Friday
Apr082011
by 
Bishop Hill
Bishop Hill Terence Kealey on post-normal science
Apr 8, 2011 Another brilliant talk from the EIKE conference, this time from Terence Kealey, vice-chancellor of the University of Buckingham. Kealey's message is essentially "never mind the idealised version of science put forward by Popper, let's look at how it works in practice".
Reader Comments (77)
very inspiring talk and very true.
Not only true for scientists but for engineers and tradesmen as well (well that should cover about everyone who makes a contribution of sorts that has any value to society)
As an engineer a plumber or a neurosurgeon you need a competence build up .
Now you can either go for that and take a big risk,because you need to learn and push delivery times and make mistakes etc or you can keep going with the "flow", which is attending multiculti h&s meetings and never offend proud women and gays, bow respectfully when you walk past that prayer room full with mats etc.
I do not expect the majority to agree with this at all, as experience indicates 90% is of the latter sort.
a last thing I want to say about this is : experienced people , think battle hardened soldiers, but is common all over, talk about their failures and the accidents.
Armchair scientists, the 90%, talk about their successes.
Springs to mind the abundance in self adoration by the BBC; they even have programs where they describe on how they came to all these wonderful successes , the many many people involved eventually the all of it crescendo-ing , as always, in the monthy Python dead parrot clip, or poor Manuel been chased around by Basil.
backing up Don Pablo...for how long did Einstein keep talking about a cosmological constant? However, he was (one of the rare) scientists big enough to admit an error, albeit late in life. i do not believe that Fred Hoyle ever backed down from the steady-state theory, nor his belief that archeopteryx fossils were all forgeries, nor that viruses and heavy metals all came to Earth from comets.
There are several current competing cosmologies that do not include a "big bang." Among them are "electric universe" cosmologies, "quasi-steady state cosmology," the "New Tired Light cosmology" (which actually retains the First Law for cosmologically red shifted light unlike the standard model), and Professor Tom Phipps' arguments which largely reject General Relativity, etc. Every one is based on the same observational basis as the others, and each, to an outsider, seems to have similar numbers of strengths and weaknesses. The failure to converge suggests that rather than having an adequate theory, like 19th C geologists, cosmologists currently talking theory are about as "correct" as either school was at that time.
OT about Delingpole and the PCC
Here is a good bit from the PCC judgement:
"In relation to the columnist’s description of Professor Jones as “FOI-breaching, email-deleting”, the newspaper had provided extracts from an email from Professor Jones in which he had written “If they ever hear there is a Freedom of Information Act now in the UK, I think I’ll delete the file rather than send to anyone”, and another email in which he had written “Can you delete any emails you may have had with Keith re AR4?”. With respect to the columnist’s assertion that Professor Jones was “scientific method-abusing”, the newspaper had provided an extract from an email from Professor Jones in which he had written “I’ve just completed Mike’s Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie from 1981 onwards) and from 1961 for Keith’s to hide the decline”. In view of this, the Commission considered that there were some grounds for the columnist’s opinion – which readers would recognise was subjective – on these points."
I bet UEA now wish they hadn't launched this attack. The evidence is massively damaging to them despite what all the "independent" reviews concluded.
Dr Kealey is quite right. Individual scientists are dogmatic and do not accept falsifications. Instead they club together in groups to shut people out. But post normal science is about making the normal western science subservient to sustaining a core idea and to political action groups. As a result normal scientific dissent is shut out by ad hominem attacks and exclusion. Advancement comes from ever more extreme and untenable research that supports the core thesis. The mark of acceptance of a scientist is signing up to a collective position statement.
Read through the article by Funtowicz and Ravetz below. In all their warm sentences, they never once allow for the possibility that the AGW policy thesis – that extreme policy is necessary to avoid a climate catastrophe – may be untenable or empirically extreme on any of a number of levels.
http://www.nusap.net/sections.php?op=viewarticle&artid=13
Then compare to the work of Dr Barry Marshall on Helicobacter pylori and ask if post normal science would have allowed his work to see the light of day.
http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/medicine/laureates/2005/press.html
Diogenes
Writing-off scientists like Fred Hoyle, because his suggestions don’t fit the current paradigm, is wrong, and for the same reasons that climate scientists are wrong to write-off skeptical arguments. Hoyle could yet prove to have been closer to reality (even if it turns out to be for the wrong reasons).
