
Scientists must fight for the facts - jkimmel
http://www.nature.com/news/scientists-must-fight-for-the-facts-1.21347?WT.mc_id=FBK_NatureNews
======
intended
Comments here are still talking about defending facts. This is a losing
argument.

This is bread and circuses.

Let scientists do science - comics and comedians are the weapon to reach for.

America has lead the way for the past 4 decades in bringing the public into
areas they don't have the prior knowledge to navigate.

Anyone old enough to remember the climate change debates will remember a time
when scientists didn't debate climate deniers because it gave climate deniers
too much credibility!

But what scientists didn't realize is that vested interests were setting them
up.

Cranks and fakers were nurtured and given air time by a certain news channel
till they eventually the "public interest" invaded the scientific.

At which point "science" lost. Science expected a debate, but walked into
Spectacle.

Trump showed that with Twitter and crap you can cross the very low threshold
required to beat the current crop of presidential candidates.

This is entertainment. If you don't treat it as such you lose space to the
person who generates better TRPs.

~~~
Tloewald
Comedians were almost completely united against Trump and a lot of good that
did. (I recall John Oliver pointing out, self-deprecatingly, how effective his
repeated eviscerations of Trump had been).

Before I moved here, I remember thinking that Americans must be too stupid to
understand "The Simpsons" because it takes apart and laughs at all the obvious
flaws in American society, but discovered instead that Americans can
cheerfully laugh at Homer, understand why they're laughing at Homer, and be
Homer all at once.

Bear in mind that a Christian Conservative is already managing epic levels of
cognitive dissonance "the love of money is the root of all evil.... mmmmm tax
cuts" so a bunch more is barely going to have an impact.

~~~
cle
> but discovered instead that Americans can cheerfully laugh at Homer,
> understand why they're laughing at Homer, and be Homer all at once.

This is not unique to Americans.

You can generalize your assertions to humanity as a whole. America is not
unique in believing wildly irrational, logically inconsistent ideas and
compartmentalizing cognitive dissonance. This is the story of human politics
since the beginning of history...

------
lhnz

      > Within two days of Trump assuming power, White House
      > officials have found themselves embroiled in a
      > scandal over “alternative facts”.
    

Those weren't alternative facts, those were lies.

Actual alternative facts do exist because we often select the facts we
represent based on our tribal affiliations.

I won't be able to reclaim the term now that is smeared. But I wish people
could point out when somebody is lying (or misleading) without trying to smear
the existence of counterzeitgeist truth.

Aside: why didn't anybody in the Trump administration respond by pointing out
that Washington, D.C. is majority democrat, and that Bush's inauguration might
have been a better comparison? Quite embarrassing that they would lie when
deflating the authority of the comparison would have probably been more
effective...

~~~
pc86
I blame the media for a lot of this, honestly. If someone tells a lie, say
"why did you lie about _____?" That's about 90% of why the media exists in the
elevated status it has/had.

But when a reporter on CNN says "Why did the Donald Trump tell the Press
Secretary to come out and tell falsehoods?" that diminishes what actually
happened. The PS lied on national television. Call him out on it. Use the word
"lied" or "liar" and stop dressing it up by using terms like "telling
falsehoods."

When a liar is said to be "telling falsehoods" it's only one small step for
them to reply with "alternative facts."

~~~
anotherturn
I wonder if the lawyers have a hand in this. Words like "liar" paint a person
in a negative light and could lead to a defamation lawsuit. Whereas pointing
out that something is a "falsehood" is inviting a comparison of facts - i.e.
inviting Trump to prove he wasn't lying.

~~~
a_thro_away
That is what I understand; lie implies intent, which is impossibly hard to do.
IMO the media is trying to being courteous, even delicate, when it is and
should be an all out brawl, when the truth and fact are at stake.

