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How Scientific Consensus Has Gotten a Bad Reputation
nerdyalien writes From the article: "Fiction author Michael Crichton probably started the backlash against the idea of consensus in science. Crichton was rather notable for doubting the conclusions of climate scientists—he wrote an entire book in which they were the villains—so it's fair to say he wasn't thrilled when the field reached a consensus. Still, it's worth looking at what he said, if only because it's so painfully misguided: 'Let's be clear: the work of science has nothing whatever to do with consensus. Consensus is the business of politics. Science, on the contrary, requires only one investigator who happens to be right, which means that he or she has results that are verifiable by reference to the real world. In science consensus is irrelevant. What is relevant is reproducible results.'" As a STEM major, I am somewhat biased toward "strong" evidence side of the argument. However, the more I read literature from other, somewhat-related fields (i.e. psychology, economics and climate science), the more I felt they have little opportunity to repeat experiments, similar to counterparts in traditional hard science fields. Their accepted theories are based on limited historical occurrences and consensus among the scholars. Given the situation, it's important to understand what "consensus" really means.
No functioning computers would exist without "Science." Science is verifiable and reproducible often in a variety of ways, or it is not "science."
If there is no way to set up a test to and verify the results it falls more into the field of pseudoscience rather than science.
If there is a way to test and verify but the data to do so isn't provided then it is more likely that it falls into the category of scam rather than science. (e-cat anyone?)
Climate science is given as an example. I don't see any reason to why results based on a model can't be backed up by providing said model or even the source code for verification.
It's actually much worse than that.
Studies in economics and psychology tend to suffer from certain problems which limit their real-world application and the likelihood that they actually mean what people think they mean.
First, they are often based on correlation rather than causation. This is especially true with psychology studies, and readily allows confirmation bias, incorrect interpretations of data, and interpretations of data which are heavily influenced by the perspective of the researcher.
Second, they are often done on western college students. This tends not to yield rules of general applicability.
Third, most economics (and psychology of economics) experiments are advertising experiments. They are done by corporations for financial gain and the results are generally kept secret because they are part of a company's IP and help the company sell its products, and because it simply saves the company money to not bother publishing.
Science is about provability, consensus is about getting majority or even a plurality of opinions. These two things are mutually exclusive.
Piltdown Man was once "consensus". We know how that turned out.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
why do you except scientific methods to be part of it?
economics can have some science to it, but mostly it's psychology and mostly it's guesswork. some better, some not so good. there's psych medicines that you can test with science and need science to produce, but the results in an individual can vary.. free will and all that. the other side of economics is just pure math, but that's just a side. you can calculate interest rates all you want but you can't really know if someone can pay it to you..
you can scientifically poll people with expertise in the field of maniacs though and therefore get a scientifically made up consensus to go by...
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
Consensus is something that helps us keep crackpots and bad actors (Say, those that pay for fake/biased studies that support their political or financial position) from pushing their agenda. Charisma and slick marketing are dangerously effective so the practice of gathering the collective opinion of all the experts in a given field is important.
It's not perfect. Occasionally the community is slow to move on new evidence, but science should be a careful and methodical practice.
We enjoy stories about underdogs and misunderstood geniuses or the rogue new guy that goes up against the "establishment" but in reality actual true stories of this nature are quite rare. Statistic noise rare. Real breakthroughs are nearly always the culmination of decades of work from hundreds of researchers.
Michael Crichton, frankly, was a hack that enjoyed the above fantasy a bit too much. He did do a bit of research for his projects but it was always just dressing for the same plot over and over again.
That man has done more damage to the world than he ever knew. When he fell in to the climate change denial camp he provided legitimacy to the anti-intellectual nonsense that we're struggling to deal with today.
Going along with your science department's political position so that you continue to have a job and funding.
A consensus is a bunch of people who share an opinion. It has nothing to do with right or wrong.
How are they mutually exclusive? Proof (or more accurately, evidence and observation) leads to consensus. There's a pretty good consensus that if I throw myself off a building, I'm going to fall to the ground. And, strangely enough there's also quite a bit of previous proof that this will happen as well.