That pig-headedness, stubborness and the refusal to give up in the face of falsifications might be virtues for a scientist had not occured to me. I thank Kealey for that insight. On the other hand John Eccles, who got a Nobel prize, always said that following Popper's methodology was key to his work.
Kealey’s position is classic Post-Normal Science and, in my view, promotes unthinking arrogance.
Popper described how (successful) scientists think. Kuhn described how (most) scientists behave.
Kuhn’s description can be applied, whether people think like scientists or not. Unfortunately, many trained scientists seem blissfully unaware of the difference and its importance.
Feynman, in ‘Cargo Cult Science’, exemplifies the difference. In Cargo Cult Science people observe the behavior of scientists who are acting on their scientific thinking. Cargo Cultists mistakenly assume that copying the behavior of other scientists will produce the same results as thinking scientifically. It doesn’t work.
The important thing is to think like a scientist (Popper) and never let accepted ‘wisdom’ go unchallenged (Feynman always checked things for himself). Science corrupts and stagnates when we adopt Khunian Normal Science without Popperian thinking (‘Post-Normal Science seems to do this).
In practice, Popperian thinking and the rigorous application of the Scientific Method are much more common in some disciplines (e.g. physics) than others (e.g. climate science). Things are further complicated by the fact that human beings can think like scientists in one context and accept a poorly founded consensus in another.
Unfortunately, challenging the ‘consensus’ (leading paradigm(s)) carries a high risk of isolation and ridicule. And not just in science, for the simple reason that egos and reputations are at stake when prevailing ideas are challenged. In science, funding is also at stake when political paymasters want to justify predetermined positions.
The risks are much lower for those working outside of a particular discipline. A physicist may openly challenge climate science but may avoid challenging, for example, the Big Bang for fear of ridicule by colleagues.
As a result, the big rewards of scientific progress often occur by accident or when people challenge from the ‘outside’.
When accepted ‘wisdom’ goes unchallenged, scientific progress is slow, loses focus and open to unfounded or corrupt influences. Vitriolic arguments result when those outside a specialization (with nothing to lose) challenge insiders (with reputations and funding to lose).
In my view, Popper described key ingredients of scientific ‘best practice’. The fact that many scientists do not follow best practice is a serious problem. Arrogant adherence to unfounded beliefs is counterproductive in the extreme.
diogenes
If I remember correctly, Einstein was wrong twice about the cosmological constant. First, when he proposed it to permit a steady state universe, and then when he abandoned it saying it was the worst mistake he ever made. As we now know, we have dark energy, so it is back, but with a different sign. Pity he never saw that.
But yes, he did admit mistakes -- eventually. Better than never.
r2
As for Hoyle, he was dogmatic to the end. However, he wasn't without great merit. He was the one who proposed stellar nucleosynthesis, which is the process that creates gold from other elements, and indeed every atom larger than hydrogen, It is (helium is created in a star) all created by a star either by fusion or when it goes nova.
That means we are all made of extinct star stuff. So we do have to accept that even "sh@te headed" scientists are worth having around.
jorgekafkazar Simon
"Kealey is describing what IS, not what SHOULD be...what is currently accepted, not what should be regarded as acceptable."
Sadly true. Scientists are people too.
I suspect many posters who us the term 'cargo cult' have no idea where the term originates.
During WWII groups of indigenous tribesmen on remote Pacific islands saw the cargo that was disgorged from transports such as the workhorse DC3 that had suddenly arrived on the makeshift airfeilds in their world. The islanders were covetous of the 'cargo' and following the logic of their belief system, they reasoned that if they fashioned small aircraft from whatever materials were at hand, added these new icons to those already representing their existing pantheon of gods and prayed to them, the 'cargo' they so ardently desired would duly arrive in a full-size version of their handcrafted icon/aircraft.
Therefore, 'cargo-cultism' is a devoutly-held religious belief, not science, and is totally appropriate when applied to CAGW believers.