~~~
mikeash
I kind of like the vocabulary they're using. Everybody knows politicians lie,
and I don't think that word would have much of an impact. Repeating the term
"alternative fact" and using terms like "believes... won't provide any proof"
draws attention to just how absurd these particular lies are.

~~~
bookbinder
It only draws attention for paying who willing to think critically. Lots of
Trump supporters are perfectly content with the notion of "alternative facts."

~~~
mikeash
That's true, but is there _any_ way to reach that group?

~~~
pc86
There were what, 63 million of them? They're not all closeted racists with
barely a HS education. _Most_ of them aren't.

I don't understand the pervasive notion that anyone who voted Trump can't be
reasoned with and isn't upset with how his administration has operated in the
last week.

~~~
mikeash
Maybe you have trouble understanding that pervasive notion because you
misunderstand what people are saying?

Neither I nor the person I replied to said or implied that all Trump
supporters are, well, anything. The other fellow talked about "lots of Trump
supporters" (which could easily refer to just a few percent of the total) and
that's the group I referred to in my reply.

 _I_ don't understand the pervasive notion that if you talk bad about any set
of Trump supporters, you're somehow painting 63 million people with the same
brush.

------
anon1253
This isn't about facts. Science is rarely about facts. Empirical science is
and cannot be about proofs. Proofs and facts are for the abstract, the ideal,
left to philosophers, logicians, and occasionally mathematicians and computer
scientists. No, this is about something much more sinister: denying the
ability to reason about and disseminate observations. All empirical science
can do is look at things, do experiments and come up with logically consistent
and plausible theories or hypotheses that explain them. The value is rarely in
the data: the value is in the reasoning around it. Observing, for example,
that beaks in birds change depending on the environment is rarely interesting.
The interesting bit is reasoning that traits get passed down to offspring in a
survival of the fittest scheme. Similarly, observing that combustion engines
release CO2, and there is more of it than before we had them … not
particularly interesting. The interesting bit is that it acts as insulation to
sunlight and that a lot of ecological and climate systems act as non-linear
under the influence of temperature and CO2.

Do I say this to downplay empirical science? On the contrary. However, the
focus on facts is I think more harmful than it might appear in trying to
protect our scientific legacy. Dump every table ever recorded on the internet
as a torrent, and very little useful things will come from it. It's protecting
the institutions and freedom to reason about, and talk about, those findings
that is important; to be able to openly challenge them, and rigorously come up
with "best explanations" (a human intellectual construct, not fact, not
truth).

Gag orders to silence academic findings, that is problematic. More so than
trying to "protect" facts-of-the-matter as if they are somehow the pinnacle of
human intellect.

Corollary this is also why I always find "humanities are not science" or "this
is not Nature worthy"-statements rather annoying. It's a no-true Scotchman
fallacy. Science is more than stamp collection, it's more than peer-review,
it's more than running elaborate statistical tests on randomized experiments:
it's the collective human endeavor to understand the universe and ourselves,
it's a mindset. A mindset that can, and should be, in constant flux as our
understanding progresses (and sometimes regresses).

~~~
hueving
>it's a mindset.

No, it's more than that. Without the rigor to come up with testable hypothesis
and reproducible results, you might as well be practicing religion. You can
have a very inquisitive mindset but without applying scientific rigor, you're
right in line with numerologists and whatever else.

That's why people are so hard on shaky humanities studies that have poor
experimental design, poor analysis, or terrible biases in the data. You can't
derive meaningful conclusions from bad science. Garbage in => garbage out.

