Claims that the "the science isn't settled" with regard to climate change are symptomatic of a large body of ignorance about how science works.
The first thing to understand is that there is no one method in science, no one way of doing things. This is intimately connected with how we reason in general.
[...] Those who demand the science be "settled" before we take action are seeking deductive certainty where we are working inductively. And there are other sources of confusion.
One is that simple statements about cause and effect are rare since nature is complex. For example, a theory might predict that X will cause Y, but that Y will be mitigated by the presence of Z and not occur at all if Q is above a critical level. To reduce this to the simple statement "X causes Y" is naive.
Another is that even though some broad ideas may be settled, the details remain a source of lively debate. For example, that evolution has occurred is certainly settled by any rational account. But some details of how natural selection operates are still being fleshed out.
(Score: 5, Informative) by Dunbal on Friday September 16 2016, @10:06AM
If you don't know what the scientific method is, then you're no scientist. End of story. No discussion.
Am I doing it right?
(Score: 2) by turgid on Friday September 16 2016, @10:58AM
Almost. But you can only claim to have done something scientifically if you have applied the scientific method. Many people claim something to be "scientific" if they're waffled in using scientific-sounding terminology.
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 4, Insightful) by FatPhil on Friday September 16 2016, @11:03AM
It's possible to do good science not knowing epistemology, but any good scientific education will cover at least parts of the subject in order to guide the student against timewasting.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Dunbal on Friday September 16 2016, @01:05PM
Well science comes from scientia which is "knowledge", it's the same root as our word "sentience". While the scientific method itself is not science, as you pointed out, this method does in fact guarantee that claims (hypotheses) that survive this method's test can indeed be considered (or at least cannot be proved NOT to be) "knowledge".
If I claim that our solar system is surrounded by giant space goats - well without science, my claim is just as valid as the opposite claim - that there are NOT giant space goats. However if I wish to scientifically prove that we are surrounded by giant space goats, I must design an experiment that would help prove this case. For example, if there were giant space goats I would expect to hear the bleating of giant space goats. So I would build an interplanetary space goat bleat detector, at which point someone would point out that there is no air in space and thus bleating is impossible, throwing out my hypothesis. Therefore I could not claim that giant space goats exist because of bleating. In fact the opposite could be claimed - that giant space goats do NOT exist because there is no bleating (or indeed no air) coming from space. So I would have to think up another question - "what if I could see these giant space goats?" and try to prove that question, and so on and so on.
At the end of the day I would have a set of clear, reproducible experiments that would either support or not my hypotheses. Every time my hypothesis lost support I would either have to modify it (ok, they are INVISIBLE NON BREATHING giant space goats) or throw it out completely. Thus "knowledge", rather than conjecture or mysticism, is attained.
(Score: 5, Funny) by fadrian on Friday September 16 2016, @01:07PM
For example, if there were giant space goats I would expect to hear the bleating of giant space goats.
In space, no one can hear you bleat.
That is all.
(Score: 1) by gmrath on Saturday September 17 2016, @04:43AM
True: In space, no one can hear you bleat. The hypothesis that there are giant space goats may need to be tested another way; for example, looking for evidence of giant space goat scat. All organisms leave behind physical evidence (scat of one kind or another) and much can be learned by studying such evidence. Perhaps the in-depth detailed scientific study of potential space goat scat may shed light on what is between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. Or, perhaps the what's in the Kuiper Belt and Oort Cloud. There seems to be some kind of droppings out there. . .
(Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Friday September 16 2016, @05:27PM
While the scientific method itself is not science, as you pointed out, this method does in fact guarantee that claims (hypotheses) that survive this method's test can indeed be considered (or at least cannot be proved NOT to be) "knowledge".
"Guarantee"? No. The scientific method doesn't (and can't) "guarantee" anything. It can't even guarantee that when you test hypothesis A and get a negative result that A is false, because your experimental design, data collection, etc. could be flawed in various ways -- ways that accord with the scientific method broadly speaking, but which will create misleading results in that case. There's this bizarre misunderstanding of Popper's falsificationist arguments that somehow truth has a weird methodological bias, i.e., that scientific experiment can be used to show that hypotheses are definitely false, but cannot be used to show they are definitely true.
