Bishop Hill Climategate and the exclusionary principle
Aug 26, 2012 Climate: CRU Climate: HSI Climate: Sceptics A new paper by Garud et al (Social Studies of Science, forthcoming) reviews Climategate and analyses some of the sociology involved. The authors conclude that while climatologists - or at least the Hockey Team - were seeking to protect the space in which they operated, their actions actually led to the destabilisation of that space.
In the case of climate science, as concerns multiplied, the approach taken was one of exclusion, which in hindsight appears to be puzzling given that the post-Climategate investigations failed to find evidence of ‘scientific misconduct’ or fraud. In other words, despite having nothing to hide, those involved employed numerous exclusionary tactics, which later misfired.
Ultimately, our analysis suggests that the exclusionary tactics taken to stabilize the climate
science precipitated the Climategate incident that threatened to destabilize the very foundations of climate science by exposing the exclusionary processes through which the infrastructure had emerged. Related to these observations, it is well known that science can become politicized and contentious (e.g., Callon 1986; Gauchat 2012; Sarewitz 2004), which was and continues to be the case with climate science (Grundmann and Stehr 2010; Nerlich 2010; Wynne 2010).
For those of us who have followed Climategate closely, it's hard not to be amused at the authors' comments about the "investigations" and their headscratching over why the exclusionary tactics began. I'm sure that readers here can help them out. Once that "mystery" is resolved the paper actually makes a great deal of sense, and indeed the rest of the analysis seems good to me. For example, this:
From such a perspective, the ongoing process of questioning and probing that we witnessed with so much vigor in the case of Climategate is the very epitome of “science in action” (Latour, 1987). Those who question the conclusions of science (and thereby open up taken-for-granted and black-boxed conclusions) are not releasing unknown evils. Rather, it is only through such critiques that we can find hope, in the form of new possibilities and reconfigurations (Garud and Ahlstrom 1997; Latour 1999). It is at moments such as these, when the results of the scientific enterprise are called into question, that the scientific process is at its best, telling us not what should be done, but opening up new possibilities about what could be done (Singleton 1996).
Reader Comments (40)
You overlooked that the first author is at PennState and does not usually write about these things. He can't have been too happy with his colleagues if he allowed a PhD student to deviate so far from the beaten path.
The wonderful thing about climate science is the way it provides a comfy living not just for climate scientists but for those who study climate scientists as well (not to mention "independent inquiry" members).
It really is hard to understand why supposedly intelligent people outside the "Westminster bubble" cannot see at the very least how the Climategate enquiries could have been considered somewhat less than rigorous (it's Sunday; I'm feeling charitable!). Did none of them ever watch 'Yes, Minister'?
Will Mann sue the authors for.having been described a paranoid?
...as Queensbury was sued for calling Oscar a somdomite.
Seems to me that it's a lot like my mum used to say, 'there's none so blind as them that don't want to see', or as someone else said but I don't know who, 'rationalizing, ie: pulling the wool over you own eyes'.
"despite having nothing to hide": apart from The Decline, presumably?
.. and the retrospective deadline change to keep Wahl and Amman in AR4 and .. .. 2035 .. .. and ..
"From such a perspective, the ongoing process of questioning and probing that we witnessed with so much vigor in the case of Climategate..."
What 'vigorous' questioning and probing would that be then, in relation to climategate? I don't recall the main players being too discombobulated by the inquiries into their conduct.
Quite frankly, what I have read in this 'analysis' so far is not dissimilar to the satirical BS reports I used to construct using my old Honeywell Buzz-Phrase Generator card.
BTW, Bish, well done on getting a mention in the Sunday Telegraph. I hope it drives up traffic for you.
"given that the post-Climategate investigations failed to find evidence of ‘scientific misconduct’ or fraud. In other words, despite having nothing to hide"
Investigations? yeah right
Nothing to hide but sheer incompetence, poor methodology, data fiddling, using poor data. hiding the decline, gate keeping, discrediting other scientists - the list is almost enless
I'm surprised that failing to find a basis for the paranoia, they didn't ascribe it to CO2 accumulation.
