Saturday
May292010
by 
Bishop Hill
Bishop Hill Harrabin again
May 29, 2010 BBC Climate: Russell The attitude of the establishment to the sceptics shines through the succession of inquiries into controversial science at the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit (CRU).
When at the launch of the Sir Muir Russell inquiry I asked about the credibility of the review panel in the blogosphere, Sir Muir dismissed the enquiry with the flick of a wrist - he had been a senior civil servant and he had run a university, his bona fides were beyond question.
But the blogosphere does not respect past reputations, only current performance. And some of the top performers in the blogosphere are critics of the establishment.
Reader Comments (26)
That was an article by a free-thinking man, and one not impressed by the condescensions of May and Russell.
Harrabin's report from Heartland referred to the 'hacked' emails, so I don't think he's entirely on board yet!
There's a sketch by Mitchell and Webb where two SS officers begin to wonder if they're on the wrong side.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FsNLbK8_rBY
It seems to me that there are a number of warmists out there who might be feeling the same way.
I believe there have always been sceptics in the RS but their voices have not been heard. I know for a fact that when Prof Houghton advanced his views on global warming in the early 1990s at least one of his predecessors strongly disagreed with him. This was at a meeting of the Foundation for Science and Technology held under Chatham House rules.
Global warming has become the establishment view. It will be very difficult to unpick. The scientists who have advocated the thesis are now well and truly on the hook; the politicians are up there on the hook with them. Getting off the hook will be a bloody business indeed.
There seems to be a slow change of direction by Harrabin. Hopefully he will continue with his new-found scepticism.
I have just returned from giving evidence at a wind farm public inquiry. The first question the QC for the developer put to me was "Dr Bratby, you're a climate change denier aren't you?" I was dumb-founded. It was either an attempt to try to intimidate me or it was an attempt to try to discredit me as a reliable witness (the QC at a previous inquiry said I was an unreliable witness because I had worked in the nuclear industry). He produced a sheaf of comments I had posted on various blogs. The problem the developers have is that to justify these useless, expensive, subsidised, noisy, harmful wind farms, they have to believe they are saving the planet from dangerous climate change. They are getting more and more desperate because "climate change" is unravelling and the public are getting organised in their opposition to having 125m monstrosities placed on the edge of their villages (there are currently 230 action groups in this country and a European-wide organisation of opposition groups).
We have to keep pushing.
BTW, I have just received an email from some young dip at DECC in response to my email to the new PM. It is essentially no different from the ones I have received in the past, referring to the usual garbage about most scientists agree that climate change is happening and it is our fault and then the usual crap about the IPCC. Finally I can rest assured that "we will use every influence we have internationally to get a global deal to tackle climate change". They are incapable of reading what is put to them; they can't even get my name right. As long as DECC is stuffed with numpties like this, we will get nowhere.
Harrabin: ".. the world will be much poorer if they do not know who they can trust."
Knowing who not to trust isn't a bad start, though.
I'd be more encouraged if Mr. Harrabin would stop dancing around the issue and say flat out that if the RS review is to be credible, it must include submissions from Steve McIntyre and other leading climate sceptics. Just "seeming" to be open to critical views is no longer sufficient.
When are they going to stop trying to illustrate their points on "carbon emissions" using these photoshopped images of cooling towers and condensers?
I'm not so sure if Harrabin has changed his mind very much - or even what would have to happen to change it.
Here's a paragraph from his BBC story:
I wonder how these 'surveys' measured the 'insouciance' of the blogosphere. Is there some kind of scale for 'insouciance'? Were these surveys 'peer-reviewed'?
Harrabin is out of his depth in anything scientific and just ends up agreeing with whoever sounds most important. He does not comprehend that scientific truth and human understanding are independent of each other.
His own background is a degree in ... English. You study Shakespeare and the more you study the better you get. Well sorry, Rog, you can't transfer that mindset to science.
I'll tell you what I think is happening. We sceptics/agnostics have moved from being all nutters/paid advocates to being wrong-headed romantics tilting against big science. In Harrabin's head, that is. He does not sympathise with the RS and all the establishment types. He does not WANT to side with the establishment. We are the rebels. That is a position he finds more emotional sustenance from. Maybe he is positioning to champion the cause of scientific scepticism. Maybe the RS is positioning to be blameless when the chickens come home to roost, when the politicians find themselves out on their own with the following crowd not cheering them on but wandering away.
