Guest Opinion by Kip Hansen — 12 October 2020
Judith Curry recently highlighted the 9 October 2020 Wall Street Journal piece by Matt Ridley titled: “What the Pandemic Has Taught Us About Science”. [ It is annoyingly paywalled, so Dr. Curry offers extensive excerpts at her own blog, Climate Etc. ]
[ Full version of Matt Ridley’s piece is available at his own website here. — h/t to Malcolm Robinson]
The Ridley piece, intentionally or not, is a foil to a science column published in Forbes on 30 July 2020 by Ethan Siegel, Senior Contributor, which declared in its headline “You Must Not ‘Do Your Own Research’ When It Comes To Science “. The piece is marked by Forbes as an “Editor’s Pick”.
I encourage readers to take the time to read both of these fine essays, in full. Please don’t just stop when you find something with which you disagree (and you will find things, I promise). If you have access to the Wall Street Journal read Ridley’s full piece there. If not, you can read the extensive excerpts supplied by Judith Curry here. The Siegel column is available at Forbes.
What follows is a rather long Opinion Piece on the topic:
Should we “do our own research when it comes to Science”?
Both of these essays are valuable – and contain truths we need to be aware of and accept. But they also represent the problem we see all across human endeavors in today’s rather complicated world, and particularly in scientific fields: It ain’t that simple.
The arguments in opposition can be simplified to these two quotes:
SIEGEL — “You Must Not ‘Do Your Own Research’ When It Comes To Science”:
“The reason is simple: most of us, even those of us who are scientists ourselves, lack the relevant scientific expertise needed to adequately evaluate that research on our own. In our own fields, we are aware of the full suite of data, of how those puzzle pieces fit together, and what the frontiers of our knowledge is. When laypersons espouse opinions on those matters, it’s immediately clear to us where the gaps in their understanding are and where they’ve misled themselves in their reasoning. When they take up the arguments of a contrarian scientist, we recognize what they’re overlooking, misinterpreting, or omitting. Unless we start valuing the actual expertise that legitimate experts have spent lifetimes developing, “doing our own research” could lead to immeasurable, unnecessary suffering.” [the link is given by Siegel in the original – kh]
RIDLEY — “What the Pandemic Has Taught Us About Science”:
“The Covid-19 pandemic has stretched the bond between the public and the scientific profession as never before. Scientists have been revealed to be neither omniscient demigods whose opinions automatically outweigh all political disagreement, nor unscrupulous fraudsters pursuing a political agenda under a cloak of impartiality. Somewhere between the two lies the truth: Science is a flawed and all too human affair, but it can generate timeless truths, and reliable practical guidance, in a way that other approaches cannot.”
“Organized science is indeed able to distill sufficient expertise out of debate in such a way as to solve practical problems. It does so imperfectly, and with wrong turns, but it still does so. …. How should the public begin to make sense of the flurry of sometimes contradictory scientific views generated by the Covid-19 crisis? The only way to be absolutely sure that one scientific pronouncement is reliable and another is not is to examine the evidence yourself. Relying on the reputation of the scientist, or the reporter reporting it, is the way that many of us go, and is better than nothing, but it is not infallible. If in doubt, do your homework.” [my bolding — kh]
I agree with both of these fine, well-meaning individuals.
Who are they?
Matt Ridley is a scientist (DPhil or PhD in zoology from Oxford), the author of several science books, a celebrated British journalist and a Conservative hereditary peer since 2013, with a seat in the UK’s House of Lords. He has been called “a heretic on most counts”.
Ethan Siegel is a theoretical astrophysicist and professional science writer. He studied physics at Northwestern and got his PhD in astrophysics from the University of Florida. To get a fuller picture of the man, see his personal science blog: Starts With A Bang!.
I agree . . . but . . .
