our ignorance (above all in terms of sea level rise), nothing came of Bill Nye. On the contrary, for me, Tucker Carlson scored with the conclusion that the climate is warming up, but it is not clear what proportion humanity has in it. This is a very reasonable point of view from Tucker Carlson, who also appeared much more naturally than Bill Nye, who wanted to be loose, but has mainly a pinched facial expression. Bill Nye refused to provide any information about the exact proportion of man in the warming of the climate, with the mention of the consensus that still exists. I would say: point victory for Tucker Carlson. Asked if Bill Nye had said that people who would not agree with his view, were thrown into jail, he departed with usual nebulous tactics. He seems to be afraid of Pres. Trump and its reaction. Under Clinton he would probably have repeated this dirt. His main point that climate warming would be catastrophic in the future was the rise in the sea level, in the course of which countries such as the North of France and the UK would partly sink into the sea. A terrible interview with an unthinkable Nye. If all the supporters of the AGW are so, then good night. The statement “Bill Nye the Science Guy believes that climate change skeptics suffer from” cognitive dissonance “, which prevents them from accepting how global warming affects their lives” speaks for itself. If Bill Nye is inside as much as he looks outside, he does not change anymore. In this context, it is becoming increasingly clear what blessing the victory trumps was for the skeptical community. He imagined in the best case, how such a dried-up cardinal of the AGW would appear under Clinton.
http://insider.foxnews.com/2017/02/27/tucker-carlson-and-bill-nye-science-guy-clash-climate-change
I never saw any posts or memes about nye “winning” that segment. And I watched the segment when it happened. Nobody “won” that, because nye said nothing of any importance at all. He just kept hammering away at his talking points, completely ignoring what Tucker was asking him.
The best part of Tucker Carlson’s show is that these morons keep coming on that are apparently completely unaware of what they’re stepping into. Tucker openly mocks them and laughs at them, and they demonstrate their own unfamiliarity with things they claim to know about.
There’s never going to be a single event that convinces people that the “climate change” meme is irreparably damaged, but a lot of little events can make people realize what’s been going on. This was one of those, and was one of the few times lately that I openly laughed while watching TV.
Reproducibility, done well, can still lead to simply replicating a type 1 or 2 error.
Robustness is a better measure. Through this method confounding factors are more likely to be discovered, thus calling into question previous results. And it is the only way forward to establishing new paradigms of scientific theories. Robustness is the process of, and when done with due diligence, rejecting or not the proposed hypothesis. Climate Science has underfunded this important work and leaves open the real risk of the populous being taken down the primrose path.
Even so, if one doesn’t provide the data, observations, methodology, etc., reproducibility can not be attempted.
Presumably, if enough other scientists attempt the reproduction, it will take only one to show the error.
It appears that CAGW folks put forth as “climate science” fails on all counts.
A particular problem in climate science is the practice of calling model runs “experiments.” The results of these “experiments” are completely reproducible. This is a link to multiple studies agreeing that the contribution of natural variation to recent temperature increases is about 0%. https://skepticalscience.com/graphics.php?g=57. They are all based on GCM’s or post hoc statistical models.
The reason for NON REPRODUCIBILITY is simply in the numbers. When you have tens of thousands of Phds it is natural that the quality of the Phd is debased. Like in any other commodity of which there are too many.
Tightening up this or that will make no difference. Once a currency is debased only time and the reduction of the numbers of Phds will help.
No shit, Sherlock, as we say in the real world of stuff that has to work to sell, outside of the temples of academe.
I know I said I’d go away but this load of unresolvable hot air is helping create a letter to Nature. The
conversation has now reached the level of the communications in the Guard post of the Death Star Detention block, and the whole thing deserves a similar fate for the time it wastes.. IMO. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4FSV8w1UoZA
The problem here is simple. Climate science just isn’t. End of.
A lot of what Nature publishes is not science – as a physicist or engineer understands it, that produces laws that can be independently validated in repeatable experiments and used to make or predict things that work every time, as predicted. Shame NASA didn’t stick to real science, a dark day for its credibility. Trump may be right about that.
Examples of pseudo scieces are, ipso facto: Climate science, biology, plate techtonics, sociology, psychoanalysis and economics, and cosmology. All worthy of study, to gather data and knowledge, perhaps help us understand them, BUT so complex, unrepeatable, multi variate and non linear in nature that any predictions based on emperical dats and history are simply probablistic guesses, no better than intuitive speculation, however well informed, not a basis for any response. In fact you might as well predict earthquakes as climate change. Some will come, soon, or not. Feynman also pointed this failing out, in terms of how a loosely defined hypothesis is inevitably unverifiable hence infinitely debateable, because its hypothesis cannot be tested, and the subject system is unable to meet the fundamentals of proof – but I can’t find the interview its in…anyone?
e.g.: Hypothesis: More CO2 will create a biological response that reduces warming, by a negative feedback effect that increases energy radiated into space, caused by biological feedback not included in the undersubscribed guesses of climate models, or through some other plausible Gaia mechanism I can hypothesise and make the data fit a model of with my modelers’ “adjustments”. I’ll never have to prove it, but can’t get such an assertion peer reviewed or published by the climate inquisition, of course. Some one should do that though :-).