A moment's reflection shows this makes little sense. In reality, a "test" of hypothesis A in an empirical experiment can never be evidence that A is definitely true nor that A is definitely false, because both a positive and a negative result can be flawed in all sorts of methodological ways. At best, a negative result serves as a likely clue that "pursuing more research on hypothesis A is probably less likely to bear future rewards" than directing research in another direction around a more promising hypothesis. And a positive result should serve as a clue that "pursuing more research on A is probably fruitful."
Alas, the way our modern scientific method functions is practice is a lot less useful than this. Instead, a positive result in many fields these days is trumpeted in the media as "Science proves A!! (And A likely implies B, and B is connected to C and D, too! Thus A, B, C, and D are likely!)" Verification through independent confirmation is rarely done, which is why we've seen so many stories in recent years that say something like, "60% of findings in field X turn out to be false!" We've overlooked one of the major methodological changes in the Scientific Revolution: independent confirmation. Scientists, philosophers, and all sorts of people have been doing experiments for thousands of years -- but it was in the 17th century or so that scientific correspondence allowed scientists to practice confirmation, which led to a lot less "confirmation bias" where researchers inadvertently influence experiments to give themselves the results they want.
And meanwhile, a negative result is not lauded, sometimes ignored, and often not even published, denying the most important value in hypothesis testing, i.e., helping other researchers to realize where less fruitful avenues of research lie. (Or, even worse, it results in "publication bias" where you might have 20 labs trying out hypothesis A, but 18 of them fail and don't say anything, while the 2 that get "significant results" publish, a process with standard tests of significance which can greatly decrease the chances of finding reliable "knowledge." Or you have people who keep trying various tweaking of experiments and hypotheses, hoping to get a positive result. But without knowing all the failures, you may not be able to evaluate that, when a "positive result" is achieved, it's actually significant or merely a statistical ghost.)
Bottom line: science is a cultural practice. There are lots of variations in methodology, from field to field, from lab to lab, from person to person. There are lots of judgment calls. Overall, the hope is that collectively the errors introduced by individual bias in the overarching "method" will be found and corrected, but our modern scientific "method" (=as practiced!) has numerous flaws which show this is NOT the case in a lot of fields. People play around with "p-hacking" and claim to find "significant results" which are nothing more than statistical coincidences. The failure to fund and recognize the importance of confirmation studies and publishing negative results leads to a lot more uncertainty in the "knowledge" science supposedly generates.
And all of the preceding assumes that there is one good and wondrous ideal "scientific method" that could work better, but philosophers of science mostly doubt that to be true. There are aspects of method that can make things better or worse, but ultimately there's a lot of subjective individual decisions made in the process of science which may or may not result in reliable "knowledge." And frankly, it doesn't help when we create little historical "myths" about the victories of science over ignorance -- we laugh about ether and phlogiston and epicycles and think of the "idiots" who held fast to these bizarre notions (or so they seem today), but most of the time these represented the best "science" of the time, derived from what was thought to be "reliable knowledge" at the time. And the "pioneers" we now laud for coming up with a better theory were frequently derided as quacks by the scientific establishment historically. Once you start looking at science historically, it becomes clear that method (and "science") gets increasingly hard to define and delineate.
(BTW -- none of this should be read as a criticism of "science" in general. Various aspects of the scientific method are some of the better options we have, in an epistemological sense. But despite the fairy tale we tell middle school students, there's not really a best, efficient pathway to secure accurate "knowledge" through one single, simple method.)
(Score: 1) by garrulus on Friday September 16 2016, @10:19AM
To say the science has been settled, and that a majority of scientists believe it so it must be true.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday September 16 2016, @10:44AM
Yes, that's what religions do. They believe things on faith.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Francis on Friday September 16 2016, @04:55PM
That's not even remotely the same thing.
Scientists actively probe the various sacred cows and replicated findings. There's been times when they threw out entire areas of study because they proved to be twattle. Phrenology is no longer a thing and alchemy eventually became chemistry.
