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'You have to decide who you trust before you decide what to believe.' Right. The difference lies in the way that trust is achieved. The "I trust X because Y tr

by zeteo 16y ago

'You have to decide who you trust before you decide what to believe.' Right. The difference lies in the way that trust is achieved. The "I trust X because Y trusts X" transitivity is very easy to jump on, but often disastrous; just ask Bernie Madoff's investors. If you read in the newspaper that "X is one of the foremost scientists in his field", it is also dangerous to rely on just this pronouncement, and blindly trust X's assertions. The other way for the layperson to judge specialists is to learn enough about their field in order to evaluate their predictions. Granted, this involves much, much more effort than lazily following the reputation talk. But it also makes it much safer to trust the people involved, and to maybe stop trusting them if they go astray at some point. To bring forth examples, evolution is quite easy to verify after reading a bit of biology. For example, DNA analysis comes in a full century after the "Origin of Species" and shows us how amazingly related all living things are, deep within; thus giving precise shapes to the "trees of life" that Darwin first sketched in his notebooks. And there are many, many other predictions of the theory of evolution that can be easily checked by the unprejudiced amateur. You'll rarely find articles that say "Dawkins believes in evolution, and Dawkins is a great scientist, therefore evolution is true". On the other hand, things like climate science seem (to me at least) to rely much more on the argument from authority for gaining lay support. If some prominent climate scientist had predicted in the 90's that "average temperature in the 2000-2010 decade, as indicated by methodology X, will be 1.4 plus or minus 0.1 degrees Celsius warmer than in the 1990s", I would have a much easier time trusting his or her claims now. But things seem to be moving in the opposite direction with this field, e.g. as witnessed by the very replacement of "global warming" (somewhat verifiable) with "climate change" (unfalsifiable), and the popular attribution of all kinds of meteorological phenomena to this cause, in the same non-comprehending way that, not so long ago, they were ascribed to the god of thunder.

