From the National Association of Scholars via an article in the Wall Street Journal.
Policy makers often cite research to justify their rules, but many of those studies wouldn’t replicate
Half the results published in peer-reviewed scientific journals are probably wrong. John Ioannidis, now a professor of medicine at Stanford, made headlines with that claim in 2005. Since then, researchers have confirmed his skepticism by trying—and often failing—to reproduce many influential journal articles. Slowly, scientists are internalizing the lessons of this irreproducibility crisis. But what about government, which has been making policy for generations without confirming that the science behind it is valid?
The biggest newsmakers in the crisis have involved psychology. Consider three findings: Striking a “power pose” can improve a person’s hormone balance and increase tolerance for risk. Invoking a negative stereotype, such as by telling black test-takers that an exam measures intelligence, can measurably degrade performance. Playing a sorting game that involves quickly pairing faces (black or white) with bad and good words (“happy” or “death”) can reveal “implicit bias” and predict discrimination.
All three of these results received massive media attention, but independent researchers haven’t been able to reproduce any of them properly. It seems as if there’s no end of “scientific truths” that just aren’t so. For a 2015 article in Science, independent researchers tried to replicate 100 prominent psychology studies and succeeded with only 39% of them.
Further from the spotlight is a lot of equally flawed research that is often more consequential. In 2012 the biotechnology firm Amgen tried to reproduce 53 “landmark” studies in hematology and oncology. The company could only replicate six. Are doctors basing serious decisions about medical treatment on the rest? Consider the financial costs, too. A 2015 study estimated that American researchers spend $28 billion a year on irreproducible preclinical research.
The chief cause of irreproducibility may be that scientists, whether wittingly or not, are fishing fake statistical significance out of noisy data. If a researcher looks long enough, he can turn any fluke correlation into a seemingly positive result. But other factors compound the problem: Scientists can make arbitrary decisions about research techniques, even changing procedures partway through an experiment. They are susceptible to groupthink and aren’t as skeptical of results that fit their biases. Negative results typically go into the file drawer. Exciting new findings are a route to tenure and fame, and there’s little reward for replication studies.
American science has begun to face up to these problems. The National Institutes of Health has strengthened its reproducibility standards. Scientific journals have reduced the incentives and opportunities to publish bad research. Private philanthropies have put serious money behind groups like the Meta-Research Innovation Center at Stanford, led in part by Dr. Ioannidis, and the Center for Open Science in Charlottesville, Va.
There’s more to be done, and the National Association of Scholars has made some recommendations. Before conducting a study, scientists should “preregister” their research protocols by posting the intended methodology online, which eliminates opportunities for changing the rules in the middle of the experiment. High schools, colleges and graduate schools need to improve science education, particularly in statistics. Universities and journals should create incentives for researchers to publish negative results. Scientific associations should seek to disrupt disciplinary groupthink by putting their favored ideas up for review by experts in other sciences.
All government agencies should review the scientific justifications for their policies and regulations to ensure they meet strict reproducibility standards. The economics research that steers decisions at the Federal Reserve and the Treasury Department needs to be rechecked. The social psychology that informs education policy could be entirely irreproducible. The whole discipline of climate science is a farrago of unreliable statistics, arbitrary research techniques and politicized groupthink.
Mr. Wood is president of the National Association of Scholars. Mr. Randall is the NAS’s director of research and a co-author of its new report, “The Irreproducibility Crisis of Modern Science.”
A reproducibility crisis afflicts a wide range of scientific and social-scientific disciplines, from epidemiology to social psychology. Improper use of statistics, arbitrary research techniques, lack of accountability, political groupthink, and a scientific culture biased toward producing positive results together have produced a critical state of affairs. Many supposedly scientific results cannot be reproduced in subsequent investigations.
This study examines the different aspects of the reproducibility crisis of modern science. The report also includes a series of policy recommendations, scientific and political, for alleviating the reproducibility crisis.