~~~
arethuza
One of my favourite quotes on the subject:

 _“Science is a tribute to what we can know although we are fallible… We have
to cure ourselves of the itch for absolute knowledge and power.”_

I saw The Ascent of Man at a young age (probably 7 or 8) and I've always
remembered this scene:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wXwj4jMnWZg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wXwj4jMnWZg)

~~~
bbctol
I think a lot about the tension inherent in science; we do science because we
have a desire for the truth, which for many scientists is a deeply emotional
and visceral hunger, a need for knowledge and a joy of discovery... but we do
science by acknowledging that this goal is impossible, that we can never have
a moment of celebration where we're absolutely certain we've discovered
something. Trust your methods too much, and you'll end up believing in
phrenology or whatever other misplaced scientism even the establishment can
come to believe. Trust your methods not enough, and you'll never be able to
come to a conclusion, and never be able to convince others of the importance
of your findings (even if the fate of the planet depends on it.)

And in the end... it's a tension that can't be resolved. All there is is the
tension. That's what science is, despite our hopes in it as a rational, dry
methodology; at some point, the methodology has to come to a conclusion, the
controlled experiments and p-values end up affecting the way we think and act,
and we all just keep trying our best to make sense of the world.

------
cderwin
I think of late one of the problems is that there is a certain dogma within
political circles and the media that the body of facts produced by scientists
is absolute and irrefutable, when the truth is somewhat the opposite: the body
of knowledge produced by science is constantly changing, individual results
are continually reevaluated, and theories are compared against each other
until there is a preponderance of evidence in favor of one over the others.

I don't want to get too political, but one can't help but wonder if the way
science has been talked about in the media has led to a skepticism of academia
to an unhealthy degree.

~~~
mseebach
I think a tangential issue is the assumption that science can decide one
particular course of action to be the correct one, often expressed in a form
such as that the science of climate change tells us that we must build solar
farms and wind turbines. Science doesn't, in fact, tell us that, directly at
least -- but it can tell us that _if_ we want to combat the root cause of
climate change, we need to decrease CO2 emissions, and major component of CO2
emissions is electricity generation, and solar and wind are reasonably
practical, comparably low CO2 options, compared to most other option. But they
are also expensive, and science can't tell us if it's 'worth it' (specifically
if its _more_ 'worth it' than other competing expenses), for an example.

Scientists understand this, headline writing journalists less so, and agenda-
pushing activists and politicians _definitely_ don't.

~~~
dnautics
Do scientists understand this? I've tried to have this sort of conversation
with scientists and most don't see things that way. I don't know if
contemporary scientists see themselves as activists or if they are too hooked
on grant money to give up the notion of scientific hyperauthority (reminded of
Upton Sinclair's lament about getting people to understand things)

~~~
andygates
Yes, in great numbers they do. The spur to activism is in response to
political foot-dragging, and the party bias is simply because the Republicans
resist the whole issue en masse.

"Hooked on grant money" is a smear trope that is used by political opponents.
If there was a credible scientific opposition to GW, they'd get all the grant
money they could handle. It just ain't so.

~~~
dnautics
no the spur to activism existed long before trump was elected president. I
haven't been an active mainstream scientist for about 4 years or so.

> If there was a credible scientific opposition to GW, they'd get all the
> grant money they could handle.

Really? Without claiming that GW is not real (I think it likely is). What
journals would they be published in? Who would review their papers? Who would
review their grants? Where would this hypothetical credible GW scientist be
getting their PhD from? Which advisor and committee members signed off on
their degree? The overall process for getting money for science (and getting
_to_ the point where you're even in contention for getting money) is not
different between chemistry and biology and climate science, and there is so
much pettiness in the process in chem and bio, it's disgusting (and a large
part of why I left). In the end whether or not you get money pretty much boils
down to who you know and what your pedigree is.

I guess my overall point is that at this juncture in history, our scientific
edifice is on very shaky foundations across the board. As much as I disagree
with Trump, the fealty to which "anti-Trump" writ large gives over to
"science", or really "scientific authority" is unfortunate. Moreover it's not
'being hooked on grant money' per se, but in order for scientists to keep
being paid like they are, they must accept the validity of the system as a
whole.

------
grabcocque
Facts are weird beasts. We are terrible at recognising facts, for a number of
reasons. For a start people tend to confuse them with truth.

A fact is generally considered to be a proposition that is true. The problem
is, science doesn't deal in what's true. Science deals in what's falsifiable.

Most things that are believed to be true aren't falsifiable, and therefore
fall into the epistemologically nebulous category of "things which are not yet
false". I'd suggest that trying to build a positivist bastion of truth on such
shifting epistemological sands is doomed to fail.

