Slashdot Mirror
The Scientific Method Versus Scientific Evidence In the Courtroom
An anonymous reader writes "A few months back, the National Research Council and the Federal Judicial Center published the Third Edition of the Reference Manual on Scientific Evidence, the primary guide for federal judges in the United States trying to evaluate scientific evidence. One chapter in particular, 'How Science Works,' written by David Goodstein (Professor of Physics and Applied Physics at CalTech), has raised the issue of how judges should see science in the courtroom: should they look at science to see if it matches our idealized view of the scientific method, or should they consider the realities of science, where people advocate for their own theories far more than they question them?"
realities of science, where people advocate for their own theories far more than they question them
If you're in a courtroom, you should ALWAYS assume than anyone presenting evidence has an agenda (because they almost always do). No defense or prosecution attorney is going to put a scientist (or any other witness) on the stand who is going to do anything but advocate for their version of the case. Any judge who isn't completely new or blind already knows that well.
What political party do you join when you don't like Bible-thumpers *or* hippies?
Good watch: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/real-csi/
One thing they didn't cover, however, was the horror behind "expert" psychologists/psychiatrists and the damage they inflict.
science is about method, not about theories
If you're in a courtroom, you should ALWAYS assume than anyone presenting evidence has an agenda (because they almost always do).
I don't really agree with this. It's the lawyer's jobs to try to find a scientist somewhere who will vouch for their client or could provide evidence for the client. Now, ideally the scientist is from some other place that never heard of this case or knows anything about the case other than what he/she is an expert on. The science has been done long before hand, is sound, has been peer reviewed, etc, etc. The problem that I garnered from this article is when an "expert" is presented yet they are not peer reviewed, their science is not sound, nobody in their community takes them seriously, their degree is a hundred years old or questionable, etc, etc. Or they know a lot about the case and they have stepped forward to voluntarily promote their agenda to back their science by building credibility via high media courtroom cases.
The point is that when scientists come into a courtroom as expert witnesses (or really any expert witness), the only agenda on their mind should be to relate to the court what they have discovered in their research. Not how much more funding they'll get when this hits the papers. Not how much the defense is paying them to say that in their professional opinion the client is insane.
This is about the validity of science presented in trials, not whether or not the defense or prosecution as an agenda. I don't think that's ever been under question or they're a terrible defense/prosecution and the client should move for a mistrial. Psychological testimony has gotten so far out of hand that some states have taken extreme measures.
My work here is dung.
I find the statement "... or should they consider the realities of science, where people advocate for their own theories far more than they question them?" kind of leading and biased in its own right. To be sure researchers will advocate their theories, but that does not mean they don't question them. Someone has a chip on their shoulder.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
should they look at science to see if it matches our idealized view of the scientific method, or should they consider the realities of science
How about both? Look to see if the real process aligns closely with ideals, then base decisions on that. Did the lab follow best practices to prevent contamination? Were the statistics compiled by someone who knew what the samples were? Do all of the numbers include error calculations?
The discerning judge who considers scientific evidence will end up with a subjective opinion of whether the result meets the need for accuracy. It's the judge's job to apply such subjective opinions fairly, and here that means allowing only evidence that meets their realistic ideal.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
The focus on science seems ridiculously one-sided. We should also allow for some room for alternatives in the court room. Science may be at odds with some religious beliefs and it would be unreasonable to just ignore those beliefs. This becomes a problem, for example, when God scatters around skeletons to test people's faith. A scientist would fail God's test instantly, claiming someone killed the victims.
Science in the courtroom?! Not on my watch. Someone fetch a Pastor to discern what God's will was in this case.
The word “science” used to mean knowledge of every kind obtained by any means. It has become narrowed in modern times to mean knowledge required by a procedure known as the “scientific method”. All people, including scientists have a worldview. No one is really objective nor has the ability to be so, because all people filter their input of knowledge and the output thereof through their worldview. Someone who considers the universe a cosmic probability experiment will interpret scientific knowledge a certain way. Someone who believes that the universe came into being by the action of a supreme mind, God, will interpret scientific results differently.
A sufficiently advanced simulation is indistinguishable from reality.
