Thursday
Feb172011
by 
Bishop Hill
Bishop Hill Learned societies
Feb 17, 2011 Climate: Sceptics A couple of postings elsewhere where help is being requested. Both relate to the subject of the learned societies:
Hilary Ostrov is concerned about learned societies putting words into the mouths of their members. She wants scientists to speak for themselves and to that end she's running a survey of scientists' attitudes to global warming.
Meanwhile Jo Nova is appalled by the groupthink of the learned societies and she is interested in the idea of setting up a new scientific society - an idea that has occurred to me in the past.
Reader Comments (20)
I would concur with that idea of Jo Nova's. However, before that can happen, there needs to be a vital realization: that what has happened in Climate Science has also been happening in a number of other areas of Science, typically represented by the Wikipedia-type scientismic attitudes towards not just Climate Science but also towards homeopathy, Wakefield and the vaccine link to autism, the Electric Universe hypothesis, the Solar System Barycentre hypothesis, "Cold Fusion"/LENR, hard-nosed materialistic neo-Darwinism, and a lot more. I am only listing areas where I have researched enough, ON ALL SIDES, to know beyond a shadow of doubt that these areas hold important and perfectly valid research, and that in these areas there has been exactly parallel marginalization, corruption of peer review, demolishing of straw men, etc etc, that we have seen in Climate Science.
It is, unfortunately, still far too easy to realize the scam that has happened in Climate Science without being aware that this deterioration is cross-disciplinary. IMHO, a lot of this is the shadow side of our enormous advances, which have brought specialization and the inability of outsiders to continue to assess - or one might claim that outsiders have abdicated their rights, or one might claim that insider cliques have formed, hedging themselves in with all that we have seen with The Team. I think both and more. I also always try to think "No Blame" - what can be done to reform this situation.
When I said "hard-nosed materialistic neo-Darwinism" I should have said "challenges to hard-nosed materialistic neo-Darwinism".
Some have made a start:
http://www.scientific-alliance.org
Sonja Boehmer-Christiansen is on the panel of scientific advisors.
"typically represented by the Wikipedia-type scientismic attitudes towards not just Climate Science but also towards homeopathy, Wakefield and the vaccine link to autism"
Feb 17, 2011 at 9:43 AM | Lucy Skywalker
Can you just confirm for me Lucy - do you think that homeopathy works, and that Wakefield has shown a valid link between vaccines and autism?
The AusIMM's submission to the government's proposed Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme included the following:
"The current imperative to reduce greenhouse gases in the atmosphere rests upon a
number of scientific assumptions, all of which are subject to varying levels of
contention in the scientific community:
• The first is whether anthropogenically induced greenhouse gas can be linked
to an increase in average global surface temperature (causality)
• Presuming the previous statement is correct, the extent to which
anthropogenically induced greenhouse gas emissions are influencing an
increase in average surface temperature (extent of climate change)
• Presuming that the influence is significant, the risk that this poses to people
and environment (extent of risk)
• Presuming that the risk is significant, the level of atmospheric concentration at
which stabilisation of climate will occur (level of concentration)
• Presuming that the international community agrees on the level of
atmospheric concentration of greenhouse gases, the policy settings that will
ensue (policy measures)
The AusIMM does not accept each of these contentions uncritically. As a
professional institute comprised of scientists and engineers, our members have a
broad range of opinions on the science of climate change, and particularly causality.
Geoscientists in particular are well placed to comment on what geological evidence
can tell us about the climate patterns of the earth over the longer term.
Therefore, this submission should not be read as an uncritical acceptance of any one
theory on the causes and consequences of climate change. We urge the
Government to recognise that its policy is based on a series of assumptions that
remain the subject of scientific debate.
The AusIMM has prepared this submission in the context of the Government’s stated
objective to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. As experts in minerals sector
production, AusIMM members are uniquely placed to recommend technology-based
measures to reduce greenhouse gas emissions that will not adversely affect the
Australian minerals industry."
On its website it states:
"Owing to the diversity of views amongst our membership, The AusIMM does not have a position on the exact climate change science."
Lucy, ZDB
Homeopathy is off topic.
Lucy, I always try to bite my tongue on other controversial issues when commenting on CAGW as I believe that it just muddies the water. There are many controversial subjects on which I think the orthodoxy is probably correct, a few, mostly not on your list, on which I think it is probably wrong. However, raising those issues just dilutes the arguments against CAGW and provides ammunition for those supporting CAGW.
