I got to thinking about how science progresses. Science is a funny beast. It’s not a “thing”, it’s a process. The process works like this:
- One or more people make a falsifiable claim about how the physical world works. They support it with logic, math, computer code, examples, experience, experimental results, thought experiments, or other substantiating backup information.
- They make all of that information public, so others can replicate their work.
- Other people try to find things that are wrong with the original claim, including errors in the logic, math, computer code, examples, and the rest.
- If someone can show the original claim is wrong, that claim is falsified and rejected.
- If nobody can show the claim is wrong, then it is provisionally accepted as scientifically valid … but only provisionally, because at any time new information of any kind may show that the claim actually is wrong.
Note that there is two things that must be present for this process we call “science” to work. The first is total transparency. If the author of the claim refuses to provide the data, computer code, or any part of the supporting evidence, the claim cannot be either replicated or falsified and thus it is not a part of science.
The second necessary component is that the claim must be falsifiable. If I say “There is a Pastafarian God who controls the universe through his noodly appendages”, no one can falsify that statement … so it’s not a scientific claim.
Now, let me point out what doesn’t make any difference in this process. The following things do not matter at all in real scientific investigation:
- The nationality, sex, educational level, previous accomplishments, publications, age, credentials, shoe size, or hair color of the person making the claim. They mean nothing—the claim is either true or not, regardless of those meaningless side issues.
- The location where the claim is made. It is either true or not, regardless of whether it is published in a scientific journal, posted on the web, or written on an outhouse wall.
- The nationality, sex, educational level, previous accomplishments or publications, credentials, shoe size, or hair color of the person who has found problems with the claim.
- Peer review. The peer reviewers have a lifetime invested in their own work and beliefs, and if their worldview is overthrown by a new scientific paradigm, they may be out of work. As a result, these days peer review mostly functions as the gatekeeper of the consensus, preventing the publication of any claim that disagrees with the agreed theories. It is no guarantor of scientific validity. From the National Institutes of Health: “We have little evidence on the effectiveness of peer review, but we have considerable evidence on its defects. In addition to being poor at detecting gross defects and almost useless for detecting fraud it is slow, expensive, profligate of academic time, highly subjective, something of a lottery, prone to bias, and easily abused.”
- Personal attacks. Attacking the person instead of attacking the person’s ideas is called an “ad hominem” attack, from the Latin meaning “to the man”. The most common one in climate science is when someone calls their opponent a “denier”. This is a childish attempt to discredit the person rather than deal with what they are saying. My rule of thumb with these kinds of personal attacks is “When someone starts throwing mud, it’s a sure sign they’re out of real ammunition.”
- And finally, to get to the subject of this post, it doesn’t matter how many people believe the original claim. Consensus on the claim is meaningless. It makes no difference if every learned person in the world, backed by the Catholic Church, believes some idea is true—as Copernicus and Galileo proved, scientific validity is not determined by either consensus or a vote.
In fact, all scientific advances occur in the same manner. Someone questions the revealed wisdom. Someone doesn’t believe the agree-upon explanation. Someone doesn’t think the current theory is quite correct. Someone disagrees with the learned scientific societies, the consensus of experts, the accepted paradigm.
And in the process, new scientific ideas are brought to light and agreed upon … until such future time as they, in turn, may be overthrown.
So I thought I’d provide a few quotes from profound thinkers on this very question. Let me start with the polymath Michael Crichton, author, director, medical student, television producer, Emmy winner, and most interesting man.