Its a Hidden Markov Model problem. There is some underlying theory with a probability of being correct based on research. But the people presenting evidence in court do so through an additional set of weighting factors that govern their testimony based upon the underlying theoretical model. The testimony is what the judge and jury are able to observe. From it, they need to deduce the underlying model and probabilities.
Good luck expecting 12 people to understand this who have to have football (US) plays explained to them by TV announcers.
Have gnu, will travel.
Science without religious, political, or judicial influence is simply pure science in my opinion. Once science is used in any of those three areas it is often used to bias towards an expected outcome.
I agree science is crucial in all areas and the methods of it's use are what concern me. Science is use to help prove or debunk evidence in court rooms every day. But while it is extremely helpful in a court case, I also believe that science has killed such things as common sense, which in some instances has been know to ruin a case. Some examples where I think science destroyed a case: OJ Simpson trial, Casey Anthony trial, all the cases trying to chip away at Roe Vs. Wade, just to name a few.
While I believe good science was used in OJ Simpson and Casey Anthony cases, I believe that too much emphasis was put on scientific evidence, thus causing doubt where there should not have been any doubt.
In the matter of case chipping away at Roe Vs. Wade, the problem is how science is destroying the underlining message of Roe Vs. Wade, the science about a fetus is outweighing the basic human rights of the mother.
Just my initial thoughts.
Life takes interesting turns, but the most interest is when you're off the beaten path.
Come on ed. How bout a case sensitive automated check?
Defense lawyers think judges too easily allow in “junk science” from plaintiffs, citing the silicon breast implant litigation, which resulted in over $3 billion in settlements
darn those silicon breast implants - causing complications with the fembot machine gun boobies!
A bit off topic, but the frequently seen misuse of "advocate" bugs me severely: "Advocate" means "to speak or write in favor of," so "Advocate for something" means "To speak or write in favor of for something" ... read that again, and weep! So, the relevant part in the summary should have read "people advocate their own theories" (strike "for").
You may now call me a grammar nazi and fling your rotted virtual vegetable and fruit. Thank you. /bows
--Udo.
Science is not allowed in the courtroom. Pseudo-science, such as fingerprint analysis and ballistic 'forensics,' sure, but real science won't make it past the courthouse steps in 99% of cases.
What is allowed, in lieu of actual scientific evidence, is the testimony of "experts" who got their expert certification from an open-book, online test for the low low price of $599.99.
Forensic science is anything but.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
You know that line about how the prosecutor is supposed to prove the guilt of the defendant beyond the "shadow of a doubt"?
Never going to go away when you're using scientific evidence. There are so many things that can go wrong that it's a miracle the stuff is still valid in court.
There is no way to assure anyone is objective. You might as well try to find a benevolent dictator. Peer review is a safeguard to some extent, but hardly worth much in anything that would be tried in the court.
However, we should ask why there is a need for much science in the courtroom. For example, prescription drugs. There should be a simple process by which drugs get approved for use. Trials, disclosure of side effects... Then all a court has to deal with is if the pharmaceutical company committed fraud or improperly followed the regulations. Regular evidence.
If they follow the regulations honestly, their drug gets approved, and it happens to have side effects... well... that should fall into the category of s**t happens. Perhaps change the regulations to catch more cases... but life always has some risk.
Some cases of science are unavoidable. If you have a car accident, and both sides bring experts to show the other person is at fault... well it becomes a matter of trust.
Either the government maintains its own engineers or accident investigators to act as an authority... or leave it to accredited experts... who hopefully have some kind of professionalism. But in these cases, its all just a matter of trust.
In any case, more often than not, there is a way to avoid the courts if we thought about it. The you wouldn't have this problem to begin with.
Scientifically, something is proven if it's effectively demonstrated repeatedly, with no unexpected effects from independent variables. This is a hard bar to rise to, and takes decades to do.
Common law proof, is "demonstrated beyond a reasonable doubt". That is to say, accounting for every practical possibility, is it certain that a certain person committed a certain crime.
These are critically different, and neither standard is very cross-applicable. Applying the common law standards to science would cause us not to examine unreasonable sounding possibilities, like the particle wave duality, for example. It relies far too much on our day to day expectations of how things work.
