Bishop Hill Everybody does it
May 15, 2010 Climate: CRU Climate: Jones Climate: Mann Climate: RP Jnr RP Jnr links to a review of the Climategate story by Der Speigel and has a fascinating discussion with his readers in the comments thread below.
The point at issue is Mike's Nature Trick and the question of whether it amounts to scientific fraud. Der Spiegel describe the trick as follows:
But what appeared at first glance to be fraud ["hide the decline"] was actually merely a face-saving fudge: Tree-ring data indicates no global warming since the mid-20th century, and therefore contradicts the temperature measurements. The clearly erroneous tree data was thus corrected by the so-called "trick" with the temperature graphs.
Many of Roger's readers take issue with the description of the divergent data as "erroneous" and I tend to agree with them here. The data has been processed in the same way in the twentieth century as in earlier periods, so it is not erroneous, but anomalous. The reason for the divergence is unknown and the divergence therefore needs to be disclosed and discussed since it potentially undermines all tree-ring based temperature reconstructions.
Roger argues that the Nature trick amounts to a fudge but not fraud. I'm struggling with this slightly. My dictionary defines a fudge as "a patch, trick, cheat" and fraud as "deceit, trick" so I'm not entirely convinced that there is any difference between "fudge" and "fraud" in terms of academic conduct (I'm ignoring the criminal meaning of of fraud here).
Everyone seems to agree that what was done was to hide uncertainty from the reader, but when a reader tells him that hiding uncertainty is fraud, Roger disagrees
I hear what you are saying, however, in the world of academia, this is just not the case. If it were, most work across most field would be guilty of such charges ;-)
I'm not sure about the smiley here. But when you have such enormous policy questions to answer, I remain entirely unconvinced that an argument of "all academics are dishonest" is going to carry the day.
"Everybody does it" is not grounds for exonerating scientists who hide unfortunate facts from policymakers and the public any more than it was grounds for exonerating the MPs who were caught abusing their expenses claims.
And one other thing. Remember the Parliamentary hearings about Climategate? The select committee criticised Jones et al for withholding data and generally flouting the Freedom of Information laws, but exonerated Jones on the grounds that everybody else in the field behaved in the same way. So this kind of argument seems worrying prevalent in the climate debate.
If Roger is right and all scientists engage in this kind of deception and if it is also true that it is accepted that policymakers accept that "everybody does it" is a valid excuse, what does that tell us about the integrity of the policies that are being thrust upon us?
Reader Comments (101)
Geronimo,
I favor your 1st choice for an explanation of why so may scientists apparently buy into CAGW.
Exemplary of this was Dr. Judith Curry's statement that she would no longer rely on IPCC publications for her understanding of the issues she doesn't work with first hand. This is my paraphrasing of her statement, but I feel it to be accurate.
She did rely on it. And so still, must many others, maybe 255 or more who haven't really done their homework in these areas.
I visited Roger's blog to see his charade of a defense for myself. There, in post #17 Roger wrote,""IMO hiding uncertainty _is_ research misconduct"
"I hear what you are saying, however, in the world of academia, this is just not the case. If it were, most work across most field would be guilty of such charges ;-)"
Roger's claim is quite incredible. I've been an academic physical scientist for a good long time, and his claim is false. Academic scientists can not ethically fudge data or suppress uncertainty in order to preserve their favored theory, and in my experience generally do not.
There can be, and should be, no hesitation to recognize that doing so is dishonest, is inexcusable, does subvert the integrity of science, and does corrode the reliability of knowledge.
Subversion of science undermines the entire basis of our democratic and technical civilization.
Hiding the tree ring decline was fraudulent, plain and simple. There is no caviling this point. Roger needs to bite the bullet. The leak of emails from UEA shows that these people have consciously mounted a systematic attack on the integrity of science. Such aggression demands clarity and a determined counter-attack, not a benign cover story and hand-waving apologetics. Churchill, not Chamberlain.