Ethan Siegel makes most of the points I would make about the average Joe or Jill “doing their own research”. I speak from experience…I do a lot of my own research. And I deal with family and friends and readers here at WUWT who “do their own research”. I wrote the following comment in response to the WUWT re-post of Judith Curry’s essay on Matt Ridley’s piece:
“Do Your Own Research!
Even this common-sense idea is strongly contested.
You Must Not ‘Do Your Own Research’ When It Comes To Science by Ethan Siegel — Senior Contributor — Forbes Editors’ Pick — Jul 30, 2020 [link in text above]
I always do my own research when it is important or some current proclamation or pronouncement pins my BS Meter to full on.
But in the real world, many people are incapable of doing their own research — either from lack of adequate general and/or specific education or from (and it is dangerous to even say this bit…) low IQ (meaning here: inability to understand/comprehend complex data).
These people, instead of “doing their own research”, do something that they think is that [doing their own research] but is in reality just surfing the web or channel searching the TV looking for opinions that agree with their own biases or new information that “seems true” to them — something that mixes well in their muddled understanding of reality.
Gads — that sounds so elitist, doesn’t it? Unfortunately, it is all too true.
I have relatives that are terrific people — do anything to help anyone in need — but who, for various reasons, would find it totally impossible to research and come to any kind of reasonable evidence-based or fact-based opinion on any of today’s complex problems. They simply don’t have the educational background, don’t have enough foundational understanding of basic science, political theory and practice, biology, physics, philosophy, etc — and, truthfully, they have never learned how to think clearly or critically. This includes people who are “professionals” — but only in their narrow fields.
Asking many of our neighbors and relatives — people on the street — or even professional journalists and columnists — to “Do Your Own Research” is like YoYo Ma asking them to “Play the cello like me!”.
I agree with Dr. Curry and Matt Ridley — with the above caveat.”
At first glance, I agree with Siegel that many people are unable to “do their own research”. The call for people to do their own research is hampered by the points above and by other simple facets of the human condition. What does this mean?
PRIDE: Many, if not most, if not all, people suffer from Pride. In this sense, that means they think they already know and are unwilling to read, research or accept information that doesn’t agree with their pre-existing “knowledge” – in quotes because this knowledge becomes, almost always, a bias that prevents further learning and understanding. This is true even for scientists and professionals who are even more prone to believing that their existing knowledge is superior to any contrary knowledge being offered by others, even by other professionals in the same field of study.
LAZINESS: Let’s admit it – far too many of us (occasionally including myself) are simply too lazy to bother fact-checking, reading original sources or comparing the value of evidences offered by various voices – too lazy even when it is important. This laziness often leads to ready acceptance of “consensus science” – we rest assured that what “the experts say…” is correct — even when we are fully aware that the consensus is politically, and not scientifically, based.
BUSYNESS: Many people simply don’t have the time to “do their own research” even when motivated to do so. Busy professionals, busy students, busy mothers and fathers. How many of us even fail to read the whole essay or column on topics we are interested in, instead skipping ahead to write a comment, only to be told the answer is in the essay? Unsure about Global Warming? Sure! Do Your Own Research! If you already have all the basic science and math under your belt and have a year to spare….
As Ridley points out, we are human. Scientists are human. Doctors are human. Astrophysicists are human. And we are all fallible. We make mistakes, we misunderstand things, we are prideful, we are hubristic, we fall in love with our own theories and opinions, we have “better things to do”. And, being human, we all have differing abilities – some are mathematical, some artistic, some philosophical, some spiritual, some intellectual, some mechanically practical.
So, in this sense, Ethan Siegel is right. However, Siegel’s column is spoiled by his selection of examples (you really must read his essay) which exposes his biases and misunderstandings and leads him to a conclusion not supported by his argument.
It does not follow that
- Because “doing your own research” is hard or even “impossible” for many people
- And “doing your own research” can be done incorrectly, even by scientists
- That thus “you need … to turn to the consensus of scientific experts” and that we must “all agree that we should base our policies on the scientific consensus”.