"it is well known that science can become politicized "
Especially when I am taxed to pay for the findings that say I must be taxed to pay to build renewables, to keep them going, for carbon credits. Hit hard and often enough in the wallet and even the most apathetic will become political animals. Money is the difference between regular politicizing and the climate business. Arguably climate science is the first ever discipline to have such widespread fianancial effects on everyone.
Try this for size:
http://aston.academia.edu/ReinerGrundmann/Papers/1598985/The_legacy_of_climategate_revitalizing_or_undermining_climate_science_and_policy
It seems to me a case of so close yet so far -- for both Garud and Grundman. Neither of them really comes out and says that the "team" does not have a leg to stand on on.
I see the Bishop's book gets a mention at ref. 31 in the Grundman paper and Ross McKitrick at ref. 32. Grundman has at least looked at their opinions. What G.. has written seems pretty critical of CRU to me, in a restrained and objective academic way.
'....seeking to protect the space in which they operated, their actions actually led to the destabilisation of that space.'
Is this a polite wasy of saying 'they shot themselves in the feet bigtime'?
I don't need some underemployed academic sociologist parasites on the body politic to tell me that. I worked it out for myself on or about 20 November 2009!
This analysis is utter rubbish: the reason why they became so paranoid was that the whole basis of the GHG heat generation and transfer is false. Yes; there is no part of it that is correct. It was always a house of cards and they had to protect all of it all the time to prevent from falling apart.
...it's hard not to be amused at the authors' comments about the "investigations" and their headscratching over why the exclusionary tactics began.
The so-called "headscratching" is clearly just more of the same old pathetic charade, and so is not in the least bit amusing. The authors know as well as anyone why the Team continued, post-Climategate, to act as they always had done.
"given that the post-Climategate investigations failed to find evidence of ‘scientific misconduct’ or fraud."
We need a succinct analysis of each of the supposed "investigations" that describes what was done, who did the investigations, their conflicts, their failings. In effect a withering rebuttal that the "investigations" had any merit at all.
Perhaps such an analysis has been done. If so, it would be useful to have a reference.
mondo
It is called
The Climategate Inquiries by Andrew Montford. Foreword by Lord Turnbull. 54pp
GWPF (The Global Warming Policy Foundation) Report 1. Sept 2010. ISBN No. 978-1-906996-26-0
I'm more inclined to view this sort of work as an interesting development, not another part of the charade. As other disciplines start to become interested in the behaviour of the different actors, opinions will change. There are many opportunities for interesting work here, even if it doesn't relate directly to the science - it still has relevance for the various legal threads.
@sean houlihane
'There are many opportunities for interesting work here, even if it doesn't relate directly to the science - it still has relevance for the various legal thread'
Jeez..hasn't climatology already had enough money spent on it already. Thousands of otherwise unemployable academics have written thousands of useless papers that other thousands of useless academics don't bother to read.
Surely we don't need to spend more on yet further academics analysing the behaviour of the previous groups - and possibly a fourth set analysing the first three.
Enough already! The scam is over. Stop the funding now.
The newly enthused psychologists, sociologists and other ologists who, like poor commuters to Mumbai, have to hang on the outside of the train, are just realising the train is slowing down, fast!
Poor suckers: real scientist are showing the climate scam for what it is, a carefully-orchestrated fraud.
I give it 3 months.
There is climate science work that needs to be funded. At a far smaller scale than what's going on at the moment, of course.
We need to start over at square one validating surface temperature data and putting error bounds around everything.
Ideally, that work would be funded by clawing back the pensions of Hansen, Trenberth et al but that is, alas, unlikely to happen.
'....seeking to protect the space in which they operated, their actions actually led to the destabilisation of that space.'
