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Let's just say for a moment that human-caused climate change is either minimal or even non-existent. At this point, would we even be able to admit that? So much

Let's just say for a moment that human-caused climate change is either minimal or even non-existent. At this point, would we even be able to admit that? So much political and scientific capital has been invested here that if we were to find out that maybe it's not what we think it is, it would do catastrophic damage to people's faith in science and institutions. And they are precariously positioned as is.

soperj 5y ago
It would do more damage to keep lying at that point.
pjkundert 5y ago
I think that the whole "Trust the Science" trope has already damaged people's faith in science and institutions. If we had, instead, encouraged "Trust the Scientific Method" and taught people to think and replicate claims, we'd be in a much better place. But, the lack of access to raw datasets (and the packaged code to transform them into claimed results) has led to a total "trust" environment, with no ability to "check scientist's work". What other outcome could we have expected?
- q1w2 5y ago
  This was especially poignant in the spring of 2020 when scientists and health officials were telling people that masks were NOT effective at preventing covid-19 infection. ...and that such idiotic positions were amplified on social media and opposing opinions were silenced.
  - listless 5y ago
    People forget this ever happened. Our memory is short. I would add to this that cloth masks barely work at all, and yet we’re still encouraging people to wear them (1). It’s this kind of thing that we need to stop doing. Just tell people the truth and encourage them to wear a surgical mask. 1) https://www.webmd.com/lung/news/20210907/masks-limit-covid-spread-study https://www.webmd.com/lung/news/20210907/masks-limit-covid-s...
- awild 5y ago
  I've seen this trope of a lack of trustable science often here. But the people not trusting the science (that I've come across) would usually not have the ability to replicate science anyway, for a lack of education. The other group to not "trust the science" usually is making their money in some of the causes of global warming. Just a few weeks back, Saudi Arabia (and some other countries I'm missing) insisted on weakening the claims made in a joint statement/study of the COP. The lack of trust in science (imho) stems from the fact that pretty big news organisations (fox, Bild etc) are doing their best to ease the cognitive dissonance of their audience by claiming them unreliable. The ivory tower is just a propaganda trope at this point
  - listless 5y ago
    I don’t think it’s a trope - unfortunately. There’s so many examples of people using “science” as a political football that they’ve undermined themselves. We’ve got public health experts encouraging people to protest racial justice in the height of a pandemic as if a virus cares about the nobility of your cause, and that’s just a most recent example. History is littered with us being wrong or just downright manipulative with data / science / experts. Said to say that I think parent thread has it right - people need to have faith in the method - not the experts - and realize that the method does not yield infallible results. It’s simply the best mechanism for getting the truth with the data we currently have. And people need to be able to parse out when they are seeing data-driven conclusions over when experts are just saying dumb/political things. That can’t be a referendum on “science”.
  - pjkundert 5y ago
    The assumption of universal ignorance on the part of non-"scientists" is ... pretty amazing. I think we'd be pretty amazed at what people can discover, when the raw data and the analytical procedures used to draw conclusions from that data are exposed to scrutiny.
    - awild 5y ago
