BPSDB
Ted Talks just recently posted a 2002 talk by Biochemist Kary Mullis: Celebrating the scientific experiment.
“Biochemist Kary Mullis talks about the basis of modern science: the experiment. Sharing tales from the 17th century and from his own backyard-rocketry days, Mullis celebrates the curiosity, inspiration and rigor of good science in all its forms.”
Unfortunately Mullis illustrates the truth of his excellent advice by completely ignoring it and instead spouts a bunch of utter nonsense about climate science.
Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes
We start with a 20 minute talk about the history of science and what makes for good science that is folksy, engaging and quite enjoyable.
As an anchor for the talk he uses the book Leviathan and the Air-Pump to emphasize the importance of verifiable evidence over received wisdom.
He then launches into a 10 minute anti-climate science polemic in which he ignores everything that he had just said. A predictable result is that what he concludes is utterly foolish.
There is nothing particularly interesting about being hopelessly wrong about climate change. Two minutes with a search engine shows that it is common enough.
The two things that make Mullis interesting are:
i) the truth of scientific principles and the critical importance of following them regardless of personal beliefs or preferences, and
ii)) that a trained scientist who clearly knows what makes for good science is still able to delude himself into spouting gibberish almost in the same breath that he is warning against the folly of doing it.
Mullis begins his assault on science with a broad ad hominem attack on the IPCC that is completely without any foundation or evidence. His claim is that in modernity people have gotten involved in science as they are “in there for the money” power and travel.
Excuse me? No question that being a scientist is a relatively secure and comfortable living. No doubt it represents vast wealth and power to those living in crippling poverty, but those people do not have the option to become scientists.
How many people seeking power and wealth say becoming an atmospheric physicist or oceanographer is the way to go? How many heads of state or members of the super rich say they owe it all to their work in paleoclimatology? Anyone?
That might be because it’s not.
Fail #1
People interested in wealth and power wisely choose to become business leaders, lawyers, rock, sports and film stars, military leaders, etc.
Anyone who chooses the sciences for this reason is clearly not bright enough to ever actually become a scientist (or wealthy and powerful).
The whole premise is so ludicrous it’s staggering. And Mullis is a scientist; he knows this from his everyday experience of not being wealthy or powerful. He lives it, and yet there he is making the statement. It beggars belief.
ASIDE for a cushy job with good pay it was hard to beat being a professional climate Denier since the oil industry had deep pockets.
Fail #2
He then makes the claim that temperature increases are only at night, a misrepresentation of the then 11 year old study by Karl et al that showed the temperature changes were more pronounced at night, but not exclusively.
Mullis parrots the idea common in the early 1990s that the measured temperature increase might be due to an urban heat island effect; ie weather stations are near cities, cities trap day time heat in all the concrete and asphalt and hence are warmer at night than the surrounding areas.
Fail #s 3, 4, and 5
Mullis scores a major “fail” on three more counts (in addition to misrepresenting the 1991 study);
i) urban weather stations are not the only source of land temperature data. There are and were many rural stations that were showing the same pattern as the urban ones;
ii) other measures of temperature such as ocean bouys and weather ballons were also showing temperature increases (discussed in more detail here).
iii) a 1997 paper by Easterling et al (already 5 years old at the time of Mullis’s talk) had shown the urban heat island explanation was wrong. Aside – they did this by not using the urban weather station data and analysing only the temperature data sets mentioned in i) and ii).
For more on Urban Heat Islands and the fable that they explain climate change see here.
Anyone can make a mistake and we can’t all know everything; those are given. But Mullis is a professional presenting himself as an authority on good science while giving a public presentation on climate.
In this regard he has a responsibility to get it right. Instead he is inexcusably sloppy in both his research and his understanding.
Fail #s 6,7, and 8
Mullis’s first five ‘fails’ set him up to blindly embrace his sixth, seventh and eighth ‘fails.’
He pulls out of his pocket notes on the then just published Evidence for Strengthening of the Tropical General Circulation in the 1990s and Evidence for Large Decadal Variability in the Tropical Mean Radiative Energy Budget. The nutshell version of these papers is that the satellite data do not seem to support anthropogenic climate change and that natural variations are a more likely explanation.
Mullis claims to paraphrase the conclusions of the authors and the editor of Science as “The conclusion is that our theories about global warming are completely wrong”
Fail #6, he is lying.
Actual conclusion of Chen et al “The missing variability in the models highlights the critical need to improve cloud modeling in the tropics so that prediction of tropical climate on interannual and decadal time scales can be improved.” (emphasis added).
