Bishop Hill The view from the Whitehouse
Dec 20, 2012 Climate: other David Whitehouse has a thoughtful piece on blogging, science and the like. It will be uncomfortable reading for those in the ivory tower:
The fact is that the internet is changing science and the debate about climate science is a good example of it. You can be a professor of anything these days but there will be someone out there in cyberspace who is smarter, better at statistics and computing, and has more time to focus on key problems. Someone who will ask for the raw data and mercilessly pick away at it, pointing out mistakes that before would have gone unnoticed. This might be uncomfortable for some, but it is undoubtedly good for science that cares nothing for personal feelings. The baloney detection kit is in ten thousand parts and is on the internet. Science needs to find a way to encompass this new reality.
Reader Comments (76)
Dung -
there is indeed an article on WUWT by Dr Ira Glickstein http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/12/19/an-animated-analysis-of-the-ipcc-ar5-graph-shows-ipcc-analysis-methodology-and-computer-models-are-seriously-flawed/
Watts also has reposted Whitehouse's paper http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/12/18/dr-david-whitehouse-on-the-ar5-figure-1-4/
Tamino's take-down is still mendacious, though
Richard Drake; With two black body emitters in radiative thermal equilibrium, can there be any radiative energy emitted from either body to the other? If the answer is yes, why aren't we part of a tenuous gas cloud? The real answer is no and I rest my case....;o)
Pete E:
Without personal knowledge of David Whitehouse but going on his writings I have to agree. But talking of his problems with the BBC I was intrigued a week ago that when Auntie felt the need for an 'authoritative' scientist on the subject of meteors she turned to none other than 'Dr David Whitehouse, astronomer and former BBC correspondent'. It may of course mean nothing but, given my new-found belief in a tipping point, for the BBC, courtesy of Martin A, I thought it did and I was encouraged. (And the testimonies at the bottom, for full ironic potential, show the Beeb at its best, precisely because British people entrust it with this kind of thing. It doesn't mean I don't want the old lady abolished. I'm in two minds on that, as always. But she certainly does have to change and I thought this respectful attitude to Dr Whitehouse, despite his well-known role at the GWPF, was a welcome example of that.)
I'm sure people will be delighted to see the return of the 'black body thermal equilibrium' thread :)
For two black bodies in thermal equilibrium, of course there can be radiative energy emitted from one to the other - thermal equilibrium just means net flows cancel out - it doesn't mean there is no flow. If they are close enough, they will heat each other up a little as they intercept some emitted energy from the other and have to radiate it out again to stay in equilibrium.
No no, TBYJ, this isn't the thread you're looking for :)
I sense that people have been at the Christmas spirit already ^.^
OMG OMG Richard you did a smiley hehe
diogenes
Thank you for that and I apologise for my lazyness :(
Dungo, I find your astonishment as convincing as the outrage of Andy Hayman before Keith Vaz's home affairs select committee last year. Too much ham, old chap.
Be careful Richard, he likes guns and he's not afraid to use them. Also, he knows your real name, I told you to use a nym :)
It's OK, I've got my bullet-proof underpants on.
From that very famous New Zealander
If your experiment needs statistics, you ought to have done a better experiment.” – Lord Ernest Rutherford
From that very famous Arthur Conan Doyle:
I never guess. It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts. — Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, A Scandal in Bohemia
(From my collection)
Richard
That wont help you, I didnt think you had anything worth shooting at down there :)
I think many here will recognise this phenomenon: you review a document that is so bad you only pick out the main faults. When it comes back to you with those problems fixed, you have a look at the second order faults...
Dec 20, 2012 at 10:43 PM | BitBucket
If there was ever something designed to raise my hackles it was that. When I submitted a paper to peer review I expected a thorough and COMPLETE review first time.
BUT, I have to say that it didn't always happen.
As Churchill said of Attlee I have much to be modest about. That I suggest is where we leave the jokes from those unknown about shooting any part of a no doubt loved but traceable person on this blog. Funny for an hour or so - but not if it becomes a repeated theme.