Those here who are engineers need to be clear about the difference between engineering and science. In engineering, enough of the science is known to establish strong boundary conditions for your engineering models. Much of your work, as I understand it, is to explore the limits of behavior within the bounds of your models. Demonstration is carried out by building pilot structures (circuits, small scale plants, etc.) that test the design parameters. Nothing goes into production until the model space is completely understood. This is good engineering.
Science is not like that. In science, the boundary conditions are not known. Science always operates on the edge of the known, where exploration requires hypothetical extrapolation and creative guesswork. It's not filling in spaces between boundaries. It is going into the dark. So, the practice of science is different than engineering practice, even though both science and engineering rely on experiments to proceed. Science is not, and can not be, engineering. To expect engineering certainties in science is to misapply standards.
Experimental science does apply certainty limits to measurements, it's true. These use the same uncertainty statistics that engineers apply to their own experiments. But when the bounds of behavior are unknown and unestablished, uncertainty takes a somewhat different meaning. In a way, the meaning is more limited in science because the uncertainty extends only to the measurement, and not to the model.
Instead of engineering models, science has theories. Theories amount to quantitative speculation. They are products of speculative creativity, best expressed in mathematics. Theories make predictions, and the limits of uncertainty in the prediction determine whether the theory can be tested. These limits, plus the uncertainty in measurements, determine whether any experiment rigorously tests the theory, or not. Theories stand or fall, in whole or in part, on success at predicting experimental or observational results.
So, science is theory creation and theory testing, where theory is quantitative speculation. Engineering is model testing, where models are empirically described, often with empirical but ad hoc phenomenological polynomials, but based as much as possible on physical theory.
Eventually, science advances into engineering, but only when the theory becomes extremely well-tested and strongly verified. For example, Quantum Mechanics, as a physical theory, didn't make it into engineering, really, until Shockley, Bardeen, and Brattain built the first transistor. And even so, building semiconductor devices today still takes engineering models with plenty of empirical phenomenology built into them.
So, be more tolerant of academic science, you engineers. It's necessary but not sufficient for the systematics of your field. But it has to be more speculative and a little more free-wheeling than engineering, because science enters areas where little or nothing is known. That doesn't mean fraud is acceptable, though, or that uncertainties can be neglected. If anything, fraud is even more destructive and uncertainty statements are more important because when little is known, honest sign posts are more critically needed.
AGW science has failed because so many climate scientists have ignored the huge uncertainties in their theory and measurement. The entire AGW field suffers from false precision, and the advocacy scientists have exploited that with a malicious tendentiousness. They have betrayed their professional ethics, and have destroyed their science in service of their politics.
michel is asking the question I have been asking since climategate was unearthed:
Would the defenders of the CRU/consensus be happy if their money was invested with people who were reporting their investment results the way Jones & pals are dealing with climate science?
Pat Frank, You are starting the special pleading again. Please stop it.
Academia and science are NOT the same thing or even capable of association in the same sentence.
Either talk about science or talk about academia. We would prefer the science.
Professorship Pielke is censuring his blog with "profiles" so i put my comment here then,
This is not a scientific argument and belongs in The Independent or in a Peter Sinclair crock:
land and ocean measurements hmmm
I am really interested how "balloon measurements" and "satellite data" are giving us an indication about how climate/temperature changed on EARTH since the 1950s..
Which CRU is responsible for that data then?
the seasons..Mmmmyeah: the seasons are observed on that 20% of earth's surface where there is high population. Nobody gives us a the Independent report on how the seasons evolve on the 70% of earth's surface that's ocean. Or Gobi deset/Himalaya or Outback.
I recently saw a documentary that htere is a desert in Chile where since aeons (hundreds or thousands of years) not a drop of water fell. the soil is sterile. could the poster elaborate on the seasons there, please.
@Pilke
I take that at heart that the whole of academia is indeed corrupted.
A case in point is the hokum about 5 fruit&veg a day. After 3 decennia finally there is a study that says it is actually all nonsense.
It is clear that thousands of reports every year in each discipline is something which does not work. People should beome Phd (one of the main reasons for reports) in another way. IF we need all this Phd nonsense anyways. When did we become last better from a Phd??
