…of peer review:
What these and other episodes reveal was that there was a concerted effort to stage-manage the appearance of an ironclad consensus at the expense of the scientific process. Rather than make an open and honest argument that, despite persistent uncertainties, there is substantial theoretical and empirical evidence to support the hypothesis that human activity is contributing to a gradual warming of the atmosphere, they focused on squelching dissenting scientific views, corrupting science in the process.
Unfortunately, as a commenter there notes, there isn’t anything really new about this. Kuhn understood it over half a century ago. This episode simply provided an ugly window into it, and in a case where the science is deeply consequential. It doesn’t “prove” that the earth is not anthropogenically warming (and people who think that science “proves” things in general simply demonstrate their lack of understanding of science). What it does show is that the people who have been telling us that it does are not to be trusted, and that a thorough, and transparent, review of the evidence is in order before we base major policy on their preferences.
[Update a few minutes later]
Another good point in comments, and you should really read all the comments over there. It is in response to the comment that we shouldn’t throw out all of the good science and scientists based on these bad apples:
100% of the scientists with like conclusions who have had their emails and code exposed to the world seem to have engaged in bad behaviour. Furthermore, very few of the scientists with like conclusions condemned the bad behaviour, instead beginning by defending it. Given these facts, I think we should say that we don’t know whether other scientist with like conclusions have engaged in bad behaviour, rather than just assuming that they haven’t.
Also:
…it is critical to examine the influence the bad apples have had over everything subsequent. To do that you first need to realize that although there are reams of studies on AGW indeed, they are almost all based off a shocking small group of data. Historic temperature wise, there are 3 major datasets in the world, and (apparently now that CRU has lost theirs) one repository for raw data. These datasets are references in a staggering amount of research, and their creators and care takers are the exact people in question here. Doug [sic] Jones being the godfather. The Wegman report warmed of how a small group of climate scientists from a small number of institutes were working too closely together to hope for any independent analysis. That has proved entirely true.
Slightly OT, but that first comment reminds me of the national, even global exchange we’ve had over the past eight years:
Defense: Not all Muslims are terrorists.
Retort: Yes, but to first order, at least lately, all terrorists have been Muslim.
Sadly for those scientists with integrity working in this field (and we don’t know how many there are — perhaps most of those with integrity have been chased out by now), this scandal has tainted them all, even if the media continues to misreport or ignore it.
I’m going to disagree. This episode is no indictment of empirical science. It merely shows the folly of misapplying the label science to things that are not.
It’s a lesson we should teach in grade school. Things are not “scientific” because they involve measurements in SI units, or because there’s math involved, but if and only if every single link in every single theory is testable by repeatable experiment.
I don’t think anyone said it was an indictment of empirical science. It was an indictment of “peer review.”
Okay, s/empirical science/peer review/g. I still think the same thing. Peer review is a system that only functions when what’s being reviewed is subject to empirical test. As I said in some other comment, the point of peer review is not to vet what’s being published. That’s ipso facto impossible. It’s only point is to ensure that everything someone else needs to duplicate the experiment for himself is included in the published report. That shortens the time necessary for bad work to be exposed as such.
In other words, “peer review” functions as a brake on cultism and bandwagonism only when you have an underlying empirical science. Otherwise, it’s just bishops issuing imprimaturs for accepted dogma.
“[This episode] merely shows the folly of misapplying the label science to things that are not.”
Exactly. In particular, mislabeling “publishing in peer-reviewed journals” as “the progress of science.”
One of the most consistently aggravating aspects of the AGW debate has been the determined misuse of the term “peer review.” I’ve seen scientists who must know better refer to peer review as somehow creating a canon of scientific beliefs.
Let me summarize the instructions of the last article I reviewed:
– Does this article belong in our journal?
– Is it citing relevant work?
– Are there major mistakes?
How you get from that to Truth is beyond me.
But leaving the peer-review process aside. Just what the hell are these journals anyway? They are the technical newsletters of professional organizations. The Journal of Geophysical Research is a publication of the American Geophysical Union. You can join that club here for $20. I honestly cannot understand why anyone thinks the committee of full members (based on whatever hierarchy they use) that is responsible for the journal has somehow seen some Truth.
Peer-review is central to the careers of academic scientists in a system that came together largely in the 20th century. That’s why it can and does get politicized. Peer-review is utterly dispensable to the progress of science.
An interesting coda to my comment is that I once had the privilege of doing a little theoretical calculation that showed that a brilliant experiment published in Nature drew completely false conclusions, in a way similar to the AGW debate: they had concluded from measurements X and Y that theory A was proven. I was able to show that A was not a unique explanation, nor even unique plausible explanation, for X and Y.
But that doesn’t mean Nature was wrong to publish the initial “wrong” research. To the contrary, it was good that they did, so that the mistake could be noticed (by me) and corrected.
It’s an interesting question what would have happened had I attempted to publish my criticism in Nature, but I didn’t, because they take so long. I published it elsewhere. I should mention, though, because science — real science — is unfairly getting a black eye from these climate studies fools, that I was subsequently invited to the same big-time international meeting to which the original authors were invited, and although everyone asked hard questions (which is right and good), there was no hint of suppression of what I had to say, although it went quite against the popular theories of the day in a certain field. Indeed, the original authors were cordial and friendly, even though I’d ruined their moment in the sun.
This is how science is supposed to work, and it generally does, out of the limelight. I’ve been at conferences in which experiments have challenged a man’s life work, and had him respond with grace and integrity, even assisting the exposure of the work that might undo all of his. This is not because scientists are angels, but because when you work in a field where all depends, finally, on experimental proof, then there is zero percentage in being anything other than completely open and honest.
The problems begin when your field is not subject to experimental proof, and then when gobs of money and power start being attracted to it. Any one who goes into science for the right reasons — generally to escape that rat-race crap — should flee the first approach of politicians and money men like the demons from Hell they are.
Defense: Not all Muslims are terrorists.
Retort: Yes, but to first order, at least lately, all terrorists have been Muslim.
That’s not a very good retort. He who refuses to do math is doomed to talk nonsense.
“…this scandal has tainted them all…”
This scandal has tainted all Science, and its repercussions will be with us for a long time to come. It’s one of the things that has enraged me most: these guys borrowed from my account and bet the community ranch on an unproven and thinly supported hypothesis.
Biologists in particular should be especially outraged, because this is going to give a LOT of ammunition to the creationist crowd.
“He who refuses to do math is doomed to talk nonsense.”
I have no idea what this nonsensical statement means.
I would not say you are correct about Dennett at all. Dennett’s ideas do not logically follow from atheism and I can’t think of anyone who has said they do. Dennett actually has some very radical ideas that most of his peers strongly disagree with. It may be that some atheists push Dennett like his stuff is factual or his ideas to refute theism. In some respects his ideas do, but I don’t think that he has ever claimed such nor have I gotten the feeling from him that hes creating a movement.
We have spammers again with “the ceylon”. I wonder if there’s some sort of AI at work here, generating random text that vaguely fits the thread.