6 ms·

I'm always kind of astounded that HNers reflexively believe Michael Mann over Steve McIntyre. Of course it's simply because they don't know. And where would t

by moldbug 15y ago

I'm always kind of astounded that HNers reflexively believe Michael Mann over Steve McIntyre. Of course it's simply because they don't know. And where would they find the time? What we call "science" is what Washington calls "science." If Washington funded astrology and laughed at astronomy, astrology would be "science" and astronomy would be for crazy people on the Internets. Mind always submits to power.

rvkennedy 15y ago
What I call "science" is the corpus of knowledge accumulated by the scientific method over the history of knowledge since Francis Bacon. There's nothing reflexive about believing Mann over Steve McIntyre - as with all such judgments we look at who's saying what, who they are, where they're coming from and why, and make a call. Within limitations, we also look at the evidence. Why do we believe Hubble (expanding universe) over Hoyle (it's static)? Hoyle is a much more impressive figure than McIntyre, but his ideas have been tested over and over in many different ways, and found wanting. You could say that the expanding universe is just a theory, that it's unproven, because you could construct an elaborate static universe model that creates the red shift in some arbitrary manner, and causes distant stars to dim sufficiently that space is black and not white, and so on. You could create an elaborate theory that explains why things fall to earth but rejects both Newton and General Relativity. But it seems to me that the reason this doesn't happen is that it doesn't affect the bottom line of well-capitalized companies in the energy sector. You are correct that we appeal to authority for most of what we know of science. But it's not Washington that's the authority, it's the corpus. And we trust it because it's constantly subjected to self-scrutiny. Voices like McIntyre's are heard, and either the whole of one single branch of science is engaged in a massive conspiracy to not listen, or he's probably wrong. But we keep our minds open.
- moldbug 15y ago
  It's not a conspiracy. It's simply a bureaucracy. Don't be looking for conspiracy theories. Be looking for bureaucracy theories. I know this bureaucracy - my mother worked for it. (To be exact, she worked for Joe Romm at DOE.) Your vision of what "science" is dates to the pre-World War II era, when "science" was actually a bazaar. You can't have a "conspiracy" in a bazaar, because there are no coordination mechanisms. So bazaars can err, but tend to converge on the truth. Why was science a bazaar? Distributed effort, distributed reputation systems, distributed funding sources. The last being the most important. "Science" today is a government program. It's not a bazaar. It's a cathedral. You don't have to read a lot of the climate emails to see the coordination mechanisms. For instance, editors who accept dissenting papers are rapidly drummed out of their positions or even professions. The de Freitas case is a good example: http://di2.nu/foia/foia2011/mail/2683.txt http://di2.nu/foia/foia2011/mail/2683.txt. Think about Soviet science for a minute. Soviet science was a branch of Western science. Soviet scientists would no doubt describe their work as "the corpus of knowledge accumulated by the scientific method over the history of knowledge since Francis Bacon." I would describe their work as: "a government program supervised by the Politburo." For Politburo read NSF, DOE, DOD, etc, etc. And yet, there was good science in the Soviet Union. There's good science at Harvard. You're not advised to trust it unconditionally, however, just because it comes with the impressive logos "science" and "Harvard." They're just brands - they mean whatever they mean today, not whatever they may have meant in the past.
  - rvkennedy 15y ago
