

A climate scientist who engages skeptics - bootload
http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/11/27/a-climate-scientist-on-climate-skeptics/

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tshtf
What is the best way to deal with skeptics of generally accepted ideas?

As a thought experiment, I'm going to throw out the worst possible analogy I
can think of: How should historians deal with holocaust revisionism?

Is it better to censor, criminalize, and ignore the deniers, or should their
claims be refuted with discussion and evidence (if available)? Ken McVay and
the Nizkor Project has been doing this with holocaust revisionism since the
USENET heyday of the 1990s. Refutation of claims from revisionist texts is
openly presented by Nizkor.

Open dialague hasn't proven to be horribly effective, but marginalization and
not responding openly to skeptical claims is certainly less effective. Humans
are social animals. We need to interact and talk, even if it sometimes seems
the guys on the other side of the fence are the bad ones.

~~~
damienkatz
> What is the best way to deal with skeptics of generally accepted ideas?

As a creator of a "NoSQL" database (CouchDB), I think I understand the
skeptics that climate researchers must deal with, and how it's difficult. In
our case, there are a great deal of skeptics who deny there are any advantages
to something that isn't SQL. No amount of arguing can convince them otherwise.

So I don't argue with them, it' a waste of my time. That's not to say it's a
waste of time, but it's a waste of _my_ time. I continue to work on the
project, make it better, grow the user base, etc. But I don't engage the
skeptics, I let the code and real successes stand on it's own, and others can
argue in it's defense if they are so inclined (and many are).

Anyway, for climatologists, the easiest way to deal with the skeptics is make
as much data and methodology as possible public and easily accessible.
Skeptics will still argue against it, but others will take up the fight of
arguing for it. If it's possible that people will argue passionately about a
new style of database, it stands to reason there's a whole army of people
ready to take up the fight of supporting your data, methodologies and
conclusions when it involves the entire Earth's climate.

And if the skeptics finds something in your research people can't defend,
maybe your data or methods are flawed and need improvement. That's a good
thing regardless if it came from skeptics or supporters.

------
MaysonL
An interesting article by Dr. Curry:
<http://curry.eas.gatech.edu/currydoc/Curry_BAMS87.pdf>

title: _Mixing Politics and Science in Testing the Hypothesis That Greenhouse
Warming Is Causing a Global Increase in Hurricane Intensity_

------
jellicle
The quoted scientist is simply wrong. Openness with one's data is a good
scientific approach, but it will not in any way reduce or minimize the faith-
based attacks of the climate change deniers. (Rather, they'll be heartened
because you took an action in response to their attacks.) Those attacks are
not coming because Joe Redneck in the Bible Belt undertook a scientific
inquiry into climate change and felt that the data wasn't open enough. You
could hand-deliver 4000 pages of climate change datasets personally to the
house of each and every person who said they don't believe in climate change;
not one of them would change their mind.

If you don't understand the actual reasons that the deniers exist, which have
absolutely nothing to do with your approach to the science, then you haven't
got a hope of actually dealing with them.

~~~
cwan
Of course it doesn't really help your case when you deliberately obfuscate and
hide data - not to mention hide the fact that you can't even replicate your
own models.

Let's acknowledge that there will always be some minority view that will
always be in direct opposition to whatever science there is. You cannot
possibly think that hiding, claiming monopoly and even deleting original data
sets helps any cause. Since when did the science go from attempting to discern
an objective truth to advocacy?

It seems like the defense of the leaked emails essentially comes down to this:
the data would be manipulated by evildoers therefore the only people who can
be trusted to interpret and even hold the data are some select group of
scientists. Oh and by the way, if you disagree with any of our interpretations
we'll label you a "denier" and try to destroy you whether you're a scientist
or a scientific journal. Sounds like religion more than science.

~~~
camccann
_Since when did the science go from attempting to discern an objective truth
to advocacy?_

Advocacy of what? Shouldn't it be the _duty_ of a scientist to be an advocate
for better understanding of objective truth? Do you really think researchers
should allow misuse of science to go unopposed?

What the researchers in this case are guilty of is not advocacy of a position,
they're guilty of reckless disregard for scientific integrity. This is the
case _even if their position is correct_.

 _the data would be manipulated by evildoers therefore the only people who can
be trusted to interpret and even hold the data are some select group of
scientists._

Well, it _would_ be manipulated by "evildoers". There's no shortage of
unscrupulous individuals seeking political gain on both sides of the climate
debate. And chances are, the number of people outside their field of study who
could correctly interpret the data is vanishingly small.

But it's still not an acceptable excuse.

The practical endeavor of science relies _heavily_ on researchers acting in
good faith, and on deferring to authorities in other fields, as no one has
time to go back and personally recheck everyone else's conclusions. "Because
the experts say so" is, generally speaking, a perfectly valid reason to accept
a scientific conclusion--which is why even the _appearance_ of impropriety is
grossly damaging. It undermines the foundation of trust that the whole system
is built on.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
_The practical endeavor of science relies heavily on researchers acting in
good faith, and on deferring to authorities in other fields, as no one has
time to go back and personally recheck everyone else's conclusions._

Although scientific progress relies on someone with integrity checking the
methodology and results - peer review and verification of experimental
results. The conclusions are the basis of the hypotheses on which the future
experiments rest and so are tested by those experiments.

Climate is a chaotic system, non-Newtonian, we don't really know what's going
to happen until it does. We have an idea of arching trends but the rationale
of greenhouse effects leading to a mini ice-age (say) seems _a priori_
consistent as an outsider.

 _"Because the experts say so" is, generally speaking, a perfectly valid
reason to accept a scientific conclusion--which is why even the appearance of
impropriety is grossly damaging._

Depends on what you have riding on the conclusions. In any field there are
usually different factions of experts and you should consider all positions.
If all experts agree (!) then assuming that position is probably not going to
materially affect you even if they are not exactly on the right path. Often it
takes outsiders to shake up a field.

Personally I'm with "House", assume everyone is lying (or at least wrong) and
you're usually right.

~~~
camccann
Peer review and such is more of a quick sanity check than anything else--in
principle it's about verifying soundness, in practice it's more a quick and
dirty filter to remove absolute rubbish. It'd be nice if things were more
rigorous, but there are systematic limitations--e.g., triple checking someone
else's work and not finding any problems does not advance one's scientific
career. It tends to work out well enough most of the time, though.

 _In any field there are usually different factions of experts and you should
consider all positions. If all experts agree (!) then assuming that position
is probably not going to materially affect you even if they are not exactly on
the right path._

Really? I can't actually think of any scientific fields with significant
factional divides. Disagreements over trivia, perhaps (such as quantum
mechanical interpretations), but nothing major. Disputes over major issues in
science tend to be worked out pretty quickly, rarely persisting as stable
factions. And yes, on the current topic, experts in climatology do pretty
consistently agree on the science (proposed political "solutions" are another
matter entirely...). What did you have in mind?

Factional wars may crop up around the fringes in fields that are only
partially scientific, but it's typically parts of the field that are
especially difficult to study scientifically that the factions split over.

 _Often it takes outsiders to shake up a field._

Often? Really? Do you have any examples? The only significant shakeups in
science that I can think of were started by people trained and acknowledged in
the field (though typically young, obscure researchers, not famous and
influential scientists).

 _Personally I'm with "House", assume everyone is lying (or at least wrong)
and you're usually right._

In matters of science, everyone is wrong, but some are less wrong than others.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
_Disagreements over trivia, perhaps (such as quantum mechanical
interpretations)_

Lol, the very nature of reality itself == trivia.

