Bishop Hill A trainee climatologist speaks
Nov 27, 2009 Climate This was posted at the uber-warmist site, Climate Progress, by Judith Curry of Georgia Tech. It's a letter from a young climatologist:
Hi Dr. Curry,
I am a young climate researcher (just received my master’s degree from xxx University) and have been very troubled by the emails that were released from CRU. I just want to applaud and support your response on climateaudit.org [95% of it
]. Your statement represents exactly how I have felt as I slowly enter this community. The content of some of the emails literally made me stop and wonder if I should continue with my PhD applications for fall 2010, in this science. I was so troubled by how our fellow scientists within the climate community have been dealing with opposing voices (on both sides). I hope we can all learn from this and truly feel that we are going to need voices like yours to fix these problems in the coming months and years.
Judith Curry then continues
At the heart of this issue is how climate researchers deal with skeptics. I have served my time in the “trenches of the climate war” in the context of the debate on hurricanes and global warming. There is no question that there is a political noise machine in existence that feeds on research and statements from climate change skeptics. In grappling with this issue, I would argue that there are three strategies for dealing with skeptics:
1. Retreat into the ivory tower
2. Circle the wagons/point guns outward: ad hominem/appeal to motive attacks; appeal to authority; isolate the enemy through lack of access to data; peer review process
3. Take the “high ground:” engage the skeptics on our own terms (conferences, blogosphere); make data/methods available/transparent; clarify the uncertainties; openly declare our valuesMost scientists retreat into the ivory tower. The CRU emails reflect elements of the circling of wagons strategy. For the past 3 years, I have been trying to figure out how to engage skeptics effectively in the context of #3, which I think is a method that can be effective in countering the arguments of skeptics, while at the same time being consistent with our core research values. Some of the things that I’ve tried in my quest to understand skeptics and more effectively counter misinformation include posting at skeptical blogs, such as climateaudit, and inviting prominent skeptics to give seminars at Georgia Tech. I have received significant heat from some colleagues for doing this (I’ve been told that I am legitimizing the skeptics and misleading my students), but I think we need to try things like this if we are to develop effective strategies for dealing with skeptics and if we are to teach students to think critically.
If climate science is to uphold core research values and be credible to public, we need to respond to any critique of data or methodology that emerges from analysis by other scientists. Ignoring skeptics coming from outside the field is inappropriate; Einstein did not start his research career at Princeton, but rather at a post office. I’m not implying that climate researchers need to keep defending against the same arguments over and over again. Scientists claim that they would never get any research done if they had to continuously respond to skeptics. The counter to that argument is to make all of your data, metadata, and code openly available. Doing this will minimize the time spent responding to skeptics; try it! If anyone identifies an actual error in your data or methodology, acknowledge it and fix the problem. Doing this would keep molehills from growing into mountains that involve congressional hearings, lawyers, etc.
And you can't say fairer than that.
(I've updated this slightly as I inadvertently ascribed the whole piece to the student. In fact the second part of the quote was due to Judith Curry.)
Reader Comments (33)
Talk about hog-wash:
"...I’ve tried in my quest to understand skeptics..."
HE'S the scientist; HE'S supposed to be the skeptic.
It is refreshing to see someone on the other side with an open attitude. Hopefully one of the results of "climategate" will be the recognition by scientists in all fields, and especially controversial ones, that they need to make their data, metadata and code available at the same time their papers are published.
In fact, in many fields, journals should not be considered credible unless they require and enforce this rule.
The age of the internet and the ubiquity of computers means that checking of papers, and even real research can be performed by those outside the fold.
The computer community has demonstrated this with the open source movement. It is time for science to develop its own open science movement.
Teacher always told us: Show your work!
If you don't show your work, you get a zero!! That's right - a zero, and even if you did write down the right answer.
Simple as that.
I wrote my response to this thread at Blackboard. The behaviour at CRU reminded me of an Abnormal Psychology class I once took.