"I am the President of the Royal Society, and I am telling you the debate on climate change is over."
I’ll tell you what it means Roger, it means, he thought his opinion was more influential, more powerful that the truth and to hell with what anyone else might think. And you Roger along with the rest of the MSM were a nonchalant journalist who just kowtowed before him. Let’s get some real enquiring journalism back on the streets and save the country billions of pounds. I think you are heading in the right direction at last.
I found these personal accounts by Harrabin a hoot:
"I remember Lord May leaning over and assuring me: "I am the President of the Royal Society, and I am telling you the debate on climate change is over.""
Now, listen to me, sonny...do you know who I AM?
What an arrogant pompous fool. You can't shut down a scientific debate by an appeal to personal authority.
If Harrabin had had his wits about him he could have retorted, "But I read the motto of the Royal Society, and I am telling you it says Nullius in Verba: 'take nobody's word for it' "
And then:
"Professor Sir Brian Hoskins, the Royal Society's lead on climate change, told me he wouldn't look outside the realms of the Royal Society for input into the framing of a society review into the UEA affair."
And so, thereby, the review is impoverished, and its credibility blighted. Except in its own eyes of course. Arrogant pompous fools.
An especially interesting comment was that “there's the whiff of "end of empire" in the air as establishments strive to protect their authority as it ebbs away into the blogosphere”. Here is what I think is happening.
Up until half a century ago, scientists built their reputations by making great discoveries. With the rise of the journal system, that changed: now they build their reputations by publishing in prestigious journals. Today, it does not matter if what is published is good research, only that it is in a prestigious journal. The result is predictable: scientists form alliances—small groups of scientists take over fields, reviewing each others papers, keeping the "in" crowd in and others largely out. Evidence for that in global-warming research is clear from the Climategate e-mails. It actually occurs in many fields.
The quality of research has declined as a result. Marcia Angell, a former Editor-in-Chief of the New England Journal of Medicine (the world's most prestigious medical journal), says "It is simply no longer possible to believe much of the clinical research that is published". Richard Smith, who was Editor and CEO of the British Medical Journal during 1991-2004, says much the same in his book. Many other fields are like that too.
In 2002, I published a paper presenting a hypothesis that implied radiocarbon dating is not nearly as accurate as has been claimed. My paper was published in the leading journal for radiocarbon research. Seven scientists, including some world leaders, then published a "rebuttal". One section of their rebuttal basically claimed that up and down are the same direction. The rebuttal also effectively claimed that having ten out of eleven dice come up 6 was something that commonly happened by chance.
In 2003, I published a paper on the chemistry of volcanoes, explaining that much prior research had misunderstood the concept of "standard error" (a basic notion in statistics, taught in all introductory courses). My paper was published in the leading journal for geochemical research. No one ever rebutted it. Instead, my paper was just ignored.
The hockey stick graph, in global warming, also had an elementary statistical error. The scientists involved fought that, and it was only because of Steve McIntyre that the truth came out. Yet even after confirmation by a world-leading statistician, done at the request of a Congressional Committee, many scientists will not accept the truth.
Another example, for research in molecular evolution, is here. I can give many more.
The BBC article closes with an important point: "for governments and many citizens, the world will be much poorer if they do not know who they can trust". Much of the trust given to scientists is nowadays unmerited. Scientists are fighting hard to keep their trusted status, instead of earning it. Bloggers are fighting hard against such.
Another underlying issue is why scientists are trusted so much in the first place. One reason for such trust is that there was previously little alternative. As an example, consider two people: one is a scientist, whom I will call "Jones", who is a world-leading researcher in his field, with scores of peer-reviewed publications, and who is the head of a leading research group; the other is an unknown, whom I will call "Keenan", who is not a researcher in the field, and who has no institutional affiliation. Suppose that Jones says "X is true", where X is something in his field, and Keenan says "X is false". Whom should you trust?
Without further information, it is obvious that you should trust Jones. Suppose, though, that Keenan also says "X is false and you can check this in source [1]". Now what should you do?
In the pre-internet age, if you wanted to check, you would have to go to a research library, and study the source. It would take substantial time and effort. Few people would do it. In the internet age, the source can be put online, and anyone can check, often with only a few minutes of effort. So someone who is willing to make that effort can generally decide for himself who is correct. What this means is that the hyperlink (not blogs, per se) renders trust in scientists less important.
The combination of less-merited trust and less-important trust means that scientists are going to become less trusted. Scientists need to come to terms with that.