~~~
coldtea
> _A fact is generally considered to be a proposition that is true. The
> problem is, science doesn 't deal in what's true. Science deals in what's
> falsifiable._

That's the epistemology of Popper. Not necessarily how science works. See e.g.
Fayerabends arguments in "Against Method".

------
nonbel
I don't think it is as easy to identify "facts" as this article implies. For
example, which of the following statements are factual:

1) The effective radiating temperature of the earth, T_e, is determined by the
need for infrared emission from the planet to balance absorbed solar
radiation:

    
    
      pi*R^2(1-A)*S_0 = 4*pi*R^2*sigma*T_e^4
    

where R is the radius of the earth, A the albedo of the earth, S_0 the flux of
solar radiation, and sigma the Stefan-Boltzmann constant.

2) Rearranged, this equation gives:

    
    
      T_e = [S_0*(1-A)/(4*sigma)]^0.25
    

3) For A - 0.3 and So = 1367 watts per square meter, this yields T_e ~ 255 K.

4) The mean surface temperature is T_s ~ 288 K.

5) The excess, T_s - T_e, is the greenhouse effect of gases and clouds

~~~
08-15
1) Conclusion from a well supported theory (not a fact, but pretty darn
close). It's only an approximation, though: what's the albedo of a
heterogenous body and doesn't it depend on temperature?

2, 3) Simple conclusions from (1).

4) Fact... sort of. It needs a precise defintion of "mean surface temperature"
that makes sense in the face of the equation in (1). Shouldn't you take the
fourth root of the mean of the fourth power of temperature? For practical
purposes, this is called a "ball park number".

5) Plain wrong. The correct coclusion is that either (a) the theory presented
in (1) is wrong or (b) one of your inputs (R, A, sigma, S_0) is wrong. Turns
out the value of A is wrong, and the simplistic idea of albedo is not good
enough for the theory in (1).

------
tomkinstinch
A march of scientists is being organized:

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/amphtml/news/speaking-of-
scie...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/amphtml/news/speaking-of-
science/wp/2017/01/24/are-scientists-going-to-march-on-washington)

------
RcouF1uZ4gsC
Maybe scientists should first set their own house in order.

* Reproducibility crisis - [http://www.nature.com/news/1-500-scientists-lift-the-lid-on-...](http://www.nature.com/news/1-500-scientists-lift-the-lid-on-reproducibility-1.19970)

* P-hacking [http://www.nature.com/news/scientific-method-statistical-err...](http://www.nature.com/news/scientific-method-statistical-errors-1.14700)

* Prominent scientists criticizing those who find math errors in their works [http://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2016/9/30/13077658/sta...](http://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2016/9/30/13077658/statcheck-psychology-replication) (There are few facts more basic than math, and one of the scientists actually used the words "methodologic terrorism" to describe this effort)

* Not publishing raw data so others can analyze it [http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/neuroskeptic/2016/08/16/sc...](http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/neuroskeptic/2016/08/16/science-without-open-data-isnt-science/#.WIjlefErLmE)

These issues, especially the last two make it seem that a lot of scientists
are not fighting for the facts, but for their own academic position.

~~~
akiselev
By scientists you do mean Elsevier shareholders, right?

------
imh
People communicating scientific knowledge to the general public need to become
more responsible in talking about uncertainty. Scientists in certain fields
need to as well. When people hear a bunch of scientific facts that later turn
out to be false, they will stop believing the experts. This happens all the
time with nutrition and health "facts." Today drinking red wine is good for
you and next decade it's bad for you. Hear that enough and you stop trusting
nutrition studies. Same with anything coming out of the fields with
reproducibility crises. You stop trusting them. If we properly communicated
the limits of and uncertainty around these ideas, people wouldn't say we're
crying wolf. If we had different layman's language to denote a theory of bunk
and the theory of evolution, people wouldn't say "but it's just a theory," and
experts might regain trust. If people stop presenting "X affects Y in certain
conditions for mice, maybe" as "X affects Y for all humans, definitely" then
lay people might stop associating that level of trust to things like climate
change. At the very least, it becomes more defensible.