No, the delusion you're saving the planet does not excuse you.
There were a lot of delusions and paranoia at CRU. Read Willis Eschenbach's FOI Request at CA.
At Blackboard one reader wrote that the best scientists are sceptics.
He's exactly right.
I wonder what garbage kids are getting taught nowadays at universities.
"Well gee, I tried to listen to them.
Well I hiope you hear us now loud and clear!"
I agree with Pope.
Your Grace,
Have you noticed how the word "change" has been debased. We have climate change, regime change, BO's presidential campaign use of change, (yeah, whatever) and finally there is no change in your pocket, because EON & EDF are stealing every ****ing penny, whilst telling us how to reduce our collective carbon footprints.
I would love to see millions of footprints stamping these scum into bloody masses in the mud, so that their claret and shit fertilizes the ground, in readiness for growing grass for all the finest beef cattle, pigs, sheep and other delicious food animals we can raise. Give me Kobe-niku. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kobe_beef
I remain,
an 'umble perished priest.
He seems very mature. Pity he already has the view that "sceptics" are wrong and the "mainstream climate scientists" are correct. As pops says "where is his sceptical, questioning attitude"?
That's his academic career buggered then.
Fair statement? It reeks of condescention and an unshakeable faith the skeptics are wrong. "...my quest to understand skeptics and more effectively counter misinformation include posting at skeptical blogs, such as climateaudit..." The grasshopper still has a lot to learn.
"The counter to that argument is to make all of your data, metadata, and code openly available. Doing this will minimize the time spent responding to skeptics; try it!"
And that, young lady, is what they refused to do.
But I can't blame them in a way. If I fudged, cooked and bent data, openness is the last thing I'd want.
"3. Take the “high ground:”"
Sad, that the normal scientific method is relegated to a moral option. Yet the writer may know that, and is trapping the warmists into accepting the mores of normal science.
Bishop HIll, that whole passage isn't from the anonymous student. Looking at the ClimateProgress page the students letter ends with this sentence:
"I hope we can all learn from this and truly feel that we are going to need voices like yours to fix these problems in the coming months and years."
and after that the words are Judith Currys starting with:
"At the heart of this issue is how climate researchers deal with skeptics...."
It would certainly help if students where properly taught the history of science. Einstein wasn't a postman he worked in a patent office.
Again, as with Dr Curry, the tone is rather patronising and totally misses the point of what it means to be a sceptic on this issue. For example:
As far as I can see the political noise machine is entirely in the hands of those supporting the paradigm and they use it unceasingly to further reinforce their message. Or did I mis-read this statement to mean the political noise machine attacks statements from skeptics?
The science I first studied in, Geology, found its unifying theory within my lifetime.
I wish I'd been old enough to understand what was going on then!
Prior to plate tectonics taking hold, the idea of continents drifting around appeared to have fallen into disrepute, with Arthur Holmes, Prof of Geology at Durham, one of the few high profile adherents. Even Holmes, who later co-authored the first modern estimate of the age of the Earth, based on Pb isotope dating) had to suppliment his income by running a mineral specimen shop!
The preceding paradigms of "geosynclines" which assumed sedimentation into mediterranean sized depressions, followed by their inversion making mountains and "land bridges" which invoked pathways accross oceans which popped up, allowed certain animals to cross but not others, mysteriously never crossed with other land bridges, then disappeared without trace, had become convoluted in order to explain observations.
Despite the convolutions, the literature up to the late 1960s shows very little "scepticism".
If "climategate" goes the way I hope it does, there will be far less funding and far fewer researchers in climate science.
I hope the open minded poster is one of the survivors, and with a keen appreciation that
"scientific theories are to be enjoyed as summer time flings, not as lifetime partners"
(Wish I could remember who wrote that)
Keith
(an aging, balding, but still bearded geologist, and comitted SCEPTIC)
As with most true believers the tone of this response still smacks of "how do we deal with the more deranged hoi polloi by whom we are incessantly hounded". I'm still waiting for one of them to say "perhaps we are wrong".