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Let us see the reproducible 2 Deg C runaway warming “paper”
Alot of wordy & unnecessary analysis from the National Association of Scholars. Simply — much “science” is nowadays conducted by corrupt, grant-money-grubbing sycophants.
Journals have promoted their value by convincing everyone that “peer” review is the gold standard of determining whether research is correct or not. This is a joke as people are finally recognizing. Research should be judged by others doing the physical work (physical is important) to verify and replicate findings. The current social construction where replicators finding problems have their careers shut down should become a thing of the past. Those scientists who try to damage others should have their careers damaged and even be fired.
Look at the Big Bang Theory. Sheldon is the theorist and Leonard is an experimental physicist who attempts to verify and duplicate findings of other researchers. Who is really more important?
Much of current statistics work came about from Bell Labs and others who tried to tease information out of noisy communications signals. Many scientists need to review this work in order to learn how many attempts were unsuccessful because you just can’t do it, that is, retrieve actual, useful INFORMATION from noise. Nyquist rules. They did have one advantage, what goes in, should also come out. Today’s scientists need to realize that statistics is not the end all or be all, you may just be ending up with noise.
What do you suggest take the place of statistics? What is a better way to find a relationship?
Kristi —> You missed the point. I’m not suggesting that statistics aren’t a valuable tool but they DO NOT provide evidence. Only real physical measurements can provide evidence. That was the whole point about Bell Labs research. You can do all kinds of statistical manipulations and think you have discovered something yet the real answer lies in knowing that when you physically input “Mr. Watson, come here, I need you.” that your physical output is “Mr. Watson, come here, I need you.”
Statistics do not provide physical evidence, models do not provide physical evidence. At best they provide you with educated guesses about what may occur. In the end, they are only guesses and that is never stated.
A good number of activists do not really want valid science. Consider the foofraw over Secretary Pruitt at EPA requiring that all studies used to support policies have checkable data bases. The greens went ballistic, as some of their favored policies depended on studies with no reported supporting data.
As bad is the claim by governments that the “latest research” shows – when the latest is the least likely to have gone through the necessary years of being tested, reproduced, amended, etc etc. And as we know, it is perhaps 50% likely to simply be wrong.
Many years ago, as a graduate physics student, I had spent a great deal of time and effort developing a new method of measuring – well, never mind what, it seems rather inconsequential at this distance – and I had just made the first measurements on my apparatus using a known test case. To my delight, I got exactly what I knew the result should be, so I went immediately into measuring unknown cases.
After a few measurements, I realised that there was something wrong with my measurements, which were internally inconsistent. It took a couple of weeks of work, but I finally realised that the noise level in my rather primitive electronics was so high that I was measuring little more than random noise, and my first, supposedly perfect test case was just a fluke. I went back and measured it again, and sure enough, I got a completely different result.
I must admit that the urge to publish something, no matter how spurious, was quite high, but in those far-off days there was a certain level of morality? honour? call it what you will, but publishing doubtful results was just not done.
Things are different now, apparently.
50%? More like 80%-90%. Causes: pressure to publish immature research, and/or overestimating significance by applying faulty statistical techniques and, not to be underestimated, political agendas.
That the issue was clearly foreseen by Dwight Eisenhower, (possibly the last American president elected before PR media manipulation professionals controlled everything) in his 1961 farewell address:
“The prospect of domination of the nation’s scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present and is gravely to be regarded.”
“In this revolution, research has become central; it also becomes more formalized, complex, and costly. A steadily increasing share is conducted for, by, or at the direction of, the Federal government.
Today, the solitary inventor, tinkering in his shop, has been overshadowed by task forces of scientists in laboratories and testing fields. In the same fashion, the free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research. Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity. For every old blackboard there are now hundreds of new electronic computers.
Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific technological elite.”
There is a related problem which also gets little discussion. This is that while a “new” finding receives heaps of press and praise, it’s hard to get a paper even published that shows that the “new” finding was totally bogus. Journals don’t like to print them, and when they do the actual truth receives little of either press or praise.