Scientists tend to be concerned with truth and applications and neither of those is served by attaching to a dogma and sticking to it in spite of evidence to the contrary. Incorrect truths tend to be found out as the contrarians in their midst love to disprove sacred beliefs.
(Score: 1, Flamebait) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday September 16 2016, @05:09PM
I agree. So you're saying Climate Change is not science? I agree again.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Francis on Friday September 16 2016, @06:36PM
Absolutely not. I'm saying that the best available science points towards global warming. Given the lack of a second planet with which to experiment, we have little choice but to assume that the research data is accurate and take positive steps to reduce emissions.
If at that point, the climate continues to change in ways that aren't reflected by the theory, then we can probably draw a conclusion that there was something fundamentally flawed in the analysis.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday September 16 2016, @08:11PM
And why should we assume the research data that says the sky is falling is more accurate than the research data that says the sky is not falling? Rampant political bullshitery abounds on both sides of the disagreement, so neither side is remotely credible at this point.
Now if you want to say it's prudent to reduce carbon emissions just in case or it's otherwise generally better for the environment, fine. I could even go along with that. Just don't claim something as Truth that you can't factually know.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Francis on Friday September 16 2016, @10:01PM
That's a ridiculous strawman. The sky isn't a thing that can fall. We've sent countless satellites and missions into the space surrounding the Earth and we know definitively that it isn't possible for it to fall.
As for climate change, we have records going back many millions of years about what the atmosphere was like and we've got tree rings and fossils going back a long ways as well. Arguing about the semantics of it isn't really helpful. We also have computer simulations of the environment that are getting rather good.
Bottom line here is that the question isn't whether or not humans are causing climate change, the question really is more about how bad it's going to be, how much we have to change and how long we have in order to do it.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday September 16 2016, @11:24PM
See, faith. You lack real, definitive proof and yet you believe anyway. Don't argue science if you're not going to be scientific about it.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday September 18 2016, @02:41PM
Absolutely not. I'm saying that the best available science points towards global warming. Given the lack of a second planet with which to experiment, we have little choice but to assume that the research data is accurate and take positive steps to reduce emissions.
"Points towards global warming" is still a far cry from "take positive steps to reduce emissions" which is in a far cry from the proposals to massively reduce fossil fuel usage currently bandied about in treaty. Where's the evidence to support the assertions that global warming is important enough that we have to greatly curtail the activities of our societies and switch over at great cost to alternate means of generating power and transportation?
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Friday September 16 2016, @05:37PM
If by faith you mean mountains of evidence then yeah, it's the exact same thing.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday September 16 2016, @05:52PM
By faith I mean believing something because the majority of scientists believe it, evidence be damned. Which is exactly what is going on in the Climate Change arena.
Science demands that you NEVER believe something just because others do. Science demands reproducible proof. If you're incapable of providing said proof to back up your assertions, you have no place in a scientific conversation.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 3, Touché) by DeathMonkey on Friday September 16 2016, @06:17PM
Science demands reproducible proof. If you're incapable of providing said proof to back up your assertions, you have no place in a scientific conversation.
So why are you talking, then? Where is your reproduceable proof that C02 doesn't affect the atmosphere?
(Score: 3, Touché) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday September 16 2016, @08:02PM
I'm sorry, you must have mistaken me for someone taking an opposing position. I'm not. I'm saying your position lacks ground to stand on.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 1) by anfieldsierra on Sunday September 18 2016, @11:48PM
You've also forgotten the NULL hypothesis. The burden is on you to back up your claim that CO2 *is* catastrophically affecting the climate AND that humans are responsible.
(Score: 2) by turgid on Friday September 16 2016, @11:03AM
Yes, because they are not scientists themselves, wisely they choose to believe that which has been proved scientifically.
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Justin Case on Friday September 16 2016, @11:23AM
Nothing is ever "proved scientifically". Science is always tentative, subject to revision with new evidence.
If you want absolute certainty, study math, or go to church.
(Score: 2) by turgid on Friday September 16 2016, @12:16PM
Way to miss the point, Socrates-dude. In this case "proved" means statistically significant and the hypothesis agrees with experimental observation etc. If you're dealing with non-scientists you have to be very careful with your choice and use of language
If you're dealing with scientists, you also have to be very careful with your choice and use of language. They enjoy the odd game of pedantry and belittling the stranger.