Is this a polite wasy of saying 'they shot themselves in the feet bigtime'?
I don't need some underemployed academic sociologist parasites on the body politic to tell me that. I worked it out for myself on or about 20 November 2009!
Aug 26, 2012 at 5:01 PM | Unregistered CommenterLatimer Alder
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Hear, hear, Latimer. This stuff is just trite, and I have seen better analyses on this and other sites, which were also better written.
Also, in the social sciences at least, citing your own papers for what are essentially a series of assertions may be acceptable - but to me it just smacks of self-congratulatory circular arguments. They are not talking about research results here, just the opinions of the authors in previous papers.
The blogosphere has already eclipsed complacent mainstream journalism, and at this rate academia had better watch out. From the looks of this paper, which emanates from one of the world's top universities, they also have been living in a mediocre, self-referential bubble for too long. The Bish's book is worth at least a couple of PhDs if this paper is any guide (and ditto Donna LaFramboise's sterling work).
Johanne, the blogosphere is proving a remarkable resource of cooperation between like-minded people working altruistically to develop real climate science. Whether it's plant metallurgists in Wollongong steelworks or academics from Sydney and Uppsala, the aim is to reassert the control of science over dogma which to achieve political ends insists falsely that a 116 year old mistake.must be correct.
Thus last night on JoNova I was offered a key reference, a 1960 Caltech PhD thesis which appears to fills in the last piece of the jigsaw.
AlecM: "This analysis is utter rubbish: the reason why they became so paranoid was that the whole basis of the GHG heat generation and transfer is false. Yes; there is no part of it that is correct. It was always a house of cards and they had to protect all of it all the time to prevent from falling apart."
As much as I'd like to agree with you don't take it for granted that the Hockey Team know that the GHG heat generation transfer is false. They are not theoretical physicists they are people who take proxies and try to produce historical records - true they've taken to producing historical records to advance a political agenda, but that's all they do. That and build models which they believe can tell us enough about the future climate to ask politicians to take the western industrial civilisations to rubble in a fruitless attempt to reduce global CO2 output. They truly believe in the GHE believe me, and they are all "progressives" who have an ideological hatred of the hand that feeds them.
As for this paper, I'm incredulous that anyone who witnesses people trying to hide declines, get editors of journals, not only sacked from their journals, but from their academic jobs, refuse to share data, tell barefaced lies, delete incriminating emails and all manner of nefarious works, have nothing to hide.
I suggest as an experiment they get some emails from people who don't have anything to hide and compare them to CG1/2.
I thought this when I read this post yesterday and then later in the day I was reminded of a (no doubt apocryphal) story of one of the early intrepid explorers (Cook, or Raleigh, or Tasman) who came upon one of those islands where the natives were very friendly but incapable of understanding how he and his crew had got there.
There were a couple of ships moored in the bay but they were so far beyond anything the natives had experienced that they — almost literally — were unable to see them and refused to admit they existed.
I wonder if something similar is at work here. I have no trust in the pronouncements of people like Corner or Cook or Colose, who know full well what they are doing and have an agenda to drive and a target to meet and who really don't care one way or the other about the personal behaviour of those in the same camp which can always be excused on some grounds or other (think Gleick).
But there are scientists who cannot conceive of the idea that colleagues would do any of the things you have just itemised and there must have been some mistake.
"Independent enquiries, you say? Exonerated? Well, there you are; I knew someone had got the wrong end of the stick."
And our answer to that one is .....?
Aug 27, 2012 at 12:04 AM | AlecM
"Poor suckers: real scientist are showing the climate scam for what it is, a carefully-orchestrated fraud.
I give it 3 months."
Alec, I pray that you are right. But I'm afraid my hunch is more like thirty years. There are too many of our beloved "elite", not only at UK level but EU and UN level who have firmly nailed their colours to the cAGW mast for this fraud to go down any time soon. Far too big to fail. And note particularly the big financial players who are in this trough up to their armpits.