------
crawfordcomeaux
The problem isn't people holding these anti-science beliefs.

It's people holding these beliefs receiving human connection in the context of
these beliefs primarily from people who share the same beliefs! We use
differing beliefs as a reason to disconnect & disassociate, which is EXACTLY
what got us Trump in the first place.

Science knows this! We have to temporarily affirm their worldview before
challenging specific pieces of it. The more foundational the belief, the
deeper the connection needs to be.

My hypothesis: we need to collectively learn nonviolent communication in order
to hear the right on an emotional level. By connecting with them over all
their deep-seated fears & beliefs, we can then more easily stay changing them.

------
juskrey
Scientists must have their skin in the game - so the facts will fight for
themselves.

------
jbmorgado
I disagree with this premise.

A scientist job is to _present_ the facts. It's the media, and ultimately the
citizen job to _fight_ for them.

------
Tloewald
Using the word "unconventional" instead of a more accurate word such as
"counterfactual" or "intentionally ignorant" is a poor start.

------
lstroud
Selective outrage. Where has this been when scientists were quoting
pharmaceutical jobs because they were being asked to omit facts?

------
lutusp
Has anyone else noticed the disturbing parallel between Trump's "Alternative
facts" and the famous Nixon-era press office claim that "Previous statements
are inoperative"?

~~~
gravelc
We had 'core' promises and 'non-core' promises here in Australia. How
politicians use language is quite instructive.

~~~
finid
Sounds like Donald Rumsfeld's _known knowns_ and _known unknowns_

~~~
x0054
Without defending the misleading way this was used, there are such things as
1. Known knowns, 2. known unknowns, and 2. unknown unknowns. AKA stuff you
know, stuff you know that you don't know, and stuff that you do not know that
you don't know.

~~~
coldtea
It's basic epistemology.

------
msier79
Seems like Python could use more TCL influence in regards to "split" and other
nuances, from your description.

------
return0
This kind of article does not belong to Nature. It talks about what the media
said as _evidence_ , undefined _alternative facts_ , how "Rejecting mainstream
science has become a theme for Trump", yet the only fact presented is that
tillerson acknowledged climate change. Other than the fair criticism of
pushing fossil fuels, it's a purely political fluff article. Even editorials
should be based on facts in Nature.

~~~
arekkas
Not true: freezing EPA funds, censoring EPA twitter, replacing web pages on
climate change with fossile fuel propaganda, and disputing truth on live
television

We need to act, and we need to act now. Science is what got this man elected
(twitter, television), now it needs to fight for the very basic principles.

~~~
TeMPOraL
> _Science is what got this man elected (twitter, television), now it needs to
> fight for the very basic principles._

The word "science" seems to mean almost everything nowadays.

Twitter and television are not _science_. They are social constructs built
around the works of _engineering_ , which itself was based on some established
scientific knowledge.

~~~
arekkas
>Twitter and television are not science. They are social constructs built
around the works of engineering, which itself was based on some established
scientific knowledge.

I admit it's a long causality chain, but without the scientific methods, those
things would not exist. Thus, those methods are what we need to preserve in
order to advance, and this is very openly threatened by the current
administration.

~~~
TeMPOraL
I agree that scientific method needs to be preserved, but honestly, I don't
think the current US administration even enters top 10 of dangers to _science
itself_. Science as both the methods and the established culture around it has
been in serious trouble for years now, and a lot of that has to do with mass
media reporting and with the way incentives for scientists are structured.

As for Trump's administration creating creating a danger for the climate-
change mitigation efforts, that's another topic.