nanairo 16y ago
I see what you mean but I think you are overlooking how easy it is to muddy the waters. You come up with a good evidence of evolution. Great: but it will take the anti-evolution just one guy that makes a somehow plausible alternative scenario, or finds one whole in your argument and suddenly people are back to square one. Despite we are _not_ back on square one. Between a theory that almost works (like evolution) and one that is pure conjecture, the fact that there's a whole in the former all it shows is that we need to improve the theory. It is the same thing in climate modelling. It takes a nobody to say something which sound somehow plausible for the scientist to need to prove themselves again, often taking several years and a lot of effort. Most scientist, including at the IPCC, do describe hypothetical scenarios with all their doubts, including error bars etc... They also state all their assumptions, and their full method. Then one guy says: "Hey, it's been crazy cold in England this winter... so much for global warming", or "between 2001-2002 the global temperature went down" and suddenly everyone feel they are back to "we don't know". But why? The data from the IPCC is the result of many different models, with many different assumptions. The opposition has provided no better model: all they need to do to keep the status quo is point out some small unknown or flaw. That's WRONG! And btw, climate science is possibly one of the hardest disciplines around: you are making a prediction in the future of a chaotic system. But the anti-science groups can find objections just as easily to pretty much any bit of science they dislike.
- zeteo 16y ago
  It's true that there's a certain amount of fuzziness, but also there's a gradient of trust between 100% and zero. Predictions that consistently come true start to dwarf alternative explanations after a while. Darwin said that the great apes are our closest living relatives, and 150 years later research finds the genetic code similarities in the 90+% range. That's pretty strong. On the other hand, it is indeed possible that the field of study is a chaotic system, and accurate predictions impossible. But then I will argue that's not a branch of natural science, but rather of history. A good historian can tell you in small details the reasons why Lincoln got elected in 1860, but is as clueless as the next guy as to the next presidential election. Would you trust him if he said Republicans are always best? Similarly, there's a lot of great work done in historical climatology, with pollen analysis, ice cores etc. and we can find out a great many things about the past. Computer models can be built to fit this history perfectly (as I'm sure that even I can code some curve that spits out the order of Democrat and Republican presidents, or even last year's Dow Jones). But unless we see these models also making verifiable and accurate predictions (without 50% margins of error! what if chimp genome turned out to be 49% identical to ours?), it might well be that the system is inherently chaotic and muddy. Then it might simply not lend itself to scientific analysis, at least not with our present methods.
  - nanairo 16y ago
    Indeed I agree that there exist a gradient of trust. But it is this that seems to be so difficult for the non-scientific literate to understand. In part I think it's a problem that society seem to use "shown scientifically" for "it's true". If there is one thing that people should learn at school is statistics and the scientific method: a LOT more useful than trigonometry nowadays! However my point is that it's not enough to have consistent predictions to show you are right. The examples of alternative medicine or even evolution are a good case. In the former we can do new tests, and we have: a lot of money has been spent trying and trying again different studies on homeopathy and friends. However the alternative practitioners always come up with an excuse why the scientist is wrong, or his result not meaningful. Their answers are not scientific in any way, but they can muddy the water enough that the audience feels they can't know either way. As for climatology, I agree with you that it's hard to call those predictions. Partially I think the very clear statements of the scientists get lost and simplified through different layers of repetitions so that when you read it in the mainstream newspaper you get a very partial version. There is also a problem that part of IPCC was _not_ strictly science. The IPCC has 3 panels from what I remember: the scientific stuff, the effect these will have on society, and ways to prevent them. The former gives proper scientific assessment but the later two less so. One of the problem of the IPCC is that many of its complains came from mistakes in the latter two groups, but they cast a shadow of doubt to the first one (the scientific one) despite the three groups have little connection to each other. (the stuff about the Himalaya melting, for example was something added by the second group, not the first one). I am not sure how easy it is to predict climate. We do better than random guesses, so I guess there's some help there, but it's not great so it shouldn't be reported as such. (of course if people knew what error bars and standard deviation were it wouldn't be so difficult). One problem though with chaotic systems is how difficult is to "fix" them. Maybe you can increase a variable (say pollution) up to 1000 (in an arbitrary scale) without any effect. Then if you take it that extra 10 points the whole system goes bad. People seem to think that in that case we can simply fix it by lowering the variable again, but that's not how it works. If your system moved from one attractor to another (in state space) it may be extremely hard to move back. This is why I think our best bet by far is to keep things as they are: better to err on the side of caution. (of course those are just my opinions: scientist should make predictions, but then it's society that decide what to do with them ^_^).
Experimentalist 16y ago
I agree with most of what you said. However, you don't need to be knowledgeable of a particular field to find faults in a scientific study. Logic, reasoning and mathematics can be used to identify methodological errors regardless of the subject matter or your knowledge of it. Also, many seem to forget, science is a process not a conclusion. We can certainly say a scientific theory is a strong theory supported by numerous scientific studies, evidence and rigorous testing. But all scientifically supported theories, by definition of using that methodology, are subject to modification and falsification based on new research. I only point this out because of the predilection of some to brand as "kooks" people who dare question scientific conclusions. In fact questioning science is part of science.
- zeteo 16y ago
  You need to know the basic vocabulary. When someone says that two genomes are 95% identical, that has a very precise meaning. You need to know genomes are made of chromosomes, containing long strings built with four letters, that amino-acids are made of groups of three of these letters, and that the possible mutations include deletions and insertions as well as substitutions. Once you know this, the claim is a mathematical statement, and you can test it in many ways.
  - Experimentalist 16y ago
    And my point, which you get to at the end of your msg, is that a mathematical or logical error can invalidate a hypothesis regardless of the subject matter of the datapoints being measured. If you say 10 nuclear reactors + 10 nuclear reactors = 25 nuclear reactors. I can prove that wrong mathematically without knowing anything about nuclear reactors. That's all I'm saying-- you don't have to necessarily have to know something about the subject matter to prove it wrong logically. Likewise, I can evaluate a statement on the correlation of datapoints of a genome without knowing anything about what a genome does or is. (assuming you have defined the datapoints)
    - zeteo 16y ago
      Basically I think we agree but have slightly different definitions of mathematics and logics. I just think that purely mathematical errors are relatively rare (and hard to observe, since even where formal proofs are given they often skip a lot of steps, and require higher mathematics).
Tamerlin 16y ago
"On the other hand, things like climate science seem (to me at least) to rely much more on the argument from authority for gaining lay support." Have you looked at any of the actual research? It sounds more like you're criticizing the very pseudo-science that the climate science community is battling. The actual researchers are using a combination of meteorological models, telemetry (if you've seen the film "Twister" you've seen a Hollywood-ized version of an actual piece of science in their flock of birds), and empirical observational evidence (e.g. presented in "Planet Ice"). A lot of organizations that fund a lot of the climate research, including NOAA, have been going to great lengths to stifle it and obfuscate the actual message that they send out to the public.
- zeteo 16y ago
  I'm sure there is a lot of good science happening in climatology. I'm not so sure, however, how much of the sound science is of the predictive variety, and how much is merely concerned with historical reconstructions. Being able to do the latter doesn't give you the ability to do the former, especially if the system is complex enough / chaotic. What I definitely can take issue with is the way the science is presented to laypersons, especially laypersons with an intellectual bent. Granted this is mainly not the work of the scientists themselves, but neither do they seem to do anything to discourage it.
  - Tamerlin 16y ago
    The muddled presentation is due a combination of factors. One is that the scientists tend not to counter the pseudo-scientific idiocy that's rampant -- even though it's mind-numbingly obvious to anyone who isn't a complete idiot that it's pure BS with Star Trek style technobabble strewn throughout, the technobabble without any real science to counter it convinces the unwashed masses. The scientists would be doing themselves a huge favor if they spoke out more. Which leads to point 2, which is that exactly the same organizations that fund a lot of that science are also going out of their way to muddle the message and stifle the scientists. NOAA has actually been intentionally altering the messages that the scientists have been releasing, and also preventing the scientists from speaking with anyone directly. Combine that with the press and the government intentionally working to hide the message, and it's no surprise that most of what you end up seeing is pseudo-science rather than real science. It's not much different from the government's claims that the Gulf oil spill is 75% cleaned up... http://www.amazon.com/Storm-World-Hurricanes-Politics-Warming/dp/0156033666/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1283874027&sr=8-1 http://www.amazon.com/Storm-World-Hurricanes-Politics-Warmin...