I want to pause here and talk about this notion of consensus, and the rise of what has been called consensus science. I regard consensus science as an extremely pernicious development that ought to be stopped cold in its tracks. Historically, the claim of consensus has been the first refuge of scoundrels; it is a way to avoid debate by claiming that the matter is already settled. Whenever you hear the consensus of scientists agrees on something or other, reach for your wallet, because you’re being had. — Michael Crichton
Next, gotta have a few quotes from the OG of scientific breakthroughs, Big Al, noted “Isaac Newton Denier”:
Blind belief in authority is the greatest enemy of the truth. — Albert Einstein
To punish me for my contempt of authority, Fate has made me an authority myself. — Albert Einstein
When a pamphlet was published entitled 100 Authors Against Einstein, Einstein retorted “If I were wrong, one would be enough.” — Albert Einstein, perhaps apocryphal but absolutely true
Then there’s Richard Feynman, one of the best physicists of the last century:
Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts. — Richard Feynman
Have no respect whatsoever for authority; forget who said it and instead look at what he starts with, where he ends up, and ask yourself, “Is it reasonable? — Richard Feynman
Here’s Scott Adams, cartoonist, hypnotist, author, and general troublemaker:
One thing I can say with complete certainty is that it is a bad idea to trust the majority of experts in any domain in which both complexity and large amounts of money are involved. — Scott Adams
Whenever you have money, reputations, power, ego, and complexity in play, it is irrational to assume you are seeing objective science. — Scott Adams
And if you will allow me a short digression, I can’t let the opportunity pass without quoting Matt Groening, creator of the Simpsons:
When authorities warn you of the sinfulness of sex, there is an important lesson to be learned. … … Do not have sex with the authorities. — Matt Groening
Facts are meaningless! You could use facts to prove anything that’s even remotely true — Homer (Simpson)
… but I digress. Let us return to the important issue of the meaningless nature of scientific consensus by quoting the aforementioned Galileo Galilei:
In the sciences, the authority of thousands of opinions is not worth as much as one tiny spark of reason in an individual man. — Galileo
And Copernicus:
Among the authorities, it is generally agreed that the Earth is at rest in the middle of the universe, and they regard it as inconceivable and even ridiculous to hold the opposite opinion. However, if we consider it more closely the question will be seen to be still unsettled, and so decidedly not to be despised. — Nicholas Copernicus
Nor is this idea of questioning the authorities new. One of the clearest visions of how science is the process of disbelieving the experts comes from the 11th-century Persian physician, philosopher, and astronomer Abu ‘Ali al-Husayn ibn ‘Abd Allah ibn Sina, better known in the West as Avicenna, who over a thousand years ago wrote:
The seeker after truth is not one who studies the writings of the ancients and, following his natural disposition, puts his trust in them, but rather the one who suspects his faith in them and questions what he gathers from them, the one who submits to argument and demonstration and not the sayings of human beings whose nature is fraught with all kinds of imperfection and deficiency.
Thus, the duty of the man who investigates the writings of scientists, if learning the truth is his goal, is to make himself an enemy of all that he reads, and, applying his mind to the core and margins of its content, to attack it from every side. He should also suspect himself as he performs his critical examination of it, so that he may avoid falling into either prejudice or leniency. — Avicenna
Astounding insights from a man writing in the year 1000 … nothing new under the sun.
And why have I written all of this? Well, it’s because I’m bone-tired of people saying “But Willis, don’t you know that all the scientists agree about the ‘Climate Emergency’? Don’t you realize you’re going against a hundred years of settled climate science? Your work can’t possibly be true, it isn’t peer-reviewed, and besides you’re a climate denier! Surely you must know that there’s a 97% consensus that eeevil humans are responsible for ruining the climate, and that everyone who is anyone agrees that bad weather can be prevented by poor people paying more for gasoline?”
Yes, I know all of that … and for all of the reasons given by all the people above, I don’t give a rat’s gluteus minimus about the existence of some claimed consensus or other. That’s not how science works, never was, and never will be.
My best to each and every one of you, commenters, lurkers, haters, the mildly curious, and all the rest.
w.
Why should I send you a proper comment when you’ll only try to find something wrong with it.
Thanks Willis, a really good article for non-scientists like me.
Excellent article! Thank You!
I suggest a separation of logical domains. Many will try, most will fail, to remain viable in the scientific logical domain. Fantasy is improbable. Faith requires trust. Philosophy is the middle ground where conjecture, hypotheses are conceived, evolve, and are birthed.
“Truth does not change because it is, or is not, believed by a majority of the people.”
― Giordano Bruno
Giordano Bruno was burnt at the stake for saying, among other more heretical things, that the sun was a star.
Nonsense. If we all wish hard enough, Tinkerbell will come back.