Take the Mann “hockey-stick” as an example. It was picked up and used by the IPCC, lauded in the press, and published everywhere. But when Steve McIntyre showed that it was total nonsense, that didn’t get any traction at all.
As Mark Twain never said, “A lie can travel halfway ’round the Internet while the truth is getting its boots laced up” …
w.
The reason that McIntyre’s paper fell flat on it face as shown by Huybers 2005 and Wahl & Ammann 2007 .
..
This is besides the fact that Mann’s work has been replicated in subsequent studies.
Mann’s work has been replicated
========
That brings up an interesting point. An erroneous conclusion can be infinitely replicated by following the same error of method. Thus replication is no guarantee of correctness.
Calibration of tree rings violates the statistical prohibition against selection on the dependent variable. It leads to spurious correlations.
however this problem is poorly understood by many scientists because it is counter intuitive. Intuition tells us that to better understand illness we need to concentrate on sick people. Statistics tells us we need to study both sick and well people.
Huybers’ paper is bunch of arcane technical points about whether the extent to which Mann’s method mines hockey sticks might have been exagerated. Huybers agrees that it mines hockey sticks. Huybers’s paper makes a nice talking point, since it’s going to be incomphrehesible to the casual reader.
The “replicated in subsequent studies” is actually very subjective. It means how much these graphs look like each other. Here’s an example of someone who thinks they don’t:
https://www.skepticink.com/prussian/2014/03/19/about-those-mann-replications/
Here’s the long and the short on Wahl & Ammann:
http://bishophill.squarespace.com/blog/2008/8/11/caspar-and-the-jesus-paper.html
https://climateaudit.org/2008/08/08/caspar-ammann-texas-sharpshooter/
Canman, no offense, but can you do better than blog postings as “evidence?”
It is very telling that Mann has never released his data to any skeptic
Alan: http://stephenschneider.stanford.edu/Publications/PDF_Papers/USATodayCorrection2003.pdf
ftp://holocene.evsc.virgina.edu/pub/MBH98
David Dirkse,
I don’t think any paper of the kind submitted to or published in a peer reviewed journal could do that much better at conveying the information in these top notch blog posts I linked to. They also wouldn’t be as clear and accessible.
I respect your opinion Canman, however, we all know that real science is not done on blogs.
Then the question becomes: If the Hockey Stick is so good, and the models are so good, then why has the GMT deviated so much from their predictions? I remember reading a National Geographic years ago and the Hockey Stick was presented in a flashy chart but even then actual global temperature was deviating, and doing so dramatically, from the Stick. I wondered then how the editors would let that pass.
All models are wrong, but some are less wrong than others. Additionally, the hockey stick is not a model, it is a summation of existing data.
It was a summation of SOME existing data.
JRF, and subsequent studies examined different data, but came to the same conclusion(s.)
David, we are not going to agree on this subject (and I respect your opinion on the matter). I am not a climatologist/meteorologist as Ristvan, Willis and a bunch of others will attest but biological indicators are in my world. Much of the Stick (and other studies) hooked different indicators (biological and non-biological) together to form a “smoothed” historical line and then took that line into the future. (Note: I made a distinction between the Stick and models but both make predictions of future temperature.) The problem with that approach is that the different Bio-indicators in particular will be affected by different sets of environmental conditions which culminates in exceedingly large error bars, and these are rarely reported. If the authors report the large error associated with their studies and treat their conclusions appropriately, then fine. But, using bio-indicators (and many, maybe all, other proxies for temperature) and assigning the same precision and accuracy as calibrated direct measurement instrumentation is…..insane. And taking those data/results/conclusions to the political sphere to drastically change people’s lives is questionable to say the least.