Fail #7
He actually admits he was lying when he later says “you can tell because they have very guarded conclusions in these papers.” He explains the “guarded conclusions” as being due to the author’s fear of losing funding and wanting to adhere to the orthodoxy of the day.
This is just speculation that is:
- hypocritical given that the authors are really just practicing the proper scientific caution that Mullis had been advocating for most of his talk,
- irresponsible given that he has absolutely no evidence or reason to say this other than his own personal motives
- unprofessional, given that he is slandering his colleagues for no reason other than to ‘prove’ his own baseless beliefs.
The fact is that the US and Canadian governments in particular have been suppressing climate science. Speaking out for climate change hurt funding and careers (see here and here), not helped them.
Fail #8
Mullis concludes “These papers should have been called ‘The end to the global warming fiasco‘.”
We know now that the problem with these papers is that they relied on satellite data that had been misinterpreted.
The scientists interpreting the satellite temperature record failed to account for decaying satellite orbits and as a result their results were wrong (see here and here).
The authors of the two papers and Mullis did not know this of course, but he still should have followed the authors real conclusions (as per his own advice) and not imposed his outrageous interpretation.
Undoubtedly he did so because his sloppy treatment of the other temperature records led him to conclude that all of the other temperature records were wrong, and so these studies seemed to suggest that all of the temperature data was wrong. In reality the data were all correct and he was wrong.
For more on the fable that the satellite data shows cooling see here.
The Big Fail: How could he be so wrong?
In his talk Mullis says “You have to get down into the details and read the papers.” True. Why didn’t he?
The core message of Mullis’s entire presentation is that you must look at the data and not let your preconceived ideas impose interpretation. Yet when it came to climate science he imposed interpretations and fabricated explanations as to why the data was wrong at every step of the way.
Why? Mullis never talks about his personal motivations and ideology, so we can’t know. Clearly some kind of strongly held ideology was leading him to consistently ignore the data, slander his colleagues and make up explanations out of nothing.
As a result what should have been a great talk on science ends up being uninformed, unprofessional, and given his earlier admonitions, very hypocritical.
Now that his talk has been released it would be nice if Mullis himself were to step forward and affirm the wisdom of the first 20 minutes by acknowledging that by ignoring that wisdom he spent the last 10 minutes being an ASS.
We give our consent every moment that we do not resist.
Denier “Challenge” aka Deathwatch Update: Day 80 … still no evidence.
IMAGE CREDITS
Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes from Wikimedia Commons
Automatic weather station by Jacarrah from Wikimedia Commons
Satellite from Wikimedia Commons
Blind spot by terri Lynn Land from Wikimedia Commons
Greenfyre's 
[…] Blinded, but not by science 9 January 2009 1 views No Comment BPSDBTed Talks just recently posted a 2002 talk by Biochemist Kary Mullis: Celebrating the scientific experiment.“Biochemist Kary Mullis talks about the basis of modern science: the experiment. Sharing tales from the 17th century and from his own backyard-rocketry days, Mullis celebrates the curiosity, inspiration and rigor of good science in all its forms.”Unfortunately Mullis illustrates the truth of his excellent advice by completely ignoring it and instead spouts a bunch of utter nonsense ab Read more from the original source: Blinded, but not by science […]
I remember the episode of The Simpsons in which the family visit one of Lisa’s heroines, a chimpanzee expert (based on Jane Goodall). In the story, she’s secretly using the chimps as forced labor to work in a diamond mine.
At one point Homer lies on a bed throwing glittering diamonds over himself and exlaims, “Woo-hoo! Look at me! I’m a scientist!”
It illustrates how ridiculous is the idea that anyone motivated by a desire for wealth would choose science as a career.
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Well, how long until Morano posts the video on the Minority side of EPW?
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How do you explain recovery of both Arctic and Antarctic ice shelves? They are not shrinking, but growing.
Proof?
Rapid growth spurt leaves amount of ice at levels seen 29 years ago.
“Earlier this year, predictions were rife that the North Pole could melt entirely in 2008. Instead, the Arctic ice saw a substantial recovery. Bill Chapman, a researcher with the UIUC’s Arctic Center, tells DailyTech this was due in part to colder temperatures in the region.”
http://www.dailytech.com/Article.aspx?newsid=13834[1]
or this:
Despite global temperatures rising, the interior of Antarctica has experienced a unique cooling trend during its summer and autumn over the last few decades.
http://www.nature.com/news/2008/080429/full/news.2008.787.html
I wish someone would make the data available, but the observations are fairly convincing. [2]
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[1] Your source is a lie as was exposed on this blog 2 days ago link is here, and Tamino does a very nice illustration of the lie link is here.