Nullius in Verba!
No kidding?
I'm reminded of Adam Smith's observation that conspiracies against the common interest are an inevitable product of professional associations.
Mr Keenan, I commend to you dearieme's dictum:
"All medical research is rubbish" is a better approximation to the truth than almost all medical research.
Great post, DJK.
Why would anyone need a pope once they can read the bible themself.
On the nail and in the coffin.
Quite a turning point.
It is rather sad that Harrabin did not grasp the significance of the 'climategate' e-mails when he had them before everyone else. Had he behaved as a true journalist/scientist the lead he was given ought to have led to a Woodward/Bernstein investigation - alas it did not
and no amount of climbing back up the fence will rid him of the whiff of BBC bias/suppression.
Clearly, had he taken an aggressive line with the e-mails he would now be working as an independent journalist, but at least he would have some integrity left.
However, in the light of recent events, he may be considering moving his BBC pension funds
(if he has any) as investments can go down as well as up !
I think Roger was somewhat surprised at the tone of the Heartland Conference. I don't think he has had a "Damascus Road" experience, but he clearly has altered the tone of many of his comments viz:-
"At the Heartland Institute climate sceptics' conference in Chicago last week most scientists seemed to agree that CO2 had probably warmed the planet at the end of the 20th century, over and above natural fluctuations."
"But they did not agree that the warming will be dangerous - and they object to being branded fools or hirelings for saying so."
Harrabin hit the nail on the head with 'whiter than white'.
Liars are liars, doesn't matter if they are little white lies or whopper lies.
John Q Public puts them in the same pile.
'....Arrogant pompous fool..... ' @ ScientistForTruth.
Whatever the colour of the government, the RS cannot afford to kick over the traces. After all it relies upon 'Parliamentary Grant in Aid' for 68.2% of its funding!
Wow
Roger Harrabin: (bbc)
"....And some of the top performers in the blogosphere are critics of the establishment.
Steve McIntyre, for instance, is a mining engineer who started examining climate statistics as a hobby. He has taken on the scientific establishment on some key issues and won.
He arguably knows more about CRU science than anyone outside the unit - but none of the CRU inquiries has contacted him for input. "
Imagine this 6 months ago........
Roger is perhaps having a Judith Curry moment...(putting the bbc in the middle)
I will imagine he will receive flak from both extreme sides of the debate for this article...
Which just shows the bbc is doing something right....
Harrabin sounds very like a rat destering a sinking ship.
Lets hope for an "end of enpire"
feeling at the BBC too.
>But the blogosphere does not respect past reputations, only current performance.
Actually, that's not really true. We do recognize past performance, if that past performance is credible. If it's just lecturing people at dinner parties then that doesn't count as "performance" (and I've heard other people tell me that May has behaved that way to them).
>Surveys show that many people don't believe the truths of scientific orthodoxy anymore
Again, not quite right, as there is the whole issue of whether what is being represented as scientific orthodoxy really is.
Agree with John Shade. Harrabin comes across as quite credible here and I now think his tendency for candid inside revelations are sometimes missed by some people.
This is quite an interesting statement that is now on record thanks to Harrabin.
I remember Harrabin candidly reporting Al Gore and his PA harraging him for not being "on message" when he dealt with them.
Whichever side of the polarisation you're on, you have to respect Harrabin as a self re-appraising reporter worthy of interest ;)
Harrabin attempts to fashion something anti-establishment out of Steve. That's at worst a misrepresentation, but I suspect more likely a base mal-comprehension of Steve. The science is not the establishment, it was merely hijacked and exploited by the establishment. It's the science's throat that Steve sank his teeth into.
I think it's well-established now that in matters of climate sciences, Steve is healthily apolitical. An anti-establishment position is very much a political stance, and it's something we can generally agree is exactly the place that Steve of all people will not go.
Nevertheless it's clear that Harrabin has had some kind of epiphany somewhere on the road to (or from) Chicago. Of course I'm maddened when I think back to some of the scientifically naive texts he's put out in the past but I think he's beginning to get it. One might presuppose he's equally as embarrassed.
When your thermometer is newly calibrated and its offensive inaccuracies are finally eliminated, how long should you spend cursing and berating your thermometer for its earlier failings? If Roger has, as it appears he may have, twigged that he has a responsibility to gain a deeper understanding of the science and present a more objective view of its key players, their motivations and their biases, then it's all good from where I'm sitting.