Now, I recognize, when doing paleo-anything, you can only use what’s available but Mann, for instance, only used Yamal Bristlecones and not others that presented a different result. And the tone of the CRU email hack is troubling. But, let me say that I do not know Dr. Mann, have not had any dealings with the man, so I will not question his sincerity or character, just the methodology that was used.
Still, real world data varies from at least most of the model predictions and the Stick.
please pardon the typo re; meteorologist!
“both make predictions of future temperature”
…
Nope, the “hockey stick” does not make any prediction(s). Reconstructions of existing data and/or proxy data are not predictive. They are summations of what we know of the various datasets.
…
Now you run the gamut of “political sphere” to purloined emails. Take my advice and try to stick to the science and ignore the fluff.
….
You have yet to address the subsequent reconstructions that use data that Mann did not use, yet they all arrive at surprisingly similar results. How do you account for that?
Perhaps semantics regarding “predictions”? Did Dr. Mann stop the Stick at the then present day and others extended it into the future (such as NG)? If so, I stand corrected regarding Dr. Mann’s Stick and apply the comments to others. However, I do believe that Dr. Mann has commented otherwise about the ramifications of future CO2 increases (and is entitled to those).
Regarding others’ proxies, if similar methods were used similar results might be expected. But, I invoke the spirit of W.E. and ask for a link (one or two will do) to another dataset. (It will be tomorrow before I can return to WUWT.)
And regarding the emails and “political sphere”, I believe those statements are accurate though not pertaining to the science of the subject as you noted. However, whether fortunate or not, the whole subject of climate/pick-your-term is in that “sphere” with implications on our use of energy, transportation, population, food production and taxation. Certainly they are separate from the science but those will be the practical offspring of the marriage of the science and the politics.
Your links dont work
David, I did go back to refresh my memory of the Mann, Bradley and Hughes papers of 1998 and 1999 and their data did stop in the “then present” and extended to 1400 in the 1998 paper and to 1000 in the 1999 paper. They did include and uncertainty band which was quite wide in the more distant past and narrowed as instrumentation became available. I did note that the upward trend toward the recent end of the data in the original papers, which was influenced by the beginnings, at least, of the 1998 El Nino, was within the uncertainty band of earlier centuries. I guess that HadCRUT4 data (1850-2013) were added later but, indeed, the graph in the original paper did not include information beyond the “then present”. So, my apologies there. Others have speculated on future temperatures to 2100 and some beyond.
My other comments remain unchanged.
As an FYI, my interest in the issues of climate revolve around three areas:
1. Why do real world data deviate from model predictions in the past? My hat is off to the modelers as they have a difficult task at handling all possible variables and getting the physics correct but, so far, something seems amiss. Ristvan and others have pointed me to resources in this area that have been helpful.
2. Do the various datasets actually contain high-quality information? Questions abound here, even with the satellite data. My hope is in the USCRN and similar.
3. What is the solar connection (not necessarily sunspots) to climate? Hmmm, a dilemma, I think.
Time for some shut-eye.
There are so many other nails in the CO2 coffin A partial list
1) Why did sea level rise faster in early 2Oth century than now and even now is not acclerating?
2) Why do only rural land temperature data sets show no warming?
3) Why did climate scientists in the climategate emails worry about no warming trends . They are supposed to be unbiased either way.
4) Why do some local temperature land based datasets like Ottawa Canada show no warming for last 146 years and Augusta Georgia show no warming for last 83 years? There must be 1000’s of other places like this.
5) why do 10 of the 13 weather stations in Antarctica show no warming in last 60 years? the 3 that do are near undersea volcanic ridges.
6) Why does the lower troposphere satellite data of UAH show very little warming and in fact showed cooling from 1978 to 1997?
7) Why is there only a 21% increase in net atmosphere CO2 pppm since 1980 bu yet mankind increased fossil fuel emmissions CO2 by 75%?
8) Why did National Academy of Sciences in 1975 show warming in the 30’s and 40’s and NASA in 1998 and 2008 not show nearly as much warming for tose time periods? .
