Tuesday
Aug202013
by 
Bishop Hill
Bishop Hill Motivated reasoning and the climate scientist
Aug 20, 2013 Climate: other Judy Curry has a must-read post about some of what goes on behind the scenes in the climate science community:
Motivated reasoning affects scientists as it does other groups in society, although it is often pretended that scientists somehow escape this predicament.
Motivated reasoning has been put forward as the reason why educated conservatives reject the consensus on climate change science. This post examines the thesis that motivated reasoning by climate scientists is adversely impacting the public trust in climate science and provides a reason for people to reject the consensus on climate change science.
Reader Comments (64)
I admire Judy immensely for putting her head in the lions' mouth(s) yet again.
Barry Woods recently posted, on Twitter, this interesting Youtube video of a discussion involving Judy, Gavin Schmidt and Richard Betts.
I commented that I thought Gavin came over as a dishonest bully, Judy as an honest victim of bullying and Richard as a wimp - sitting on the fence.
Richard took this personally and said it was easy for me to act the tough guy while hiding behind anonymity.
Maybe he had a point, but I didn't think I was being particularly rude - except to Gavin who deserved it.
It's an interesting video and I'd be interested in other peoples' reactions.
People often assume that because man has the highest intelligence of any living organism on the planet (as far as we know) he is controlled by that intelligence and/or his decisions are based on the use of that intelligence. However that is not the case, intelligence is a tool and man will use it like any other tool to help him achieve his goals.
Man's goals are dictated by his hind brain, the old brain, the remnant of his animal past. Here we have both good and bad; lust, desire and ambition as well as love, integrity and loyalty.
A man's motives are not the result of any reasoning.
Blimey!
'Nobel cause' a typo:/
I very much doubt it.
Judith's piece talks about motivated reasoning as if it is some kind of new idea which she is surprised to discover exists. Her phrase "motivated reasoning" is man using his intelligence to help him achieve his goals, everybody does it all the time.
Why are some people's goals so admirable (like Judith Curry) and other's goals so despicable? It takes a brave man (some would say stupid) to go through the whole of his life standing up for what he believes is right. Chances are that if he succeeds he will be a pauper but also people have responsibilities to their families and it is not hard to see that these are powerful influences.
If a person is rich or retired and comfortable it is easier to do the right thing.
Foxgoose:
I respect you for writing that last phrase Foxgoose. Would Dung agree that it was a fair point for Richard to make? Or would Dung say that such an argument is never allowable, as I believe I saw him write in the early hours on a BH thread not far from here?
Foxgoose again:
Couldn't agree more, on both points.
I did however enjoy one other typo - schackles - as I've just made use of at Judy's.
Judy is really getting stuck in - she just added this comment:-
Jim, I wasn’t going to post on this orchestrated leak by the IPCC, but I think I will change my mind. Stay tuned.
I'll get off your back in a moment FG but agreed again - highly significant.
Good stuff as usual from JC. Of course its not just the scientists. Even worse are the legions of sociologists and psychologists who claim that sceptics suffer from motivated reasoning, apparently believing themselves to be immune from the effect.
I don't want to get involved in that argument with you again Richard.
I agree with Dung that anonymous internet discussion is perfectly acceptable - and lack of anonymity confers no moral advantage.
I do however try not to use anonymity to insult reasonable people like Richard B - which is why I made the comment.
Foxgoose: Sorry to break it to you but you have just got involved again, by what you wrote at 9:20 PM and just now at 10:51 PM. And you're agreeing with my position, thank you. I assume though that you're not agreeing with Dung's parody of my position, for which I also thank you. :)
I must admit that although I started watching the video (very interested to see gavin in action) I found the sound quality coupled with my hearing loss made understanding it impossible. I can not therefore answer Richard's question in the full knowledge of all the facts.
However I will give an opinion based on what I have read in Bishop Hill. I agree with the first impression given by Foxgoose which was that Richard Betts is a wimp and his claim that Fox was hiding behind anonymity was further proof of that. Strangely the words spoken by RB were not too bad and it was the voice of Gavin and the two girls that caused me to stop listening. I was able to watch RB introduce himself and his body language and speech just confirmed my impression of him as weak.
Referring to RD's question as to whether RB's decision to quote Foxgoose as hiding behind anonymity would ever be allowable (in my book) I would say it depends what Fox said. For RB to raise the anonymity question just because Fox suggested he was a wimp just proved Fox right. That kind of comment is allowable under the law as it stands. Should Fox have made some serious accusations then maybe RB's response would be justified.