Pat Frank,
It’s no accident that engineers make up a large percentage of the sceptic community. Unlike much of the media or the political world, engineers have the kinds of skills that are needed to understand the language of pure science. We know that a lot of climate science is just theory and if it was portrayed as such we’d be more forgiving.
Are climate scientists responsible for that or is it just down to the media and the likes of Al Gore? I’ll confess, it was his assertion that the science is settled and that there is consensus that got me digging for the truth behind climate science. I don’t remember a wave of scientists rejecting those claims, even though several (including Phil Jones) are now trying to distance themselves from such stupid ideas.
When the scientists slipped from just doing their best to get answers, to creating a more convincing picture they lost the protective mantle of academia. When governments started spending (and taxing) huge sums of money on the say so of those scientists, there was a need for the kind of accuracy and honesty (which does not preclude uncertainty) that fields like engineering and medicine demand.
It is not the job of scientists to make decisions on what the world does in response to climate change. When they fudge the science they try to take away my right to judge the situation based on the best information available.
Incidentally, one of the things that gets me steamed up is when some numpty of a politician or reporter tries to tell me that I’m a sceptic because I’m too thick to understand the science and I’m in denial. I might accept it from someone with the right credentials but never from someone who’s main qualification is an ability to gossip effectively.
This is a general grumble and not directed at anyone here.
Just for the record, as a 'software engineer' - a ridiculous term given the primitive state of our so-called discipline - I totally accept the distinctions Pat Frank has made and, not for the first time, I thank God for him, however awkward that makes him feel! That was awesome, thank you. We need a lot more like you.
One big question: what about the issue of the climate being an open system, not a closed one in a test tube? I've heard it said that Roy Bhaskar criticised Popper's falsification ideas back in 1975 as simplistic in the open system case, leading to what is now called critical realism, a phrase that sits well with me in other fields. Who should I read on such matters, anyone?
Chuckles, nowhere did I suppose that science the same as the Academy. A methodology obviously cannot be an institutionality, and so your objection is categorically meaningless.
Given the commentary here about Roger Pielke jr.'s suggestion that falsifying data is common in the Academy, my defense of the reputation of academic science is completely on topic.
Moreover, your dissociation of the Academy from science makes you appear unaware that most of the advances in science come from universities. Those advances would not be forthcoming if academic scientists were habitually fraudulent.
When I defend the general honesty academic science, I am not speaking merely from extensive personal experience, but from the incontrovertible documentary evidence represented by the history the last 150 years of scientific practice and advance. This extensive historical evidence shows in fact that one almost cannot speak of modern science without including the academic context.
So let's not have any more shallow carping about irrelevancies.
TinyCO2, while I respect your outlook, an education in engineering is no panacea against shabby science. For example, engineers are very over-represented in leading the Creationist onslaught against Evolutionary Theory and against educational honesty in teaching Biology.
Your remembrance to the contrary, there have been many scientists speaking out against AGW climatology. I know this because I've searched the literature. The insight for me, for example, came nearly 8 years ago after reading the paper by Soon, Baliunas, Idso, Kondratyev, and Posmentier (2001) Climate Research 18, 259–275, which showed GCMs have energetic uncertainties much larger than the CO2 forcing they are purported to detect.
There are many scientists who have spoken out against the suborning of science by AGW advocates, have published their critical results, and have gotten pasted for it. Dick Lindzen has published a paper, which you can access here, describing some of this, including scientists who have lost their career because they dared to speak out.
And here is Ross McKitrick's description of the dishonest gate-keeping he experienced, at the hands of journal editors, trying to publish a critical paper. Dick Lindzen tells a similar tale, and so does Steve McIntyre. One suspects it's not at all uncommon. Keep in mind that when journals themselves become biased, scientists with critical views become silenced in great part. And even when speaking out in that biased context, they get discredited because, after all, their views are claimed to be not based in the same peer-reviewed literature that will not accept their work. It's a vicious circle of prejudice.