[2] For Antarctica see:
Less Sea Ice in the Arctic, More in the Antarctic, and, of Course, the Denialists Get It All Wrong
Evidence that Antarctica has warmed significantly over past 50 years
“The breakup is the latest of seven major Antarctic ice-shelf collapses in the past 30 years, after some 400 years of relative stability.”
NASA Satellites Watch Polar Ice Shelf Break into Crushed Ice
Whoops … once again good netizens have dealt with this already. Well, it’s worth getting Tamino’s post out there regardless.
Jim, the data are available. Check Hadley or the NSIDC.
And look at what they show.
DailyTech’s piece is carefully crafted to sow confusion and misinformation. Try again.
Jim H: Surely you can see the January 7 post regarding that DailyTech article.
Fail #9.
OK, but you’d better check you own blind spots.
You learn more from a failed experiment than by one that merely confirms your hypothesis.
Failure is a good thing. Without it, there would be no progress.
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Agreed – but are you admitting that you were wrong, or claiming that because you were wrong you are right? 🙂
But Greenfyre, you see, to get endless riches you must not only be a scientist — you must be a scientist and adhere to the politically correct orthodoxy of the day! As Professor Richard Lindzen hath shewn us, political correctness is the key to prizes and awards, which lead to riches, and to Lehman Brothers, or something like that.
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Not to take sides or anything, but in regard to “Fail #1”, don’t you think its possible he’s referring to those who are now taking advantage of science for their own gain, such as Al Gore, and all of the economists that are now much better off as a result of the public acceptance of anthropogenic climate change (including the chairman of the IPCC and highly funded academics who have jumped on the climate change bandwagon). [1]
That is one of the true problems with science, in that a bias is introduced by the funding system. If the current “public support” is in favour of “Topic A”, then those acknowledging “Topic A” will be well funded. At the same time, those refuting “Topic A” will be shunned from the scientific community. Only when all sides are heard and studied so that a reasonable person could conclude that the evidence is irrefutable should it be accepted. [2]
How do you think it was confirmed, beyond any doubt, that smoking cigarettes caused cancer? Tobacco companies threw money to refute any study on statistical means [3], so researchers worked harder and harder to obtain enough data such that it became irrefutable. That is how science should be done (hopefully with equal funding from the same organizations and not opposing funding from those with their own agendas though). [4]
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George, the critical problem with that claim is that it assumes the outcome of scientific research is known when the research is proposed — that is, starting from a conclusion. This is the exact opposite of how science works.
A ‘consensus challenger’ would arise by proposing research into a particular aspect of climate change — and, if your claim of preferential funding is correct, this would result in funding. (If only it were that easy…). Then, if the results are scientifically robust and challenge the consensus, boom, instant publication — and instant reknown, since you’re toppling something that is pretty damn well robust itself. Seriously, this is Nobel-Prize-worthy stuff if it happened.
The fact that it hasn’t, and that people who begin from assumed conclusions rather than observation claim persecution on preferential funding, should illustrate the robustness of the current theory and the nature of science to preclude cranks.
…Well, either that or a Great Warmist Conspiracy. Which is more likely?
Brian, one would hope that the outcome of scientific research is determined solely by the results, just like one would hope that politicians solely work for the good of the people which they serve, but it doesn’t always work that way.
In modern science, consensus challenging is much more difficult than you describe. Writing a grant to a major funding agency under the claim that you are studying climate change, then publishing a paper saying it doesn’t exist (or is not as severe as predicted or whatever) is enough to keep you from getting a grant renewal. [1]
And as to benefits, look at all of the economists who are now “raking in the dough” (at least from the perspective of a scientist) because they study the “economics of climate change”. What do you think would happen to their positions if they were to come to the conclusion that global warming will have a net positive on food production? (just an example of course). [2]
And its not about whether there is global warming or not (I’m personally undecided), I’m just saying if you can criticize someone for not following scientific method when speaking against your cause, you can also critique them when they speak for your cause.
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George, two points.
First, the economists are a red herring, since they don’t have the same standards scientific journals have. [1] Consider Bjorn Lomborg, who concludes things similar to what you’re saying and is a favorite of conservative think tanks with all the funding they provide. (He isn’t an economist but his arguments follow the economist pattern and are called about as such.)
Second, can you find any evidence of someone concluding climate change isn’t happening who has NOT had some serious problem with their work discovered? It’s not the conclusion, it’s the “bad science” bit that prevents republication.