This is what I call “almost true”. The most dangerous kind of mendacity. Certainly, we can all agree with Newton’s Laws of Motion in a practical sense. But not because there exists a “scientific consensus” on the issue, rather because they have been found to be true (enough) in actual practice through innumerable tests and trials.
Siegel, in effect, concludes: “Always stick with the apparent consensus.”
I say “apparent”, because in many fields there is almost always a vast difference in the publicly perceived – media presented – apparent consensus and the real professional-field-wide-scientists consensus. See my series on Modern Scientific Controversies.
Even worse is Siegel’s proposition that “When they [people] take up the arguments of a contrarian scientist, we recognize what they’re overlooking, misinterpreting, or omitting.” In this, Siegel uses the “Royal We” so often seen in declarations in support of consensus science – a usage with the definition here of “Us Right-Thinking Scientific Elites”. Somehow Siegel overlooks that his very own field, theoretical astrophysics, is itself filled with conflicting theories, “contrarian scientists” and that many would assign Siegel himself to that category.
Matt Ridley is correct: He calls for us to “examine the evidence yourself. ….If in doubt, do your homework.”
Why? Because, in the end, “The only way to be absolutely sure that one scientific pronouncement is reliable and another is not is to examine the evidence yourself. Relying on the reputation of the scientist, or the reporter reporting it, is the way that many of us go, and is better than nothing, but it is not infallible. If in doubt, do your homework.”
Matt Ridley is pragmatic. For instance, on the virus, his view is straight-forward:
“The health of science depends on tolerating, even encouraging, at least some disagreement. In practice, science is prevented from turning into religion not by asking scientists to challenge their own theories but by getting them to challenge each other, sometimes with gusto. Where science becomes political, as in climate change and Covid-19, this diversity of opinion is sometimes extinguished in the pursuit of a consensus to present to a politician or a press conference, and to deny the oxygen of publicity to cranks. This year has driven home as never before the message that there is no such thing as “the science”; there are different scientific views on how to suppress the virus.”
I maintain that there are “different scientific views” on almost all modern scientific questions. Why? Because for these questions we are just starting along the necessary scientific path to discovering the basic truths of these topics. When we are uncertain what to believe, what to think or how to understand one of these topics, we can, as Matt Ridley suggests try “Relying on the reputation of the scientist, or the reporter reporting it, is the way that many of us go, and is better than nothing”.
Or, if it is important enough to us individually or societally and we are capable of doing so, we should examine the evidence ourselves – we should do our own homework.
We should, however, acknowledge that not everyone is capable of doing so, for the reasons I identified at the beginning of this essay. Some people can overcome their deficiencies, they can study up, read widely, retrain their minds to think clearly and critically and learn to ignore their own biases. Others may not be able to do so. In this case, they need to call upon others, who are capable, to help them examine the evidence – honest information brokers.
This task becomes the responsibility of Science Journalists. People like myself and many other professional authors, paid and unpaid. It is not our job to dictate what “the Science” says. It is our job to publicly examine the evidence on different topics in a way that the general public can understand it – carefully giving the various major viewpoints and laying out the evidence for all to see, in a way that they can comprehend it and come to their own understandings.
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Author’s Comment:
It is interesting to me that Ethan Siegel could be right about the details of the human condition that impede efforts to do one’s own research and yet come to the exactly wrong conclusion of discouraging people from examining the evidence for themselves. Because he fails to take Matt Ridley’s advice, and does not examine the evidence for himself, he ultimately falls back on “Listen to us, we’re the experts!” and denigrates all other professionals who don’t agree with the “us” as “contrarian scientists” unworthy of serious consideration. And that last part, my friends, is an intellectual crime most foul.
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How much knowledge, intelligence, etc. does it take to notice that scientists in some fields have a long and large track record of making predictions that did not come to pass? A person does not need to understand the concept of “falsifiability” to realize that a lot of predictions are failing.
https://cei.org/blog/wrong-again-50-years-failed-eco-pocalyptic-predictions
“The reason is simple: most of us, even those of us who are scientists ourselves, lack the relevant scientific expertise needed to adequately evaluate that research on our own.”