Applying scientific standards of proof to criminal law makes no sense, because there's simply no way to control for all relevant variables. They are different, and very much should be.
The scientific method and the legal method don't really mesh well most times. 'Science' very rarely produces black and white results. Shades of grey are tough to get across to lay people.
But on TV, they just push a few buttons and the security camera footage clearly shows the criminal doing the deed. And there's always irrefutable forensic evidence too, like special kinds of mold that are only found in a 3 block radius of the criminal, car tire marks that can be individually matched to a specific make and model of car, and all done with detectives that love their country and spend all their time bringing murderers, rapists, and child abductors to justice, all while tossing off one-liners that make them sound smart, educated, and likeable.
And the really guilty ones ask for a lawyer. You just know when someone asks for a lawyer or invokes their fifth amendment rights they're guilty as fuck, and they'll just sit there smiling like that alone gets them a get out of jail free card. Hero Detective will just lump on ten times more evidence against them before the next commercial break, maybe bending or breaking a few rules or contacting Mystery Person X from Government Agency Y to really dig into said dirtbag.
When you consider how most people are shown how science operates within the criminal justice system, and how little there is to contradict that, why is the result at all surprising? It's not that science is hard to explain to lay people, it's that their expectations have been manipulated by fictional events and popular entertainment; And even on things like the news we see things like "Space shuttle was travelling at 17 times the speed of light before it exploded". And in cases where science runs up against a popular misconception like fluorinated water, vaccinations, homeopathic remedies, etc., the media gives "equal" time to opponents of science. Look at how many media people start by asking the scientist invited to their show "Do you believe in evolution?"
When the nature of the average person's exposure to science is muddied up like this, it's no surprise people fall back to the one thing they do trust: Their own personal biases and emotions regarding the person to form their opinion regarding their credibility.
And gee, who's going to win; the guy in a suit and tie, balding, and still looks like he's in the marines, wearing some wire-rimmed glasses and with 20 years "on the force", or the 27 year old with a clip-on, who talks with an unsure voice and uses words you don't understand, and crumbles under cross-examination by a lawyer who's every question ends with "Are you sure?" and "and remember, you're under oath."
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
...when you have a scientist discussing something for which there is overwhelming consensus in one of the hard sciences, agendas and prejudices may be present, but to a far lesser degree than one might find with, say, a handwriting expert who declares "Yep. That's so-and-so's handwriting."
For every expert opinion there is an equal and opposite expert opinion.
One of the absolute worst instances of nonsense, expert testimony came from the county coroner in the Casey Anthony case. The coroner ruled death by homicide. When questioned as to why she thought is had to be a homicide the coroner actually stated under oath that it was a homicide because the body was dumped. That is from a supposedly educated professional. No cause of death could be determined yet we have this from an expert. Could it ever just be that a child drowned as the parent was asleep and fearing social criticism and in the doom of despair tried to hide a body? People who lose a loved one can do very odd things at times.
Ask a physicist about what was there before the Big Bang, and you're almost certain to get a personal slant in his or her answer. Ask a medical researcher about the Germ Theory of Disease, and you can pretty much take what he or she says to the bank. The difference between the two is a little thing called a "scientific consensus". If the consensus is strong (say, 90% from the relevant field), then the likelihood of personal bias/agenda/conspiracy/whatever is driving the answer is vanishingly small (although still a nonzero number).
The paid experts people are mentioning in this thread are often expressing opinions that have little to do with scientific consensus (e.g. handwriting experts expressing an opinion on a particular piece of handwriting).
Always try for the lowest common denominator!
"They" (Jury consultants/prosecutors) don't like..
People with post graduate educations
Lawyers
Professionals
Law enforcement officials
"They" (prosecutors) do like..
Welfare moms
The elderly
Blue collar white males
Why? Because "They" are always looking to find the most malleable people who will find the way that the prosecutor leads them!