Can’t be hard given how easy the climationist fraud has been to impose over reason and available reality by the simplistic assertions of its leading priests in journals like Nature. Glaciers building in some places, stable in others, retreating in others, as they always have, polar bears still there and becoming a pest,. Oceans barely moving in height, temperatures not subject to any dramatic positive feedback hockey Schtick that tracks CO2 levels, that we are all still waiting for. The opposite happened of course, in relative terms. The multiplier was turned down to adjust for that, etc. You can’t make it up. That’s climate modellers’ jobs.
All these disciplines have merit, but are not “science”, they prove no laws under the strict regimes of the hard science of things we can measure and repeat. Climate change models , and all the other things, fit Feynman’s pseudo science definition. Just a self evident truth. The so-called climate science may be useful in responding to crises when there is no proven science, but proves no laws and cannot be repeated, because the “nature – al” experiments are unrepeatable, with variables not under investigation held constant.
In particular these sciences offer policy makers no basis for massive expense to try to change an effect no one understands in detail, not happening as advertised, and in fact a minor problem compared to natural changes in history involving forces far greater than we can conceive of, but that we should prefer to spend our surplus wealth on protecting ourselves against. By moving or rebuilding and as necessary to live in harmony with the changes the planet imposes on us.
The so called anthropogenic climate change problem is in simple fact an unprovable either way soft “science” belief. These have always been a perfect vehicle to exploit as an act of faith, much like an ancient reigion, deceiving the faithful for power and profit with pretended knowledge, and attacking any “heretic” who points out that the inconvenient truth that things may be otherwise, and what is being done in the name of the problem is making it expensively worse, to profit the religion’s insiders, at the people’s expense. Build more pyramids, pay more tributes, make more sacrifices, line up your first born children, the rains will come. I bet the Moche priests had stashed away a tidy retirement hoard in Bolivia well before they made a run for it across the Peruvian Desert..
Point? Climate science is and can never be a real science, so incapable of proof or disproof, ever. Get over it. At best a rather undersubscribed numerical model that may successfully exptrapolate a few years temperatures but most iikely won’t, without “correcting” the data and model. Not worth the hot airand bytes..
Better to read the proven science in “Sustainable Energy – Without Hot Air”?
Your science may vary. I prefer stuff I or an independent other could repeat myself, given the resources.
Climate change, as advertised by its climationists as being from scientifically proven causes we can modify according to climate change laws, is total BS (Bad Science). What is done it in its name is making it expensively worse on the measured emissions facts, mostly, while compromisising the energy infrastructure we need to maximise wealth to combat the real effects of a changing climate, for whatever unknowable reason.
Bye again,
“It was a boring conversation anyway”
In efforts to publish, the results of experimental tests are reported as long as they meet the 5% significance level. Even if the theory is worthless, one out of 20 tests will meet that criterion. By lying to themselves, and throwing out “flawed” data points, experimenters should be able to increase the number of tests meeting the criterion to around 5 out of 20 ..I’ve fallen into that trap myself years ago, when trying to devise methods to handicap horse races.
There should be an effort to reproduce tests before any paper is published. That should cut down those false positives by 05%.
“There should be an effort to reproduce tests before any paper is published. That should cut down those false positives by 05%.”
0,5 %? I think the 80-90 percent figure is more appropriate when it comes to climate science. For the sake of fun, only a consensus of 7 per cent would remain. This is the best way to tackle the problem of climate science without having to put these fraudsters in detention. On the other hand in science, the problem settles by itself. Those who have productive work in the daily struggle of companies to market shares of their products do not have time to publish peer-reviewed works in journals. They are measured according to the quality of their products and services. The small portion, which still has time for such kinky slits, is negligible. They belong to the 7 percent consensus community.
The excuse of “climate scientists”, which is why their work is not reproducible, and secondly, they often show results that do not correspond to the observations, is a stereotypical one. In this way, the climate sciences are so exaggerated, so that this would be the summit of all science, practically the mother of the sciences. An abundance of data to be processed in no science would be responsible, and these data would still fluctuate in an unpredictable manner. New insights would turn up daily, which made the old work no longer reproducibly reproducible. This is the old hare and hedgehog principle. A pseudoscientific excuse for misguided scientific work. If a NASA space engineer were to use the same excuses for a mission to Pluto or a mission like “Osiris-Rex,” the approach to an asteroid, for a bust, the responsibility would be the senseless consumption of several billion dollars (or euros- my currency, that is pretty much the same at the time.). Simply a sick science.
sorry typo for 95%. You’ll still reach the 5% significance level for 5% of tests by random chance if the hypothesis is worthless.
Oh, the number in my first sentence must be 5 per Cent. But this does not change my statement.
The reply still stands. But where is my statement? And the follow?
Es ist offenbar wieder da.