Only someone very stupid, or a sellout, would suggest that a very average 11 years old lacks “relevant scientific expertise” on vaccine and medical science to see that the CDC is full of it.
I call that adultoidy: the pseudo savant “adult” attitude that dismisses the fact that a child would immediately see that provax propaganda is demented. The minimization of “childish” abilities that adults do to make it so that they progressed when they actually regressed.
Those who feed on crises need crises.
In July, while those lucky enough to work flew here and there tons of masks as relief aid, shops (and pharmacies) in France, Portugal, Spain and Italy were selling ordinary disposable China imported paper masks for about 12.50 Euros each. No kidding.
Today the very same are offered for 1.50 Euros each or in 10 packs for 15 Euros. About 30 times their production cost.
Sale staff will pick and handle them to you with the very same hands used to handle money coming from all customers.
No wonder masks are just compulsory virtue signaling overpriced amulets.
EMM, Easy Money Matters. Be it COVID, climate or even better, both combined.
Typo causing miscommunication?
Looks to me that a comma or two are needed.
Seigel’s article argues in favor of ‘depending upon the Argumentum ad Verecundiam’ fallacy.
Instead of being wary of authoritative claims, Seigel proposes that should swallow authoritative claims hook line and sinker.
Next up; Forbes publishes an article in favor of pyramid scheme scams and fast talking con artists.
ATheoK ==> Its a complicated sentence, and I would have written it differently…hmmm, actually, my editor would have forced me to rewrite it for clarity.
“…is reliable, and another is not, is to…” would be the proper way to write this. I was surprised by the confusion it created for me, since there is only one meaningful interpretation. But I’ve noted that lately
more and more public speakers are getting double negatives wrong and saying the opposite of what they mean.
And so I think we’re being conditioned to think first of typos and secondly of syntactical errors before considering simple punctuation. Spoken normally, this sentence would have been unremarkable.
What has bemused me for years is the entire ‘peer reviewed’ argument.
The argument usually goes that unless your paper (or whatever) is ‘peer reviewed’ then your argument is clearly inferior to my ‘peer reviewed’ counter.
However, when you claim that their ‘peer reviewed’ paper has flaws your are mocked and rejected because you are clearly not a peer.
This is where we get to the topic of the day – Do Your Own Research vs Don’t.
Are we not ALL peers?
Not only that, we do not need to understand the research fully if we can clearly see the conclusions don’t make sense.
For examples – if someone was to claim that an event would cause millions of deaths, then we, the outside observer, should expect to see these deaths. If you are only observing hundreds of deaths then do you not have the right to question?
– If someone who is an expert in topic A (say – viruses) and makes the suggestion based on their virus knowledge that it would be a ‘no brainer’ to convert an entire counties manufacturing capacity into say ‘face masks and respirators’, then does someone who has little skill in topic A, but significant experience in topic B (say… engineering and manufacturing process) to reject this suggestion as completely unworkable? Having a skill in B does not make you a peer of someone who has skill in A, so therefore the B skilled person must be ignored when discussing A based recommendations?
Not all of us have the skills to be an exceptional cook, but I feel safe in saying that nearly all of us recognises a burnt meal when they see one. Just because you can’t technically describe what went wrong in the cooking processes does not prevent you from claiming the cook has made an error.
It would possibly prevent you from being able to offer a solution to prevent cooking failure in future, but the burnt dish is still burnt.
Craig ==> That’s an interesting analogy: Cooking. In that sense, Siegel says : “Only professional cooks should be allowed to judge a meal.” and Ridley says “Taste it for yourself.”
Kip – that is a better analogy than I was going to throw out, along the lines of ‘Only professional politicians should be allowed to judge politics’. Anyway, another thought provoking column. Thanks.