Richard
Boooooooooooo I thought that Christmas merryment had arrived? Genuinly no offence intended and there I was thinking it was one of my best quickfire responses Oh Well :(
Interesting comment by Whitehouse. For many reasons fairly clever people become obsessed with a particular subject and a minority will end up as experts. This can be difficult for authors, but all options apart from their taking it on the chin are worse. One possibility, maybe more useful for less emotional subjects than climate change, is comment sections for journal articles, although I'd insist people use their real names and post their email addresses. It will sometimes result in pages of foolish comments but, with "recommends", the interesting ones end up at the top and you don't have to read them all.
Dung: Shooting and maiming someone who has frequently disagreed with you is now your idea of 'merryment'? Once I said stop I meant it. Thank you.
Jonathan Bagley: this kind of thing is bound to happen but the need for it is profoundly contested by those not willing to use their real names. Not that they will necessarily be consulted when it happens and that's just another irony we'll have to get used to.
Dung resolves to buy a more powerful handgun (just in case)
Diogenes, please explain where exactly have acted as a "professional falsificator". My guess is that you cannot. You dismiss what I or others say as lies because it is easier than accepting that what is said might be true. This lets you live happily in your own little bubble, protected from anything that challenges your world view.
Stephen Richards: "I expected a thorough and COMPLETE review first time." That is unrealistic. If there are errors in a paper that a reviewer considers serious, the reviewer would be foolish to waste time reviewing any subsequent text that relies upon these foundations.
'professional falsificator' ... is like giving a compliment
Come on then shub/greek, tell everyone, where have I been "falsifying" things?
Nope. Not the time or the place. This thread is not about you.
All hat and no cattle. Both of you.
Please keep in mind that the process of 'peer review' as discussed these days is not the same as many of us encountered in our most productive scientific years.
In the 1970s to 1990s, the resources industries in Australia financed a great deal of research from their profits. When it was sensible to club together, there were institutions to collect funds to finance, for example, a large, expensive instrument for CSIRO to use. In the main, because of intense and exciting competition, the corporate scientists tended not to publish in open journals, but we did write a lot of material than went by Statute into libraries such as those of Departments of Mines. In later stages, a senior corporate scientist acted somewhat like a frequent peer reviewer, studying detailed proposals for both development of projects and development of theories. Even in those days some projects were in the billion dollar cost category.
Hence, few of us have long publication lists in the manner now used to show prowess.
It was also much more difficult in the 1950-60 era to pay the way to a PhD. In one of the groups I helped manage, about 50 graduates would typically include 1-2 PhDs.
A difficulty arises when we comment on scientific topics now. Those who wish to assign us ridiculous names might be more respectful if they had some idea of our past contributions. It is knowledge, experience, hands-on wisdom that frightens the uncertain scientists of today behind peculiar timetables, formats, procedures, etc. They seek to hide themselves from scrutiny from people such as Steve McIntyre whose work is so far ahead of their own that threy have no answer in science.
The answers, on this strange topic of global warming, will come from science. It is the only reliable source. What follows, such as economics, philosophy, politics - that is little more than speculation on a stock exchange.
I see that David Whitehouse has taken some notice of our comments, and updated the version of his article posted at the gwpf website
http://www.thegwpf.org/climate-science-opinions-baloney-bloggers/
now makes explicit reference to 'experiments' in the first paragraph.
'based on so many generations of scientists carrying out *experiments* and measurements, formulating hypotheses and theories, using logic and mathematical models'. (my emphasis)
A fine example of open review in action. And a better article because of it.
TheBigYinJames: 'thermal equilibrium just means net flows cancel out'
A pyrometer measures the correct temperature of a body even when it is convecting most of the heat input to a forced lateral air blast. Yet the pyrometer sensor and the body are in radiative thermal equilibrium. If you were right, the pyrometer reading would vary as convective heat transfer changed. Thus there can be no energy transfer between the two black bodies at radiative equilibrium. The explanation is in Maxwell's Equations - Poynting Vectors.