      I think you're confusing something here. I'm not claiming we don't need open data nor am I claiming that the non-academic populus would be unable to make interesting observations with open data. I'm saying that of those people that deny scientifically validated claims (like climate change or the efficacy of vaccinations) the majority would not be able to make interesting (and valid) observations, nor would it be in their interest to do so. I know how to run climate simulations, given a huge dump of climate data I would _not_ be able to draw any new conclusions out of it, I can guarantee that to you. My point is that this idea that distrust in science stems from a lack of open data is wrong, and instead product of concerted and ongoing effort of propaganda and defunding of academia. Climate change is at this stage more a political problem than it is a scientific one.
- lotsofpulp 5y ago
  >But, the lack of access to raw datasets (and the packaged code to transform them into claimed results) has led to a total "trust" environment, with no ability to "check scientist's work". Even if raw datasets were available, I suspect 95%+ of people lack the ability to draw conclusions from them. A majority would fail simply in the step of opening a browser and navigating the internet to get to the dataset. And then a sizable portion would fail at figuring out which programs to use to analyze them. And then a sizable portion of those would not understand the math to be able to understand the measurements they would be making. The emergence of certain mostly trustworthy organizations filled with mostly trustworthy people is what has gotten us humans this far. People do not have the capacity to be able to comprehend and analyze all of nature, they will have to rely on trustworthy specialists.
  - pjkundert 5y ago
    That's the beauty of the Scientific Method. It doesn't take a multitude of people to falsify an unsound claim. It only takes one counterexample. Could it be that "Trust the Science" is simply an attempt to prop up faulty science that can't survive scrutiny?
    - lotsofpulp 5y ago
      The data should, of course, be made available so anyone can try to verify. But at the of the day, for the most complicated topics, we will have to trust others.
  - ghostwriter 5y ago
    > And then a sizable portion of those would not understand the math to be able to understand the measurements they would be making. There's a sizable portion of so-called scientists that neither know nor understand math either [1] [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/math/comments/1xfa8p/medical_paper_claiming_to_have_invented_a_way_to/ https://www.reddit.com/r/math/comments/1xfa8p/medical_paper_...
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
- thepasswordis 5y ago
  We have seen this cycle play out in the past. There was a time when you were meant to trust the church. You weren't allowed to read the bible or interpret it yourself, since that was the role of a priest. It was not a good system, and the people who were in charge of interpreting the scripture for people used their station to enrich themselves and levy power over the people who had to come to them.
consumer451 5y ago
> Let's just say for a moment that human-caused climate change is either minimal or even non-existent. But we know that this is not the case. To me, this exercise is along the lines of wondering what the universe would be like if the cosmological constant had a different value. It's a discussion about a theoretical world which does not exist, isn't it? What is the point then?
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
marstall 5y ago
grant that our certainty on AGW is whatever it is now. be generous and call it 95%. what would it take to prove to the scientific establishment that whoops, we're in that 5%! Wrong after all. Here's the proof, everyone can go home now. Given the number of variables & the long timelines involved, and the depth of political entrenchment - that outcome of a widely accepted disproof seems basically impossible, doesn't it? In which case, what are we arguing for?