I thought the psychology and body language in that video was very telling.
Gavin's sneer when Judy was talking said far more than his dissembling waffle about open discourse.
I sensed from her reaction that she'd had enough of the "consensus police" - I guess she'd decided it's time for a showdown.
Good for her.
Dr. Curry has written a smashing post. Seems to me that she is ready to write a smashing book on ethics in science. I hope that she does.
For me this is turning into a very interesting three-cornered discussion.
First, Foxgoose:
This I deeply agree with, except the 'Good for her' is too weak! May the richest Irish blessing be upon her, her home and all whom she loves.
Second, Dung:
But that's not quite how Foxgoose himself described it. He said Richard "said it was easy for me to act the tough guy while hiding behind anonymity." I think that is a fair point. It doesn't wipe out all of Fg's criticisms, to be sure. But it's not only allowable, it's effective. People in glass houses and all that.
Richard - you're like a dog with a rather smelly bone.
Why don't we all agree to differ on the anonymity thing and concentrate on the important stuff.
Foxgoose
"orchestrated leak by the IPCC"
Or in other words " you can fool some of the people......"
Judith wrote:
In a nutshell - publish and then be damned............or, be right.
Heheh Anonimity to Richard is like some aspects of radiation physics to Mydogsgotnonose. Very interesting to him but of very little interest to others.
Have you heard the one about a Fox, a Drake and a Goose meeting on a Dung heap?
No? Just where have you been?
I have been Green Sand on the web from way before Al invented it. I treasure its integrity, it is MY name!
You either take me as I am or you discard, you make the decision, any complaints about whether my name is real in this virtual world are by definition irrelevant.
Wow, amazing how much can be read into "body language" seen via a webcam pointing up someone's nose.... :-)
Foxgoose, to clarify, I didn't think you were being rude to me, I just found it slightly ironic to read those comments coming from an anonymous account. However if you check my tweet you'll see that I added a smiley :-) as indicative of a remark intended to be in humour or good spirits. I generally regard our occasional twitter discussions as banter rather than insults. No offence taken or intended!
Richard Betts has taken the words - and indeed the smiley - right out of my mouth. This is quite a lark for me too. I was very amused by what Dung wrote to Stephen Richards about his critique of 'Anon' almost 24 hours ago and have been ever since. Not least because of the irony of the bad words passed in the past from Richards to Richard.
Perhaps my amusement doesn't always come across as effectively as it might? But I can assure everyone on this blog that it's been there throughout :)
This of course is one of the great warmist shibboleths; that skeptics as a group hold a particular political viewpoint and are only sceptical of CAGW because of it. This is demonstrably untrue.
Much more plausible however is the application of the same terminology in Judith Curry's blog post which basically points out that "climate scientists" have a number of very good reasons for toeing the IPCC line such as money and status within their peer group which override any considerations of scientific and personal integrity.
NW: It's called reversal of the truth and it's a key sign of conspiracy. Sorry Dr Lew but the game is almost up.
Green Sand, are you upper or lower?
"Sorry Dr. Lew"
Yes, you got that spot on dear thing.
Foxgoose (11:28 PM): How can we agree to differ when we don't differ? Same goes with everyone on this blog apart perhaps from one. And he seems to be talking slightly more sense than usual.
Richard Betts
You do not hide behind a nickname but nevertheless you have two identities ^.^
Sadly I do not feel able to attend pub meets because in a noisy environment I can not hear a bloody thing anyone says. However those BH regulars who have met you think you are a good bloke to talk to in a pub and I have no reason to doubt their judgement.
When it comes to talking climate change however you are a different kettle of fish and to be honest I have no idea what you really believe. You have stated that you will choose when and where you will join our discussions and when you will leave them. When someone asks you a difficult question (talking politics here) you leave and the only other people who do that are trolls.
I often wonder why you do join in on Bishop Hill since you are really not willing to really engage but only you can answer that.
Athelstan.
Where possible upper, when not allowed lower, always here to please!
Dung
Agreed.
Intelligence is a tool used to achieve goals, but goals are not chosen intelligently.