I killed da wabbit -Elmer Fudd
How quickly we forget: http://yro.slashdot.org/story/11/09/29/0241219/science-manual-for-us-judges
and advocacy debate (aka. legal justice system) really are polar opposites. An individual scientist is no more "qualified" or "reasonable" than any other scientist, assuming both have equal eloquence, social status, and professional prestige. The advocacy system itself is ancient, it dates back to the days when anyone who said they actually understood something must be considered either crazy or a god. Can cancer can be cured through the use of chiropractic spinal adjustments? Depends on who you ask, and how much mojo they bring to the table.
the only thing he didn't emphasize enough is the ponzi like nature of employement, driven by the need for cheap grad student labor (although he did touch on this)
The book chapter "How Science Works" by Goodstein is available here from the author's CalTech web page.
Goodstein is a physicist, and so am I. I read the chapter and found myself agreeing with it completely...
BUT
The central issue he examines is the picture of science as an enterprise involving powerful theories that make predictions, which are then tested. This is a lot more applicable to physics than to other physical sciences, less applicable to the life scienes, and even less applicable to medicine or clinical psychology, which aren't really sciences at all.
IMO he correctly depicts physics as an enterprise where scientists behave adversarially (not impartially as depicted in high school science textooks), but the truth eventually becomes known, and the result is a theory that is absolutely known to be correct within its sphere of applicability. On p. 13 he discusses the myth that "Scientific theories are just that: theories. All scientific theories are eventually proved wrong and are replaced by other theories." IMO he's right that this is a myth -- in physics. For example, relativity didn't show that Newtonian mechanics was wrong, it showed that it was right only within a certain domain, where it had already been thoroughly tested.
But this is nothing like how things work in a field like clinical psychology.
Find free books.
Ask a physicist about what was there before the Big Bang, and you're almost certain to get a personal slant in his or her answer. Ask a medical researcher about the Germ Theory of Disease, and you can pretty much take what he or she says to the bank. The difference between the two is a little thing called a "scientific consensus". If the consensus is strong (say, 90% from the relevant field), then the likelihood of personal bias/agenda/conspiracy/whatever is driving the answer is vanishingly small (although still a nonzero number).
The psycholist and Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman makes mincemeat of that statement in his latest book, "Thinking, fast and slow". He calls it availability cascades, where the consensus view becomes the norm without having to be anywhere close to fact, and the scientists who do try to practice the scientific method get the silent treatment (or worse, become labelled deniers etc).
In short, "consensus" has nothing to do with science. It has a lot to do with psychology.
it's in my head
Judges only evaluate the admissibility of evidence, not it's efficacy. It's up to the jury to decide if the evidence is valid, and the process of voir dire ensures that prospective jurors with a clue about any scientific evidence to be presented in the trial will be rejected.
FTFA:
Defense lawyers think judges too easily allow in “junk science” from plaintiffs, citing the silicon breast implant litigation, which resulted in over $3 billion in settlements and compensation for autoimmune injuries that most scientists now agree weren’t caused by the implants.
I knew about silicone implants--the introduction of alkyl chains to a silica backbone makes a nice, jiggly material--but I had no idea we made silicon breast implants. Can you search Google by twisting a nipple?
Actually, I wrote my thesis on life experience.
Ask a physicist about what was there before the Big Bang, and you're almost certain to get a personal slant in his or her answer.
That's not my experience at all. I'im greatly interested in astrophysics and origin of universe and majority of the scientists in the field are saying that we DON'T KNOW what was before bing bang or even what was right at the time of the bing bang. Bing bang is "predicted" by Einstein's general theory of relativity. It's a moment in time when (according to mathematical formulas describing relativity) space is infinitely small and energy is infinitely large. Infinite energies are not possible so every sane scientist (Einstein included) will tell you that general relativity is not complete enough to describe the events right at the moment of big bang. Because we don't have better and well tested theory available, the consensus is that we don't know what excatly happend at the time of big bang and before it.
Sure there are many hypothesis which try to describe the pre-big-bang events but the are not yet supported by observatios so if anyone is trying to sell them to you as estabilished thruth about big bang, he's no credible scientist in my opinion.
TL/DR: Good scientists are not afraid to accept that there are lot of things for which we have no suitable explanations at the moment and they will not try to force on you theories unsupported by observations as estabilished facts.
Judges should be forced to say in any trial that will present DNA evidence: "Ladies and Gentleman of the jury, please keep in mind a DNA match means only the DNA matched and does not prove *how* the DNA came to be there. It is far easier to collect and synthesize a suspects DNA after the fact and plant it on the evidence at the police departments' leasure than it is to fake fingerprints. A DNA match cannot and should not mean 100% absolute proof of guilt."