by zeteo 16y ago

nanairo 16y ago

I see what you mean but I think you are overlooking how easy it is to muddy the waters. You come up with a good evidence of evolution. Great: but it will take the anti-evolution just one guy that makes a somehow plausible alternative scenario, or finds one whole in your argument and suddenly people are back to square one. Despite we are _not_ back on square one. Between a theory that almost works (like evolution) and one that is pure conjecture, the fact that there's a whole in the former all it shows is that we need to improve the theory. It is the same thing in climate modelling. It takes a nobody to say something which sound somehow plausible for the scientist to need to prove themselves again, often taking several years and a lot of effort. Most scientist, including at the IPCC, do describe hypothetical scenarios with all their doubts, including error bars etc... They also state all their assumptions, and their full method. Then one guy says: "Hey, it's been crazy cold in England this winter... so much for global warming", or "between 2001-2002 the global temperature went down" and suddenly everyone feel they are back to "we don't know". But why? The data from the IPCC is the result of many different models, with many different assumptions. The opposition has provided no better model: all they need to do to keep the status quo is point out some small unknown or flaw. That's WRONG! And btw, climate science is possibly one of the hardest disciplines around: you are making a prediction in the future of a chaotic system. But the anti-science groups can find objections just as easily to pretty much any bit of science they dislike.

zeteo 16y ago
It's true that there's a certain amount of fuzziness, but also there's a gradient of trust between 100% and zero. Predictions that consistently come true start to dwarf alternative explanations after a while. Darwin said that the great apes are our closest living relatives, and 150 years later research finds the genetic code similarities in the 90+% range. That's pretty strong. On the other hand, it is indeed possible that the field of study is a chaotic system, and accurate predictions impossible. But then I will argue that's not a branch of natural science, but rather of history. A good historian can tell you in small details the reasons why Lincoln got elected in 1860, but is as clueless as the next guy as to the next presidential election. Would you trust him if he said Republicans are always best? Similarly, there's a lot of great work done in historical climatology, with pollen analysis, ice cores etc. and we can find out a great many things about the past. Computer models can be built to fit this history perfectly (as I'm sure that even I can code some curve that spits out the order of Democrat and Republican presidents, or even last year's Dow Jones). But unless we see these models also making verifiable and accurate predictions (without 50% margins of error! what if chimp genome turned out to be 49% identical to ours?), it might well be that the system is inherently chaotic and muddy. Then it might simply not lend itself to scientific analysis, at least not with our present methods.
- nanairo 16y ago
  Indeed I agree that there exist a gradient of trust. But it is this that seems to be so difficult for the non-scientific literate to understand. In part I think it's a problem that society seem to use "shown scientifically" for "it's true". If there is one thing that people should learn at school is statistics and the scientific method: a LOT more useful than trigonometry nowadays! However my point is that it's not enough to have consistent predictions to show you are right. The examples of alternative medicine or even evolution are a good case. In the former we can do new tests, and we have: a lot of money has been spent trying and trying again different studies on homeopathy and friends. However the alternative practitioners always come up with an excuse why the scientist is wrong, or his result not meaningful. Their answers are not scientific in any way, but they can muddy the water enough that the audience feels they can't know either way. As for climatology, I agree with you that it's hard to call those predictions. Partially I think the very clear statements of the scientists get lost and simplified through different layers of repetitions so that when you read it in the mainstream newspaper you get a very partial version. There is also a problem that part of IPCC was _not_ strictly science. The IPCC has 3 panels from what I remember: the scientific stuff, the effect these will have on society, and ways to prevent them. The former gives proper scientific assessment but the later two less so. One of the problem of the IPCC is that many of its complains came from mistakes in the latter two groups, but they cast a shadow of doubt to the first one (the scientific one) despite the three groups have little connection to each other. (the stuff about the Himalaya melting, for example was something added by the second group, not the first one). I am not sure how easy it is to predict climate. We do better than random guesses, so I guess there's some help there, but it's not great so it shouldn't be reported as such. (of course if people knew what error bars and standard deviation were it wouldn't be so difficult). One problem though with chaotic systems is how difficult is to "fix" them. Maybe you can increase a variable (say pollution) up to 1000 (in an arbitrary scale) without any effect. Then if you take it that extra 10 points the whole system goes bad. People seem to think that in that case we can simply fix it by lowering the variable again, but that's not how it works. If your system moved from one attractor to another (in state space) it may be extremely hard to move back. This is why I think our best bet by far is to keep things as they are: better to err on the side of caution. (of course those are just my opinions: scientist should make predictions, but then it's society that decide what to do with them ^_^).