Yes, the science will continue to be debunked. But it was very threadbare 10 years ago and actual events and data, as the Climate 'keeps on a-doing whatta Climate's gotta do', just underlines the fact that the 'consensus science' is drivel.
But even more blatant is the Ruinable Energy scam. The figures are there to be seen (or, at least enough of them to make the uselessness of Wind & Solar absolutely obvious). Yet, here in the UK, are Cameron & Clegg, or Milipede, or DECC, or anyone else shamefaced and apologetic? Are Gummer & Yeo on the back foot? Have the Ruinable Energy Association shut up shop?
Anyone with the intelligence of a retarded slug can see the BigWind is 100% scam. Yet they still keep harvesting Billions (of tax payers and energy user's money, not kWhrs!).
If we still can't make our teeth meet on this, how long before the arcane details of CO2's atmospheric effects are reconsidered?
The only way the wheels will come off the waggon anytime soon is if large swathes of the population tire of shivering in the dark. Otherwise we will have to wait for a new generation of scientists who will hopefully increasingly question the bunkum they were taught at school. And after Mann, Jones, Briffa, Trenberth and the rest have peacefully died in their comfortable beds.
Martin I agree it will be a long time. We can shorten it if we give them a black eye at the general election by voting for the only party that stands for looking more closely at the science and the policies, that would be UKIP.If they make a good fist of the next election watch the Tories start to back peddle on the EU and climate policy.
It is only the ballot box that can end this fiasco, which is why so many "progressives" are suggesting the "suspension" of democracy. Currently we have a near silent non-critical press, the BBC suppresses totall discussion on the science and allows no critical discussion of the policies, the scienctists pontificate without challenge and hence, the mass of people are kept in the dark, so either believe this drivel, don't know about it or don't care either way.
As it will take about 20-30 years before we see real problems with energy supply, your in the right ball-park, although I'm convinced that the greens want to ration energy anyway with the introductiono of smart meters, that may be a catalyst in waking the people up to the creeping control the greenies are having over their lives. Who knows?
Aug 27, 2012 at 12:04 AM | AlecM
"Poor suckers: real scientist are showing the climate scam for what it is, a carefully-orchestrated fraud.
I give it 3 months."
Today, sadly, we learned of the passing of Neil Armstrong, the first person to stand on the Moon. We did NOT learn of the ending of theories that the mission was filmed in Hollywood.
The end of the global warming argument is not going to be absolute. It cannot be timed to 3 months or 30 years. There will be a crowd that perpetuates the myth ad nauseam. Sometimes it will be large, sometimes small.
In the same vein, there is still a chemophobic crowd fearful of man-made cancers, though this fairy story was dismissed by the sensible more than 30 years ago. Ditto the zero dose theory for the dangers of ionising radiation.
As they say, old bankers never die, they just lose interest.
Anyone who quotes Latour approvingly is not to be taken seriously.
Still, interesting to see.
"… it simply shows the short comings of modern science and journalism. Both fields have become so politicised that progress and real achievement in either is difficult. In both fields an arrogant elite is able to dictate truth not because of any ability or intelligence but because they control access to the money. Anybody that dares question “authority” is cut off from the cash and denounced as a nut …"
This is not a quote from a “climate change” critique, but from a blog-post following the death of Martin Fleischmann – a man whom I had the honour to know many years ago. Anyone less like a charlatan or crank you would be hard pushed to find.
There are many similarities between the climate change situation – where an “arrogant elite” are able to dictate the “truth” – and the physicists and so-called science journalists who were also able to dictate the “truth” about low energy nuclear reactions. In so doing, they did a complete hatchet job on the work and career of Fleischmann. The major difference between the climate change and the cold fusion lobbies is that the sceptics of AGW are outside “the establishment”, whereas the sceptics of cold fusion are inside.