9) Why has no one been able to disprove Lord Monckton’s finding of the basic flaw in the climate sensitivity equations?
10) Why has there never been even 1 accurate prediction by a climate model. Even if one climate model is less wrong than another one it is still wrong.
11) Why do most climate scientists not understand the difference between accuracy and precision?
12) Why have many scientists resigned from the IPCC in protest?
13) Why do many politicians, media and climate scientists continue to lie about CO2 causing extreme weather events? Every data set in the world shows there are no more extreme weather events than there ever were
14) Why do clmate scientists call skeptics deniers as if we were denying the holocaust?
!5) Why did Michael Mann refuse to hand over his data when he sued Tim Ball for defamation and why did Mann subsequently drop the suit?
16) Why have every climate scientist that has ever debated the science of global warming lost every debate that has ever occurred?
17) Why does every climate scientist now absolutely refuse to debate anymore?
18) Why do careers get ruined when scientists dare to doubt global warming in public?
19) Why do most of the scientists that retire come out against global warming?
20) Why is it next to impossible to obtain a PhD in Atmospheric science if one has doubts about global warming?
21) Why is it very very difficult to get funding for any study that casts doubt on global warming?
22) Why has the earth greened by 18% in the last 30 years?
23) Why do clmate scientists want to starve plants by limiting their access to CO2? Optimum levels are 1200 ppm not 410ppm.
24) Why do most climate scientists refuse to release their data to skeptics?
25) Why should the rest of the world ruin their economies when China and India have refused to stop increasing their emmissions of CO2 till 2030?
26) Why have the alarmist scientists like Michael Mann called Dr. Judith Curry an anti scientist?
27) Why does the IPCC not admit that under their own calculations a business as usual policy would have the CO2 levels hitb 590 in 2100 which is exactly twice the CO2 level since 1850.?
28) Why do the climate modellers not admit that thie error factor for clouds makes their models worthless?
29)Why did NASA show no increase in atmospheric water vapour for 20 years before James Hansen shut the project down in 2009?
30) Why did Ben Santer change the text to result in an opposite conclusion in the IPCC report of 1996 and did this without consulting the scientists that had made the original report?
31) Why does the IPCC say with 90% confidence that anthropogenic CO2 is causing warming when they have no evidence to back this up except computer model predictions which are coded to produce results that CO2 causes warming?
32) How can we believe climate forecasts when 4 day weather forecasts are very iffy?.
33) Why do all climate models show the tropical troposhere hotspot when no hotspot has actually been found in nature?
34) Why does the extreme range of the climate models increase as the number of runs increases on the same simulation?
35) Why is the normal greenhouse effect not observed for SST?
36) Why is SST net warming increase close to 0?
37) Why is the ocean ph level steady over the lifetime of the measurements?
38) what results has anyone ever seen from global warming if it exists? I have been waiting for it for 40 years and havent seen it yet?
39) If there were times in the past when CO2 was 20 times higher than today why wasnt there runaway global warming then?
40) Why was there a pause in the satellite data warming in the early 2000’s?
41) Why did CO2 rise after WW2 and temperatures fall?
42) For the last 10000 years over half of those years showed more warmung than today Why?
43) Why does the IPCC refuse to put an exact % on the AGW and the natural GW?
44) Why do the alarmists still say that there is a 97% consensus when everyone knows that figure was madeup?
45) The latest polls show that 33% do not believe in global warming and that figure is increasing poll by poll ? why?
46) If CO2 is supposed to cause more evaporation how can there ever be more droughts with CO2 forcing?
47) Why are there 4 times the number of polar bears as in 1960?
48) Why did the oceans never become acidic even with CO2 levels 15-20 times higher than today?
49) Why does Antarctica sea ice extent show no decrease in 25 years?
50) Why do alarmists resent skeptics getting funding from fossil fuel companies ( when alarmists get billions from the government and leftest think tanks) and skeptics get next to nothing from governments for climate research?
