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've had this question about temperature 'adjustments'.
Say you are a climate scientist or a group who's discovered mathematical error/s, a new better method, or some issue with the temperature record. Assume, for example, that the changes produce a total warming 0.3 C (i.e., quite a bit of it). Would you announce it and implement it at the earliest?
Like Richard Betts, my dog believes 'warming over the last 40 years is probably largely man-made'. That's because he hates human beings*. Not because he is a dog, but like many so called climate scientists, he is a member of an environmental cult whose unshakable article of faIth is that human civilisation is destroying the planet.
He fully admits that being employed by the Met Office would have the same effect (or he would no longer be employed by the Met Office). I saw a climate scientist being made to apologise for what other people had written on his / her blog very recently. I don't do intimidation .
*apart from myself , Lady Smiff and that nice lady at number 42 with the endless supply of jammy dodgers.
michael hart (2:47 AM): I don't think you're an idiot and I appreciate again what you say at 2:19 AM about being a liberal who rejects CAGW on scientific grounds. This marks you out as different here. One of the key points I'm trying to make in Everyone on this blog is that it's never true that this strange set of people, however defined, agrees on anything.
Thank you for pointing me back to the interaction I was thinking of. I obviously appreciated your original post or I wouldn't have done the old "flushed with embarrassment" joke in response. I also agree with you on all of this:
Having said which, Richard's subsequent revelation
obviously stuck with me and not in a nice way. The thing is, I don't want those colleagues of Richard to think we are idiots.
As Rhoda said so well at 10:11 AM:
Put people like this in a group where they define 'troll' as someone who persistently disagrees with them and you are bound to get some groupthink. But we have enough independent thinkers like Rhoda and yourself to guard against this.
Thanks for fronting up on this.
Talking of independent thinkers what Roy says at 10:19 followed by johanna at 10:41 AM, showing that even the feted William McBride was 'a motivated reasoner who was subsequently convicted of scientific fraud' is a superb example, the reason many of us return to Bishop Hill to read and learn.
Roy's quote from Judith Curry should still be taken with the utmost seriousness of course. She has lifted the lid on something that has to be addressed. Almost everyone on this blog surely agrees with that :)
Bottom line when you start with the view your 'saving the planet ' it becomes very easy to think that human errors are 'other people’s problems '. Add in the massive go and arrogance, that seems to be a requirement for career progression in this area, and you can see why it would never occur to them that they subject to motivated reasoning.
And of course if you built your house on quicksand it’s a lot harder to sell it , if you tell people what you built it on.
M Courtney (10:12 AM):
I think everyone accepts your three points. I certainly do. That's why the campaign to make out that I was way out on a limb on this, reaching its peak in January, was tiresome. As well as amusing, as I managed to view it then, most of the time, and certainly do now.
What Dung's post to Stephen Richards yesterday morning seemed to be doing was to rule as illegitimate any negative reference to someone's use of a nym whatever they had been saying. That's way too big a restriction on our freedom in my view. Sometimes cowardice is involved in use of a nym and this can be inferred by what people use it to say. There have some notable examples where this could not be in doubt - death threats, libel and the like. And in my book it's totally fair game for Richard Betts to make this point, in a much milder way, when Foxgoose takes him to task publicly for lack of courage.
If this uncontroversial suggestion makes other nyms feel like big girls blouses I can't help that. I think that has been part of the problem here. It's not what I've ever said but it is an emotion that I think was skillfully used by Dung, with the intended consequence, I believe, that the set of 'everyone on this blog' would no longer be deemed to contain Richard Drake. But that also turned out to be a step too far.
;-) ;-)!
Posters who don't use there real names should be especially careful to stick to science blog rules.
Such as good logic with numbers, and no ad hominems.
An anonymous charge of 'lack of courage' is, ad hom and also, as Betts pointed out, ridiculous.
What I find amusing is the climate science profs, Betts, Curry and Edwards motivated to compete for the honor ( and rewards ) of leading the warmist climb-down.
You hit some painful nails on the head there Roger. Thanks!
People who make up their own rules for games they play with others risk looking like pompous idiots.
Foxgoose: You've got used to something patently ridiculous as your inalienable right and this is not only unhealthy but laughably so. Those like Roger that point out that it is ridiculous aren't being pompous, they are stating the facts of the case. You were self-aware enough in the first post of this thread to say that Richard Betts may have had a point so your situation is not as bad as some. But there is something truly ridiculous here. Will your admiration for the courage of Judy Curry one day lead you to divulge who you really are, as she has always done? At that point are you expecting the same plaudits for giving all in the battle for truth? I appreciate your commitment to this place and the truth, based on a number of years experience of you, but there are limits and you have set them for yourself. Deal with it.
sorry Richard - but you do come across as pompous - on a number of occasions.
Barry: It doesn't matter, just as it doesn't matter if Richard Lindzen comes across as pompous, as his opponents have frequently accused him of being. What matters in both cases is whether we're correct. I've no doubt that on the narrow issue of those using nyms needing to be limited in what they say about real people - best of all by their own conscience and common sense - that I'm right. So let's stop playing the man and attend to the ball. It's not pomposity, it's a matter of courage: saying something that is obviously true but that has somehow become taboo to mention, a weakness in the culture of an important place for UK debate. That courage is the quality we admire in Judy Curry in the climate area. Thus I aspire to be in all areas. And there are of course other subjects, such as the balance between freedom and security that Matt Ridley writes about in the Times today. That's where I chose to begin this morning. Not as big a theme on Bishop Hill as it might become in future. But everything has its place.
FROM
http://stewgreen.com/irrational_world/rational65.htm
JC responded that the AGU statement's hype wasn't responsible, and after an objection from GS - the AGU has been consistent in its position statement, this one is no different, he claims - went on at length to explain that the committee represents the entire AGE, thus misleading the public about who is really speaking.
I think Stew Green's summary deserves to be corrected.