Keep in mind, police departments are now starting to take DNA samples during the most minor of offenses, just to have it on file to plant on the evidence of the next stone-cold whodunnit.
I think you're conflating different ideas together. Or perhaps you'd like to demonstrate how a scientific consensus can "become the norm without having to be anywhere close to fact". There's a myth put out by people who don't have any evidence to back them up, that "they are hiding it from you". You see it's not that the person trying to convince you that their insane theories are right is, in fact, insane. No, everyone secretly agrees with him, but everyone is too afraid of what "they" will do.
Most often we see this line of argument used by intelligent design advocates and the climate change denial machine. However, real scientists who don't accept the consensus on climate change (like Lindzen) are still able to publish regularly despite their contrarian positions (Lindzen still thinks the science linking smoking and cancer isn't settled). The problem is there just aren't that many people who can keep publishing new material when it gets proven wrong over and over again. The people who get labelled as deniers get labelled deniers because at some point it becomes obvious that they can not change their minds. Often in climate science this is because their jobs depend on denying the evidence. For many of the pundits they are literally paid by the Heartland Institute to deny climate change, and their public appearance fees depend on presenting a pre-determined view. They in too deep and no longer have the option to change their position.
In short, thinking that "consensus" has nothing to with science is foolishness. The scientific consensus is the giant on whose shoulder every scientist perches. Without consensus, every scientist would have to work from first principles and we'd never progress any further than what could be discovered in one lifetime.
Fanatically anti-fanatical
Didn't fakegate prove once and for all that there's no real money being paid out by Heartland?
The rest of your post consists mostly of ad hominems and other logical fallacies, but when it comes to consensus it simply has no place in science. No scientist bases their work on consensus, they base it upon hypotheses that has withstood falsifications over time.
http://randi.org/site/index.php/swift-blog/1506-skeptic-history-a-tale-of-two-scientists.html
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/Wegener/printall.php
it's in my head
Didn't fakegate prove once and for all that there's no real money being paid out by Heartland?
No, it proved the opposite. The Heartland Institute doesn't deny that the parts about who they're paying and how much are accurate, and most, if not all, of them have been verified.
The rest of your post consists mostly of ad hominems
I don't think those words means what you think they mean. I gave you a particular example that disproves your thesis that people who don't agree with the consensus are shut out. I also explained to you why some people are legitimately labelled deniers.
consensus it simply has no place in science
Absolutely wrong. Experiments and hypotheses are the bones of science, consensus is the muscle. Without both science can't go anywhere.
hypotheses that has withstood falsifications over time.
Which, would be the scientific consensus. Consensus is the feedback loop which allows science to progress. If you don't a consensus on which hypotheses have or haven't been disproved you'd have to personally verify every single one yourself. That would probably take more than a lifetime of work in almost any field before you could get to the point where you could even start working on something new.
Fanatically anti-fanatical
No, hypotheses that withstands tests over time do not rely on people _wanting_ them to be true or _believing_ in them - which are words used together with "consensus" :) It's completely irrelevant and the concept of a consensus brings nothing to the scientific table. As far as I know, it's only used by conservative scientists who want to dismiss scientific challenges (see the links I posted).
Regarding the Heartland Institue, their total budget and the payouts according to fakegate won't even get you a cup of coffee in a big university. Thus it's proved conclusively that they (at least) do not operate a "denial machine" (your words).
it's in my head
No, hypotheses that withstands tests over time do not rely on people _wanting_ them to be true or _believing_ in them - which are words used together with "consensus"
Merriam-webster's definition of consensus: general agreement
If you don't have a general agreement on what is true and what is not, how do you tell what is true?
It's completely irrelevant and the concept of a consensus brings nothing to the scientific table.
The scientific consensus (what is generally accepted as true) is the feedback loop that allows science to progress.
As far as I know, it's only used by conservative scientists who want to dismiss scientific challenges (see the links I posted).
And those scientists were actually doing their proper job which was to be sceptical of new claims. When the scientists provide compelling evidence, the new theory is admitted into the consensus. The scientific consensus is the body of science.