Alan, thank you for your list of very interesting questions! I will keep these close at hand. I can add a little to #4: a few years ago, Joe D’Aleo at WeatherBell did an analysis of US weather stations, looking for rural stations that were unaffected by siting issues and UHI. As I recall, he found about 200 stations with 80 years of records and found no warming associated with the set. (Maybe Joe D. will stumble across this tread and comment further.)
” lack of accountability, political groupthink” These are the primary points that need to be attacked in order to reverse this mess we find ourselves in. People pushing this politically driven crap have to be severely punished, publicly and loudly, so that others will not “replicate” the results they have been creating.
As long as irreproducible science continues to reliably produce funding, the Climate Science farce will continue.
Since we’ve begun our post-Christian journey in what was once a thoroughly Protestant made experiment, it shouldn’t be a surprise when science is bent to bow and scrape to the humanist politics of the day. And why on Earth would any pol stick his head up only to have it shot off? 535 elected officials in Congress but I challenge any WUWT reader to name 10 skeptics who aren’t portrayed as lunatics. Sorry, just my latest missive from Bluesville…
Everyone thought Galileo was a lunatic. Us skeptics always argue on the science. The alarmists always argue on the consensus. However their consensus is actually that only 2/3 of people believe in global warming. 1/3 dont and that fraction is growing every day. However back to the real consensus where it counts. Among PhD scientists of all disciplines, the majority now think that global warming has been too much hyped and there is really nothing to worry about. Only in the climate science field is there a majority who adhere to the party line because their careers are at stake. When they retire the majority now come out against global warming because they have nothing to lose. Just look at the growing number of retired NASA employees who think global warming is a joke. As soon as 75% of the public realizes the global warming hoax the politicians will change their tune and the media will follow. The whole thing will collapse very quickly at some point. Every climate scientist has lost every debate with a skeptic to the point that every climate scientist now refuses to debate it. The skeptics have truth on their side. What do the alarmists have? Groupthink!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Alan. Do you mind if I snitch your 50 nails in the coffin piece? I would like to see that get around. Thanks.
Not quite 95 Theses, but should be nailed on the CAGW cathedral door all the same!
The psychology studies may not be that bad. They could have been skewed lower if Dr. Lew was included.
This is all a symptom, basically, of the corruption – which IS, in fact, a LOT worse than I thought.
And I thought it was pretty bad.
I work in pharmaceuticals and we have the same problem. Clinical research that is not stacking up and negative results becoming ‘file on data’.
Outcome based science was necessary for the globalists and so called clean energy rent seekers
to justify their plans . The UN admitted so and the global warming cheerleaders waiting for government cash to line their pockets helped pump the tires .
The result no temperature change difference after wasting over a $trillion dollars and an annual fuel poverty death count of at least 100, 000 .
Why aren’t people in jail ?
Now what was the latest on the other significant event …. Stormy Daniels /
That’s where we are folks .
Here is a new idea. Take part of the funding for NIH, NIST, and CDC to build a government science replication lab and institute. This is a needed function for government to improve policy formation, regulation, and the judicial system.
…and FDA
The CDC… that agency that needed to be restrained by law from promoting gun control? That agency that went out of the way to hide the origin Haiti cholera outbreak?
You think you can salvage something from these US agencies with an epidemic of manipulations, half truths, or plain cheating?
(Yes, I’m ALSO looking at you, Federal Bureau of Matters.)
Regarding “bad science”, a buddy of mine used to work at Econ Journal Watch https://econjwatch.org . He explained to me years ago how this group reviews various claims of economic “science” — claims which inspired bogus laws to have been created — and refutes them.
no doubt this sort of thing occurs all of the time in other areas of “science”. 😎
I went back and looked at some of the document.