Disney’s First Law: Wish and it will come true.
Thanks Willis.
Another refresher course on reality.
Douglas Adams, author of the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy series, had a lot of fun poking at science, but he was also wise:
“I’m a scientist and I know what constitutes proof. But the reason I call myself by my childhood name is to remind myself that a scientist must also be absolutely like a child. If he sees a thing, he must say that he sees it, whether it was what he thought he was going to see or not. See first, think later, then test. But always see first. Otherwise you will only see what you were expecting. Most scientists forget that.”
― Douglas Adams, The Ultimate Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
Richard Feynman:
“Religion is a culture of faith. Science is a culture of doubt.”
It seems everything needs to be modelled in today’s world. I think I recall Feynman saying something like – the use of a computer usually devolves into playing a game.
As one of the laypeople who has learned much about climate and its complexity by reading this blog and Judith Curry, I have learned that there are certain accepted physical phenomena which have been characterized as laws such as the second law of thermodynamics and gravity, both of which I experience on a daily basis. The weather however is largely a crapshoot.
Weather is actually fun! Some great weather channels on youtube. Climate has long ceased to be fun.
To maintain their power over the peasants, scientists, the MSM, governments and Big Tech all recently colluded to hide the origins of Wuhan flu. You don’t think they aren’t doing the same thing with AGW to keep their money conveyor belt running?
Willis – yet another prime example was Alfred Wegener.
“I would rather have questions that can’t be answered than answers that can’t be questioned”-Richard Feynman.
The ability to question makes us human. The right to question makes us free.
We see all around us that the right to question the narrative has been bullied out.
How do we counteract this-
1) When you are forced to wear a mask, have a highly visible one (bright yellow best) with “AGAINST MY WILL” or “TYRANNY” on it. The mask can be made with a yellow rag, so it costs basically nothing. Nobody has been stupid enough to attack me for it.
2) Boycott any business that subscribes to the woke nonsense of shutting down free speech. Look what has happened to Coca Cola.
3) Ignore any media that do NOT call out woke/ cancel culture. This means that mainstream media need to be recognised as propaganda.
4) Simply do not vote for any wannabe “leader” that goes in for wokeness/ cancel culture. They are usually on board with the witch hunts. The easy way to identify the ones that get your vote (refusing to vote / participate in the political process means you are just allowing yourself to be ruled by your inferiors) is that they are the ones attacked by cancel culture. They smear those they fear.
5) Needs just a bit of research – if someone is being hounded out of their freedom of speech, stand up for them- let it be known that the witch hunting throng are violating Section 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Let them know they should hang their heads in shame for such a flagrant violation of human rights.
Obviously, we should all be getting active in various groups to wake up the silenced majority.
To quote Thomas Sowell-“Our job is not to wake the sheep, it is to wake the lions.”
“Rise like Lions after slumber
In unvanquishable number-
Shake your chains to earth like dew
Which in sleep had fallen on you
Ye are many-they are few.”
― Percy Bysshe Shelley, The Masque of Anarchy: Written on Occasion of the Massacre at Manchester
Poets are the true legislators.
Spot on, Willis. The “consensus” BS is always the “lead-off batter” I have to contend with in every conversation I have with the climate deluded.
What they fail to realize in their ignorant certainty is the precise reason the “consensus” BS is thrown at them, time and time again. They bombard people with the “consensus” BS because they want people to stop thinking, researching, questioning, and above all REASONING. Because the “climate crisis” nonsense crumbles quickly in the face of reason, and the Climate Fascists therefore dread it, like vampires running from the sunlight.
I want to pause here and talk about this notion of consensus, and the rise of what has been called consensus science. I regard consensus science as an extremely pernicious development that ought to be stopped cold in its tracks.
Consensus itself can’t be the problem. An intelligent social animal like humans or any other, can presumably only establish accepted truth of scholarly matters through a process of consensus – at least of some kind of majority.