Regarding the Heartland Institue, their total budget and the payouts according to fakegate won't even get you a cup of coffee in a big university. Thus it's proved conclusively that they (at least) do not operate a "denial machine" (your words).
That's specious logic. First, I'm not aware of any big university that has only a single climate science faculty. Second, when presented with evidence that the Heartland Institute (among other similar organisations) pays people to argue that global warming isn't happening, you choose to say they're probably not paying them enough so it doesn't count? It looks like you're in denial. I suggest you try reading Merchants of Doubt or "Don't Get Fooled Again: The Sceptic's Guide to Life " by Richard Wilson. The media loves stories with conflict, they bring in more product to sell to their advertisers, so it doesn't take much to get them to promote the "controversy" angle. That's before we consider media bias and outright distortions on the issue itself.
Fanatically anti-fanatical
Merriam-webster's definition of consensus: general agreement
If you don't have a general agreement on what is true and what is not, how do you tell what is true?
Something called "the Scientific Method" :) There's no need for agreement whatsoever, and it has absolutely no place in science.
That's specious logic. First, I'm not aware of any big university that has only a single climate science faculty. Second, when presented with evidence that the Heartland Institute (among other similar organisations) pays people to argue that global warming isn't happening, you choose to say they're probably not paying them enough so it doesn't count? It looks like you're in denial.
Which other organizations? How large are their budgets? Are you sure you're basing your opinion on actual facts?
As far as I know, no one argues global warming isn't happening. I live in the southern part of Sweden myself, where the Little Ice Age is in fresh memory still (and played an integral part in the war between Sweden and Denmark over Scania). I'm not really sure what you're trying to claim, but it seems important for you to get the word "denial" into the argument somehow.
That's completely irrelevant to me. I'm talking about how science works. It has nothing to do with "consensus".
it's in my head
Something called "the Scientific Method" :) There's no need for agreement whatsoever, and it has absolutely no place in science.
You don't seem to understand the difference between procedure and knowledge. The scientific method is the process, scientific consensus is the product.
As far as I know, no one argues global warming isn't happening.
Which is a strange statement to make since that's exactly what the Heartland Institute says and pays other people to say for them.
Fanatically anti-fanatical
You don't seem to understand the difference between procedure and knowledge. The scientific method is the process, scientific consensus is the product.
You keep claiming that, but it's not true. Here's a hint, it won't become any more true just because you repeat it ;)
"If I were wrong, then one would have been enough!" --Albert Einstein
Orbital mechanics, plate tectonics and ulcers. The existence of a "consensus" says nothing about the actual state of science in a field. It might say something about how scientists fall prey to common psychological concepts just like everyone else though :)
I'll quote large parts of what Daniel Kahneman writes about in the book I mentioned back in this thread. Psychologists, while not practicing a hard science, do have interesting things to point out when it comes to our fallacies:
An availability cascade is a self-sustaining chain of events, which may start from media reports of a relatively minor event and lead up to public panic and large-scale government action. On some occasions, a media story about a risk catches the attention of a segment of the public, which becomes aroused and worried. This emotional reaction becomes a story in itself, prompting additional coverage in the media, which in turn produces greater concern and involvement. The cycle is sometimes sped along deliberately by “availability entrepreneurs,” individuals or organizations who work to ensure a continuous flow of worrying news. The danger is increasingly exaggerated as the media compete for attention-grabbing headlines. Scientists and others who try to dampen the increasing fear and revulsion attract little attention, most of it hostile: anyone who claims that the danger is overstated is suspected of association with a “heinous cover-up.” The issue becomes politically important because it is on everyone’s mind, and the response of of the political system is guided by the intensity of public sentiment. The availability cascade has now reset priorities. Other risks, and other ways that resources could be applied for the public good, all have faded into the background.
As far as I know, no one argues global warming isn't happening.
Which is a strange statement to make since that's exactly what the Heartland Institute says and pays other people to say for them.
Really? Where do they (and others they pay pocket change) say that? I can't find it in any of their publications.
it's in my head
You keep claiming that, but it's not true.
It's a shame you can't see how ridiculous your statements appear.