I read Matt Ridley regularly and have even given some of his books as gifts (although I never bought one for myself). Even when I don’t agree with Ridley he makes his points clearly and fairly.
I used to try to read Eric Siegel but I gave up long ago and now I avoid him. He always came across as a bombastic handwaver to me, a ten-cent Sagan, and never actually helped me understand anything about cosmic questions. I’d rather listen to someone like Roger Penrose – he always leaves me more confused than ever, but in an enjoyable way.
DaveW==> Yeah — I liked the cooking analogy — not perfect, but at least understandable.
Craig
You raise a point that I think deserves to be formally accentuated: the judgement about the quality of something is asymmetrical. That is, one does not have to have a PhD in ichthyology to know when a dead fish stinks.
ahhh … theoretical astrophysicist … sounds like a hobby …
Similarly, in the field of climate science, it’s overwhelmingly well-understood that:
NO, it is not overwhelmingly understood…… but there is a FABRICATED consensus.
the Earth is warming,
From the coldest period in 10,000 years, and still well below most of that 10,000 years
Only happening at El Nino events. Thank goodness for that slight warming.!
and local climate patterns are changing,
WEATHER patterns have always been variable , everywhere.
caused by changes in the concentration of gases in our atmosphere,
Only when those chemicals block incoming energy…..
Excess surface energy is removed mainly by convection and conduction, controlled by the molecular density gradient in the atmosphere. Only H2O has the ability to alter that control, because of its changes of state.
driven by human-caused emission of greenhouse gases from fossil fuels,
Absolutely NO EVIDENCE of that.. a mumbo-jumbo anti-science ASSumption.
and that this is having a number of adverse consequences: causing changes in food supplies, water availability, and land use all across the world.
Crop yields keep increasing, water supply issues are an engineering issue, often blocked by the greenie agenda. Land use for bio-fuels is causing a lot of harm, actual food crop land is decreasing.
So, basically everything in those statements is either trivial or WRONG.
“and local climate patterns are changing,
WEATHER patterns have always been variable , everywhere.”
It’s comic that many scientists will talk abut the climate and forget that “climate” is the average of weather over 30 years(pretty arbitrary). . So trying to forecast climate for even a couple of months is impossible to do reliably. But weather forecasters such as Joe Bastardi have discovered that the weather follows patterns over 50 years long. So they can make more accurate weather forecasts by pattern matching current weather conditions with a similar, previous pattern. Computer modelling does about as well, if you, as a consumer, ignore forecasts more than a few days long. Computer models always fail after a short period as the errors mount up. Pattern matching, experience, and computer modelling can work more accurately because any pattern will only segue into other fairly specific patterns(rain storms rarely turn into snow in July).
The “climate experts” are mostly politicians. They should take their own advice. If CO2 is a cooling preventive gas they should all note that the increase of concentration is well along the exponential absorption curve. It will roughly take another doubling to 1200ppm to get warming equal to what we’ve seen- 150ppm to 300-400 ppm.
The trick for laymen is to understand the scientific method, and insist on a necessary and sufficient falsifiable hypothesis statement before accepting anything as scientific.
In layman’s terms:
1) Tell me what observations would prove you wrong;
2) Tell me why if we don’t see those things, your explanation is the only one that works.
More precisely:
1) a list of observations, which if observed, mean your hypothesis is false;
2) a logical argument that the lack of those falsifications means that your hypothesis must be favored over all others (including the null).
I think you have some steps messed up.
1) Observation of some outcome
2) Theory of why the outcome occurred
3) Create hypothesis that adequately predicts the outcome
4) Experimentation to confirm/falsify hypothesis
I am not sure a “null” hypothesis is always adequate in a situation with many confounding variables. With climate change you can make the hypothesis that “CO2 is THE control knob for temperature” and the null hypothesis “CO2 is NOT THE control knob for temperature”. I think the null has been proven but it doesn’t buy us much. CO2 is obviously a PART of atmospheric temperature but not the only part. GCM modelers are trying to create a testable hypothesis but are failing miserably.