So I’m thinking, “what the heck??”. All these jammering and whinging comments about “science”, everyone thinking they are talking about the same thing. When, if one actually tries to parse the comments, one realizes that everyone is using a different personal meaning of the word. Apples and oranges, bananas and paint, everyone is just tossing mud.
It would be the same if you were using the word “set”. It is possible to have 464 discussions, each using the word “set”, ALL different.
Tower of Bable.
Please, please, use the proper word in the proper place Just because a common usage of the word “science” is to mean “knowledge base”, using that definition in a discussion does not serve well.
Please be consistent, if you wish to be understood in your rants.
I am a physicist who regularly submits to Nature. Scientists submit important papers here because it has the highest “impact factor”, so it is good for advancing your career.
All my colleagues know that Nature has the reputation of accepting papers for publication primarily because of impact, and not necessarily being reproducible. We even joke that papers published in Physical Review Letters are more likely to be correct. I am happy to hear they will tighten their acceptance criteria.
John – I need some scrutiny on a piece of work that I did on the principles of science. If you care about such things and would like to have a look, I would be delighted.
There is a reason drug trials are double blind. Even unwittingly an experiment can be biased. That makes reproducibility indispensable, at least for sciences influencing public policy.
Every hypothesis begins in the philosophical logical domain. With deduction and reproduction it may either move or intersect with the scientific logical domain characterized by accuracy that is inversely proportional to the product of time and space offsets from an observation frame. It may also move or intersect with the two other logical domains: fantasy and faith.
They have discovered that correlation does not necessarily imply causation. The use of inference, liberal assumptions/assertions, and abuse of correlation has created a post-normal science where theoretical scientists (e.g. climate science) have progressed to conflation of logical domains.
Introductory statistics courses teach that correlation does not prove causation – an often repeated fact. However, it is seldom stated that the corollary- “Lack of correlation disproves causation” is also true.
I don’t think that it does. Lack of correlation implies but does not establish independence.
Some of the causes of problems in medicine:
1) It has been found that the HeLa cancer cell line has been found to have infected other cell lines used in research, as have certain others. With aggressive cancers, such lab contamination is a big problem. If you think you are testing a cancer drug on colon cancer but it is really skin cancer, you will have failure when you get to clinical trials. There are tests for contamination but little incentive to make sure the problem is not there.
2) It has been found that white lab rates are overly sensitive to environmental stressors due to their inbreeding. In addition, the overly clean environment in the lab has made their gut flora abnormal, which affects their immune system. This has been known for some time but these rats keep getting used.
3) The problem of data dredging has not been adequately dealt with. If you test hundreds of hypotheses about diet and cancer, diet and heart disease, you will get false positives. So we get headlines that bran muffins will save your life (remember that one?). This problem is also big in the social sciences like psychology.
These are just the most obvious big problems that are allowed to continue because everyone is desperate to publish.
Try to get something published that reproduces the results of another paper. Try to get funding to determine if the results of an already published paper is reproducible.
Until funders are willing to fund, and publishers willing to publish papers reproducing the results of other papers, reproducibility will be a non factor.
Irreproducibility makes for flawed science but the opposite syndrome, argument by way of ineptitude, is equally as bad.
The case of Pons and Fleischmann is probably the best example of such. Their experiment had a controversial result which the textbooks said could not happen. Getting this result called for some painstaking and meticulous work. If the work was not done correctly then the result would not be seen.
The initial attempts to replicate their work failed, and they were called frauds on the basis of that failure.
However, it was later shown that Pons and Fleischmann’s results are indeed reproducible, and that the problem with the negative results was a lack of competence by the first group of reviewers.
It should never be assumed that because one guy says, “I cannot reproduce this experiment therefore it must be impossible” that this is true. It could be simply a case of not having the necessary skill to achieve the original result. Along with a large helping of confirmation bias, of course.
“Sylvia Earle preaches science to students” was a headline on the front page of the Corpus Christi Caller March 3 edition. Her talk was part of the Texas A & M University-Corpus Christi (one of the takeovers by a major older school) Distinguished Speaker Series Student Forum. Previous speakers included a NASA director, a theoretical physicist and Bill Nye. Earle is a celebrity oceanographer/activist connected to the school, but mostly with National Geographic. She was quoted as saying “I just look at the evidence.” She is involved in “maintaining diversity and to curb accelerating climate change.”
I would argue that the larger problem is elevating hypotheticals, the evident danger sooner in engineering. Hypotheticals are the essence of science, but sometimes sit around for decades or longer before the interest and technology comes along to investigate.
The big science breakthroughs are over. Has been for decades. What remains is the ‘science’ of nearly imperceptible ‘correlations’. A lot of science is just statistics now.
With regards to BBT, the classic Origin of the Elements by Alpher, Bethe and Gamov is still valid.
the big bang is NOT a theory is is a rather bizarre hypothesis that is falsified by what we observe………to claim all the matter in the universe was in one tiny location is LUNACY.
A good start would be to uphold the demand to save data and methods together with the paper.
Without that it is just an essay.
It could not be a problem now, when you have plenty of space to save anything. The problem might be that it could show sloppy practice.