The way you wrote your post shows no discrimination within the class of scientists, as though they have all become dishonest. This is in great part just not true. One does not see the sort of corruption, now common in climatology, in other branches of science. As a scientist myself, I'd be grateful for some discernment on your part.
Richard Drake, I do feel awkward, but thanks. :-)
The link to Ross McKitrick's essay did not come through, sorry. Here it is again.
By the way, for TinyCO2, as a scientist who has spoken out on AGW science, so-called, my letter in the Fall 2009 Newsletter of the New England chapter of the American Physical Society can be accessed here. Scroll half-way down the page.
Phil Jones wrote in an email that he used Mike's Nature trick on a couple series (including Briffa's) to hide the decline. Has anyone bothered to ask Jones who he was hiding the decline from? Politicians? Funders? Other scientists? The public? People too lazy to read the text (eg politicians, funders, other scientists and the public)? Deniers?
Andrew-
This is an extremely unfair post, to put it mildly.
You write:
"I remain entirely unconvinced that an argument of "all academics are dishonest" is going to carry the day."
This is not even close to my views or what I said. Not only did you quote my words out of context and not provide a link, but you placed them into the context of a misleading and incorrect interpretation. I did not say that all academics are dishonest, nor did I say that I approve of the specific behaviors being discussed. I said that hiding uncertainties is not fraud. And it is not.
Criticism is fine. But you've gone well into the realm of, well, fudge.
Roger wrote: "I said that hiding uncertainties is not fraud. And it is not."
It is fraud, Roger. Were it not, hiding would be unnecessary.
Note that, "to hide" is an active verb. "Hiding" implies an activity, with conscious intent, to remove from sight. How is an active concealment of uncertainty, so as to convey a false certainty, anything but a conscious deception? A fraud?
So Roger, you're right that you didn't say that all academics are dishonest. But when you look at what you actually said, do you really think that changing the argument to "most academics are dishonest" carries the day either?
Or is it that you don't believe that 'Mike's Nature Trick' was dishonest? If that's the case, just say so.
Mixing, hiding splicing data with full disclosure is abhorrent to me. I was lucky in my first degree to have a professor who believed in full openess and integrity above all. Such maniplulation of data is cheating not only those who read your publication but worse still, yourself. Yo may fully believe in an elegant theory, but if you have to fudge data then that seems to say a lot about your personal integrity.
"hiding uncertainties is not fraud."
Hiding any relevant information is fraud.
Andrew
1. Tree ring width is hypothesized to correlate with temperature.
2. In the one of the few (perhaps the only?) span of time that you have measured temperature data, the tree rings widths do not correlate with temperature.
3. This is called a "divergent data problem" and not "my hypothesis is not reliable"?
Can anyone explain how this incident can be associated at all with science? Cannot astrology be supported using the same rigorous logic? I cannot understand how this issue is worth 5 minutes of any rational person's time; anyone supporting a shred of this BS just looks kind of crazy.
One flew east, one flew west, one flew over the cuckoo's nest..........
Pat Frank
The way you wrote your post shows no discrimination within the class of scientists, as though they have all become dishonest. This is in great part just not true. One does not see the sort of corruption, now common in climatology, in other branches of science. As a scientist myself, I'd be grateful for some discernment on your part.
Pat, People are people. And if you want to see just how much a scientist can be a fallible person, you have to only go as far as Albert Einstein. As we all know, he postulated The General Theory of Relativity in 1915 or so. About 10 years later, a Jesuit priest and brilliant mathematician, Georges Lemaitre, postulated what Hoyle later ridiculed as the "Big Bang Theory" because Lemaître postulated that the universe was expanding, and if so, there had to be a single starting point. This he based on Einstein's General Theory of Relativity. Einstein, who "fudged" his theory with the cosmological constant to put the expansion of the universe into a static state, took extreme exception to Lemaître work. Going to the point of telling him "Vos calculs sont corrects, mais votre physique est abominable"
As we now know, Einstein was wrong on this particular point.