My problem is spending trillions to “solve” something that doesn’t even have a testable hypothesis at this time.
SciAm now saying that falsification is a myth and it’s time to abandon it
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-idea-that-a-scientific-theory-can-be-falsified-is-a-myth/
TonyG
I might start out by dismissing this as coming from SciAm. However, what the author is basically advocating is pragmatism. There is nothing pragmatic about a hypothesis that is shown to fail, that is, has been falsified. When the Black Swan trumpets, the game is over. So much for the pronouncements of yet another ‘expert!’
“Relying on the reputation of the scientist, or the reporter reporting it, is the way that many of us go, and is better than nothing”.
actually its much worse than nothing becasue it gives the power of the truth to someone else when you should control it for yourself …
don’t do your own research really means DON’T QUESTION ME … and a BIG RED Flag of a fraudulent sceintist or hobbyist ( theoretical astrophysics, come on …)
The Dark Lord ==> Wouldn’t agree, if one has a good sense of who is reliable. We all do this in the course of our daily lives. We have opinion leaders and information sources we feel can be counted on to be generally right. I have science texts that I trust. In that statement, Ridley is just being pragmatic — talking the everyday approach, which on many topics is “good enough”.
“Controlling the fluoride levels of water is a safe and effective public health intervention, reducing dental caries in children by 40% where it is implemented versus places where it isn’t implemented.”
Who drinks tap water?
I do, because I drink coffee.
But if you don’t drink coffee, do you drink tap water?
I think an effective public health intervention would be to provide tap water that taste good- particularly in low income areas.
Is everything you drink have controlled fluoride levels?
Should I “research” it?
I generally drink tap water. It’s cheap, most places it tastes just fine. The problem I have is that I grew up with fluoridated water. Nearly cavity free after 4th grade. Out here in Pennsylvania you have to pay the dentist $40 for a fluoride treatment.
People who are too ignorant, lazy, or busy to do their “own research” should at least be open minded and aware of the various points of view. Becoming convinced of one’s absolute correctness is the fastest way to end up espousing faith instead of educated opinion.
Maybe many scientists never learned, or perhaps they just forgot that anyone and anything can be wrong – all it takes is one leap in understanding to topple well-founded beliefs. The Standard Model is a perfect example of something that is scientific, well-founded, widely believed, very useful, and ripe to be replaced with something new and different. Maybe the new understanding will be a little nudge, or maybe like “The Theory of General Relativity” it is ground-breaking.
Many breakthroughs are performed by non-professional scientists – or at least were. It is getting to the point were one needs to be dedicated to a narrow field to really push the edge and that to me is a frighting thought. You can easily end up with a “clan” of elitists that dominate and pervert that branch of science. Climate Science is the perfect example of science gone bad.
Feynman has his belief in the ignorance of scientists. I have belief in the wisdom of the uneducated and stupid.
No matter how low someone’s IQ is, people throughout history have shown a remarkable ability to tell when they are being conned. You may need considerable training and mental application to design wind turbines or nuclear power stations, but you don’t seem to need this to work out that being offered intermittent energy at ten times last year’s price is a num deal…
–Similarly, in the field of climate science, it’s overwhelmingly well-understood that:
the Earth is warming,
and local climate patterns are changing,
caused by changes in the concentration of gases in our atmosphere,
driven by human-caused emission of greenhouse gases from fossil fuels,
and that this is having a number of adverse consequences: causing changes in food supplies, water availability, and land use all across the world.–
It also well-understood that we living in an Ice Age.
And what called Little Ice Age, ended around 1850 AD.
Anyone who read history, knows climate has been changing and we continue
to change in the future. No one is promising something as silly as stopping climate
change from occurring.
A trace gas is not responsible for climate changing.
