Of Diamond Planets, Climate Change, and the Scientific Method

A few weeks ago, we discussed the discovery of a diamond planet in orbit around a pulsar. One of the researchers behind the discovery has now written a followup article about reaction to the news from the media and laypeople. Quoting: "The attention we received was 100% positive, but how different that could have been. How so? Well, we could have been climate scientists. ... Instead of sitting back and basking in the glory, I suspect we’d find a lot of commentators, many with no scientific qualifications, pouring scorn on our findings. People on the fringe of science would be quoted as opponents of our work, arguing that it was nothing more than a theory yet to be conclusively proven. There would be doubt cast on the interpretation of our data and conjecture about whether we were “buddies” with the journal referees. If our opponents dug really deep they might even find that I’d once written a paper on a similar topic that had to be retracted. Before long our credibility and findings would be under serious question. But luckily we’re not climate scientists."

Comments

Politics

[Anonymous Coward]

Well...yea. The discovery of a diamond planet isn't used by politicians to create bad policy that doesn't properly address the concerns created by the discovery, and cost people unnecessary amounts of money.

Re:Science depends on stats

[SciBoy]

There is no scientific debate on this issue. It's settled.

And once upon a time all scientists knew that the earth was flat. Just because there is a consensus doesn't mean that they are right. I think people are being sceptical because we're just not seeing the evidence of what they are proposing. So far, none of the climatologists predictions have come true. Al Gore himself has bought San Fransisco-bay area real-estate that would be washed away if his own predictions were true.

Even if there are a million scientists that claim that the air is full of little invisible fairies that push the clouds around, if they are scientists, they should listen when someone puts forward proof that this is not the case. There are scientists (Henrik Svensmark, for example) that have alternative theories to why there is global warming and who actually have experiments that confirm their theories.

I think one of the main reasons why people are sceptical to this research is that it is a field where we suck. We suck at predicting weather. We suck at it because it is too hard. If you've studied just a little bit of chaos theory you know that it is impossible to forecast weather for more than a very limited time. So all one can say about it is possibly general and broad statements about how it's going to be in the far future and even then just a slight change in the model or the data you're basing your calculations on and that all changes.