But what does make a difference to the effectiveness of the scholarly process, and might defend the process from the danger of believing falsehoods for hundreds of years, is how the consensus is treated or “managed” and what attitudes and practices relate to the consensus. Is the scholarly community relaxed about it, regarding a consensus as “easy come easy go”? Or do personal interests and agendas get entangled in the consensus, with the result that a lot of violence is done to prop up the consensus and prevent its refutation by suspending the scholarly process? This is how sociobiology and politics unfortunately undermine scholarship. Although only for a while – truth eventually emerges.
Nonsense. The Scientific Method obviates that idea. That’s why it is so important. It only requires one idea to be right and no other supporters are needed. In science “consensus” is simply redundant. In fact it has proven to be the single biggest obstacle to innovation and new ideas. Consensus is the antithesis to scientific inquiry. There is no manner of rewording which can validate “consensus” within the scientific process.
There has to be a consensus about ethics. Still Einstein best says what the scientific method is – see the PBS interview above.
Ethics is a fundamental component of politics, which is why I suggest “consensus” is always about politics. It’s about getting along and fitting in. Science is about trying to explain our world.
As usual, Willis, more proof that you have a first-class mind. To paraphrase Mrs. Medlock in <i>The Secret Garden</i> I’d say that if you had a couple more degrees people would say you were clever.
But I suggest that the problem is not just the 97% of gubmint-funded scientists toeing the party line.
I’d say that the problem is that the educated class gets 97% of the public bandwidth. It is almost impossible to get a word in edgewise unless you are a card-carrying member of the educated-class establishment. Something has to go badly wrong before anyone else gets to be part of the conversation.
Here’s the best reason to doubt the urgers and extremists and it only takes about 5 minutes of your time.
Dr Rosling’s video showing all countries over the last 200 years is about as accurate as we can get.
OH and according to the latest data there has been improvement since 2010 to 2020 as well.
Another problem is the population increase since 1970 of over 4 billion people and an increase in life expectancy ( about 15 years) and wealth since that time.
And urban living has increased since 1970, even in Africa our poorest continent.
When will people wake up to their BS and fra-d?
Look at Dr Rosling’s video and then ask yourself this question……where is Biden’s EXISTENTIAL threat or emergency or crisis?
Anthropologists now think that fully evolved humans have existed for about 200,000 years and the first 1 billion humans alive was in about 1800 and life expectancy then was under 40 and in 2021 is 73 for the 7.8 bn alive today.
And 4 bn + have somehow miraculously appeared since 1970 and now have a life exp of about 73 and also much wealthier than 50 years ago.
So AGAIN where is Biden’s EXISTENTIAL threat???
If he looks in the mirror, Biden will see it.
Biden knows there is an existential threat – to the entire transatlantic financial system. It will soon implode under its own rules-based-order.
That will mean an existential threat to all savings. Which means an existential threat to the powers that be. They are reacting in desperation. Even Facebook is part of the Atlantic Council.
Either that threat or its proposed cure , the Great Reset will rapidly drop population to 1 billion even if nuclear war is avoided.
Which means to anyone who likes eating, putting finance immediately under regulation. It literally means survival.
A lot of climateers get of lost in CO2 fog the fail to see the 600lb gorilla.
Succinct, memorable, accurate, and enjoyable. In short a brilliant article. Many thanks Willis.
Rhys
Another quote from Feynman: “I much prefer questions that cannot be answered to answers that cannot be questioned.”
Dr. Einstein, the Science is settled! We Took a Vote!
Dr. Newton, the Science is settled! We Took a Vote!
Dr. Galileo, the Science is settled! We Took a Vote!
Dr. Aristotle, the Science is settled! We Took a Vote!
I’m noticing a pattern here.
Consensus is scientifically meaningless, but it is a useful gauge for laypeople. I’ve not seen it presented as anything more.
“…useful gauge for laypeople…”
Not when the ‘consensus’ is a lie.
If we assume that there is a grand global scientific conspiracy then all bets are off. But unsubstantiated conspiracy theories are a poor basis for a worldview.
There is no need for a conspiracy for irrational humans to get on the bandwagon. All religions have grown similarly from a seed and spread around the world.
Consensus can only ever be used in a political sense. Only politicians, juries and women’s sewing circles seem to require it.