One say that Dust Bowl was a climate change- and was not caused by CO2.
There was cooling in 1970’s and it was not caused by CO2.
There no valid claim that CO2 has ever caused climate change.
The climate change is referring to predictions. And many prediction have made
decades ago, and they did not happen. Most prediction about future have never happened, predicting the future as been a common hobby since the beginning of human history.
Oracles were go to priest class of Ancient Greece. Palm readers can found in any town.
There money to be made from guesses about the future.
People claim CO2 emission {in world which has low levels of CO2 {because we living in an Ice Age}, only climate change from higher CO2 level has been global greening and increase in crop yields. And nothing wrong with global greening or increasing crop yields.
So we are recovering from a colder period time, called the Little Ice Age which was few centuries of lower global temperatures. And prior to Little Ice Age, it warmer, and before that it was cooler, and etc.
And in regard longer periods of time, Earth has been slightly cooling for over 5000 years.
And more than 1 million years, we been in this Ice Age. Before that, there was a much higher global temperature. The human, as elementary school taught, “evolved” during this Ice Age. Perhaps you remember the bit about the increasing grasslands in Africa? Well, in cooler global conditions, forests give way to grasslands. Or cooler conditions are drier conditions- trees don’t well in drier conditions and the grass replaces it.
I think the key is education rather than “research”.
And part of basic education in the US, would be knowing what Supreme Court is.
What causes seasons- and a bunch of stuff.
When most of us say, do your own research, what we generally mean to say is protect yourself from the ordinary fools who will not do their own research, but just repeat what someone else told them.
Background research is but a part of doing science. No one is doing science unless after thorough background research they actually try to design an experiment, get apparatus to work, analyze data, and attempt to get it published in some way. There are virtually no amateurs who do anything like this. So with all due regard to Kip, and the two gents he quotes, the controversy is not real and the argument misdirected.
kevin kilty ==> Matt Ridley says “The only way to be absolutely sure that one scientific pronouncement is reliable and another is not” is to “examine the evidence yourself“…He does not say “Do your own original research”. Siegel is also not talking about doing one’s own original research.
Well done. Even in this technological age, there can be cases where our knowledge and overall understanding of a subject has yet to catch up to the extreme complexity of the problem at hand.
The other day I made three observations on the Quora site.
1) That the IPCC was a political organisation.
2) That it was set up to determine any risks involved in anthropological CO2 emissions.
3) That it is not surprising that it found risks; as otherwise it would have been disbanded.
The first two were not supported by any deep research; so were well open to challenge.
The third was merely a personal surmise on the assumption that the first were true.
The result was an ad hominem attack on the basis that I had advanced a conspiracy theory; so had obviously touch a nerve which made me wonder whether this was indeed a matter where research was needed. Not I have any inclination or resources to carry out that task.
Siegel was saying “I am right and even if a ‘contrarian scientist’ disagrees with me do not dare form an opinion because you are a know nothing redneck”
That’s fair enough with regard to quantum theory or civil engineering. The problem relates to non-science science. Climate, political, economic, social, racial etc etc. Any conclusion drawn about these subjects is a matter of opinion not fact. None of these words can properly be followed by “Science”.
You may well be an expert in one or more of these subjects but you are not scientist. The vast majority of opinionology “theories” are postulates not even making it to the level of hypothesis.
Siegel misses the point. People are not trying to analyse data and check the mathematics in scientific papers and then coming to “wrong” conclusions. Mostly, people are looking at the big picture and then applying common sense. For example, you might learn through a small amount of research that “predictions” of future temperatures are based on computer models, and moreover, that there are over a hundred of them and that they all vary wildly from 1.5c to 10c warming per doubling. Such a person applying common sense would then think “they cannot all be right.” That person may look a little closer and “oh look, there are 4 different model scenarios,” and they notice that the most extreme uses a scenario of a return to coal. But that is the exact same output being promoted by the worlds media. They might conclude that the model scenarios are being misrepresented to the public.