This thread has got quite heated , but it has also been great - thanks to all the people who have posted, lots of interesting stuff from e.g. Simon Hopkinson, geronimo, Shub, alleagra, and others.
I think the heat here is because of the mixed messages coming from Kealey. On the one hand, he was speaking at a sceptical conference, and indicated that he thought that much of the consensus crew were being - in the Popperian sense - unscientific by not seeking out, or indeed by ignoring, falsifying evidence. That goes down well with us. On the other hand, he is suggesting that all science involves people doing that, the more the better almost. Some readers approve of that, others (including myself) certainly do not. For one, it makes it harder for scientists, in due course, to prove the consensus wrong if we start not to accept that "wrong" means very much.
Also, we got into a related discussion of post-modern science, which some people think means that the group in power can decree what the truth is in some cases, then ride roughshod over everyone else. To be fair to Ravetz, I don't think that is what he means it to be (the essay linked to by ManicBean is not about climate - his essays on WUWT (see e.g. here, or here) are much more sympathetic to the sceptical point of view. Towards the end of the first of those essays, he calls on consensus climate scientists to engage with the sceptics on the internet, accept that their certainty and preaching of low carbon solutions are inappropriate, and thereby make
As I wrote previously, this essay (and the companion one) by Ravetz are hard-going but I at least found them rewarding. I would encourage interested readers to read them carefully. I think people are being over-critical of Ravetz (though why on earth he chose the name "post-normal science" is beyond me).
On the topic of how Popperian science really is, some of the comments here made me think that I had missed out something important in my first comment. We need to distinguish between different levels of science. At the low-stakes day-to-day level of research in science, scientists accept falsification easily and indeed seek it out. You literally could not do any research without using the basic logic of scientific research as described by Popper on a day to day basis. Also, at that level, it is very easy to accept that your theory has been falsified. No or little face is lost by admitting it. But what most of the comments have focused on here is the higher-stakes theories, ones that have made people famous, or could perhaps make them famous in future, and here the picture is very different. If the scientist who put them forward accepts they are wrong, it could destroy his or her career. There's far fewer examples of people back-tracking on those theories, and loads of examples of people twisting and turning to avoid conceding defeat on such a point. In the present case, its hard to believe that Hansen could one day simply say "Oh yes, I got it a bit wrong, sensitivity to doubling is in fact only 0.5 degrees C, and everything will be peachy after all." There was a thread here some weeks ago where someone pointed out the important role of face in science. It would be interesting if some people could find a way of allowing climate science to climb down from some of its claims gracefully - that might stick in some sceptics' craws, but it might be more effective than demanding that the whole consensus crew recant. Another long comment - sorry.
J
Your last comment is very timely I think. Aqcademia, and science, are "respect cultures" in many ways. The old person in the faculty commands more respect than the young person. I fyou have a position where yiu are respected, it becomes very hard to admit error un less you are a genuinely humble personb. In that kind of self-supporting culture, such people are rare. People like quoting Feynman, but did he ever admit to error...did he ever make errors? I am sure he did but he managed to sweep them under the rug. Once you are big, you cannot admit error. it is like the CEO of a large company - eg the guy in charge of Shell who had to resign because a paragrapoh oin the nnual report about proven oil reserves was incorrect. It was a trivial error but he had to resign simply because it was an error. Un til that happens, though, the situnation cannot move on.
In climate sciemnce, i think the "warmists" need to be given space to back down gracipously without everyone clustering to eat their livers, otherwise the battlelines will contin ue to entrench and the arafare will get more and more hostile and destructive...and the repute of scien ce will suffer as a result.
(spoken as someone who is not a scientist)
As a scientist who has been training new scientists for more than 20 years, I agree with some but not all of Terrence Kealy's conclusions. In practice, almost all experimental biology is done to support a pre-determined position. Kealy is right that this is really the only way to proceed because there are so many potential observations (an issue made even more difficult with high throughput methodologies such as next generation sequencing) that a story must be decided upon beforehand and used to guide the experimental design and to interpret the results.
