Careerism leads a scientist not to want to have their research be challenged or audited, for fear of damage to their reputation that is shallowly based on such things as publication numbers, funding, memberships on prestigious boards, press releases and citation numbers (rather than an interest in learning and making meaningful contributions that advance science).
Policy advocates/activists do not want to see their science challenged (or the science of their political allies), for fear that the challenge will diminish their policy and political objectives. Challenges from someone on the ‘other side’ of the policy/political debate are regarded as especially objectionable, since their motives are ‘different’. As a result, we are seeing an epidemic of ‘activism that abuses science as a weapon.’
Read the whole post. I was not sure what made the best excerpt.
I see this issue in Martin Gurri terms, with insiders and outsiders in conflict. The insiders are the credentialed academics. The outsiders non-academics or academics from other fields. We can expect outsiders to enjoy greater access to information and more ability to publicize their analyses than was the case before the Internet. The insiders will react by attacking the outsiders’ motives and lack of credentials. If we side too much with the outsiders, we risk nihilism, in which good science is too easily dismissed. If we side too much with the insiders, we risk groupthink, in which bad ideas persist because contrary analysis is suppressed.
Scientists who are harassed often feel alone. Universities do not tolerate harassment based on race or gender, and neither should they tolerate harassment based on contentious science. They should provide training and support to help their researchers cope.
This is an argument made with an ulterior motive, I know, but still…that is a flat out embarrassing paragraph for a 57 year old man to put his name to. Some sort of shame-based punishment is in order for Stephan Lewandowsky.
Aye. I would add Michael Mann to that list, too. He denies the most obvious weaknesses with his early work. He should at least be pushed out of Penn State. The fact that Penn State keeps him on staff, without seeming to lower the college’s reputation as a center of knowledge, is part of why I don’t feel good about academia as being especially at the forefront of knowledge in today’s world.
It’s something I grew up being told, and I just believed, with no real evidence, that people who dedicate their lives to knowledge would be good at it. Now I don’t know why that would be true. From an insiders and outsiders perspective, you would much more expect that people in a 100+ year old institution are primarily going to be good at working the mechanisms of the institution.
To look at it another way, you can tell how an iterated system will evolve if you look at its selection function. Colleges select their staff based on the length of the vita. The length of the vita, in turn, is primarily determined by being accepted by other members of the community. It’s the most insider-driven organization that could possibly be imagined. There’s no way to challenge it from outside, certainly not on the basis that what you say is objectively wrong.
“They should provide training and support to help their researchers cope.”
As if…
“I see this issue in Martin Gurri terms, with insiders and outsiders in conflict.”
I would agree if this dynamic were seen in non-politicized fields — is it? If not, this smells much more like politicization, where the out group is marginalized by force. And the ‘out group’ need not consist of non-academics (Judith Curry is certainly an academic). Either way, it’s a very interesting (and chilling) article.
The scientific standard does not care for reputation or resume. It cares about theory that can be proven. The priority the climate cabal gives to controlling membership and message is the first indication they are not scientists.
“It doesn’t matter how beautiful your theory is, it doesn’t matter how smart you are. If it doesn’t agree with experiment, it’s wrong.” — Richard P. Feynman.
In support.
There is a pervasive error in public acceptance of “scientific” statements and government pronouncements. A “scientist” or government official says something. The public believes it until it is disproven. Most statements are very difficult to entirely disprove. But, the burden of proof is on the proponent, not the critic.
Consider the type of real science or economics which can predict what will happen, and so is suited to guide policy. It is not primarily up to the reader or other scientists to find the evidence which supports and contradicts the proposed theory. In real science, the proponent examines all of that, especially the contradictory evidence.
The late particle physicist Richard Feynman was a plain-spoken genius. This speech considers why we continue to not know the truth about many things, hundreds of years after people discovered how to do good science. An enjoyable must-read.
http://www.lhup.edu/~DSIMANEK/cargocul.htm
Cargo Cult Science
1974 by Richard P. Feynman
Commencement speech at The California Institute of Technology
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[edited] Details that could throw doubt on your interpretation must be given, if you know them. You must do the best you can to explain them, if you know anything at all wrong or possibly wrong.
If you make a theory, for example, and advertise it or put it out, then you must also put down all the facts that disagree with it, as well as those that agree with it.
There is also a more subtle problem. When you have put a lot of ideas together to make an elaborate theory, you want to make sure, when explaining what it fits, that those things it fits are not just the things that gave you the idea for the theory, but that the finished theory makes something else come out right.
=== ===
Prediction is everything, it must work more than once, and it must work for data which has not already been put into the theory. Explaining everything after the fact is merely making up complicated stories. Noticing a trend on a graph does not empower the supposed theorist to extend that trend line into the future while shouting “we are all going to die”.
Feynman says that real science is a method for discovering facts about our world, and it requires bending over backwards not to fool others, and especially not to fool oneself. He notes it is particularly easy to fool oneself, and so requires the greatest dilligence and openness to criticism and disproof to avoid being that fool.
The complicated theorizing of climate scientists, New (and old) Keynesianism, and now Pikkety, is a lot of story telling combined with math models which have not been shown by experience to predict anything. Then, these stories are presented without being tested against the known supporting and contradictory evidence. It isn’t science, and it is not reliable. Yet, it is used to promote and justify massive experiments on the lives of the peasants. These experiments just happen to deliver massive resources to politicians for distribution to themselves and their friends.
“If we side too much with the outsiders, we risk nihilism, in which good science is too easily dismissed.”
This assumes that the insiders’ “science” (or whatever kind of expertise is at issue) is more reliable than that of the outsiders. This is not always true. Also, it is not nihilistic to question the good faith and honesty of insiders when there are reasonable grounds to do so.
Finally, however great the insiders’ expertise, one cannot simply assume that they are using that expertise as a means to attain worthy ends. One has to look at how the insiders define the “good” in pursuit of which they are deploying their expertise. Their expertise is not necessarily useful in defining the good to be attained. Defining the good to be attained is usually a philosophical or political question that the insiders are no more qualified to answer than anyone else.
He didn’t say it WAS nihilism. He said it RISKED nihilism.
Type 1 errors exist AND type 2 errors exist.