What a delightful world we inhabit, truly a paradise for the ignorant and obnoxious.
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 1) by anfieldsierra on Monday September 19 2016, @12:00AM
statistically significant and the hypothesis agrees with experimental observation
Another part of the scientific method you've conveniently forgotten about the hypothesis is that it must be a falsifiable hypothesis. In the AGW world, there is no evidence possible which will falsify the theory that man is responsible for the majority of climate change and that any such change will be detrimental to the planet.
It's not science. It's politics and religion dressed up to appeal to the masses. AGW has the appearance of a scientific theory with none of the substance to actually make it one.
(Score: 2) by turgid on Monday September 19 2016, @06:50AM
How is it not falsifiable? Does Exxon shoot you if you try?
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 16 2016, @01:26PM
Help us, Asimov [tufts.edu]!
(Score: 2) by TheRaven on Friday September 16 2016, @01:53PM
sudo mod me up
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Justin Case on Friday September 16 2016, @11:09AM
I read a great article some 15 years ago pointing out that scientists are people too; they have needs like continued employment, and desires like perhaps fame.
So the scientist who is most scrupulously careful in all experiments and analysis will still be emotional when deciding what to study.
Later I worked with some of the Mars Rover people, and I saw that it was true. They were driven by goals such as "find water" and "find life". So they launched rovers with tools specifically chosen for detecting water etc. They sent those rovers to places that "looked interesting".
They should have selected a random sample of places to explore. But nobody wanted to be the one to spend a career going "yep, sand, just like we thought". So they're never going to really discover the truth. At best they'll find what they wanted to find.
I call it "backwards logic": start with the conclusion you want, build up evidence in support, and ignore anything that doesn't help you win. Kinda like how my dad defends his cherished belief in young-earth creationism.
Same flaw exists for a lot of scientific problems: cure cancer, save the world, etc. Starting with the conclusion is not science.
Well that's my conclusion anyhow!
(Score: 3, Informative) by shrewdsheep on Friday September 16 2016, @12:44PM
Well, I work in academia and would have some trouble stating what the scientific method would be exactly (IMHO there no generally agreed upon definition).
That being said, I disagree with your criticism of "backward logic". What counts in my every day life circles around studies. A study starts with a research question and then goes on to design a study to answer this question in the most efficient way possible (in theory). Study design includes what to measure, how so, on which subjects and which statistical analysis to use to arrive at the answer. The research question is always (yes, always) guided by a-priori knowledge. Why is this important? A common criticism nowadays is lack of replication. One big reason is that a-priori chances for a scientific discovery are low thereby creating a lot of noise (i.e. false discoveries due to multiplicity). False discoveries cannot be replicated (with high probability). What you propose is to lower a-priori chances even further by looking even at research questions that would not normally come up (you are bit derogatory in implying emotional reasons). Apart from the cost, scientific progress would be slowed down. If the research question is well defined and the study well designed your answer will be yes or no (well not-yes) at a chosen level of statistical significance. It is true that (most) people are driven by fame and influence but the choice of research questions is competitive amongst scientists. You will be judge by your peers as to how well you chose your research questions. If the group of peers has deeper understanding of the subject matter, good research questions will bubble up by allocation of grant money and scientific promotion. Yes, that's the ideal situation and practice deviates but I believe that there exists at least some scientific integrity at work in academia. So, if you become famous beyond your academic peers by choosing the "sexy" topic that makes the news, more power to you (as long as you have followed the scientific method :-)
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 16 2016, @12:56PM
Of course. Imagine they sent the Mars Rover to a place where they just expected sand, and found just sand. What would happen? They probably will have a hard time arguing for funding ("Oh, you want to test whether there's really sand there? And you say, it's very likely? So what is the point of wasting money on this?"). If they find what they expect, they probably won't get it published ("oh, you found sand on Mars? Sorry, that's not interesting. Come back when you find something new.") In short, they'll risk their career.