From —–IMPLICATIONS FOR POLICYMAKING
“Reformed standards may also favor other liberal policies in the end: scientists who worry about climate change have already begun to marshal crisis-of-reproducibility arguments to discredit their skeptical opponents.”170
From Endnote 170
Rasmus E. Benestad, et al., “Learning from mistakes in climate research,” Theoretical and Applied Climatology. 126, 3-4 (2016), pp. 699-703, https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00704-015-1597-5
“There have been attempts in the scientific literature to correct some misconceptions, such as a myth regarding an alleged recent “slow-down” in global warming, a so-called hiatus.”…”The sample was drawn based on expert opinion according to the criterion of being contrarian papers with high public visibility and with results that are not in agreement with the mainstream view.”…. ” There may also be flawed papers agreeing with the mainstream view, but they have little effect on the gap of perception between the public perception and the scientific consensus.” Based on analysis of 38 papers available in supplementary materials
and
Goldman, et al., “Ensuring scientific integrity in the Age of Trump,” Science 355 (2017), pp. 696-98, http://science.sciencemag.org/content/355/6326/696
Behind a paywall, but first two lines of summary.
“With the new Donald J. Trump Administration comes uncertainty in the role that science will play in the U.S. federal government. Early indications that the Administration plans to distort or disregard science and evidence, coupled with the chaos and confusion occurring within federal agencies, now imperil the effectiveness of our government.”
I dare not enter into the minutiae of the analysis in the supplementary material, but there is enough to suggest further review which I would appreciate reading, especially since I am sure that this problem predates both climate science and the US presidents of this century. Hope I have everything correct.
Learning through replication in climate research by R.E. Benestad, H.O. Hygen, R. van Dorland, J. Cook, D. Nuccitelli, S. Lewandowsky, K. Hayhoe https://static-content.springer.com/esm/art%3A10.1007%2Fs00704-015-1597-5/MediaObjects/704_2015_1597_MOESM1_ESM.pdf
I just read the WSJ report (paper edition) and I think I got the National Association of Scholars report mixed up with another, too much information. This one belongs somewhere else apparently but don’t see it. My apologies. It looks like they are on the right track. Dueling reports?
The criterion of reproducibility is very important, but even more so is a commitment to falsifiability, and subjecting findings to active attempts to falsify them. Sir Karl Popper style.
Take for instance, the AGW conjecture. AT first it sounds quite plausible but then listing “scientific consensus” as a reason to believe ti tells me that something has got to be wrong. Of course “scientific consensus” is really an oxymoron since science is not done that way. Consensus is a political rather than a scientific argument All this work they have done with computer simulations is not much better than make believe. They hard code in that CO2 causes warming so that is what their simulations show. The whole thing begs the question and is hence useless..
When one looks more critically at the AGW conjecture one realizes that it is based on only partial science. According to the paleoclimate record and the work done with real models, one can conclude that the climate change we have been experiencing is caused by the sun and the oceans over which mankind has no control. There is no real evidence that CO2 has any effect on climate and plenty of scientific rational to support the idea that the climate sensitivity of CO2 is really zero. The AGW conjecture would have one believe that all but a few trace gases in the Earth’s atmosphere are thermally inert. The AGW conjecture ignore’s the fact that heat energy transport by conduction, convection, and H2O phase change dominate over LWIR absorption band radiation by trace gases. An important part of the AGW conjecture is that more CO2 warms the atmosphere which allows more H2O to enter the atmosphere and because H2O is also a greenhouse gas, the additional H2O provides more warming and hence provides a positive feedback which amplifies the effect of adding more CO2 to the atmosphere. The AGW conjecture ignore’s the fact that H2O is a net coolant as exemplified by the fact that the wet lapse rate is significantly less than the dry lapse rate. If CO2 really affected climate then one would expect that the increase in CO2 over the past 30 years would have caused at least a measurable increase in the dry lapse rate in the troposphere but such has not happened.