And as for you dichotomy between engineers and scientists, engineers have to produce stuff that actually works, while scientists do not. I do have a Ph. D. and I have also worked as an engineer for years in Silicon Valley, so I think I understand both schools. While working on M theory and the 11 or so dimensions is lots of fun, I really want my computer to work as well.
Jr misspelled nudge as that is clearly what was intended. To nudge reader toward believing that drivel. I call them what they are: weasel words.
I cannot understand RP's defence but Judith Curry seems to be still trying to be the sane voice on the AGW side, though she would appear to try to pass the buck... ( "The real issue is with the IPCC, since the text taken at face value, is arguably guilty of obfuscation, fabrication, bare assertions." )
I have a problem with this though. It seems to me that the people "hiding" data are the same ones peer reviewing for the IPCC. Despite Judith's pleas, I just cannot get rid of the stench in my nose over all this.
Judith's comment link:
http://rogerpielkejr.blogspot.com/2010/05/how-science-of-global-warming-was.html?showComment=1273927902409#c5596325035260657031
OT I know, but has anyone read this week's New Scientist? It has a remarkable number of bile-filled articles about deniers and, to me at least, represents a new low in the debate. Not one scintilla of science in any of the articles I read, just referenced to authority and the overwhelming evidence, which seems to be evidence of warming not its cause.
I have written to them expressing my disappointment and shock at the articles. They are available on WUWT
slowjoe,
"The fig-leaf that is being used is that the splice isn't used in a peer-reviewed paper, but only is an executive summary/cover of a report."
Holy sheepskin batman, let;s not bury it in a ref in a report for policy makers where they will never read it, lets's put it in the summaries which they will read... that will make it okay!
BWAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHA... where do they come from?
I do like the idea of renaming Climate Science as Fudge Science.
Pat Frank.
Of course there are good scientists and even good climate scientists, just as there are bad engineers. They’re not genetically different. Engineers aren’t unique in scepticism or ability to observe odd goings on in climate science, but scientists are often held up as the only people who are allowed to judge climate science. Who was Roger Harrabin looking to speak to about climate scepticism? Academic scientists. He would have got more mileage from industry and/or numerous other job titles than scientist. Meteorologist, geologist, statistician, software programmer, etc.
While I’m sure that climate science has a great many who doubt the ‘consensus’ and who realise that the picture isn’t as clear cut as the media portray it, they mostly keep their heads down. Not least because they get labelled denier if they question any part of the dogma. Another big reason they keep quiet is because they feel that to speak out is to cast doubt on climate science as a whole. I think the opposite is true.
I wasn’t extending my opinion of the scientific community beyond climate science but other areas are not immune to the same mistakes climate science is committing. The recent outbreak of swine flu is a good example. The flu could have been a disaster but we were lucky because it was so closely related to an earlier strain. The medical scientists were guilty of not controlling the media perception of pandemic flu and now they admit amongst themselves they made a big mistake. They over hyped the dangers of this flu and the value of a vaccine. They under stressed the uncertainties and kept too quiet when it became apparent that H1N1 wasn’t going to be a mass killer. The risk of a horrific pandemic is still there but people will be much more sceptical of catastrophe next time.
If CAGW is true, we won’t get a second chance. If climate scientists continue to damage the reputation of their field by ignoring obvious faults they’ll be guilty of feeding public scepticism and of delaying effective action.
Don Pablo, my point is that the great majority of scientists are not dishonest, not that they're not fallible.
You wrote, "as for you dichotomy between engineers and scientists, engineers have to produce stuff that actually works, while scientists do not."
That is a false dichotomy. Scientists have to make hypotheses and produce tests of theory, engineers have to produce working models and reliable instrumentality. There's no point in faulting scientists because they do not do as engineers do.
Scientists have to produce reliable results and physically predictive theories, which are easily as rigorous tasks as the production of reliable models and working artifacts by engineers.
Supposing that engineering is more grounded than science by pointing to technology, ignores the basis in theoretical and experimental science of all that engineers do. Engineering without science is no more than an art.
String theory, which even some physicists call a liberal art, does not exemplify all of science.