However, Kealy fails to mention the next step which is extremely common in day to day science. Namely, obtaining results that do not support the pre-determined story, repeating the experiment to be sure the first results were not just a mistake, then trying other experimental approaches, getting more results and integrating them into the story and finally modifying or throwing out the story and putting together a new one. In my opinion this data-driven iterative but progressive process is the heart of experimental biology and is the approach used by most currently practicing scientists. Claiming that most scientists start and finish as advocates for a particular hypothesis simply does not describe how most experimental biologists work on a day to day basis. It is interesting that his description applies more to accepting or rejecting a major hypothesis on a particular issue on the part of the scientific community as a whole. Probably because of pride and ego, a number of scientific leaders who have strongly advocated a particular narrative are very slow to abandon that narrative, even though convincing evidence has been reported that refutes it. However, even this process progresses rather routinely, so that about half the things I learned in my introductory immunology course are no longer accepted as correct or they are now know in so much more detail that one could view the previous narrative as essentially useless. Therefore, I do not see much evidence that Kealy's model applies to current "normal" scientific practices in experimental biology.
Does Kealy's model apply in climate science? I do not know. It seems to apply in some cases, but seeing Kealy make broad generalizations that clearly (to me at least) are incorrect for experimental biology, I am hesitant to express a strong opinion one way or the other as to whether climate science operates in a particular way. However, it seems to me that Judith Curry's mission is to shake climate science up a little by pointing out that the narrative has become too enshrined and that the field as a whole is not as data-driven as it should be. This seems to me to be the case, but it is best made by someone who works day to day in that field, like Dr. Curry.
Hi Stephen
just look at recent announcements by Nurse and Singh and the like and tell me that there is no institutional/establishment bias....
Yes, scientists are all objective and factual and good popperians...but they also have careers and families etc...
Not a criticism, people have to earn a living. just saying nthat the appeal to authority should only be used when it is really worthwhile. Otherwise it fails.
This reminds me of the discussion about peer-review. (i.e. is peer review broken or not?). Some scientists and engineers think not; and argue that any system can be gamed by dishonest people. Others argue that the system is broken, and consensus and dogma cannot be overturned by the present peer review process. When such a discussion about peer review occurred at climateaudit, someone who ventured that peer review was broken was asked in what field of science they worked. The answer came back 'the social sciences'. I suspect that physicists, chemists, engineers, etc. are used to regular major developments occurring in their fields, and advancements rates much higher than the rate of funerals. Additionally, simple independent reproduction and verification (or falsification) of their results occurs - so trying to enforce a false consensus is impossible. However, I also suspect that in other areas (e.g. psychology, cognition, grand theories of economics, political 'science', climate 'science', etc.) where experiments are less cut and dried, dogma and consensus take longer to move on. (Sorry, Don!).
"In climate [science], i think the "warmists" need to be given space to back down [graciously] without everyone clustering to eat their livers, otherwise the battlelines will continue to entrench and the [warfare] will get more and more hostile and destructive...and the repute of science will suffer as a result." -- diogenes
A nice thought, but unlikely to happen. Do i need to point out that the fava bean warehouse is located on the Warmist side of town? How do Warmist "scientists" back down graciously from the 10-10 video, when they failed to castigate it when it appeared? Of from the WWF "We know where you live" threat? Or from the numerous whitewash panels? No, the reputation of Science is already a rotting corpse. Too late for CPR.
ZT
Just because someone knows the catechism does not mean he is a Pope or even agrees with it. The experiments you refer to are not only "less cut and dried" but typically pure BS. As I reported several times before, as the Cornell University computer center statistical consultant in the around the 1970 time frame, I saw just what crap was done. And indeed, there are a couple famous professors today, who as graduate students based their thesis on a random eigenvalue or vector kicked out by a 32-bit precision (not much at all!) factor analysis program. Guess who helped them at the computer center? :)
And you are right -- the more dubious the "science" the more dogmatic the "researcher".
However, I must also admit I passed on an excellent career in the pharmaceutical industry because their ethics were even muddier.
diogenses
Like our good friend ZDB? :)) jorgekafkazar is right! Not likely. And it would appear that they are the ones throwing the rocks.
Just substitute 'scientists" with "drug company scientists" and the problem and solution becomes obvious and practiced for 30 years.
Scientists can argue all they want - who cares.