There’s even an obvious counterexample: Christy and Spencer’s UAH satellite analysis, which for a decade led to the “satellites don’t show global warming” meme. They had no problem securing funding during this time. (Their analysis no longer shows this, since there was an algebra mistake in their analysis that has since been corrected.)
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Brian,
I would argue that the real red herring is the simple concept of climate change. I’ll admit that a lot of people want to fudge numbers and pretend that there isn’t any sort of climate change, but the fact is that of course there is climate change, there has always been climate change, and there will always be climate change until the earth meets it’s demise.
The two questions most pertinent to me, and apparently Dr. Mullis as well, are:
1) Have we caused the change? [1]
2) What is the net overall effect? [2]
In regard to 1), the closest even the IPCC can give as a number is a probability greater than 90%, and that is from an international group based on the principle of climate change (imagine what would happen to the IPCC if it became dogma that man does not have a significant effect). [3]
This is where the economists come in, and why they are relevant. Without economists, and other “analysts” the public would have no idea what climate change means to them. Telling people the temperature is going to rise by 2 degrees or 10 degrees or whatever in the next century does nothing to people if you don’t tell them that there’ll be terrible hurricanes and drought and famine
I’ll reiterate: I don’t take sides in the climate change debate, I just hate seeing science being railroaded in a single direction because of politics. [4] Its also why a lot of people don’t believe scientists. If there is anthropogenic global warming occurring, both sides should be equally funded, FROM THE CLIMATOLOGY SIDE, and once climatologists reach a general consensus, [5] independent of funding, then they must convince the public [6], then the analysts and economists can have their say, and then the policies can be made and people can accept them. That way, people understand global warming, and that the climate will be variable but upward, and then everyone won’t jump off the bandwagon when it snows in las Vegas.
And now that my rant is done I realize I never answered your question. No, I can’t produce that evidence, because I’m not a climatologist, I’m a biochemist, I haven’t studied all the data, and it hasn’t yet been presented to me in a decisive manner.[7]
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“both sides should be equally funded, FROM THE CLIMATOLOGY SIDE, and once climatologists reach a general consensus, independent of funding, then they must convince the public, then the analysts and economists can have their say, and then the policies can be made and people can accept them.”
You see the circular reasoning here? Both sides? What sides? There is nothing but the climatology. Why wouldn’t you let the public decide on whether they trust their own judgement of the results of these studies? Policy may be two-sided, but science is not. The continued search for truths about the universe, backed up by checking by those “on the other side”. Let’s say I build two Stevenson boxes (the one used in the surface station measurements), and set them up with identical electric thermometers. Then I may compare those two to check what conditions produce differences in the output. That’s layman’s science for me, but I believe someone has done this sorta background check already, say, when mercury or alcohol thermometers were replaced by electric ones in many locations.
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George:
In regard to 1), the closest even the IPCC can give as a number is a probability greater than 90%, and that is from an international group based on the principle of climate change (imagine what would happen to the IPCC if it became dogma that man does not have a significant effect).
In this one paragraph, you display two profound misunderstandings of scientific procedure.
First, it is impossible for science to be 100% certain of anything. The IPCC value of “very likely” (90%-99%) is remarkably strong for science, especially once you hear that it would have been ‘virtually certain’ (>99%) if China and Saudi Arabia hadn’t demanded it be weakened (aside: That figure appears in the Summary for Policymakers, which is not a scientific document but a political one.)
Second, scientific bodies do not “change their dogma” on a whim. It follows from evidence and experiment. It isn’t some governing body, some church, or some idol. If its conclusions change, it is because the evidence, and the scientific consensus, changed as well, and it would be for those reasons that scientists would advocate a different end. Multiple lines of evidence are all pointing to man having a significant impact on climate today, and none point away from it. Please keep that in mind.
Telling people the temperature is going to rise by 2 degrees or 10 degrees or whatever in the next century does nothing to people if you don’t tell them that there’ll be terrible hurricanes and drought and famine
You haven’t read the IPCC report, have you?
There are three components to it. WG1 is the physical science, what you claim isn’t settled. WG2 is exactly what you ask for here, an analysis of the impacts of the changes predicted by WG1, both in terms of natural disasters and sociopolitical impacts (for instance, what would happen if the Himalayan glaciers melted? They supply water to huge portions of China, India, Pakistan and other nearby nations which won’t take kindly to drought, nor will nearby nations take kindly to environmental refugees. The iconic argument relates to sea level rise in countries like Bangladesh.) Then there’s WG3, which is mitigation and adaptation measures.
No, they weren’t all written by scientists. WG1 was exclusively scientific, WG2 and 3 had, by their very nature, economic and political expertise behind them as well.