Brian Josephson, a Nobel Prize winner for Physics, gave a lecture in 2004
http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/JosephsonBpathologic.pdf
I quote: “What happened with cold fusion (and what happens in other cases as well) was the creation of a myth, the myth that the phenomenon was unreal. Such a myth consists of an elaborate story, which in principle might be true. The two main responses of interest are (i) accept without serious questioning (ii) question the story before accepting it.
(i) occurs when there is a strong disposition to accept, because it confirms a belief system
(ii) is the more scientific response, which sometimes gets overridden, especially when strong emotions are involved.
Some scientists are especially prone to whip up emotion ‘in the cause of science’ (or so they believe).”
The myth that the Hockey Stick is real and the myth that cold fusion is unreal have a lot in common. It is interesting that the European Commission has recently produced a report (EN25350, 2012) recommending further research into low energy nuclear reactions. Oh that they would produce another on unsettling the "science" of climate change.
Warning another crazy rant coming up.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cr2vj87DRKM&feature=autoplay&list=PLF50A2172FF9E0CEE&playnext=2
Just watched an old Star Trek episode The Squire of Gothos ( this one is very more camp than usual )
Spock came out with a brilliant quote
" I object to interlect without discipline. power without constructive purpose "
Interlect without discipline is Climate Science in a nutshell.
Everytime Al Gore , Miles Allen ,Johnathon Porrett or Dominick Brigstock make some riduclous outlandish prediction about 25 million refugees or the sea level rising by 18 feet the scientices Micheal Mann or Phill Jones step in themself and tell them to quieten down and be more realistic.Instead as all these dire predictions have failed to materialise they just made themselfs and science generally look foolish.
Power without Constructive Purpose that the responce to Climate Change in a nutshel (Another rant about that later)
What trouble would we be in if Climate Scientice had been running The Manhatten Project or mapping DNA or running CERN and Hubble, researching a cure for Polio ,Aids or Cancer.
PS Live long and Posper
The public is never going to get its head round the CAGW argument. I am retired and have all the time left to me available to read up on the subject and I have barely skimmed the surface. Knocking down the straw men provided by our opponents is great fun but it will not affect Joe Public at all.
The best way to get the public onside is to publicise the corruption involved in the increased taxation they/we are all suffering.
The exclusionary tactics, which is a fancy name for good old tribal behavior, would he succeeded if it were not for FOIA and the email releases.
If science does not convince you... we just need to change you...
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/andrewbrown/2012/aug/21/confront-climate-change-moral
Pathetic face of ecofascism.
Dung,
I agree that the general public is never likely to get their head around the science of the matter, but doesn't mean they should be ignored. That is why I consider it important to focus on
1) What predictions, and WHEN, have been made and found to occur/not occur?
2) Were those predictions appropriate? [That is the point at which it is easier to mislead even the careful and the competent].
Be that as it may, there are a lot of capable scientists [probably the real "97%"] without the time or inclination to look in detail. Competent people ignoring quixotic theories of global warming emerging from the mouths of activists is what got us into this situation in the first place.
TomRude
Ben Pile's reposte to Andrew Brown here:
http://www.climate-resistance.org/2012/08/environmentalisms-amoral-disorder.html
Thanks, Latimer.
"...In other words, despite having nothing to hide, those involved employed numerous exclusionary tactics, which later misfired." Hardly: continue shooting themselves, foot-wise; hence, legless, yet still with us.
Hah, hah, hah: 'Despite nothing to hide'. Having kidded themselves, who else are they trying to kid? The equally credulous? Sorry, a vanishing species on the Serengati.
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Whenever people have strong beliefs based on untenable foundations, they have sought to exclude criticism. This includes the pre-reformation Catholic Church, Henry VIII's foundations for divorce, the Soviet State and the McCarthyite "investigations" of the 1950s. It is not necessary to exclude opposite opinion where the evidence is extremely strong - such as for 6 million Jews being killed in the holocaust. Then any comparison of differing views will show clearly on which side the weight of evidence lies.