The fact that there exists a scientific consensus around the dangers of tobacco smoke has been quite helpful in guiding my actions around cigarettes, despite the fact that I have not read the entire body of medical literature on the subject or personally replicated the many studies. Consensus can be used in a decision making sense, whether at an individual or policy-based level.
It sounds like you are a person who plays it safe and runs your life by Pascal’s Wager.
There has been no ‘consensus’ about the dangers of cigarette smoking – there have been a number of scientific studies done linking cigarette smoking to illnesses and diseases which still gives us the best information on the subject. An informed and well reasoned point of view based on a sound scientific argument doesn’t need some artificially conflated ‘consensus’ to sell it.
Well put.
So it is your opinion that there is no general agreement among the medical research community about whether tobacco smoke is dangerous?
My contention is that the widely held agreement that cigarette smoke is dangerous is based on scientific studies not on a decision by consensus that it is so.
I’m curious. You are convinced that tobacco smoke is dangerous. What about marijuana smoke? Do you suppose it might also be dangerous? If so, why no ‘hue and cry’ to discourage ‘grass’ for health reasons?
Any form of smoking is bad for respiratory health – one can only speculate as to why pot smoking tends to draw a smaller focus than tobacco. Probably because pot has been illegal for most of its history in the US, so health concerns were not at the forefront of thought on the subject. I’m also not certain population studies have shown higher rates of lung cancer among pot smokers. Pot also tends to be used differently (I don’t know any chain tokers).
However, that has nothing whatever to do with the science. The “consensus” decided for nearly 100years that Mars was covered in “canals”, that the Continents couldn’t move and that stomach ulcers were caused by stress etc. If “consensus” has had any effect on science it has been to suppress truth and negatively interfere with progress.
I would argue that there actually wasn’t overly strong consensus about most of those topics. Some astronomers speculated about the possible presence of “canal-like” features on Mars, but these hypotheses were based on rudimentary observing devices and questioned strongly by the observers’ peers. Continental drift was initially rejected by the scientific community not because they had a strongly held belief in the immobility of the continents, but because Wegener could provide no evidence of a possible mechanism for such movement. If you were an academic living in these times you would not have found it odd to be embroiled in debates about these subjects with your peers.
But all that said, I agree, and stated earlier, that consensus is not part of the scientific process – it is simply a state that is tended towards as evidence for or against some hypothesis accumulates. Today there is a strong consensus among scientists about plate tectonic theory, evolutionary theory, gravitational theory, etc. A scientist in the modern day would find it quite baffling to attend a research conference at which everyone was arguing over the veracity of evolution versus Biblical creationism. It doesn’t mean these ideas are objectively true, but it certainly indicates to laypeople that the experts believe the evidence in favor of these ideas is strong. That is, they’ve run out of reasons to object to the ideas.
I believe it is extremely misguided to pretend that this information is of no value.
“The science is settled!” Obama
In the environmental sciences the scientific process becomes subverted by the precautionary principle which says in effect that given the dire consequences in case we are right, the question is not whether we are right but whether you can take the chance that we are right.
https://tambonthongchai.com/2020/12/27/superstitious-humans/
Thanks, my friend, always good to hear from you. If people toss the Precautionary Principle at you, you can return the favor with my post entitled Climate, Caution, and Precaution.
w.
Thanks Willis. I will go take a look.
One of the things that has always bothered me about the PP, was that in the absence of complete understanding of the problem there is a risk that any actions might exacerbate the problem, thus accomplishing the opposite of what is desired.
Only when the countdown timer is at one second is it prudent to forget about logically trying to decide whether to cut the red wire or green wire. That is, making the wrong decision is no worse than making no decision. However, prior to the timer not giving enough time to get away, making the wrong decision is worse than making no decision.
The precautionary principle would work well in this case except that if the climate enthusiasts are wrong, then the course of action they are urging us to take may cause far more suffering and loss of life than if we did nothing. The game theory that is used to justify the precautionary principle fails to account for a decrease in temperatures – they only gamed an increase (they got it right) or a no increase (they got it wrong) set of outcomes.
Willis your too kind not giving only rat’s gluteus minimus. I wouldn’t give rat’s anal sphincter about so-called 97% consensus.
