BPSDB Of course most people will recognize this phony argument (logical fallacy) in it’s more popular form “have you stopped beating your wife?”
In this verbal trap, if you answer ‘Yes‘ you are admitting to having beaten your wife before, and if you answer ‘No‘ you are admitting that you still beat her.
The climate change Deniers love to use logical fallacies, and this one is the Loaded Question. It is “loaded” because if you answer it in the way that it is posed, you lose no matter how you answer it. In this example the question is ‘loaded’ with the assumption that you were beating your wife before, and there is no way to answer the question as asked without accepting that premise.
With respect to climate change science the loaded question comes packaged in various forms of “the debate is not over” canard, but really they all boil down to the same ‘Loaded Question’ logical fallacy.
Have you stopped debating your climate science?
If scientists say ‘No‘ then the Deniers claim that climate science is still in dispute and we need more research. If they say ‘Yes‘ then the Deniers cry that this is not science because in real science all questions remain open; nothing is ever settled.
The latter sounds convincing because it is trivially true. That is to say that as a broad abstraction it is true, but in practice you have to actually use your brains when applying it. The actual application of this axiom is somewhat nuanced and depends on understanding how the question is loaded.
The “debate is over” question is loaded by equating “the debate is over” with “the debate is permanently closed“, and they are NOT synonyms. Those are actually two different statements.
The answer?
The debate is never over
All scientific questions remain functionally open forever for two reasons:
1) If new evidence arises that makes us question the existence of atoms, that shows the periodic table is total nonsense, or that matter actually repels matter (ie gravity is wrong), or that the Sun doesn’t actually exist, then we would reopen those debates and try and figure out what the hell is going on. Equally we would do the same if a new hypothesis was put forward that better explained the evidence that we already have.
Of course no one would be happy about it in the examples given, but science would do it all the same. Even though the debates on these questions have been over for a very long time, Science would resume the debates because the debate was never permanently closed. No scientific debate ever is.
2) We never know absolutely everything about anything. Even as we answer macro questions we encounter questions on smaller scales as well as more questions about how it fits together. For example the discovery that tissues were made of cells led to questions both about what were cells were made of, as well as how cells interacted to make tissues.
Thus even as our knowledge of a particular system or topic increases every day, there are always unanswered questions. As long as there are questions there is debate, or at least the possibility of debate.
The debate is over
1) The key phrase above is “If new evidence or a new hypothesis arises…” Scientists do not sit around faculty lounges and Institute lunch rooms arguing matters that were resolved centuries, decades or even days ago. Why would they?
Science would never progress at all if every day was spent debating (again) whether water really was composed of two hydrogen and one oxygen atoms, or if the laws of thermodynamics really are true. The whole notion is completely idiotic (but then what part of the Denier Canon isn’t?)
In science you stop debating the evidence you currently have when it is satisfactorily explained by the prevailing hypothesis. The debate is not permanently closed (ie new evidence or a better hypothesis can change everything), but you stop debating the current evidence and the existing hypotheses because rehashing the same old stuff over and over is completely pointless and a huge waste of time, ie the debate of the existing evidence is over.
Of course not every piece of new evidence automatically re-opens a scientific debate. Every new piece of evidence showing that water really is composed of two hydrogen and one oxygen atoms causes no more than a shrug, if that.
Equally, all new evidence that is consistent with our current understanding of anthropogenic climate change is added to the already vast body of existing evidence without reopening the debate. It is only evidence that is inconsistent with the current understanding that would cause the debate to resume.
2) We never know everything about anything, but we know some things. The Denier claims to the contrary are an Appeal to Ignorance Fallacy (for the record, I do not find any of the Denier ignorance to be appealing).
For example, there is still a huge amount we do not know about elephants, such as the sequence of their genome, but not knowing that does not mean we question whether elephants exist or not. There is a huge amount that we do not know about the Sun, but we know that it exists, that the Earth orbits around it, etc.
Thus “the debate” about many questions at many levels of a given topic can be “over”, even as many other questions about that same topic rage on. The two are not mutually exclusive at all. In fact within the sciences it is the norm.
The debate is over, but not closed!
In climate science there are many aspects of anthropogenic climate change that are still being hotly debated. However, although aspects are still being hotly debated, given the existing evidence and hypotheses the debate about anthropogenic climate change itself is over … but not permanently closed, nor will it ever be.
Huge thanks to In it for the Gold who pointed me to NASA’s Unresolved questions about Earth’s climate for those who are curious are to what some of the major scientific uncertainties about our current understanding of climate are.
Closely related to the concept of “the debate” are the concepts of “settled vs unsettled science”, and the infamous “scientific consensus.” Intertwined though these are, there are nuances that make them different concepts, and as such that discussion is best left to another time.
Incompetence, malpractice, or fraud?
Of course the reason that the “debate is over” false argument works is that most people are not aware of how the sciences actually work. Members of the general public and anyone who is not a scientist would not be expected to know this; that is a given.