To Perry Debell,
Hilarious! kobe kobe kobe...
The problem is that scientists are supposed to be skeptics.
Tough questions are only dealt with by honest, transparent answers.
The AGW promotion community has gotten away with pretending that anyone who is a skeptic is actually an immoral nazi loving imbecile.
Now we see the leading promoters of AGW are to climate science about what Lysenko was to biology.
I would suggest taht Dr. curry's better answer woould read something to the effect of:
"We see in the e-mails how a group of self-selecting leaders for a particular point of view have lost important aspects of the scientific process, by indulging in ad hom, peer review distortions, data fudging and other unacceptable behaviors. scientists must never become so enchangted with their preferred theory that they seek to prevent the examination of other, competing theories or critiques of their own theories. what Jones, mann, et al, ahve done violates that and must never be allowed to become perceived to be the status quo of climate science.
We must have complete transparency, in the best traditions of science, and a rigorous, credible, peer review process, if climate science is to avoid being tossed onto the ash heap of history."
Instead, Dr. Curry indulges in blaming those wraskly denialists for her friend's problems. her firend's problems, and frankly her own problesm with her failed efforts on linking hurricanes to AGW, are those of the community that she is aligned with. Blaming skeptics is only a frivolous waste of everyone's time.
The bit missing from Judith Curry's post is this: "and if we're wrong, admit it and drop it"!
Judith - there is only one way for scientists- #3 and the sooner climate scientists embrace it - the better.
Here is the first portion of Curry's opinion:
Ideally, there should not be one single scientist who does NOT consider themselves to be somewhere on the sliding scale of scepticism. To be a scientist is to question, find an answer, then question the answer - Dr Curry seems to forget that. Surely there must be some aspects of climate science she is less convinced by, or has she forgotten she is a scientist?
Climate change and other environmental issues seem to be beyond reproach - they dare not be questioned by students. That is killing science teaching from school age right to graduate level. Where is the critical thinking these days?
Yes, I'd noticed the "post office" gaffe. It conjured up for me an image of poor young Albert trudging round Zurich with a sack on his back delivering letters. He'd probably have been happier in the sorting office; at least he could have been doodling equations on the backs of envelopes in his coffee breaks.
(And he was apparently already qualified as a maths and physics teacher before he joined the patent office).
Yes, a refreshing attitude, certainly compared with the attitudes on display in the Climategate emails.
Just a little bit patronising towards the sceptics though.
I think I'm going to puke! Having just read Curry's sentence naming Einstein, I'm definitely going to regurgitate my dinner!
It reads like a quasi-religious grief session. It's like some Irish priest has been caught kiddy-fiddling and Sister Curry blames the "skeptics" - whoever they are!
Climate Science has clearly drifted so far into politics, spin and data manipulation, that any notion of objective understanding has long evaporated!
Scientists should be their own greatest skeptics. An outcome needs to be tested "six ways to Sunday" in order to ensure it is correct. The process of finding rationalizations for the adjustment of the data so they fit the hypothesis is simply unscientific.
Also, meteorological baselines should be adjusted to acknowledge what are known to be natural cycles in weather. A 30 year baseline "normal" period is less than optimum when there is evidence for a 60 (ish) year periodic cycle that greatly influence surface temperature observations over larges parts of the planet's surface. If you select a period of time that is 1/2 the period of the cycle, you could possibly establish the cool phase or the warm phase as the "normal" period and so you are constantly in a situation where climate is either "warming" or "cooling" when it is still in both cases within the norms for a 60 year period. Today's temperatures, for example, are only unusual when viewed in a context of the period from 1961 to 1990. If viewed in the context of 1931 to 1990, there is nothing "unprecedented" going on at all.
