Dr. Judith Curry writes:
The perils of ‘near-tabloid science’
A remarkable essay by esteemed oceanographer Carl Wunsch.
While doing a literature survey for my paper on Climate Uncertainty and Risk, I came across a remarkable paper published in 2010 by MIT oceanographer Carl Wunsch, entitled Towards Understanding the Paleocean.
The paper is remarkable for several reasons — not only that it was published but that the paper was apparently invited by journal editor.
The paper is well worth reading in its entirety, for a fascinating perspective on paleo-oceanography and paleoclimatology. Here I provide excerpts of relevance to the sociology of climate science:
Introduction
From one point of view, scientific communities without adequate data have a distinct advantage: one can construct interesting and exciting stories and rationalizations with little or no risk of observational refutation. Colorful, sometimes charismatic, characters come to dominate the field, constructing their interpretations of a few intriguing, but indefinite observations that appeal to their followers, and which eventually emerge as “textbook truths.”
Consider the following characteristics ascribed to one particular, notoriously data-poor, field (Smolin, 2006), as having:
1. Tremendous self confidence, leading to a sense of entitlement and of belonging to an elite community of experts.
2. An unusually monolithic community, with a strong sense of consensus, whether driven by the evidence or not, and an unusual uniformity of views on open questions. These views seem related to the existence of a hierarchical structure in which the ideas of a few leaders dictate the viewpoint, strategy, and direction of the field.
3. In some cases a sense of identification with the group, akin to identification with a religious faith or political platform.
4. A strong sense of the boundary between the group and other experts.
5. A disregard for and disinterest in the ideas, opinions, and work of experts who are not part of the group, and a preference for talking only with other members of the community.
6. A tendency to interpret evidence optimistically, to believe exaggerated or incorrect statements of results and to disregard the possibility that the theory might be wrong. This is coupled with a tendency to believe results are true because they are ’widely believed,’ even if one has not checked (or even seen) the proof oneself.
7. A lack of appreciation for the extent to which a research program ought to involve risk.
Full story here, well worth a read.
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Well done Dr. Curry on unearthing this 2010 paper from Carl Wunsch. So, here’s a question for all devotees of this splendid blog – do you think that this paper would be published today?
Sounds just like luke-warmer judy & co and their imaginary Radiative Greenhouse Effect,….
The luke-warmers magical gas and Thermo-dymagic’s, the defenders of the consensus, the gate-keepers as it pays the mortgage.
I don’t know who is the most contemptible.
Anthony, Thank you for passing along Dr Judith Curry’s thoughts on the sociology of science and relevant quotations pertinent to the global warming hypothesis and “climate science”controversy from the article by Carl Wunsxh on paleooceans.
I would add two points one of which is a take away from the detailed lay history of the invention and construction of two massive LIGO experimental stations that detected the collision of two orbiting Black Holes and the gravitational waves in Sept 2015 emanating from which that altered space time written by Jenna Levin in her book Black Hole Blues and Other Songs from Outer Space 2016.
The successful validation of an old Einstein theory occurred after several decades of trial and error, some false starts, continuous experimental refinement, intermittent personal animosity, hired and fired project managers, the fight for Federal funding from the NSF, the lack of consensus at times about the under lying theory of how to detect gravitational waves, and whether it was even possible to do so given the vast spans of time and space between a cosmic event in the past and earthly observation in the present.
Reading Levin’s book I kept thinking: How different is the history of the LIGO project and the behaviour of its principal scientists from that of the climateers such as MBH and AGW modeling. One is a model of Big Science to be admired and duplicated, the other a modern travesty of the scientific method. The most amazing thing about the success of LIGO was the scepticism of the principal scientists about what they had detected and their efforts to seek independent validation and confirmation of the results from a network of international collaborators before they announced anything to the press.
real science does not ever guarantee success or empirical confirmation of theory nor are positive empirical results achieved on schedule or on a pre determined time frame, that scientific research in Big Scinece may not only require a lot of time and money, ingenuity and genius but also humility and enormous patience. It strikes me that one characteristic of contemporary climate sciencists is their utter impatience and lack of humility and lack of unbiased disinterest in their work.
My point is that Levin’s book describes how much time, the real risk of failure, the potential loss of professional reputation was at stake in the effort to detect gravitational waves, the huge amounts of money involved in the Federal funding of the LIGO project and that this risk was appreciated by the principal investigators in the project over the course of several decades, because the outcome was always uncertain.
The second point is that intense group identification of climate scientists and their exclusion of others who disagree with them is not only similar to that demonstrated by adherents to a particular religion or political platform but epitomises the behaviour of Marxist Leninists in the Soviet Union and CPUS and their belief in the infallibility of the doctrine of the Communist Party, regardless of the obvious failures to deliver on utopian promises, the ongoing use of terror tactics to control the population, the contradictions and embarrassing reversals of policy and that slavish adherence to CP ideology was rewarded with show trials and imprisonment and execution for any deviation in political thought.
An article by Wunsch on the Thermohaline: https://courses.seas.harvard.edu/climate/eli/Courses/EPS281r/Sources/Thermohaline-circulation/more/Wunsch-2002.pdf
An excerpt:
For the Radiative Green House Effect to function as advertised the surface of the earth must radiate as a 1.0 emissivity ideal black body.
But the non-radiative heat transfer processes of the atmospheric molecules make such BB emission impossible creating an effective emissivity of 0.16.
There is no upwelling radiation, no downwelling radiation, no GHG energy loop and carbon dioxide plays no role in the behavior of the climate.
Interesting list, but Smolin is rather a character himself. Being against string theory is one thing, not believing in quantum mechanics is quite another. Rather flat-earth-ish.
https://motls.blogspot.com/2004/10/lee-smolin-trouble-with-physics-review.html
https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=smolin+site:motls.blogspot.com