However, anyone who is or was a scientist should know this perfectly well. It is mindboggingly basic; remedial first year level at best. Anyone working within the sciences should know this as well as they know the scientific method. Broadly speaking it is part of the scientific method.
As such any scientist making this argument is either incompetent, and/or guilty of malpractice and/or fraud (ie deliberately lying to mislead the public). There really aren’t any other options, and I see absolutely no reason to pretend otherwise.
So, in the absence of some new hypothesis or evidence, any time you hear or see a “scientist” making this argument you know exactly what you are dealing with.
“Since 1982, spring in East Asia (defined here as the eastern third of China and the Korean Peninsula) has been warming at a rate of one degree Fahrenheit per decade.” Earth Gauge
We give our consent every moment that we do not resist.
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Comment Policy
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Great post!
Of course, the inactivists do have lots of new evidence… though the new evidence looks suspiciously like old talking points warmed over.
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Bi,
And FranMann is right on cue.
What is the point of providing information? On the rare occasion when a denier actually follow a link, it’s used to simply make up false interpretations or conclusions that are completely unethical.
A crumb of correct information and a wildly distorted conclusion.
Fran is obviously unfamiliar with the real issues in the North (both ecological and political). Our people in the North are not reporting an exploding polar bear population. People in the community are seeing more bears, seeing more bears swimming, seeing more female bears making dens on land, etc. Some populations of bears are suffering the effects of early thaws and late freeze ups due to climate change. Other bear populations seem to be following the receding ice further north, for the time being. Each population will be affected differently, depending on what is happening with the sea ice. The overall habitat is however at risk.
Since Fran lives in Canada, Fran might want to access a Canadian research site. We have prominent polar bear experts at the University of Alberta, for example, and Fran could read the most current research by Andrew Derocher or Seth Cherry.
The facts of climate change are not being disputed and traditional knowledge confirms it.
The industry of sport hunting is the issue, and it is a modern interest – not a traditional one. Yes, the core of the debate is of course related to the issue of the listing of the bears, as this would greatly impact livelihood in relation to sport hunting. Subsistence hunting would not be negatively affected by listing the polar bear because of the nature of the current system.
The government of Nunavut has acknowledged that the bear population in the western Hudson Bay region is in trouble and the hunting quota dropped. Their lead researchers are more than familiar with both traditional ecological knowledge and biology.
Fran can’t even get the basics right – the bears have been a ‘species of special concern’ since 2008. In the US they are listed as endangered. Nunavut is not in the United States. Greenland, and Nunavut and the federal government, recently signed a crucial co-management agreement. A roundtable will make recommendations on any further changes to the status e.g. bumping to ‘at risk’, in Canada.
The Inuit are being impacted by non-Native industries causing climate change. What does or doesn’t happen regarding the debate over listing the bears is not going to make a difference to climate change. What we do about climate change will, however, help avoid severe losses for both people and bears.
Fran cites nothing, but is of course referring to the oft-cited by deniers 2007 Davis study by Lily Peacock — who is a lead research now calling for hunting quota reductions and a critic of that particular study, which she now identifies as seriously methodologically flawed.
The North does not thank idiots like Fran for their concern.
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I didn’t see Fran’s comment, but Martha’s comment are, as Mike says, very well articulated and I was able to figure out which myths Fran was repeating.
I have nothing to add to Martha’s comments but I just wanted to thank her for the response. It was done much better than anything I would have written.
Thank you, Martha, from another Canuck far-northerner (who has since moved south to “warmer climes” and is working in northern Ontario…..at least for now…the north never stops calling you home). 🙂
Oops. Should be “is”, not “are”.
And thanks Mike for a good post too. I will share this one with my students (first year biology) as we discuss the nature of science and how it is done in addition to standard biology material.
“If they say ‘Yes‘ then the Deniers cry that this is not science because in real science all questions remain open; nothing is ever settled.”
Exactly… nothing in science is ever settled. Ever. That’s how it works. If you don’t understand why, you haven’t taken the time to learn or understand what the scientific method is all about.
If he hadn’t questioned Newton’s law of universal gravitation, Einstein would never have come up with E = mc^2, and he would never have set aside his own theory just as it became popular to pursue the elusive ‘unified theory’. Not coincidentally, the most successful scientists (Tesla, Hawkins etc. etc.) were and are constantly critical of their own work, because they have an intense desire to develop a better model of understanding for the world around us (i.e. not to confirm or maintain a chosen theory)
This post on the other hand, reflects the disturbing and ignorant attitude of many in the global-warming following, who love to invoke the word ‘science’ in defense of their chosen ideology, but have no idea what science actually means.
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you want to worry about death , ten or twenty years from now, but the nine million childern dying every year right now mean nothing today.
What about the 40,000 people who starve to death every day, every today.
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So who cares if a few more millions starve, there are children starving anyway? Would that be your argument?
How about you care about both – like so many good people already do?
Whenever a neocon stops fantasizing long enough to admit there is a problem, he turns Hegelian and excuses every horror as a stone along the difficult road of progress. Miriam Lau