Your Excellency,
Everything you do is fabulous except this piece which seems to be out of character. You've got a dumdum graduate student with typical global warming prejudices. No place for that on your blog. Go for the jugular, bishop. They did so in the Crusades and kept Europe from a drastic change.
Dr. Ward Ciac II
scientist
Alas, Judith no job for you in Climate Science awaits, nor in Politics.
My welcoming letter to new grad students.
First, a quote from a graduate student in microbiology, another field that copes with ambiguous data and how to handle the outliers:
"In 1992, O'Toole told me that shortly thereafter Imanishi-Kari called her in and said, "'Margot, look. There's really something here,'" showing her data that suggest the results O'Toole had been unable to repeat. Then Imanishi-Kari, sitting at her desk, went over the data with a pen. To O'Toole, who was looking over her shoulder, she appeared to be crossing out high measurements in mouse groups that she wanted to be low, and low measurements in those that she wanted to be high. " 'See, she's really happy and perky. I'm just astonished.'"
"Until that moment," O'Toole continued, "I was in complete turmoil. I was frantic trying to make myself get the data. I was frantic trying to understand why I am not able to be a scientist. Watching her, I just had this utter feeling of tranquility that I was not partaking because I would not partake. She said, 'Bring me your data.' And then she went through my data and made them conform. She turned around to me and she said, 'So, what do you think?' The she turned back. And this word came out of my mouth, spontaneous and genuine; it just escaped in a whisper out of my lips: 'Fascinating.' And she turned around to me and she looked in my eyes and her eyes were smiling at me. And she liked me. And she pitied me. And she welcomed me back into the fold."
The Baltimore Case: A Trial of Science, Politics, and Character, by Daniel J. Kevles, W.W. Norton & Co (London, New York), 1998, p. 56.
Now, my letter to you, young climatological student: May you also be so welcomed into the fold.
EXACTLY, Judith.
"Many hands make light the work"
Information is NOT the enemy.
So strong is my faith I walk amongst the heretics and deniers, I listen unmoved to their preachers babbling about reason, falsifiability and reproducibility. I invite them into the temple and listen to them spew their tales about solar cycles or cosmic rays or SO2 aerosols. We who have been shown the truth of our guilt know that it us, our emissions, our sin that poisons the world. When they show me their primitive icons showing busted surface stations next to air conditioning vents I just chant a mantra “It's not peer reviewed, It's not peer reviewed”.
'There is no question that there is a political noise machine in existence that feeds on research and statements from climate change skeptics.'
And I thought it was voice crying in the wilderness.
Realists have been on the backfoot continually whilst the political machine trundles onward to Copenhagen.
I applaud Curry's open attitude but the fact that she has to fight for the expression of that view says a great deal about the mucky pond in which she swims.
" I have received significant heat from some colleagues ...": never underestimate how cloth-eared people can be.
Okay....
Talk about hog-wash:
"...I’ve tried in my quest to understand skeptics..."
SHE'S the scientist; SHE'S supposed to be the skeptic.
Now that you've made that correction, Yer Grace, my apologies to the grasshopper. Dr. Curry's reply reeks of condescension and unshakeable faith that skeptics are wrong. Her efforts at engagement are laudable to an extent, but its clear she considers it a missionary effort.
Contrary to other posters, I think it's all right for Curry to believe in her hypothesis and I am glad that even though she calls it the 'high ground' rather than something more neutral like maybe 'scientific method' she is willing to engage. Her strongest point is in the time spent responding to criticism. The point remains that answering the same question over and over again is unnecessary if you do it right the first time, that is, be transparent and open about your methods, that should enable any questions to be answered once, if you get it again you can point to your answer and say 'look I answered this already'. The reason the warmists are getting 'same' questions over and over again is because they refuse to answer, or partially answer or apparently hide completely from addressing it, that's their problem, not that of the questioners. Of course it's annoying to have to make up a new excuse to avoid answering the same question each time it's asked, I'd suggest that if they just answer the bloody question they might find that annoyance significantly less grating.