soperj 5y ago

It would do more damage to keep lying at that point.

pjkundert 5y ago

I think that the whole "Trust the Science" trope has already damaged people's faith in science and institutions. If we had, instead, encouraged "Trust the Scientific Method" and taught people to think and replicate claims, we'd be in a much better place. But, the lack of access to raw datasets (and the packaged code to transform them into claimed results) has led to a total "trust" environment, with no ability to "check scientist's work". What other outcome could we have expected?

q1w2 5y ago
This was especially poignant in the spring of 2020 when scientists and health officials were telling people that masks were NOT effective at preventing covid-19 infection. ...and that such idiotic positions were amplified on social media and opposing opinions were silenced.
- listless 5y ago
  People forget this ever happened. Our memory is short. I would add to this that cloth masks barely work at all, and yet we’re still encouraging people to wear them (1). It’s this kind of thing that we need to stop doing. Just tell people the truth and encourage them to wear a surgical mask. 1) https://www.webmd.com/lung/news/20210907/masks-limit-covid-spread-study https://www.webmd.com/lung/news/20210907/masks-limit-covid-s...
awild 5y ago
I've seen this trope of a lack of trustable science often here. But the people not trusting the science (that I've come across) would usually not have the ability to replicate science anyway, for a lack of education. The other group to not "trust the science" usually is making their money in some of the causes of global warming. Just a few weeks back, Saudi Arabia (and some other countries I'm missing) insisted on weakening the claims made in a joint statement/study of the COP. The lack of trust in science (imho) stems from the fact that pretty big news organisations (fox, Bild etc) are doing their best to ease the cognitive dissonance of their audience by claiming them unreliable. The ivory tower is just a propaganda trope at this point
- listless 5y ago
  I don’t think it’s a trope - unfortunately. There’s so many examples of people using “science” as a political football that they’ve undermined themselves. We’ve got public health experts encouraging people to protest racial justice in the height of a pandemic as if a virus cares about the nobility of your cause, and that’s just a most recent example. History is littered with us being wrong or just downright manipulative with data / science / experts. Said to say that I think parent thread has it right - people need to have faith in the method - not the experts - and realize that the method does not yield infallible results. It’s simply the best mechanism for getting the truth with the data we currently have. And people need to be able to parse out when they are seeing data-driven conclusions over when experts are just saying dumb/political things. That can’t be a referendum on “science”.
- pjkundert 5y ago
  The assumption of universal ignorance on the part of non-"scientists" is ... pretty amazing. I think we'd be pretty amazed at what people can discover, when the raw data and the analytical procedures used to draw conclusions from that data are exposed to scrutiny.
  - awild 5y ago
    I think you're confusing something here. I'm not claiming we don't need open data nor am I claiming that the non-academic populus would be unable to make interesting observations with open data. I'm saying that of those people that deny scientifically validated claims (like climate change or the efficacy of vaccinations) the majority would not be able to make interesting (and valid) observations, nor would it be in their interest to do so. I know how to run climate simulations, given a huge dump of climate data I would _not_ be able to draw any new conclusions out of it, I can guarantee that to you. My point is that this idea that distrust in science stems from a lack of open data is wrong, and instead product of concerted and ongoing effort of propaganda and defunding of academia. Climate change is at this stage more a political problem than it is a scientific one.
lotsofpulp 5y ago
>But, the lack of access to raw datasets (and the packaged code to transform them into claimed results) has led to a total "trust" environment, with no ability to "check scientist's work". Even if raw datasets were available, I suspect 95%+ of people lack the ability to draw conclusions from them. A majority would fail simply in the step of opening a browser and navigating the internet to get to the dataset. And then a sizable portion would fail at figuring out which programs to use to analyze them. And then a sizable portion of those would not understand the math to be able to understand the measurements they would be making. The emergence of certain mostly trustworthy organizations filled with mostly trustworthy people is what has gotten us humans this far. People do not have the capacity to be able to comprehend and analyze all of nature, they will have to rely on trustworthy specialists.
- pjkundert 5y ago
  That's the beauty of the Scientific Method. It doesn't take a multitude of people to falsify an unsound claim. It only takes one counterexample. Could it be that "Trust the Science" is simply an attempt to prop up faulty science that can't survive scrutiny?
  - lotsofpulp 5y ago
    The data should, of course, be made available so anyone can try to verify. But at the of the day, for the most complicated topics, we will have to trust others.
- ghostwriter 5y ago
  > And then a sizable portion of those would not understand the math to be able to understand the measurements they would be making. There's a sizable portion of so-called scientists that neither know nor understand math either [1] [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/math/comments/1xfa8p/medical_paper_claiming_to_have_invented_a_way_to/ https://www.reddit.com/r/math/comments/1xfa8p/medical_paper_...
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
thepasswordis 5y ago
We have seen this cycle play out in the past. There was a time when you were meant to trust the church. You weren't allowed to read the bible or interpret it yourself, since that was the role of a priest. It was not a good system, and the people who were in charge of interpreting the scripture for people used their station to enrich themselves and levy power over the people who had to come to them.

consumer451 5y ago

> Let's just say for a moment that human-caused climate change is either minimal or even non-existent. But we know that this is not the case. To me, this exercise is along the lines of wondering what the universe would be like if the cosmological constant had a different value. It's a discussion about a theoretical world which does not exist, isn't it? What is the point then?

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

marstall 5y ago

grant that our certainty on AGW is whatever it is now. be generous and call it 95%. what would it take to prove to the scientific establishment that whoops, we're in that 5%! Wrong after all. Here's the proof, everyone can go home now. Given the number of variables & the long timelines involved, and the depth of political entrenchment - that outcome of a widely accepted disproof seems basically impossible, doesn't it? In which case, what are we arguing for?