I'm sorry to say this, but I think that Roger has this entirely wrong. And it seems clear, both here and at his blog, that the vast majority of posters (even Judith Curry although she was politic about it) agree with that position.
TinyCO2, thanks for your clarification. I agree that too many climate scientists keep their heads down, for reasons only they know. Steve McIntyre has been very outspoken about the one-sided silence of paleoclimatologists and even of the national science bodies, such as the AGU and the AMS, who have protested the inquiries into Michael Mann's work and the leaking of emails, even as they have been studiously silent about the withholding of data and methods, and the bias of journal editors and reviewers.
I'm also in complete agreement with you about the falseness and vacuity of the argument that only climate scientists are qualified to judge the field. This argument is generally made by green NGO supporters, most of whom seem to be scientific illiterates, and some of those climate scientists that have put their environmental advocacy ahead of their professional ethics (or maybe of their good sense). It's not an argument likely to be made by the general run of scientists. It's not very likely, for example, that any reviewer (outside of climate science, anyway) would get away writing that some study is invalid because the author didn't have the correct degrees.
I don't care to make a Pascal's wager about AGW. From what I can see, the empirical evidence argues that the CO2 is having an undetectable influence on climate, apart from any effect that may follow from the apparent greening of forests and deserts. I see no reason to credit the predictions of climate models, on which the entire CO2 alarm is based.
Richard Drake,
You could try Roy Bhaskar's " A Realist Theory of Science", published in the 1970s and availalbe at Amazon. It's quite tough going. These days he has gone a bit strange, but the 1970s stuff seems to me very insightful.
The treatment of anomalities defines the difference between academia and those of us who live in the real world. In the real world, an anomality can lead to an explosion on a drilling platform or a plane crash. Is the impact of the current anomality in the Gulf of Mexico lessened by the fact that 50,000 wells were drilled in the last x number of years without an incident?
In the real world, an anomality is something that escapes rigorous process and quality controls. It appears that in academia, the process and quality controls, if they exist at all, are greatly in need of improvement. An anomaliy could justly be disregarded as erroneous since they do not have control of the process or the quality.
More importantly, in the real world, an anomality is regarded as a learning opportunity, or an opportunity for improvement. It appears the the reason to "hide the decline" was to make the picture neat. There is also the underlying issue of not to cast doubt on the validity of the data. Where is the intellectual curiosity to understand this anomality? Is it possible, for example, that tree growth is related to visible light and is independent of infrared? The greenhouse effect increases feedback of infrared light and may not impact tree growth. Therefore an understanding of this anomality might support the AGW theory. On the other hand, it could be the the warming seen in an illusion because of bad siting of surface stations. This is why anomalities should not be hidden, but considered a learning opportunity.
I'm not sure that the engineers vs. scientists meme is helpful. There are certainly scientists who can make very competent engineering decisions. There are certainly engineers who can do excellent science. I for one don't believe that there truly is a paucity of engineers in support of AGW; more likely to me is there is a lack of engineers with requisite credentials to participate in AGW marketing.
If there is one thing that might discriminate engineers and science on this issue, it is perhaps in the assignment of relative risk. Most AGW is promoted based on a Precautionary Principle, "What's the worst that can happen" approach. Engineering tends to be driven more by cost-benefit trade-offs.
Fraud? Fudge? If a research student of mine had tried to sneak that fiddle past me and I'd caught him, he'd have been out on his ear. That sounds to me like an operational definition of fraud discovered.
Mikep: thank you. There's nothing more recent than Bhaskar 1975 then? Not that there has to be I suppose, given that it's philosophy. I think I will check with a friend who lectures in the history and philosophy of science at some point.
Banjoman,
What you state about the precautionary principle of scientists versus cost benefit analysis of engineers makes me think that this science/engineering meme is very useful. It makes me think the scientist has the the blunt instrument when he answers the question: "in principle does CO2 contribute to a warming?" On the other hand the engineer is asked to tackle the more difficult task of giving us numbers. The problem with the precautionary principle is it can be utilized for every danger the human mind can dream up. By the precautionary principle I could argue that the whole global warming debate is moot because we first have to settle the question of the 2012 doomsday. For me, much of my skepticism lies with the models and models are things that engineers fashion. Hence, the engineers vs. scientists meme is helpful.
