Sunday
May222011
by 
Bishop Hill
Bishop Hill Paul Nurse on trust in science
May 22, 2011 Royal Society This interview with Paul Nurse appears to have been recorded in January, although I haven't seen it before. The interesting bit is at the start, with Nurse discussing the role of the blogs in science.
Watch the full episode. See more The Open Mind.
Reader Comments (23)
Sir Paul Nurse doesn't blog and believes none of the bloggers are scientists. Should he not read some of the blogs before he makes such a statement?
@May 22, 2011 at 4:13 PM | Messenger
I fear you are letting your judgement be clouded by logic.
If a great Savant like Nurse believes that No Bloggers are Scientists and has evidently made up his mind, then why should he be confused by mere facts?
The other thing I thought was interesting was his suggestion that we're all rude out here on the blogs. He may have a case, but given that he had made a programme juxtaposing us sceptics with AIDS deniers it might be seen as a tad hypocritical to say so.
Still, I'm sure we can rise above this sort of thing.
I think we might be marginally less rude on the blogs (I certainly would) if we didn't have to put up with trolls (I name no names but you know who you are, Zed) whose only aim in life appears to be to disrupt the flow of debate.
I have said before, I will debate with anyone -- and probably lose -- if they are prepaed to make a case. Neither here nor on Delingpole's blog nor Chris Booker's ST column do any of the pro-AGW commenters ever say anything that can be classed as a positive contribution to civilised discussion.
And then there's realclimate ...
Is it any wonder that the blogosphere gets a reputation for ill-mannered behaviour?
Still, I'm sure we can rise above this sort of thing.
But can he? I think Martin was right.
And I suppose it would do no good to point out to Sir Paul that, by and large, the rudeness tends not to come from the sceptic side of the street.
Perhaps someday he might actually take a look and see for himself?
Nah!
This is slightly off-topic, but I notice that there is a petition asking for the repeal of the climate change act:
http://www.gopetition.com/petition/43914.html
David Bailey
Look down!
It is simply astonishing that he thinks that the blogs are not populated by scientists. And also that he thinks sceptics are sceptical for reasons of dogma or ideology, rather than because they have looked at the scientific case for CO2 induced AGW is very weak.
I am reminded of something I think I wrote in a comment on Martin Cohen's 2009 essay "Beyond debate?" [ http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?storycode=409454 ] along the lines of: climate science has been corrupted by politics, so it is now too important to be left to the scientists.
A prime example of the "Do as I say, not as I do" impediment.
Puhlease. Sir Paul Nurse has, of course, read plenty of blogs! Real Climate, Open Mind, Skeptical Science, Deltoid etc etc and only after reading those has he come up with the entirely valid conclusion that no scientists blog.
It is obvious really.
Nurse's argument is good fun.
In effect, what he says is, scientists and the authorities must at all times, have control over not only what the science is, but what it means.
For example, as a good scientist, you are more interested in the results and the methods than the introduction and the discussion. You make up your mind about what the data means, and then verify that against what the authors say.
In global warming science, not only should the data say something, it shouldn't say anything else. Indeed it is this peculiar form of dogmatism directly leads to the 'settled science' idea and the more commonly encountered fallacy of 'debunking'. Paper B 'debunks' Paper A so I don't have to think about what Paper A says anymore (There can be true debunking, of course, but that rarely happens in science, with one paper).
Bob Bindschadler: So there's just no question that human activity is producing a massively large proportion of the carbon dioxide.
Paul Nurse: So seven times more[than natural causes].
Bob Bindschadler: That's right.
How can we trust the science, when scientists like Nurse and Bindschadler can be so emphatically wrong?
I made it as far as '....the David Beckham of science...." - is this a record?
We look to scientists to investigate and analyse the world around us - its past, present and, importantly, its future.
Is anyone concerned that the President of the Royal Society, the peak body for scientists in the UK, appears to gleefully admit to being a technological troglodyte?
Peter Pond
Investigating the future! Is that astrology or has he been watching too much Dr Who? I prefer Red Dwarf and The Hitchhikers Guide for my investigations of the future.
Are you sure this isn't a video of Harry Enfield pretending to be a "scientist"?
Hmmmm.
The instruments are a mess. The data is corrupted. The adjustment process for the data is bizarre. The databases have serious quality control problems. The quality of the code has been described by Harry in terms that should be easy enough to understand. The statistics underlying the science are worthy of a trip back through the looking glass.
Peer review is corrupt. The IPCC has been exposed as a lie. 'Scientists' refuse to allow their work to be audited or replicated and have no interest in checking the work of other scientists. The few studies which have been checked by outsiders have been exposed as worthless. The climate models don't agree, none have managed to meet basic standards for verification and validation, yet all claims of doom depend on the models.
So -- of course the only sensible thing the public should do is to turn all the decisions over to the very people who created and maintain this squalid mess in the first place.
Perhaps the man might turn his attention away from blogs and devote himself to actually doing something constructive about the science. It's not like there aren't a few items on the cleanup list.
He should the blog realclimate and hear how scientists talk. I won't even look at that site anymore.
Scottish Sceptic: I'd suggested the Harry Enfield thing some months ago, and no one had replied. Relieved to hear I'm not the only one who spots the likeness!
SPN philosophically seems to adhere to controlfreakianism ?
or maybe not i do not know the intricacities of pippetry
He surprised me a while ago when he said that science builds on a wave of consensus coming from the data. that was how he predicted the climate change debate would evolve.
This is not true, really.
Take qm . early 20th century there was an established theory that explained atomic spectroscopic results. However as this theory seemed very complicated and did not seem to mesh with particle like behavior the gates were open for new theories . the first one was matrix mechanics and then quantum mechanics. Up until now, no theory won and all 3 theories are "valid".
Space time theorising stopped with the early death of Hermann Minkowski , and the ostracising of Goedel from the fissix community as the scientific community slowly congealed in keepthembusy mongering and petty university department politics, following society at large (socialism)
SPN seemed to have gotten his nobel with describing a protein that starts/stops cell splitting. If I read the greek right..
When I watched that Horizon episode with Paul Nurse I never thought that I would wonder whether the President of the Royal Society was a genuinely scientifically ignorant fool, or a crook. As we have had problems from other Alumni of the University of East Anglia with Climategate, resistance to freedom of information requests and the disastrous incident in New Zealand when they employed someone from the University of East Anglia, who then produced a graph that showed Global Warming out of data that did not show any warming at all.
http://www.climateconversation.wordshine.co.nz/docs/are_we_feeling_warmer_yet.pdf
You could call that man made warming, they then sacked the man from the UEA. I think that has seriously undermined peoples trust in Climate Scientists in New Zealand, but just like Super Injunctions in England. Everyone there knows that the University of East Anglia is full of scientific fraudsters but this is a still a mainstream media taboo.
Read Sir Paul Nurse (Nobel, Medicine - 2001)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2011/may/25/freedom-information-laws-harass-scientists
Sir Paul is trying to elicit input from individuals, organizations, and institutions for the great effort:
http://royalsociety.org/uploadedFiles/Royal_Society_Content/Downloads/Influencing_Policy_-_Themes_and_Projects/2011-05-12-Science-as-a-public-enterprise-Call-for-Evidence.doc
According to the Royal Society:
The top name in the Royal Society’s “high level working group” is:
Phillip Campbell:
http://blogs.nature.com/climatefeedback/2010/02/nature_editor_resigns_from_cli.html