    You seem to be quite keen to tell me, and others here, what we really think. I laid out my position above, but your case is that actually I accept unquestioningly the facts and opinions approved by the scientific establishment. On the contrary, I am a sceptic, in the original (non climate-related) sense. If the US government ran the scientific community, that community would not have its strong consensus on climate change, because half of congress, and every other president, is committed to at least equivocating on whether that consensus exists. I'm afraid the link you posted does not cast Chris de Freitas in a positive light. If I knew of sloppy science that had been passed through peer review, I'd expect the person responsible to be excoriated, much more so if that work contradicted my own. This would not make me wrong, or the editor in question some kind of victim. You have one good point though - money, be it from government or corporations, distorts the process. The procedures for the allocation of fund lead to too much being done in some areas, not enough in others. The academic economics profession has been a particular victim of this. The trouble with the idea that climate science has fallen victim to a grand counterfactual groupthink (if you don't like the 'c' word) is that the numbers, the physics, and the reasoned opinions of the vast majority of apolitical observers support the climate consensus. As for Soviet science: did the Soviet Union promulgate any kind of false science that you're aware of? Not in the peer reviewed journals, to any great extent I know of. What would be the point? That's peer review in action. But who's trusting anything unconditionally here? As I said, we keep an open mind.
    - moldbug 15y ago
      If the US government ran the scientific community, that community would not have its strong consensus on climate change, because half of congress, and every other president, is committed to at least equivocating on whether that consensus exists. You fail to realize how the USG operates. Elected officials are not the ones in charge: http://foseti.wordpress.com/2011/02/02/on-government-employment/ http://foseti.wordpress.com/2011/02/02/on-government-employm... Congress and the President could not turn off the climate science machine or even redirect it, even if they wanted to. Sure, their signatures are scribbled underneath its annual funding. That doesn't mean they have actual power over it. I'm afraid the link you posted does not cast Chris de Freitas in a positive light. If I knew of sloppy science that had been passed through peer review, I'd expect the person responsible to be excoriated, much more so if that work contradicted my own. This would not make me wrong, or the editor in question some kind of victim. It sure doesn't! That's because the emails are written by his enemies - who are in the process of purging him. Here's some context, if you're comfortable reading "deniers:" http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/11/27/the-tribalistic-corruption-of-peer-review-the-chris-de-freitas-incident/ http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/11/27/the-tribalistic-corrup... If the "scientific community" was a bazaar, de Freitas' enemies would not have the power to purge him. It's a cathedral, though, so they do (and did). The trouble with the idea that climate science has fallen victim to a grand counterfactual groupthink (if you don't like the 'c' word) is that the numbers, the physics, and the reasoned opinions of the vast majority of apolitical observers support the climate consensus. You have considerable confidence in your ability, I see, to identify an "apolitical" observer. (Everyone wants to be apolitical these days - it's as if they didn't believe in democracy, or something.) The normal meaning of "apolitical" is "bureaucratic" - see above. You also may not be talking to the same physicists as me. What I've heard is that there's a lot of concern about being bureaucratically identified with this scam. But no point in coming out against it, except to ruin your career. It's true that the physics of the greenhouse effect per se are valid - though I'd lay even odds that no one's informed you that CO2 forcing is O(log n). There is a considerable distance between this and believing that climate models have any predictive power, which IMHO is prima facie absurd. Here's a brief discussion of why: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/03/02/why-cagw-theory-is-not-settled-science/ http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/03/02/why-cagw-theory-is-not... The author is a denier, I'll admit (or he wouldn't be posting on a denier blog), but he's also a physics professor at Duke. As for Soviet science: did the Soviet Union promulgate any kind of false science that you're aware of? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trofim_Lysenko http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trofim_Lysenko
MaysonL 15y ago
Have you noticed growing season changes and bird migration changes and polar ice changes and glacier changes and (low temperature record #s/high temperature record #s) ratios lately? Screw Steve McIntyre, screw Michael Mann, look at what's happening.