How can you claim to be undecided if you haven’t read the available information? How can you say “We have to wait until this information is available” when it’s already available?
If there is anthropogenic global warming occurring, both sides should be equally funded, FROM THE CLIMATOLOGY SIDE, and once climatologists reach a general consensus, independent of funding, then they must convince the public, then the analysts and economists can have their say, and then the policies can be made and people can accept them. That way, people understand global warming, and that the climate will be variable but upward, and then everyone won’t jump off the bandwagon when it snows in las Vegas.
This entire paragraph is about fifteen years out of date, as it describes the formation of the IPCC (which wasn’t funding original research but rather surveying available research). That you think it’s still applicable today speaks wonders about the impact of disinformation campaigns.
Look at the history of our scientific understanding and of the denial machine. You may be surprised.
My question wasn’t what evidence you could provide but rather what you would find convincing. It’s evidently clear you haven’t looked at any but those in the popular media. I’m a cognitive scientist (with an undergraduate in physics), and I had no problem reading the full report (all three working groups). You shouldn’t have an issue with it either.
Mike: I apologize; I spoke too soon. I was reacting to all the arbitrary assumptions and fudge factors present in economics as a whole, not to mention its apparent inability to question its foundational assumptions (look at what happens to folk like de Soto or Daly…).
You all keep insisting there is no such thing as sides in science, but there always is.
If I have a grant to study the effect of X on Y, I’m not looking to disprove it, as continued funding is contingent on there being a connection. The state of funding guides the state of science (not always, but sometimes). Try publishing a negative result. If you don’t recognize that this happens in science, then I can’t have a discussion with you.
What I have a problem with is that climate is so much more variable than most things scientists study, and we have such a small window of knowledge on the climate of the earth. Yet now that there is an agreed “consensus”, about 30 years after the idea was first suggested in scientific literature, and the emphasis is no longer on exactly what is happening, but now on the effects of what scientists believe is happening.
In something as important as the climate, especially taking into account all of the worst case scenarios, the scientific journals should be rife with “one-upmanship” on proving exactly what will happen in the future, on bringing those error bars down, hopefully upgrading some of those low and medium confidence levels in the working group II report to highs.
And no, I haven’t read the IPCC reports. I find without the time to properly analyze both an article and its sources, your time is essentially wasted, and I certainly don’t have time to read 3000 pages of reports, supplementary data and their accompanying references. Good on you for having the commitment for that.
And please Mike, suggesting the extinction of the human species as a result of global warming is nothing more than hyperbole. While you’re recommending reading, please find me anywhere in the IPCC report that suggests that its even possible for humans to release enough carbon, methane, nitrous oxide or any other greenhouse gas to reduce the livable area of the earth to what would support less than a sustainable population.
So really, to summarize my standpoint, overall, the earth has warmed in the past 250 years, even more in the last decade. Climate is variable, and while I’m not saying these changes are a result of variation, I’m saying that the more data you have, the better your correlation or evidence of causation will be. That should be the focus of science today.
And really, my initial point was simply that saying Dr. Mullis doesn’t understand science because he believes that people can be in it for profit is patently false, as there are many people who financially benefit from science. I’m bad at quoting so I’ll just list your “Fail #1”:
“People interested in wealth and power wisely choose to become business leaders, lawyers, rock, sports and film stars, military leaders, etc.”
That they do, but if you can’t admit that once in awhile, someone that is interested in wealth and power abuses science for their own benefit (say by making millions of dollars off a documentary and speaking tour), then we have no common ground to stand on.
And I just noticed a couple points that you added in reply above:
[2] Except the US and Canadian governments (and probably others) have been suppressing climate science and being a climate advocate hurt your career and funding, not the the other way.
Governments are not granting agencies. They’re certainly connected, but saying that being a climate advocate certainly does you no harm in Canada, just ask Dr. Van Kooten, who was granted a tier 1 CRC chair (1.4 million dollars in research money) all the way back in 2002 for studying the economics of climate change.
[2] As a biologist I have to say that would defy logic, but I would want to see the research before judging.
This was in regard to the possibility of global warming increasing overall global food production. So as a biologist, you’re suggesting that it would defy logic that plants would grow better in a warmer world with more CO2? I know water availability and such also play a pivotal role, but to say it would defy logic is quite a conclusion.
If I have a grant to study the effect of X on Y, I’m not looking to disprove it, as continued funding is contingent on there being a connection. The state of funding guides the state of science (not always, but sometimes). Try publishing a negative result. If you don’t recognize that this happens in science, then I can’t have a discussion with you.