I've once saw in TV something about the discovery of pale blue galaxies in areas of the sky where previously there had been thought to be nothing. They interviewed the astronomers, who told that they didn't tell the truth about what they planned to do, because that way they never would have been given the observation time. Instead they made up another planned observation, which got them the observation time. It wasn't said what they would have done if they indeed had found nothing, but I guess they would have claimed that they made a mistake, causing the telescope point to the wrong place in the sky.
They are going to discover the truth about their questions, namely whether on those places they selected there is water or not. It's not as if they'd find water just because they want to find water. If they find water, they find it because it is there. And if they don't find water, it's also significant.
Such a selection doesn't make their work the slightest bit less worth; it just means that other interesting stuff might remain undiscovered.
Note that already the selection of your subject is a selection what you are going to look for. Would you say that the discoveries at CERN are less valuable due to the fact that the scientists there actively decided to be particle physicists instead of e.g. organic chemists, and therefore ended up searching for fundamental particles instead of new organic molecules?
That's not what you described before. Just because they included instruments to detect water, they won't automatically find water. The detectors will only show water if there actually is water. Now if they ignored actual sensor readings that show no water where they expected some, that would be problematic. But there's no indication that they do.
No. Did your father device any experiments to test young-earth creationism that could fail to demonstrate young-earth creationism? Because those Mars Rover people definitely could fail to find water. And if they didn't find water that would be significant because they looked at the places where water is most likely to be found, and because the Mars Rover had instruments looking for water. "I sent a rover looking for sand to Sahara, and didn't find water, therefore there's no water on Earth" wxould not be convincing. "I sent water detectors to the middle of where we thought the Atlantic Ocean should be, and found no water there" on the other hand would be a very significant finding.
Neither cure cancer, nor save the world is a scientific problem, although both certainly involve solving certain scientific problems. Seems you do not even know what science is.
And it is not what those Mars Rover people did. They didn't say "there's water on Mars, so let's find it." They said "Let's look if there is water on Mars, because if there is, that would be big." Note the "if". They didn't start with the conclusion, they started with the question. The question was: "Is there water on Mars?" They didn't know whether the conclusion would be "there is water on Mars" or "there is no water on Mars".
(Score: 1) by kanweg on Friday September 16 2016, @03:22PM
Very insigthful
Bert
(Score: 4, Insightful) by takyon on Friday September 16 2016, @02:35PM
I'll tell you what. Increase NASA's budget to allow a new rover to land on the planet every month, or to put a permanent manned base on the planet, and then you can study all the boring sand piles you want. Until then, priorities will be based on limited resources and lofty goals. Or maybe you believe we should look for life after we have finished contaminating or terraforming Mars?
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 16 2016, @04:40PM
I call it "backwards logic": start with the conclusion you want, build up evidence in support, and ignore anything that doesn't help you win. Kinda like how my dad defends his cherished belief in young-earth creationism.
While I think Karl Popper [wikipedia.org] is well worth studying, but I suspect the article that will best encapsulates the differences between your dad and those scientists is this: http://www.csicop.org/si/show/field_guide_to_critical_thinking [csicop.org]
In particular, the Mars Rover team had a falsifiable hypothesis, they comprehensively studied where they though water would be (from the evidence they had), then they tested it. The hypothesis "Water exists in location X" was a very testable statement. Sure, they hoped to demonstrate water did exist, but it was falsifiable. Does your dad have a falsifiable hypothesis, comprehensively studied the existing knowledge and then taken the time to demonstrate it with sufficiency? Has he tried to develop a method for dating the earth?
Starting with a "conclusion" (a hypothesis, like "Water exists in X location") is certainly science in that you are able to disprove it. It appears to me the Mars Rover people did just that, tried to disprove their theory, by intentionally going to the most likely place to have water and see if there was any.
In my opinion, falsifiability is the most important aspect of science today, but some of the other pieces James Lett mentions are valuable too.
- JCD
(Score: 3, Interesting) by bzipitidoo on Friday September 16 2016, @05:12PM
Starting with a conclusion is okay, if often not the best approach. Doing so makes it more likely to be wrong and that you are wasting your time, especially if the hypothesized conclusion is not based on reason. But it's not inherently wrong to begin with a conclusion, then try to find out if it's right or wrong.