I recently finished reading a really interesting and well written book. “Hot Hand” by Ben Cohen. https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0062820729/ It was well written and very entertaining. The subject of the book is the controversy over whether or not there is such a thing as a hot hand in basketball. In 1985, Gilovich, Vallone and Tversky published “The hot hand in basketball: On the misperception of random sequences”, which argued that the “hot hand” is a cognitive illusion, our minds impose a pattern on random events. That idea became “established science”. But, like real scientists, other social scientists and mathematicians did not accept it and move on. They picked at the idea, and eventually proved that the paper had deep seated flaws.
The point here is that the core of science is doubt. Nothing is science can be accepted as “established”. Everything must be doubted and and picked at.
This is true in every part of science. Let us take an example from a core subject of physical science: gravity. Newton’s Principia explained gravity in 1687. It was the beginning of the separation between empirical science and speculative philosophy. Surely, gravity is established science.
Well, not really. Newton’s theory was revised and expanded for two centuries after it was propounded. But, eventually there were problems. In the 19th Century, they found that the orbit of Mercury around the sun could not be explained by Newtonian theories, unless there was another large planet nearby, which nobody could see.
Albert Einstein published his General Theory of Relativity in 1915. The theory refined Newton’s law of universal gravitation, and provided a unified description of gravity as a non-Euclidian geometric property of four-dimensional space-time. It could explain the orbit of Mercury. But, it also opened up a whole new vista of astronomical phenomena that are uncanny, at best, such as the bending of light by gravity, the dilation of time by gravity, the collapse of stars into their own gravitational fields that produce Black Holes, and even stranger yet gravitational waves, that were first directly observed only recently.
Game over, we have the answer. Gravity is now established science. Right? Not exactly. There are known and real problems with General Relativity as an explanation for life, the universe, and everything. For instance, the Black Hole Information Loss Paradox. I won’t try to explain it. If you want a good understandable explanation go to “The Black Hole information loss problem is unsolved. Because it’s unsolvable.” http://backreaction.blogspot.com/2020/11/the-black-hole-information-loss-problem.html has an explanation and a video. It is by a German theoretical physicist named Sabine Hossenfelder. She has a lot of videos and explanations about basic issues in modern physics.
The point here is very simple. There is no such thing as “established science”, nor can there ever be such a thing. The core of science is doubt. As the Royal Society, to which Newton reported his results, has it: Nullius in Verba. “Take nobody’s word for it”. The only way to prove statements about science is an appeal to facts determined by experiment. https://royalsociety.org/about-us/history/
In 1931 a book was published in Germany: Hundert Autoren gegen Einstein (A Hundred Authors Against Einstein). In response Einstein said, if he were wrong, one author would have been enough.
It was Kepler who discovered universal gravity. Newton was not a scientist as Maynard Keynes discovered- see the Bio, as I post above. So a Magi like Newton uses alchemy. Looking at Newton we find the model for the charlatans today. They are not easy to spot in Newtons shadow. That is why well known climateers get away it.
Interestingly Newton was Master of the Mint – he knew where the money was.
Developing integral and differential calculus wasn’t enough to qualify?
Pretty much everybody who dabbled in science back then was an alchemist. It was the research of those who called themselves alchemists that led to the modern science of chemistry.
I suspect that the real reason why you are so desperate to discredit Newton is because he was British.
PS: If you want to know a charlatan, Keynes would be a fine candidate.
His economic nostrums ruined economics for a generation.
“In the long run, we are all dead” has got to be the stupidest statement ever made by someone who claimed to be scientific.
Sweetie seems to be indulging in an ad hominem exactly as described in the article that they’re posting under. The irony of that fact amuses me greatly!
There was a poll conducted some years ago…don’t remember all the details…it was like a thousand scientists sent a one page yes or no list of questions and a stamped self addressed envelope….it was in response to this 97% stuff and the answers were of course not anything like 97%…..the answers if I remember correctly were mostly “not sure”.
I note that the (in)famous science ‘communicator’, John Cook, appears now to be communicating mostly with his navel.