Pat Frank
"Methinks the scientist doth protest too much."
I am assuming that you actually have advanced degrees and have spent time at a major university, as I have. In my case it was Cornell. I even had a Nobel laureate, Robert W. Holley, on my graduate committee. The reality I watched was quite a bit different than you seem to believe.
To each his own. Scientists do not have to produce anything, just words. I think the Standard Model of Quantum Mechanics is a classic example. It goes on for several pages of complex mathematics and yet is does not even try to deal with gravity.
It reminds me of the Crystal Spheres theory developed by Plato, Eudoxus, Aristotle and others to explain the movement of the stars and planets. This got more and more complex over the centuries to deal with such problems such as the regression of Mars and a few other loose ends.
Somehow I get the feeling that Physics today is little more than Crystal Spheres II.
True, they are trying to find the Higgs boson with a multi-billion euro Large Hadron Collider, but I hope they find the tachyon instead.
If you know quantum theory at all you will understand what an iconoclastic wish that is.
It is worth remembering that Pelke Jr is a Senior Fellow of The Breakthrough Institute which he describes as "a progressive think tank" but is also an environmental advocacy organisation.
The 'Everybody does it' argument gets me quite depressed. I have been taking some eight years to write a book on a complicated subject, simply because there are lots of facts that must all fit in, or else my main point goes out of the window. It's nothing of great consequence, only Art History, but the scientific principle is the same. With less care it would be over three years ago, with academic promotion and all, but this is something I just cannot do. And there are many like me. That 'everybody does it' business is simply a lie.
Don Pablo, you wrote, "Scientists do not have to produce anything, just words."
As an experimental scientist of long standing, I know for a fact that this claim is entirely wrong. I also know many other scientists who have produced entirely reliable experimental results, often guided by the (as it turned out correct) predictions of quantum mechanics as represented in Density Functional Theory. I'm not interested in a contest of credentials, and offer my arguments only on their own merits.
Your gripe about QM amounts to a complaint that it is incomplete. So what? All current scientific theories are incomplete. People work on them where their lacunae are the most troublesome. But incomplete doesn't mean useless, meaningless, subjective, mere opinion, or casually dismissible.
Likewise, all of physics is not represented by particle physics. However, I have no philosophical problem with people trying to understand the physical universe at its most basic level; even if that turns out to have no engineering applications (which demurral I tend to doubt as a matter of principle). I also have no philosophical problem with seeking knowledge for its own sake; something you apparently dislike.
Your engineering models require a basis in the same physical theory you disparage. Engineering models also include experimental points connected with non-physical polynomials. But I understand the need for that, and have no criticism of interpolated fits to data or of their use by engineers. I fully respect engineers and admire their work. It appears to me, though, that an important part of your world view includes disparagement of science and scientists. So be it. But your position is rationally untenable.
As an addendum relevant both to the larger topic of AGW and the local topic here, let me observe that the best thing that could clear up the AGW mess is an engineering-quality validation and verification study of GCM climate models.
Not one GCM has gone through the process required of the engineering models used for all other large technological projects. I have little doubt that such a third-party study by disinterested engineers competent in numerical modeling would prove the climate models policy-worthless. Academic climate scientists are unwilling to do this, because it's tedious and won't attract grants. Politicians and the national engineering societies, but especially the former, have failed abysmally in their duty to demand a thorough V&V study of climate models before crediting their predictions of catastrophe.
So, if you'd like to make a good contribution, Don Pablo, one suitable to your elevation of engineering methods, do talk up the need for an engineering-quality V&V study of climate models. You guys are uniquely qualified to carry out the project, and have the tools that this kind of attention to detail assessment requires. It would put a strong light on the heart of the controversy and clarify the whole business. I have little doubt that the final report would include the most outspoken condemnation imaginable of the 20 years of complete incompetence we have all lived through.