A big problem is some people are unwilling to discard a conclusion even when it has been shown to be very wrong. Instead, they cherry pick data, or just flat make up evidence. Data that contradicts the desired conclusion is dismissed, smeared as being unreliable, or even as made up, same as they'd make up favorable data. It could be that some suspect everyone of doing it, see conspiracies everywhere, because they would do it themselves, and can't understand why anyone wouldn't do it. They don't see why they shouldn't do it, and get stuck in a mental swamp in which they have no idea which information is correct and which is wrong, and no way to find out. They don't appreciate that science is our best tool for getting out of that swamp, but that it doesn't work too well if it's held in contempt and deliberately misused.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by tfried on Friday September 16 2016, @09:10PM
A big problem is some people are unwilling to discard a conclusion even when it has been shown to be very wrong. Instead, they cherry pick data, or just flat make up evidence.
But see, that cherry picking shows that your theory is still alive and kicking!
To be quite clear, I do think, GP is bringing this because he disagrees with AGW, and disagreeing with AGW becomes increasingly hard without explaining how a vast majority of scientists can be wrong. He himself is, very much, starting from his conclusion, and defending it uphill, and beyond reason.
However, that does not mean that his line of argument is all wrong. Having worked in science for a bit, I actually think it is quite valid, and something to be wary of. Personally, I have been in the situation of starting from a conclusion. Essentially, our research question / conclusion was of the kind of theory A is better than theory B. And boy, theory B is boring! So we invested a significant amount of resources into our study. Even setting up the methods for my study was a huge effort (at the scale I was working at, at least). And then after about two years (the study needed a delay period, too) we had a huge amount of data, and finally, we could set out to answer our key research question, and ... it kind of sort of was not a clear cut case. So, being the stats guy in the project, I spent a long time with that data, and tell you what, using the right methods, the right subgroups, or the right kind of exclusions, I found enough corners where our beloved theory A was doing great. But some pedantic drive kept me going on until I had convinced myself, that boring theory B simply did a much better job at capturing the overall results. That was a long and painful process, and it was enabled by being young, having a lot of time on hands, and low pressure from the seniors. Not sure I would have reached the same conclusion with a bit more nudging from my fellow research team members.
So far, so good, science won (I hope), but the real staggering realizations started to set in when we were publishing our findings, and going through peer review. Peer review was a bitch. It was giving us quite some headaches, some over ridiculous misunderstandings, many over hair-splitting on words, some over very real substantial problems. But none were about the sensitive spots of my analysis. Today, I am quite convinced, if we had simply run with theory A, we would never have been caught in peer review, and the world would not have known any better.
That was a pretty confined area of research, not too many people working on it world-wide (and that does reflect the lack of importance). I'm sure, more eyes do improve the situation. But do not, ever, underestimate the means, and the motivation of small groups of scientists to nudge results into the direction that they honestly (but mistakenly) believe to be right.
(Score: 2, Informative) by pTamok on Friday September 16 2016, @11:53AM
Part of being a scientist is being willing to believe you can be wrong, and and taking actions to try and prove you are wrong. If your work is not falsifiable, it is not science.
We know that most, if not all theories (or even 'natural laws') are wrong, in that they are inaccurate - but they are the best descriptions or explanations that we have that fit the known facts. Newton's description of gravitation was better than those that came before him, but Einstein came up with a theory that better describes gravitation in strong fields - it is more accurate. Einstein did not show Newton to be wrong - he came up with a more general theory that was consistent with the known facts and worked better in more situations.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday September 16 2016, @03:28PM
The mark of intelligence is to progress in an uncertain world and the science of climate change, of human health and of the ecology of our planet has given us orders of magnitude more confidence than we need to act with certitude.
Notice how this worked out. A multi-page straw man on what science is followed by a one paragraph fallacy by assertion on climate change. The obvious implication is that if you don't accept the fallacy, then you aren't capable of understanding science. The obvious problem here is the evidence doesn't match the confidence. And once again, we're left with an empty lecture on science which hammers climate change talking points.