But when their employer want to apply the science to the public - they have to go through an independent, nay, adversarial public guardian - the FDA.
Current Climate Change and the green industry practices are equivalent to drug companies and their scientists being allowed to put drugs on the market without any testing and without an audit of this by the FDA - rather just based on mutual review by other drug company scientists - a totally ridiculous concept to all of us; why can't we see this with climate change science and products.
What I should like to ask of anyone who has bought into the idea that scientists are and have to be advocates for their beliefs, is this:
What distinguishes scientific advocacy from non-scientific advocacy? At what point does tenacity of belief in the face of refutation become mere bigotry?
"Just substitute 'scientists" with "drug company scientists" and the problem and solution becomes obvious and practiced for 30 years. ...(T)hey have to go through an independent, nay, adversarial public guardian - the FDA. Current Climate Change and the green industry practices are equivalent to drug companies and their scientists being allowed to put drugs on the market without any testing and without an audit of this by the FDA - rather just based on mutual review by other drug company scientists - a totally ridiculous concept to all of us; why can't we see this with climate change science and products." --Michael Cejnar
Largely true. But you realize, don't you, that if there were a Federal Science Administration, The Obama would have by now converted it to Gestapo to suppress skeptics?
Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
just reminds Don Pablo about stomach ulcers...for many years the accepted consensus was that they were caused by stress. A bright guy investigated a bacterial causation. Cold-shouldered by the consensus (I believe that medicine rates as a hard science?) - to the extent that he did an experiment on himself.
Time for "hard" scientists to cut some slack for people whose research fields are not easy to work on in an experimental way. But I will not hold my breath.
diogenes
Witchcraft, alchemy and conjuring are perfectly fine activities, but to claim they are science is absurd. Science is a method, a philosophy. There are other methods and philosophy, but they are other things.
Ulcers are caused by many factors, including too much aspirin. Helicobacter pylori, the bacteria you refer to a major factor in ulcers, but not the only one -- (it is involved with 60% of gastric and up to 90% of duodenal ulcers). However, stress is also usually found to be a factor for an ulcer to develop, which is important.
As for truly hard science, I routinely poke fun at the Standard Model of Quantum Mechanics -- it can not explain gravity without the magical Higgs Boson, a particle which may or may not exist. And billions have been spend at the CERN laboratories on the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) looking for it.
That said, the Standard Model is still the best description of what we know about quantum mechanics. It is imperfect and everyone knows it, but it will be a stepping stone onto the next level of explanation of the field.
In short, theories need to be tested, refined and retested. That is science. Hiding computer programs, losing data, and pretending only "real climate scientists" understand enough to explore it mysteries of climate is BS.
Kealy is largely right, in my experience, that a lone scientist will act as an advocate for whatever is their theory at the time, but scientific communities certainly practise the logic of falsification. As I remember hearing it put once: I don't think about falsifying my theories, that's what my colleagues do.
Flabbergasted! What an idiot. Redefining science. Ignore evidence? What the difference between science then and religion or pseudoscience? Schools for suicide bombers are also advocates. Kepler should have stuck to perfect spheres and circles rather than the imperfect ellipses. Flat earthers should have stuck to their guns.
The only thing the idiot has "smashed" is the meaning of science.
I think Kealey makes a good fist of the sociology of science, and as an argument with/for Kuhn, it's not bad. However, Kuhn's theory was sociological. Even though he has been taken to heart by the relativists, his work can be read the other way. For it is a stark warning: religious dogma is ever-present; and groups (and hence institutions) must always be under suspicion for attempting mystical preservation of their secrets (pace Mann).
What Kealey honestly misses (I believe) is Popper's logic of science. Someone somewhere may look at the emperor and decide he has no clothes. This need only be one person (and usually is). Yet they may be right and all the others wrong (as they usually are).
That is why the task ahead of us is to (re-) establish independent institutions free of state and big business interference. As the AGW hysteria demonstrates, this interference leads straight to the organised lie as the driver of public policy and morality. The most terrifying part of Kealey's story is the use of the internet to expose the lie at its heart. There were apparently no other institutional safeguard in place whatever. The solution to this is sociological and political; and long overdue.