by moldbug 15y ago

rvkennedy 15y ago

What I call "science" is the corpus of knowledge accumulated by the scientific method over the history of knowledge since Francis Bacon. There's nothing reflexive about believing Mann over Steve McIntyre - as with all such judgments we look at who's saying what, who they are, where they're coming from and why, and make a call. Within limitations, we also look at the evidence. Why do we believe Hubble (expanding universe) over Hoyle (it's static)? Hoyle is a much more impressive figure than McIntyre, but his ideas have been tested over and over in many different ways, and found wanting. You could say that the expanding universe is just a theory, that it's unproven, because you could construct an elaborate static universe model that creates the red shift in some arbitrary manner, and causes distant stars to dim sufficiently that space is black and not white, and so on. You could create an elaborate theory that explains why things fall to earth but rejects both Newton and General Relativity. But it seems to me that the reason this doesn't happen is that it doesn't affect the bottom line of well-capitalized companies in the energy sector. You are correct that we appeal to authority for most of what we know of science. But it's not Washington that's the authority, it's the corpus. And we trust it because it's constantly subjected to self-scrutiny. Voices like McIntyre's are heard, and either the whole of one single branch of science is engaged in a massive conspiracy to not listen, or he's probably wrong. But we keep our minds open.

moldbug 15y ago
It's not a conspiracy. It's simply a bureaucracy. Don't be looking for conspiracy theories. Be looking for bureaucracy theories. I know this bureaucracy - my mother worked for it. (To be exact, she worked for Joe Romm at DOE.) Your vision of what "science" is dates to the pre-World War II era, when "science" was actually a bazaar. You can't have a "conspiracy" in a bazaar, because there are no coordination mechanisms. So bazaars can err, but tend to converge on the truth. Why was science a bazaar? Distributed effort, distributed reputation systems, distributed funding sources. The last being the most important. "Science" today is a government program. It's not a bazaar. It's a cathedral. You don't have to read a lot of the climate emails to see the coordination mechanisms. For instance, editors who accept dissenting papers are rapidly drummed out of their positions or even professions. The de Freitas case is a good example: http://di2.nu/foia/foia2011/mail/2683.txt http://di2.nu/foia/foia2011/mail/2683.txt. Think about Soviet science for a minute. Soviet science was a branch of Western science. Soviet scientists would no doubt describe their work as "the corpus of knowledge accumulated by the scientific method over the history of knowledge since Francis Bacon." I would describe their work as: "a government program supervised by the Politburo." For Politburo read NSF, DOE, DOD, etc, etc. And yet, there was good science in the Soviet Union. There's good science at Harvard. You're not advised to trust it unconditionally, however, just because it comes with the impressive logos "science" and "Harvard." They're just brands - they mean whatever they mean today, not whatever they may have meant in the past.
- rvkennedy 15y ago
  You seem to be quite keen to tell me, and others here, what we really think. I laid out my position above, but your case is that actually I accept unquestioningly the facts and opinions approved by the scientific establishment. On the contrary, I am a sceptic, in the original (non climate-related) sense. If the US government ran the scientific community, that community would not have its strong consensus on climate change, because half of congress, and every other president, is committed to at least equivocating on whether that consensus exists. I'm afraid the link you posted does not cast Chris de Freitas in a positive light. If I knew of sloppy science that had been passed through peer review, I'd expect the person responsible to be excoriated, much more so if that work contradicted my own. This would not make me wrong, or the editor in question some kind of victim. You have one good point though - money, be it from government or corporations, distorts the process. The procedures for the allocation of fund lead to too much being done in some areas, not enough in others. The academic economics profession has been a particular victim of this. The trouble with the idea that climate science has fallen victim to a grand counterfactual groupthink (if you don't like the 'c' word) is that the numbers, the physics, and the reasoned opinions of the vast majority of apolitical observers support the climate consensus. As for Soviet science: did the Soviet Union promulgate any kind of false science that you're aware of? Not in the peer reviewed journals, to any great extent I know of. What would be the point? That's peer review in action. But who's trusting anything unconditionally here? As I said, we keep an open mind.
  - moldbug 15y ago
    If the US government ran the scientific community, that community would not have its strong consensus on climate change, because half of congress, and every other president, is committed to at least equivocating on whether that consensus exists. You fail to realize how the USG operates. Elected officials are not the ones in charge: http://foseti.wordpress.com/2011/02/02/on-government-employment/ http://foseti.wordpress.com/2011/02/02/on-government-employm... Congress and the President could not turn off the climate science machine or even redirect it, even if they wanted to. Sure, their signatures are scribbled underneath its annual funding. That doesn't mean they have actual power over it. I'm afraid the link you posted does not cast Chris de Freitas in a positive light. If I knew of sloppy science that had been passed through peer review, I'd expect the person responsible to be excoriated, much more so if that work contradicted my own. This would not make me wrong, or the editor in question some kind of victim. It sure doesn't! That's because the emails are written by his enemies - who are in the process of purging him. Here's some context, if you're comfortable reading "deniers:" http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/11/27/the-tribalistic-corruption-of-peer-review-the-chris-de-freitas-incident/ http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/11/27/the-tribalistic-corrup... If the "scientific community" was a bazaar, de Freitas' enemies would not have the power to purge him. It's a cathedral, though, so they do (and did). The trouble with the idea that climate science has fallen victim to a grand counterfactual groupthink (if you don't like the 'c' word) is that the numbers, the physics, and the reasoned opinions of the vast majority of apolitical observers support the climate consensus. You have considerable confidence in your ability, I see, to identify an "apolitical" observer. (Everyone wants to be apolitical these days - it's as if they didn't believe in democracy, or something.) The normal meaning of "apolitical" is "bureaucratic" - see above. You also may not be talking to the same physicists as me. What I've heard is that there's a lot of concern about being bureaucratically identified with this scam. But no point in coming out against it, except to ruin your career. It's true that the physics of the greenhouse effect per se are valid - though I'd lay even odds that no one's informed you that CO2 forcing is O(log n). There is a considerable distance between this and believing that climate models have any predictive power, which IMHO is prima facie absurd. Here's a brief discussion of why: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/03/02/why-cagw-theory-is-not-settled-science/ http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/03/02/why-cagw-theory-is-not... The author is a denier, I'll admit (or he wouldn't be posting on a denier blog), but he's also a physics professor at Duke. As for Soviet science: did the Soviet Union promulgate any kind of false science that you're aware of? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trofim_Lysenko http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trofim_Lysenko

MaysonL 15y ago

Have you noticed growing season changes and bird migration changes and polar ice changes and glacier changes and (low temperature record #s/high temperature record #s) ratios lately? Screw Steve McIntyre, screw Michael Mann, look at what's happening.