Really? Where do they (and others they pay pocket change) say that? I can't find it in any of their publications.
Here's one. You obviously didn't look very hard.
Fanatically anti-fanatical
It's a shame you can't see how ridiculous your statements appear.
I've cited numerous examples to support my stance. You've cited none :)
Here's one. You obviously didn't look very hard.
:) You must've looked really hard to find a document that apparently was published 15 years ago! Have the claims changed in newer documents with newer data perhaps? They seem to quote the 1995 IPCC report correctly. Even so, not even an old document supports your claim:
Page 14: "The small amount of warming that occurred during the past century"
Are you trolling?
it's in my head
Science is reality. Law is verisimilitude.
Science is supposed to generate results that are not contradicted by experiment. Kuhn aside, it is not done purely by popular vote - if one guy publishes a repeatable experiment that differs from current consensus, eventually other guys will repeat it, publish as well, and the consensus will change. Science has the luxury of being able to say "we don't know enough now to decide" and "we used to believe X, but experiment contradicts that, so now we believe Y".
Law is supposed to generate results that are acceptable to the majority of citizens. It has to make decisions with evidence that is often questionable or missing. It tries to be long-term internally consistent (adherence to precedent). The gold standard in law is a jury decision - a sample of the population looks at the evidence and makes a choice, which often comes down to whose lawyer's story sounded better to them.
Lawyers and the law in general are only interested in science when it supports their primacy in running society. I will believe otherwise when juries are routinely told that eyewitenss identification is unreliable - in some states in the US, it is illegal to mention this well-established fact in front of a jury.
To a Lisp hacker, XML is S-expressions in drag.
I've cited numerous examples to support my stance. You've cited none
Everything you've cited is irrelevant to your case. What you've shown are examples of people questioning new discoveries and refusing to believe something until evidence to support it is provided. This is proper scientific scepticism, and is exactly how the scientific consensus works. It always lags the bleeding edge of science. Everything you've cited actually supports the arguments I've made.
Frankly, you have an absurdly reductionist view of science, with nearly 6 million people engaged in scientific research world wide (2006 OECD estimate) you can't help but have a consensus in each field. The consensus isn't perfect, but it is the best representation of what we have learned through application of the scientific method. There are plenty of people who are convinced the consensus is wrong about something, however, they need to make the case in writing with evidence to back it up. That is how we keep the time cubers, flat earthers, vaccine deniers, and other assorted loons from polluting what we know with what they wish was true. When there's enough evidence that can be independently verified and reproduced, then the consensus advances. Without independent verification and reproducibility, it's not science, it's wild claims.
You must've looked really hard to find a document that apparently was published 15 years ago!
Actually, it was the first PDF linked in the "climate change" section of their wikipedia article, and it was still on their web site as recently as 2008.
Even so, not even an old document supports your claim:
Regardless of it's age, point 2 on page 2 says:
Which is, of course, false and it was known to be false in 1995 and 2008, but it proves exactly what I've said. It's fairly amazing that you skipped the obvious quote on page 2 that proves the case I'm making to reach for straws with a part of a sentence on page 14. Do you always practice such selective reasoning or are you trolling?
Fanatically anti-fanatical
This is proper scientific scepticism, and is exactly how the scientific consensus works.
When someone falsifies a popular hypothesis, science has advanced immediately. From a scientific point of view it's not relevant how many hold a particular viewpoint.
Regardless of it's age, point 2 on page 2 says:
Which is, of course, false and it was known to be false in 1995 and 2008, but it proves exactly what I've said.
The section I cited was limited in time and thus testable. The section you quote is unbounded (and is a headline to a chapter detailed in full on page 9). Thus the refutation is simple - the headline it's correct or incorrect depending on from when you start drawing your trend. If we advance to the chapter itself they limit the statement in time and fully source their data (from NASA) and I'm sure it was correct at the time of publication.
You've failed to support your claim about HI, as you've failed to support your claim about "consensus". My guess is that you're not interested in science, only politics.
it's in my head
I'm sorry that you don't understand and refuse to listen. You've failed to do anything but cling dogmatically to your obviously false beliefs in the face of overwhelming evidence against them.
Fanatically anti-fanatical