This is entirely appropriate role for the lay person to play. In fact it is absolutely essential for the functioning of democracy.
If it is Science that produces a device, no one cares, the device will speak by itself. No one needs to know thermodynamics to choose the best car. The result of the knowledge is right in front of your eyes. However, when the “science” is used to impose government regulations with impacts in our daily life, every one is entitled to his/her own opinion. We dont want an expert dictatorship. I would love to see a REGULATION imposing equal public spending on opposite views research for any knowledge used to draw a regulation. Moreover, any industry that would suffer losses from the proposed regulation would be entitled to obtain public funds to conduct its own research to oppose the “science” used to harm its business. It would be a way to assure the society that the regulation was based on the best of our knowledge. Interesting, publications require scientists to show any funding from the private sector, but not the funding from public sector, which is orders of magnitude higher. So, researchers in the public sector are free to develop their own agenda. Finally, no one cares to do their own research for fields such astrophysics, particle physics – they just can wait to see who is going to be the winner.
It is true that “research” by some folks is not always helpful. I have quite a few times had colleagues who are quite intelligent but under-educated. Quite absurd theories can be quite genuinely held. Some training in the scientific approach and critical thinking is really helpful.
On the other hand if we were to rely on the “scientific” consensus surely the world would be flat, the sun would revolve around us and the weather would be controlled by the carefully timed sacrifice of virgins.
So possibly the way forward is for the independent researchers to keep bombarding the consensus with alternative theories and to keep asking “why” and “how” and “what about”.
I would have thought that to state that “the science is settled” shows a fundamental lack understanding about the scientific method!
That’s the Thunberg/Attenborough/Monbiot/Gore/ . . . problem solved.
SIEGEL — “You Must Not ‘Do Your Own Research’ When It Comes To Science”
This marks the beginning of a return to Medieval elitist scholasticism.
It won’t be long before they return to conducting research in Latin, to exclude outsiders.
They’re already doing all they can short of that to exclude outsiders, but they will always fail.
They’re simply not as smart as they think they are.
A lot of them are surprisingly stupid.
Venite formare atque mirabilis fabula de tempestate.
Uti possumus perdere inimicos nostros.
Better with “atque” removed.
Scientists who have had decades of accumulated experience in hard science should find it quite easy to recognize the trappings of this silly post-normal methodology and evualte it (mostly for rejection).
Discussions of the part to be played or not played by the sceptical onlooker quite often miss what the onlooker is doing and why. There are many, many instances of such people studying again the data of experts and obtaining quite different conclusions. This does not mean that they are right, but it does impose an obligation on the original researchers to take another look to see if they were wrong.
By ‘wrong’ I mean one or more of the dot points of logic failure had been used originally. Be that argument from authority or correlation/causation bewilderment or another of the many logic points, it is so, so easy to discover and so demote the importance of the original. Well over half of the “climate science” proponent authors can be found lacking by this simple filter. In the olden days, the authors and the sceptics would get together and sort it.
Another flashing red light is the inability or unwillingness of many climate authors to conduct proper, formal analysis of uncertainty. Again in the old days, this was unacceptable and authors claiming detailed, certain findings in a sea of noise were quickly rejected as unreliable. Geoff S
Today, the climate people actively avoid this collegial approach. I suspect that I know why. Geoff S.
Climate science is very immature, there isnt the depth of expertise needed to understand it to at least the level of almost all climate scientists.
““You Must Not ‘Do Your Own Research’ When It Comes To Science”” Even if that is so, you can certainly judge the prognostications of scientists!
You are also allowed to recognize eco-doom ‘scientific’ propaganda that is no different from that which has gone before.
Put it this way, when the science is junk, anyone can have a go.
Siegel is just an appeal to authority, “Trust me I’m a doctor”.
He was totally wrong in the one section I looked at.
Why would anyone bother with the rest. !