The AGW conjecture depends upon the existence of a radiant greenhouse effect caused by trace gases in the Earth’s atmosphere with LWIR absorption bands, yet such a radiant greenhouse effect has not been observed in a real greenhouse, in the Earth’s atmosphere, or anywhere else in the solar system. The radiant greenhouse effect is science fiction so hence the AGW conjecture is science fiction. .
Over a period of 13 years my job was to design and manage a series of scientific studies. In the design of a scientific study the key requirement was for the claims that were made by the model that was the product of the study to be falsifiable for if these claims were not falsifiable the scientific method was not followed.
It is astounding the consistency of the comments here that show complete distrust in science – and particularly in climate science, of course. Not just that, but accusations of corruption, fraud, greed, desire for glory…just about anything scientists could be accused of, it’s one this page. And you are all so CERTAIN of yourselves!
This is exactly what I hate about the movement to ensure climate change is not considered in policy-making: it has bred an unquestioning dismissal of a vast range of science. A few weeks back there was a study on WUWT that actually had nothing to do with climate change, but it was trashed, ridiculed and completely misunderstood. The comment about it by the WUWT writer ridiculing it was more than enough to get everyone to identify its imagined flaws.
The “skeptic” side of the debate is not bent on proving a theory, but on tearing one down. That is bias. And because it’s so mixed up in the reverence of fossil fuels and the idea that the nation would collapse if we used more renewables, there’s conflict of interest ensuring that bias.
Are you all certain that scientists are wrong in predicting major climatic disruption, with significant negative effects? Are you sure?
If you are sure, you are not a skeptic.
Oddly it is often not the scientists who make doom and gloom predictions, but other who are pushing AGW for their own reasons, such as St Gore.
Although I am biased, as I do not considered those whose standards are lower than would be expected for undergraduate in writing an essays to be scientists at all. And given that does cover quite a few working in climate ‘science ‘, such has Mann , you can see the problem. But it would be good no why industrial scale levels of smoke and mirrors are required in what is claimed to be ‘settled science’
Kristi —> “The “skeptic” side of the debate is not bent on proving a theory, but on tearing one down. That is bias. ” This is not bias, it is the scientific method at work. A theory is not proven nor does it become a
law by recreating experiments that “prove” it but by devising experiments (or other theories) that attempt to disprove it. It only take one experiment to disprove a theory but an infinite number to prove it.
Heck, for hundreds of years Newton’s laws of gravity were “proven” all the time by experiments in grade school and beyond. Then along comes Einstein and revolutionizes the theories about gravity and Newton’s laws, while accurate with the right assumptions, are no longer the be all and end all. Was Einstein a skeptic?
Yes. Proper science isn’t about coddling your intellectual darlings. It’s about trying your very best to murder them.
Yet you are so *sure* about our *sureness*?
We don’t have to reinvent the wheel to point out that the wheel-of-the-week is not rolling.
In the Wall Street Journal article one finds the following:
“The whole discipline of climate science is a farrago of unreliable statistics, arbitrary research techniques and politicized grouptthink.”
Bout says it all.
“The whole discipline of climate science is a farrago of unreliable statistics, arbitrary research techniques and politicized grouptthink.”
Also true for vaccine research.
(We are still waiting for the evidence showing that most vaccines are more useful dangerous.)
The problem is made worse by the following:
1) Scientists often think that “no effect” of some treatment is a failed study and don’t even try to publish it. I heard this twice in the past week. This “only positive results are science” bias is simply wrong.
2) Journal are loath to publish critiques of studies they published, even if you can show the study was a disaster.
3) The pressure on junior scientists to publish in order to get tenure are extreme and motivate cheating. If you don’t get tenure you may be ruined. To make this even worse, at this stage in their career, a scientist may not have funds or grad students so the pressure is even worse.
4) In cancer studies, there is a huge problem of contamination of cultures such that melanoma (a very aggressive cancer) is often what people are testing rather than what they think they are testing.
5) In both cancer studies and toxicology, the white rats being used are so pure-bred that they are highly susceptible to even being looked at funny.
6) Dont’ get me started on models.