You can’t honestly be serious, can you? Here’s a quick Google Scholar search for “no effect”, a phrase indicative of a negative result in the case of a study of the effect of X on Y. Nearly 3.5 million hits.
If “X affects Y” is a consensus, and you have a rigorous result that *disproves* that and holds up to subsequent investigation, you’ve just opened up a brand new front for research.
What I have a problem with is that climate is so much more variable than most things scientists study, and we have such a small window of knowledge on the climate of the earth. Yet now that there is an agreed “consensus”, about 30 years after the idea was first suggested in scientific literature, and the emphasis is no longer on exactly what is happening, but now on the effects of what scientists believe is happening.
30 years? Try over 100 years (Arrhenius) or more (Tyndall and Fourier, although they didn’t do the calculations). But you’d know that if you’d read the IPCC report.
And no, I haven’t read the IPCC reports. I find without the time to properly analyze both an article and its sources, your time is essentially wasted, and I certainly don’t have time to read 3000 pages of reports, supplementary data and their accompanying references. Good on you for having the commitment for that.
“I believe that one side of an argument, of which I haven’t read anything about, has these characteristics…”.
No, I haven’t read all of the sources either. I’ve read several that overlap with my areas of understanding, but I rely on the remainder of the report to summarize that which I am unable to follow.
I recognize that, if the whole peer review process is corrupt, this renders their result invalid. However, given the rigor that went into the IPCC report and the component papers, such a corruption would essentially damage the entire human endeavor of science — an outcome I find sufficiently unlikely to discount.
Meanwhile, you seem to hinge on this “conspiracy for funding” angle with no evidence to back it up. Can you find ANY example of any climatologist who has been denied funding for proposing legitimate research? Any one?
By the way, we’ll probably try taking you more seriously if you understand that Gore has nothing to do with this.Only the deniers end up citing him.
Negative results are not the same as “no effect”. I’ll do an example completely outside of climatology so there shouldn’t be any sides to take.
The Large Hadron Collider is supposed to be able to identify the Higgs-Boson. If they go through years of collisions, and are unable to identify it, do you think they’re going to let you publish that in Nature? In the same breath, what do you think would happen to the operational funding of the LHC if tomorrow it was proven mathematically that there is no Higgs-Boson?
And to clarify, I’m not proposing some sort of conspiracy. I never have. And its not about being denied funding. Its about the ability to publish, and an attitude in academia of “publish or perish”. If I have a lab of 10 graduate students, and get them to do preliminary examinations of 10 different sets of data and 4 of them get an interesting preliminary result, as a supervisor, I would have the other 6 work with the 4 to come to solid conclusions based on those data. Does it matter that the other 6 sets of data weren’t looked at? Maybe, maybe not. Its how all types of scientific study works, because of the “publish or perish” philosophy.
I find it hilarious that I’m being so thoroughly attacked. I’m not a denier by any means, I just support good science, and whenever science gets mixed with politics, international relations, religion, etc. it inevitably becomes bad science. Knowledge is power and it will be corrupted by those who seek power. I’m not saying the science of global warming has been corrupted, I’m saying that if it isn’t, it will be, and the only way to prevent it is to ensure the science stays pure.
Now I’m going to shut up as I’ve read the comments policy and this no longer pertains to the article, I only wanted to partially defend Dr. Mullis, as I know people that profit from “popular” science (in my own field, not related to global warming in the slightest), so I know what he’s talking about. If you disagree, that is your right.
The Large Hadron Collider is supposed to be able to identify the Higgs-Boson. If they go through years of collisions, and are unable to identify it, do you think they’re going to let you publish that in Nature? In the same breath, what do you think would happen to the operational funding of the LHC if tomorrow it was proven mathematically that there is no Higgs-Boson?
Wow, you really don’t get it.
The LHC is set up in such a fashion to definitively test for the Higgs. If it’s there, the Standard Model is essentially complete and all that’s left is filling in the decimal places. If it isn’t there, the LHC would have single-handedly given us reason to rewrite all of known particle physics. Such a result would *definitively* be published in Nature and/or Science.
Care to bet on it? Nothing major, say, $100 each to a charity of the winner’s choice, contingent on the Higgs *not* being found at the conclusion of the experiments but the result being published in Nature and/or Science? (If it’s found, there’s no disagreement that the result would also be published, so the bet would be null then.) I’d bet more, but I’m sure you’re familiar with the budget of grad students.