When will he turn his attention to the evidence for overpopulation, global poverty, habitat and arable land destruction, government and societal corruption, etc? There are bigger problems out there which "acting with certitude" on climate change can completely fuck up, making our situation worse than it would be if we did nothing about climate change at all.
(Score: 2) by Bot on Saturday September 17 2016, @01:13PM
I concur, human related climate change is a convenient fig leaf. "We destroy society with war, economic war, treatments instead of cures, pollution, but hey we are preoccupied about global warming, which means 1. we are good guys, 2. the problem is you and not us, now shut up get taxed and don't reproduce."
Account abandoned.
(Score: 2) by curunir_wolf on Friday September 16 2016, @03:29PM
Claims that the "the science isn't settled" with regard to climate change are symptomatic of a large body of ignorance about how science works. ... Those who demand the science be "settled" before we take action are seeking deductive certainty where we are working inductively.
I thought that everyone was already claiming that AGW, based on use of fossil fuels, is, in fact, "settled science". Is there some acknowledgement now that it's not, so now we should change tactics to encourage support for taking action?
The article brings up some interesting points, but if the goal is to get these "ignorant" skeptics to go along with the "action plan", it fails on many levels. The most obvious is the failure to acknowledge how an established scientific theory can be defended in the face of conflicting evidence (many examples of it throughout history).
Aside from that, the "action items" proposed to deal with climate change are extraordinary, and with very little relative impact on the predicted outcomes, even within the models. In fact it seems clear in the studies that when all factors are accounted for, the proposed measures would cause greater suffering of people around the world than taking no action at all.
Instead of continuing these bitter fights and arguments, and battles for world dominance, it would be better if all viewpoints were simply acknowledged and some reasonable steps to mitigate the effects of a warming earth could be agreed to instead. In that way, it wouldn't really matter how much of the warming is actually caused by CO2. Fossil fuels are a finite resource anyway, and we need to plan for that. The climate is warming and we need to plan for that. Increased energy efficiency, increased use of economic renewable energy, and support for improving the living conditions of ordinary humans should be the focus, not beating people over the head all the time because they might be emitting too much CO2.
I am a crackpot
(Score: 1, Offtopic) by Scruffy Beard 2 on Friday September 16 2016, @04:00PM
Cam across this 20 minute video yesteray by Zitta Jones:
Atheist transphobia: Superstition over science [youtube.com]
In it, she argues that many armchair psychologists are stuck at the simplified 8th grade science curriculum. They got as far as to demand that experts in the field go back to grade school for remedial lessons.
They do not grasp that grade-school science is a simplified approximation. Heck, my high school physics classes had like 1 question about Quantum Mechanics. Everything else was Newtonian physics.
(Score: 2) by Scruffy Beard 2 on Friday September 16 2016, @04:11PM
oops Zinnia Jones.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 16 2016, @08:56PM
I try not to be cruel to people with birth defects and mental illness, including defects that are both at once. I don't however wish to participate in your mistaken idea of reality. That means I'm not cool with non-biological pronouns. If you can agree to disagree, we can be friends. Try shoving your ideas down my throat though, and I'll seethe with rage.
Compare:
Suppose a person thinks that doorknobs are talking to him. I'm going to deny that. I'm not going to kick the poor fellow's ass, but I'm not participating and I'll try to resist making fun of him. I'm not going to say that the doorknobs talk to me too. I'm not going to accept doorknob conversation as the new normal.
Suppose a person thinks about killing himself. I'm not going to offer to help. I'm not going to join in. I'm very unlikely to support the decision, maybe excepting stuff like terminal bone cancer. Somebody's twisted and broken vision of reality is defective, and I'm just not going to encourage or acknowledge that.
The same goes for the mentally retarded, the crippled, the homos... You go ahead and be you, but don't you dare demand that I pretend that things are normal.
(Score: 1) by Scruffy Beard 2 on Saturday September 17 2016, @06:17AM
Assuming it is a mental illness, what exactly do you thing the most effective treatment is?
Hint: it is not trying to convince them that they are delusional.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Francis on Friday September 16 2016, @04:53PM
The scientific method is general enough that it fits an astonishing number of different specialties.