If you think that scientific consensus is all bunk based upon whichever pet political causes you have, you really should stop using GPS, television, internal combustion engines, and everything else that has ever been built upon scientific consensus.
A consensus is a bunch of people who share an opinion. You can have a consensus of scientists, but not a scientific consensus. Crichton was right (about that): science is about consistent, reproducible results, not opinions or consensuses. Politics often involves consensus.
Climate science doesn't care how many people, scientists or not, vote for a particular hypothesis. Climate politics do, and that's what's involved when we try to decide what to do. Unfortunately, people confuse the two.
It's absolutely true that science is not about consensus. Science is not a body of knowledge, but a process of (roughly speaking) formulating an explanation of phenomena, devising a means to test the explanation, and then using that test to determine whether the explanation adheres to the "real world". One of the criteria of a good test is that it must be reproducible, but nothing in the process of science actually requires "consensus".
However, you have a bunch of different scientists with different specialties studying different phenomena, so much so that no single person can actually be aware of it all. Certainly no single person can actually reproduce all of the tests and experiments. In the face of such complexity, we've developed another system which, speaking strictly, is not "science". It's more of a social/political system whereby the various experiments are reviewed by other scientists who attempt to determine whether the tests were good, and whether the tests actually tested the explanation/phenomena they were supposed to. In a formal setting, this process is called "peer review", but it also happens informally (i.e. scientists read each others' work, challenge it, devise other tests).
The upshot of this social system is that, if you aren't enough of a climate scientist to review the existing knowledge of global warming and evaluate its validity, then you should probably just trust the consensus. You trust that there are a lot of smart people working on the problem, and if 95% of the climate scientists agree, then the safe guess is that they're probably at least on the right track. It doesn't mean that they're absolutely correct-- no scientific or social process can guarantee absolute correctness-- but you're going to find more success going with the overwhelming consensus than going against it.
Of course, every once in a while, there is some genius who figures out that the overwhelming consensus is wrong. Most of the time, the scientific community catches on pretty quickly and the consensus changes.
The notion that climate science or economics can't repeat experiments is not entirely fair. While it's true that we can't conduct isolated double-blind experiments under identical conditions, we can conduct tests under analogous conditions to determine whether a given model is accurate or not, which is the real goal of such science. Given enough instances in which the accumulation of carbon compounds in the atmosphere leads to an overall increase in temperatures, or in which an increase in government spending or low-end wages stimulates economic activity in a market economy, we can make the inference of a correlation, and start looking for a mechanism of a causal connection.
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
Incorrect. Appeal to authority means accepting what a person says on a topic as probably correct because they are an authority. The difference is scientists are using research to back up their claims. They are not stating claims as fact simply because they are experts.
What do you call many, many non-scientists who happen to be right? Right, a consensus. What do you call many, many scientists who happen to be wrong? Right, a consensus. What do you call many, many non-scientists who happen to be wrong? Right, a consensus.
Your point?
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
Saying that consensus has no place in science is going too far, but there is a fundamental difference between science based on reproducible experiments such as the physical sciences, and investigations of phenomena that are inherently irreproducible, such as data in psychology, economics, and climate science. This is why climate science is a combination of making observations of irreproducible event and then applying known physical science to draw conclusions. It's also why it's harder to come to these conclusions, so a certain reliance on authority tends to happen, and it's harder to convey the science to others not familiar with the subject matter. It doesn't help that economics has been totally hijacked by ideological agendas, discrediting the 'soft' sciences in general..
Tragically, both sides have abused the inherent uncertainties in climate science. Rising temperatures are reality on a planet-wide scale. The rate of rise is vastly greater than anything that has happened before. But there is increasing uncertainty when we start to look at specific factors that are causes, and more uncertainty about the ideal course of action. Both the certainties and the uncertainties have to be acknowledged.
By the way, I'm pretty sure "the backlash against the idea of consensus in science" started in the Middle Ages if not earlier. Remember Aristotle and Ptolemy were once the consensus.