Experimentalist 16y ago

I agree with most of what you said. However, you don't need to be knowledgeable of a particular field to find faults in a scientific study. Logic, reasoning and mathematics can be used to identify methodological errors regardless of the subject matter or your knowledge of it. Also, many seem to forget, science is a process not a conclusion. We can certainly say a scientific theory is a strong theory supported by numerous scientific studies, evidence and rigorous testing. But all scientifically supported theories, by definition of using that methodology, are subject to modification and falsification based on new research. I only point this out because of the predilection of some to brand as "kooks" people who dare question scientific conclusions. In fact questioning science is part of science.

zeteo 16y ago
You need to know the basic vocabulary. When someone says that two genomes are 95% identical, that has a very precise meaning. You need to know genomes are made of chromosomes, containing long strings built with four letters, that amino-acids are made of groups of three of these letters, and that the possible mutations include deletions and insertions as well as substitutions. Once you know this, the claim is a mathematical statement, and you can test it in many ways.
- Experimentalist 16y ago
  And my point, which you get to at the end of your msg, is that a mathematical or logical error can invalidate a hypothesis regardless of the subject matter of the datapoints being measured. If you say 10 nuclear reactors + 10 nuclear reactors = 25 nuclear reactors. I can prove that wrong mathematically without knowing anything about nuclear reactors. That's all I'm saying-- you don't have to necessarily have to know something about the subject matter to prove it wrong logically. Likewise, I can evaluate a statement on the correlation of datapoints of a genome without knowing anything about what a genome does or is. (assuming you have defined the datapoints)
  - zeteo 16y ago
    Basically I think we agree but have slightly different definitions of mathematics and logics. I just think that purely mathematical errors are relatively rare (and hard to observe, since even where formal proofs are given they often skip a lot of steps, and require higher mathematics).

Tamerlin 16y ago

"On the other hand, things like climate science seem (to me at least) to rely much more on the argument from authority for gaining lay support." Have you looked at any of the actual research? It sounds more like you're criticizing the very pseudo-science that the climate science community is battling. The actual researchers are using a combination of meteorological models, telemetry (if you've seen the film "Twister" you've seen a Hollywood-ized version of an actual piece of science in their flock of birds), and empirical observational evidence (e.g. presented in "Planet Ice"). A lot of organizations that fund a lot of the climate research, including NOAA, have been going to great lengths to stifle it and obfuscate the actual message that they send out to the public.

zeteo 16y ago
I'm sure there is a lot of good science happening in climatology. I'm not so sure, however, how much of the sound science is of the predictive variety, and how much is merely concerned with historical reconstructions. Being able to do the latter doesn't give you the ability to do the former, especially if the system is complex enough / chaotic. What I definitely can take issue with is the way the science is presented to laypersons, especially laypersons with an intellectual bent. Granted this is mainly not the work of the scientists themselves, but neither do they seem to do anything to discourage it.
- Tamerlin 16y ago
  The muddled presentation is due a combination of factors. One is that the scientists tend not to counter the pseudo-scientific idiocy that's rampant -- even though it's mind-numbingly obvious to anyone who isn't a complete idiot that it's pure BS with Star Trek style technobabble strewn throughout, the technobabble without any real science to counter it convinces the unwashed masses. The scientists would be doing themselves a huge favor if they spoke out more. Which leads to point 2, which is that exactly the same organizations that fund a lot of that science are also going out of their way to muddle the message and stifle the scientists. NOAA has actually been intentionally altering the messages that the scientists have been releasing, and also preventing the scientists from speaking with anyone directly. Combine that with the press and the government intentionally working to hide the message, and it's no surprise that most of what you end up seeing is pseudo-science rather than real science. It's not much different from the government's claims that the Gulf oil spill is 75% cleaned up... http://www.amazon.com/Storm-World-Hurricanes-Politics-Warming/dp/0156033666/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1283874027&sr=8-1 http://www.amazon.com/Storm-World-Hurricanes-Politics-Warmin...