Dung
I believe that climate varies naturally but is also being influenced by human emissions of greenhouse gases and aerosols, and also to some extent by land cover change (through changes in surface albedo, evaporation and, locally, the urban heat island effect). I think that the long-term warming over the last 40 years is probably largely man-made, but that the warming in the 90s was faster because of natural variability adding to it, and slower in the 2000s for the opposite reason. I think that in the next few years to a decade or so, natural variability will dominate over human influence in affecting year-to-year changes. In the longer term I expect warming to continue, but I don't know how fast or what the impacts will be - could be small, could be large. Also the impacts will depend on other factors not just warming (like the direct effects of CO2 on plants, and also land use, and of course human factors such as the state of the economy - generally speaking, increased standards of living, improved technology and wealth will be important factors in being able to adapt). I don't think we can predict the future, but believe we can make judgements about risk, which need to be continually revised in the light of ongoing research. I don't talk about politics online because I'm not allowed to, and anyway in many cases I quite honestly do not feel that I know enough to have a properly informed opinion. I know little about economics, for example.
I join discussions on Bishop Hill and other blogs / twitter when time permits, because I think it's important and interesting to talk about these things, especially with people who have a variety of perspectives. I think it's important for scientists to discuss their work with people who have an interest, even if it's a critical interest, as science (and especially climate science) is often over-simplified or even misrepresented by the media and lobby groups. I prefer to explain my science for myself, rather than let the Daily Mail or Greenpeace use a caricature of it to sell their newspapers or political ideologies.
Hope that helps!
Dung to Richard Betts:
Can you give one example of a person on Bishop Hill for whom this does not apply?
Are you saying that if we can find one difficult question that Richard Betts stayed around to try and answer he is not a troll? I don't think that should be too hard.
What about the difficult questions Richard has posed for some of us? What about that recent example about burying bad news - something his colleagues at the Met thought was totally far-fetched but it turned out Richard's prediction of what some idiots on Bishop Hill would say was totally accurate. Did anyone face up to that? Sorry I can't give you the page and the link but I'm sure Richard can if you ask nicely.
Looking in the mirror is seldom pretty for any of us.
Well I just bit my tongue, and posted this at Judith's
The Liberals may have left me, not vice-versa, but it is NOT about left and and right in my view. It is that I am wholly unpersuaded by the arguments that anthropogenic CO2 emissions are causing, or are likely to cause, catastrophic global warming. Further; that policy enactments to try and address this putative problem are actually a lot worse than useless.
Sorry, but it is arse. That's just one word, but it is also currently my considered opinion on the matter.
Richard Drake, I do hope I'm not one of the idiots you were thinking about, when I predicted on this blog
Richard Betts' response
Richard Betts may well have predicted that someone here would say that. But I MADE MY PREDICTION IN PUBLIC and, by good luck or bad luck, can claim that it came true! (OK, like all Met Office predictions, sorry, projections, we can argue about the fine details.)
http://www.bishop-hill.net/blog/2013/7/23/your-ship-is-sinking-will-spin-help.html?currentPage=3
Most importantly, Richard offered to buy me a pint as a result of the exchange. I think he is a man of honour, and I will be honoured to drink it if I ever get the chance.
Richard Betts
Thanks for summarising your overall position with candour. I doubt there is more than a degree of difference between your views and mine. And, I hesitate to say, most of the congregation at Bishop Hill. For example, it may well be that the majority of warming in the last 40 years is 'man made' but that would include adjustment of data? :-)
I posted this on Judith's site as well.
All this stuff about motivated reasoning ignores the important point. Is the reasoning correct?
“You’re just saying that because you’re jealous”
“That’s why I’m saying it. But the important point is that it’s true, regardless of why I say it.”
Foxgoose
"It's an interesting video and I'd be interested in other peoples' reaction.
I thought that Gavin personified what Judy refered to as salesmanship.
When Gavin said "It's not true" (which he said on more than one occasion)I would have loved Judy to have asked Gavin if he was stating that as a fact or if it was his opinion.
Gosh - "natural variability" rides again.
Feynman:
Betts:
Foxgoose and all, I started to deconstruct the "Gav & Judy Show" (the Should Scientists Advocate ? debate) .. It's a big job so I didn't fully finish. My notes so far with links to the transcript I made. (RB commented back here on BH Unthreaded)
Motivated reasoning? We all do it. Form your opinions first from, well, nothing really, then use your intellect to back them up and dismiss opposing views. We all do it, and the most intelligent of us do it best. That's why you always find very smart people on both sides of any issue. It is useless to accuse others of it and deny it for yourself. The only thing you can do, internally, is to know what makes you prejudge the evidence and try to run it past your reasoning faculty to check whether you are a victim yourself.