I’ll admit an understanding of particle physics is not exactly on my resume (didn’t realize it was a boson or no boson situation until now, just used it as an example), but wow, an anonymous internet bet for something that if it happens will likely be 3-5 in the future? I’ll give you credit that it’s much better than the Olshansky/Austad lifespan bet, but not by a wide margin.
I’d formalize it using something like LongBets.org, which is designed for exactly this sort of thing.
The crux of your claim was that a negative result would lead to no publication and an abnormal decrease of funding (I say abnormal because the funding for the LHC includes a large amount dedicated to the search for Higgs that would disappear with *any* result; the question is if the subsequent amounts would be higher or lower). You suggest that a negative result would struggle to be published if it were published at all, to wit “If they … are unable to identify [the Higgs], do you think they’re going to let you publish that in Nature?”. I maintain it would be lauded as an incredible breakthrough and would certainly be published in Nature as quickly as possible.
I assert that your thesis is wrong and a negative result is VERY significant (i.e. Michelson-Morley), which (in conjunction with my earlier rebuttals) pretty much invalidates the “motivated by grants” claim you put forth since the 12th. I’m willing to put my money where my mouth is; are you, or are you just bluffing? (Note that I would not be a beneficiary at all.)
Correction: A negative result *can be* extremely significant, when what is being tested is a central tenet of scientific understanding at the time. Michelson-Morley set out to investigate the properties of the aether, and their conclusions were so out of line with consensus but so rigorous that alternative theories had to be developed. Another example you’re probably more familiar with would be Lavoisier’s phlogiston experiment.
These results are famous for a reason.
A modern equivalent would be someone — anyone — testing elements of climate change and finding some fundamental flaw in our understanding. Such a flaw hasn’t been found despite copius amounts of research. That should tell you something.
Once again, I’ll mention that I was misinformed when it comes to the theories of particle physics, and the importance of any sort of result at the LHC (if they ever get it running again…).
I’ll agree with you that a negative result CAN be extremely significant (and therefore publishable), but those cases are in the minority, and are only applicable with complete, thorough debunking of what appeared to be time tested scientific knowledge. That kind of work takes time, a lot of time usually, and that amount of time increases nearly exponentially with the amount of evidence there is against it.
The problem with the time component involved is that it actively discourages research to oppose largely ingrained scientific theory.
Imagine that a few dozen climate researchers, who just got their PhDs from a selection of the best graduate programs, under the best supervisors, wrote a grant to “confirm climate change”, using no one’s analysis but their own, in a completely independent manner. Providing they received their funding (which would be doubtful, as you are most definitely aware that the peer review for a grant like that would sound a lot like the peer review for a grant trying to make sure that creationism didn’t get it right in the first place), and set out in their study to use only source data and do all the analysis themselves. Let’s say they find that everyone else was right, all the analysis was correct. Where are they going to publish that? The journal of confirmed findings? They’ve also destroyed their research careers in the process by not publishing anything else for a long period of time. So yes, the payoff can be huge to publish an opposing opinion (if they found something contradictory), but the stakes are incredibly high as well. [1]
I would also argue that the Michelson-Morley and Lavoisier examples are irrelevant due to massive differences in the structure of funding for modern scientific research.
That’s why I mentioned the cigarette smoking/cancer studies. Some scientists received grants to find the truth, and others were paid to pick apart that truth so as to make it statistically insignificant. In the end, science led the way, and a rock solid case of causation was made. [2] Unfortunately, this time around, the “bad guy” (big oil, coal, etc.) decided to go the route of misinformation and slander instead of massively funding opposing interests. Yes, I know that is happening as well, but not nearly to the extent of the cigarettes causing cancer era. Only by putting extreme pressure on to “debunk” a technically correct concept did causation become irrefutable.[3]
And how this relates back to the article… I’m now stuck. 🙂
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Fighting back:
The Climate Denial Crock of the Week
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Peter
GreenFyre et al,
George is talking about some of the problems associated with the (social) facts of science as a discipline and as an establishment.
The idea that individual scientists are generally shaping discovery does not reflect the realities of our power-divided, highly bureaucratized society. Sorry, my brothers. Of course, the fantastic history of science inspires this idea. The Popper-Kuhn debate and the radicality of Paul Feyerabend are is still an important part of science education and passion. Thank God.
However, there is a vast intellectual literature of the social study of science that exposes just how conservative and authoritarian the practice of science has actually become. George seems aware of it, and he is accurately suggesting some of the practical truths of the general situation of modern science, both as a profession and as a discipline.
Anyone who cares about science needs to have a critical and accurate analysis of the social context, along with their idealism. Actually, I see no sign that George’s input on this point has been understood at all.