You'll generally start making observations, but that's not technically required. You form a hypothesis, test the hypothesis and if the results of the experiment confirm the hypothesis you'll generally mark it as such and write your paper. At that point, the paper generally gets peer reviewed for flaws and published. At that point, you'll generally have other scientists perform the same experiment under the same conditions to try and replicate the results.
Once there's been a number of different and related hypotheses tested, those will usually result in some sort of a theory that describes a set of situations in a more general way and itself is used to make further predictions and generate new hypotheses.
Laws are where things break down a bit as there doesn't seem to be as much agreement about what laws are and should be. They generally wind up being relatively narrow in focus, but there's some disagreement as to whether that's just because we know so little or because that's what a law is.
If you're not doing something that approximates that, then it's questionable whether or not you can or should refer to that as science. That's been the way things have been done for quite some time and it tends to work quite well. Fields that slip away from that tend to wind up with results that aren't reliable.
Most of the actual variance involved between specialties isn't at that level, it's about what level of certainty you need to call something settled and what rules you're expected to adhere to when it comes to actually performing the experiments.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 16 2016, @05:54PM
Most social scientists need to be taught what the scientific method is, and most journalists as well. We've seen countless times how social science studies claim to be able to measure people's emotions only to find out that they conducted a mere survey, seen studies that claimed that violent video games increased aggression only to find out that the social scientists used their own arbitrary definition of "aggression" and disregarded real-world results and statistics, seen studies reach a particular conclusion only to find out that there are countless conclusions that could be reached from their vague data, etc. There's a serious lack of rigor in the social sciences that's even more prevalent than in other fields.
Journalists love the social sciences because their subjective, largely unscientific nature allows them to easily push an agenda. Too many times we've seen journalists aggressively cite new studies that just came out and acted as if the debate was over, even though those new studies had yet to be replicated and no scientific consensus on the matter had yet been reached. Instead of caring about actual science, they care about playing the 'citation game' where truth is set aside as an irrelevancy. Oftentimes, the studies the journalists cite don't even reach the conclusions they claim they do, or aren't as rigorous as they claim they are. This leads to some people getting misled by ignorant or dishonest journalists who appear to be speaking with authority because they're supposedly just reporting on a study.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 16 2016, @08:00PM
some believe that the "scientific methode" starts with bias and influencing from the get go.
also it is believed that anyone can "learn" the scientific methode.
on the other hand, some people believe that understanding comes from no regerous methode but
rather from insight (*poof* here today, gone tomorrow)
some people are born stronger or faster or taller or less fat or with sharp eyes or ears and some people might just
get more "insights" then other ... no methode required.
it doesnt mean that the "scientific methode" is useless...
however this theory cannot be popular in a society that staunchly belives it is (99$-%) equal ...
(Score: 2) by krishnoid on Friday September 16 2016, @09:20PM
Claims that the "the science isn't settled" with regard to climate change are symptomatic of a large body of ignorance about how science works.
Obligatory XKCD [xkcd.com]. It might just have to do with presenting the data in a way that people can connect to better.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 16 2016, @09:26PM
Have you actually compared the predictions to the data though. The one fitting the data by far best is "best case scenario", even though the opposite has happened:
https://tamino.files.wordpress.com/2014/03/gwpf_nasa-hansen_graph.png [wordpress.com]
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 16 2016, @09:23PM
What is the religious method, and why do so many theologians, clergy, and lay people get it wrong?
What is the philosophic method, and why do so many philosophers, pundits, and newspeople get it wrong?
What is the engineering method, and why do so many engineers, mechanics, and tinkerers get it wrong?
What is the medical method, and why do so many doctors, nurses, and patients get it wrong?
What is the musical method, and why do so many classicists, pop stars, and Kayne West get it wrong?
What is the computational method, and why do so many developers, users, and Microsoft get it wrong?
Thank you. I'll be here, two shows a day, until the servers die.
(Score: 2) by Bot on Saturday September 17 2016, @01:16PM
Missing data point, scientist do not operate in a vacuum. Proof, related scandals (sugar industry the flavour of the week).
Conclusion, understanding the scientific method is orthogonal to trusting scientific results and theories.
All of this is completely unrelated to climate change.
Account abandoned.