Which is a lot easier to espouse than it is to actually do.
Anonymity:
Three points to consider:
1) If the person uses the same pseudonym on every internet discourse then that seems to be a different case to showing a fresh face in each forum. All they are doing is distinguishing their internet profile from their professional profile. There may be good reasons for that. And their opinions are still traceable for a full understanding of their arguments.
2) The reasons for anonymity are not known in every case. Judging someone for using a pseudonym is assuming knowledge you do not have.
3) Using anonymity does provide freedoms that a professional persona does not have. And it is unsporting to challenge those with more restrictions on themselves to act like you can do.
So far nearly all the comments on this post have ignored one of the key points that Judith Curry made in her own post.
One of my colleagues was thinking about publishing a paper that challenges the IPCC interpretation of the previous pause during the 1940s to 1970′s. My colleague sent a .ppt presentation on this topic to three colleagues, each of whom is a very respected senior scientist and none of whom have been particularly vocal advocates on the subject of climate change (names are withheld to protect the guilty/innocent). Each of these scientists strongly encouraged my colleague NOT to publish this paper, since it would only provide fodder for the skeptics.
The behaviour of those three senior scientists is an absolute disgrace. Suppose a similar situation occurred in medical research and a scientist discovered possible evidence of serious harmful effects from a particular drug, but, because that drug seemed quite effective and also because the firm that made it could suffer serious financial losses if its use was restricted, the scientist did not publish his/her results.
Suppose that the Australian doctor William McBride had not written his letter to the Lancet suggesting that there was a link between the drug thalidomide and birth defects? Would keeping silent have been ethical behaviour?
William McBride
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_McBride_(doctor)
Scientists who are reluctant to try and get articles criticising the "consensus" view on global warming are partly responsible for billions of pounds/dollars/euros etc. being misspent. The damage to the economic well-being of many countries will result in less money for things like health and fewer imports from developing countries, ruining peoples chances in those countries of escaping poverty.
I wonder if Sir Paul Nurse and the Royal Society would have anything to say on this subject.
Thanks for that SG.
I missed it on "unthreaded" - it's a bit difficult to keep up with.
You did an excellent job on nailing slippery Gav's ducking & diving.
It's the hint of sneering menace towards Judy that chilled me though.
That's why her phrase "consensus police" has struck such a chord I think.
Jack Hughes +1
Roy, Dr William McBride was also a motivated reasoner who was subsequently convicted of scientific fraud regarding another morning sickness drug, Debendox:
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/thalidomide-doctor-guilty-of-medical-fraud-william-mcbride-who-exposed-the-danger-of-one-antinausea-drug-has-been-disgraced-by-experiments-with-another-writes-robert-milliken-in-sydney-1474190.html
He hates Big Pharma and is convinced that they are out to get him.
That is why every single scientific claim, no matter who makes it, should be independently verified in what used to be the great tradition of the Royal Society.
It is unfortunate that Professor Curry feels the need to protect the guilty. One of the reasons that they can get away with supressing progress is that they know they will be protected by colleagues.
Jack Hughes - yes, the good old "natural variability". Whenever those* who dredge it up when things aren't quite going to plan, I ask them what is the physics, the science behind "natural variability" and can they reference some journal papers. This generally invokes finger pointing and shrieks of "climate denier".
* predominantly socialologists, climate lawyers and those with degrees in interpretive dance.
Judith's article is spot on. It does however take courage to maintain personal ethics especially when your livelihood depends on your job and your job maybe at risk if you do not follow the consensus.
That is why in the video flagged by Foxgoose, Gavin came across as very insincere. By trying to suggest there is no pressure put on scientists by the consensus is just a downright lie. Judith of all people, is all too aware of the risks of speaking out against the consensus.
Gavin was also trying to suggest that his opinion carries no more weight with decision makers than any other climate scientist. He is just one voice out of thousands with no executive power. Again this is very disingenuous, he must be fully aware that in his position his opinion is taken very seriously. Therefore with this position comes responsibility, or as Judith called it 'micro-ethics'.
Gavin sounded like Fred Goodwin formerly of RBS in trying to remove himself from being in a position of power with the responsibility which comes with that position. He does indeed sound and look like an untrustworthy salesman.
It seems like the best advice to scientists then is 'if all else fails, tell the truth'.