Hank
I think the appropriate meme is the discussion of the precautionary principle vs. good cost-benefit analysis, not scientists vs. engineers; there is no reason why scientists cannot be good engineers, and no reason why engineers can't do good science, and discussions otherwise simply distract from more important issues.
I see the hide-the-decline as part of a deliberate effort to mask inconvenient facts in an effort to avoid cost-benefit discussion and go straight to the precautionary principle. Roger Pielke's primary defense of fudge seems to hinge on the triviality of the offense; that it affects a very small part of the overall graph. Sort of like the difference between petty theft, theft, grand theft, and larceny. Perhaps he is right; I only have so much energy these days. I think the problem with the hockey stick is not really the dramatic temperature increase in recent decades, but complete elimination of the medieval warm period that makes that increase so dramatic. That isn't really part of hide-the-decline.
This may be considered o/t but to me it cuts to the chase. This is from Phil Jones's Q&A with Roger Harrabin:
Yet many sceptics seem to concede the point that 'of course we don't deny warming, just the anthropogenic contribution to it'. Jones's reply would seem to indicate that there has been no warming to speak of, anthropogenic in origin or not, for the last 15 years. If true, that would seem to make all other arguments pale into insignificance, so why is it not game, set and match to us (the sceptics) when Phil Jones, of all people, openly admits the apparently complete failure of the whole theory?
I would have thought this simple point should be hammered home relentlessly, but recently I haven't particularly noticed this. Confused.
Der Spiegel was not the first to use the word 'erroneous' referring to these data. The March 2010 Parliamentary Science and Technology Select Committee report on CRU used it here (my emphasis):
Is not the following quote from Richard Feynman to the point?:
>>There is one feature I notice that is generally missing in "cargo cult science." It's a kind of scientific integrity, a principle of scientific thought that corresponds to a kind of utter honesty — a kind of leaning over backwards. For example, if you're doing an experiment, you should report everything that you think might make it invalid — not only what you think is right about it; other causes that could possibly explain your results; and things you thought of that you've eliminated by some other experiment, and how they worked — to make sure the other fellow can tell they have been eliminated.
Details that could throw doubt on your interpretation must be given, if you know them. You must do the best you can — if you know anything at all wrong, or possibly wrong — to explain it. If you make a theory, for example, and advertise it, or put it out, then you must also put down all the facts that disagree with it, as well as those that agree with it. There is also a more subtle problem. When you have put a lot of ideas together to make an elaborate theory, you want to make sure, when explaining what it fits, that those things it fits are not just the things that gave you the idea for the theory; but that the finished theory makes something else come out right, in addition.
In summary, the idea is to try to give all of the information to help others to judge the value of your contribution; not just the information that leads to judgment in one particular direction or another. <<
DR - the quote you mention includes these words:
"...that did not fit his view that recent global warming is predominantly caused by human activity".
The point I make in the post above yours is that even Jones seems to admit that there has been no statistically significant warming for the last 15 years, so the AGW element is academic, is it not?
DougieJ - I think it's possible to read too much into Phil Jones' BBC comment. Noisy data over a short time scale are difficult to assess - is the noise 'masking' a real trend, or is there no trend? The measured increase in temperature since 1995 just fails to reach statistical significance - Phil Jones' response to that is 'we should assess temperature data over a longer period'.
And I think the quote in my post uses 'recent' in the sense of 'since the 1970s' or so.
Pat Frank
I do love your rhetoric. You might run for office.
Your criticism is sans substance, Don Pablo.
Just like your rhetoric. You right hundreds of words and say nothing. Very boring.
Don Pablo. Right. evidence that academic physicists produce more than just words is hard to find. Likewise academic chemists. Academic biologists?, clearly nothing to see.
Here's an example of some of my own recent experimental work re-writing the solution structure of cupric ion, but obviously validating your claim that academic scientists don't have to produce anything, have no stake in physically reliable results, and toy around with mathematically dense but substantively vapid theories.
You're also dead right on, of course, that remarking on the lack of independent V&V of GCMs is empty of significance.