Bishop
she is interested in the idea of setting up a new scientific society - an idea that has occurred to me in the past.
I think you have -- The Bishop Hill Blog.
artwest
Agreed. I do wish LS would stop doing this.
Many thanks for bestowing post-hood on my survey, Your Grace ... For those who are interested, since I published (Feb. 14 @ 4:30 pm PDT), the actual survey page has had 70 views - and resulted in 13 responses [as of 1:00 pm PDT today]. While certainly not enough to justify drawing any statistically significant inferences, I'm still pleased with this rate of return :-) ... I'm almost at 1% of my (admittedly very ambitious!) goal of 1500 responses from scientists of any and all "persuasions".
Hilary
This is why I inveigh against the Royal Society rebranding itself as "Britain's national academy of science". We don't need one! The RS was another thing entirely, and ought to remain that way.
all this controversy over CAGW/AGW/CC/whatever has made me sceptical of all scientific claims unfortunately, which i think is/will become a problem for most sciences (history etc..)
did you see the prog BBC2 last night about carnac stones for example.
Sorry Bishop.
I could not see how to say what I needed to say about reforming the Royal Society (which seemed to be the topic of this thread) without bringing in this line, so I thought it was on-topic, moreover I made it as brief as I could. I still say it: I believe the reform needed cannot happen until eyes are opened a lot more. IMHO. Eyes are opening with the realization of BS having taken up residence in Climate Science so we have a start at least.
But from comments here it seems we still have a way to go. I'm disappointed but live in hope.
Lucy
I realise your mentiong of the subject was innocent, but I didn't want the thread to turn into a debate about homeopathy.
Don P
Yes, that was my conclusion too. You don't actually need a formal structure any longer.
I think Lucy is getting a bum rap. The matters she references are relevant to her comment. Contrast that with some of the parenthetical asides that appear in BH comments from those on the left. These contributors urgently need to signal the fact that they are only evil in respect of CAGW, not with respect to 'social justice', the NHS, bell curves, birth certificates, Sarah Palin, and so forth. Such matters are, arguably, much less relevant to CAGW than the Dr. Wakefield saga. That's not a good reason for His Grace to suppress all mention of them, though. If those on the left were not allowed to disclose their righteousness, then they might not comment here at all. Which, in many cases, would be a pity. And such disclosure is informative, for those of us who are steeped in sin.
And it's not Lucy's fault that ZDB seized upon a couple of items in her comment as a pretext for beginning to trash yet another thread. You might as well close comments altogether if ZDB is to be granted de facto censorship rights. Lucy is an asset, ZDB is a menace.
Great post and most timely! Good to see the Bish, Jo Nova and others becoming aware of the general mood about this in the broader scientific community.
Sonja Boehmer-Christiansen's organisation, http://www.scientific-alliance.org is a good start but is essentially an environmental sciences concern.
At this time what is most needed is a powerful international and generalist science association that is focused on upholding the traditional scientific method. This is something proposed and agreed upon among 37 scientists and related professionals linked with the 'Dragon Slayers' project ( i.e. authors and supporters of the 'Slaying the Sky Dragon' publications).
There is a great need for such a new international association formed along charitable status lines with no party political or ideological favor. Our fledgling group is Principia Scientific International (website: http://principia-scientific.org/pso/) and we envisage progressing the new society later in 2011 and are currently exploring fundraising options.
We would certainly welcome working with anyone to further advance such an initiative, either in the guise we've created or in similar format.
Jane Coles
Careful not to make too many assumptions about the political convictions of commenters here. There is a risk of mistaking actual topic knowledge with political bias.
If I understand your somewhat elliptical statement correctly, that is.
'for political bias'.
re: recent discussion about need to protect reviewers' names.
Seems that for any (sensitive, political, policy influencing, income-at-risk, religious) topic a consensus opinion should be derived from a secret ballot. This is even more important than reviewer identity/transparency/(and/or protection when needed) - especially for young talent that have an entire career ahead of them who find themselves in the role of the heretic (like Galileo - whose name certainly seems to have been misappropriated in the latest discussions about skeptics - better to label them the "heretics" in the current environment).