That is not to say that the evidence for human-caused climate change is not clear.
George.
It is clear. 🙂
Cheers.
George:
The problem is, writing a novel climatology paper, based partly on other people’s analyses, isn’t that much easier either.
Research simply isn’t easy either way, and if lots of studies confirm the AGW theory, it’s simply not due to a Vast Conspiracy, or groupthink, or whatever.
It’s very hard to actually understand the conspiracy model of IPCC. It has a sort of dreamlike inconsistency.
The IPCC is under very little pressure to continue to exist. In the increasingly implausible event that there were some sort of refutation of all anthropogenic climate change, it would publish a report to that effect, to the great relief of its member nations with exactly zero exceptions that I can think of.
The institutional momentum of the IPCC can be estimated by its vast payroll: as I understand it they partially fund a single clerical employee. Signatories to the reports all have stable employment elsewhere.
Most climate scientists would be thrilled to get out of the realm public controversy and get on with quietly studying the climate system.
So please, George, do come up with your refutation. Nobody is against such a thing if it actually holds water.
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I didn’t start my career in engineering or my current career because i wanted to earn a lot of money.
Like the majority of people, I chose a career based on skills, knowledge, interests, genes etc.
The trouble is, in these days of dog eat dog, me, me, me economics. The minority that force their way to the top because of money grabbing ambition, have a disproportionate voice about how things should work in society.
All to often you come across wealth seeking people that are convinced that everyone else must be like them and that we all have an agenda or motive that is similar to theirs. To them scientists must be doing climate science purely for the money and the science comes second.
It would not occur to them that the science might come first and the money is needed to support their pursuit of the knowledge, no matter where that knowledge might lead.
The other point of course is that there is a mistaken belief that if the science does not have a positive outcome for individuals, the economy etc. then it will have no use.
eg. what is the point in spending money on the pursuit of knowledge that could cost us a lot of money in our every day lives and would not lead to more profit for today’s carbon intensive businesses?
So really for some, there is an obvious reason for opposing research into climate science, it is down to a persons character and genes. Unfortunately although some may not understand why we need to pursue this knowledge, the reduction of funding doesn’t make the problem go away.
Sticking your head in the sand doesn’t solve any problem, although given that we have so many industrial accidents caused by negligence, I guess it isn’t surprising that some people also prefer to ignore climate change and hope it won’t happen.
Regarding “Fail #1”, I understood Dr. Mullis to be saying that it was during a particular period of time, prior to and during World War 2, that science was attracting people interested in status and power, because of the money that was being pumped in, and this was a driving force in creating the so-called military-industrial complex. I’ll have to re-watch the first part to see if that was a correct interpretation; the whole premise, though, seems a bit weak — a “just-so” story.
I was actually enjoying Mullis’ talk, up until the point where he went off on the global-warming tangent (I hadn’t heard of the guy before watching the TED talk). The format of the talk, light with not much detail, is pretty standard for TED. His rips into the IPCC seemed way off-base, as has been noted here, and my thinking at the time was “oh my god, a conspiracy loon masquerading as a scientist!”. But, I like to give people some sort of credit for not being completely deluded, and would up finding this critique, which I think adequately addresses Dr. Mullis. Too bad most people seem to be saying “oh look, a nobel laureate says global warming is a crock, so it must be true!”.
I notice after all the attacks on Mullis, nobody has bothered to discuss the crux of the two papers he cited and why since that time (2002) the prognosticators of the CO2 AGW dogma have been left with trying to discredit satellite data rather than test their hypothesis.
Nice try Greenfyre, but you do not pass Go.
There is no coincidence Santer et al 2008 was published for the purpose of giving the illusion climate models are in agreement with satellite data.
Like the hockey stick, Santer et al (hello Tamino), it is being exposed for the garbage and fraud that it is, just wrapped in a different package.
See http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=4991
Greenfyre, despite your eloquent attempt at putting to rest the issues in #2-#5 (#1 is psychobabble), you obviously did not research the relevant studies even before 1998 up to 2002. If you’d like to compare notes, that can be arranged.
The rest of your rhetoric is typical alarmist propaganda.
Great, another conspiracy theorist.
[…] It is too easy to dismiss as a rant, but I learnt a lot. I fully respect him for questioning climate science, but disagree with his statements. In searching for the 2 papers he quoted, I found quite a few people disputing his conclusions of the papers, including someone who claimed to be Bruce Wielicki, one of the writers of the second paper. An good rebuttal to Mullis’ points can be found here https://greenfyre.wordpress.com/2009/01/09/blinded-but-not-by-science/. […]