> the more I read literature from other, somewhat-related fields... [such as] psychology ... the more I felt they have little opportunity to repeat experiments
As somebody who is writing a paper entitled "A Generalized Theory on Abnormal Psychology", I assure you that Psychology is about to gain the ability to repeat experiments.
'Let's be clear: the work of science has nothing whatever to do with consensus. Consensus is the business of politics. Science, on the contrary, requires only one investigator who happens to be right, which means that he or she has results that are verifiable by reference to the real world. In science consensus is irrelevant. What is relevant is reproducible results.'"
The phrase "One investigator who happens to be right" assumes one would be able to tell who is right and who is wrong immediately as it happens. The consensus is agreeing who got reproducible provable results.
People who do not understand science, who want to game the system are intentionally gaming the system. They bring in rules used in philosophical debates and legal arguments into science. Equal time for both sides works ok in philosophy and in courts. But not in science. Let us say one side has tons and tons of data and the other side is waving hands. Giving equal time to both is doing a great injustice to the side with data.
If one side is just asking questions, raising doubts, etc and the other side is actually answering the questions and clearing the doubts, it is a great injustice to give equal time to both. It takes much longer to answer questions than to raise them.
One should gain standing to raise doubts. Getting funding from industry groups with vested interests is not getting the standing. Must publish in the relevant field, get peer reviewed papers. Must risk reputation gained by hard long work to raise questions.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
"Consensus is the business of politics. Science, on the contrary, requires only one investigator who happens to be right, which means that he or she has results that are verifiable by reference to the real world."
Wrong! Since the results are required to be independently reproduced and verified, science always requires more than one person to be right. One person, however, can be proven wrong.
It's my thought that the climate science establishment can address the communication problem that the article mentions by spending less time and energy on the predictive, and more on the descriptive.
Most criticism of the AGW consensus points to predictive graphs and narratives that turned out to be wrong in some way, making it easy to call into question the credibility of climate scientists in general. Indeed, climate science seems to have problems in this area- because predicting the future is REALLY HARD, and in fact next to impossible. Scrambling to explain why predictions turned out to be wrong after the fact does nothing but harm to the general public acceptance of climate science consensus.
Instead, they should stick to unimpeachable analysis of historical observations and measurements, which is a far stronger platform on which to present the AGW science to the general public. Statements about the future can usefully be kept general and unspecific.
And as soon as those many many many scientists can repeat and verify that experiment, the consensus very quickly changes to account for the new experiment, and the old consensus vanishes. (Or someone can come up with a counter experiment that shows how the first doesn't apply....) That's how Science advances. "Here's how the current theory works. X, Y, Z.". "Hey, I found a case where Y doesn't happen, if there is a presence of midichlorians (M)." "You're right. Ok, new theory: X, Y (if there are no M), Z.". Doesn't make the first consensus wrong. It was right for all of the available data at the time.
science is about repeatability. if only one investigator happens to be right, and no one else can repeat his experiment, then there will be no consensus even if he happens to be right. the prevailing hypothesis has stood the test of time and had multiple scientists repeat experiments to verify it, this is how the consensus forms.
Without a consensus most scientists will ignore it and go off to research something else, but then once in a while someone may come along and say "i wonder if this really is true?" and then they will run an experiment to try to confirm it. They will then either confirm it which reinforces the consensus, or will say hey these results don't fit, something is wrong here. they must then get other scientists on their side to repeat the experiment to confirm the results. if no one is interested in running those experiments then it doesn't really matter how right that scientist is, his discovery that the accepted hypothesis is wrong will be forgotten. and so consensus is very important to science
Sure, sure...
Utter nonsense. What's settled is that the climate is changing at the hands of man, what's open to debate is what the impact on us will be in the short and long term. The "consensus" is the same as the "consensus" that supports the modern understanding of evolution - it is a refinement and agreement across the field on the gross mechanism for something, and all the arguments lie in the details.
Kudos for tossing in the pinch of anti-government paranoia, it has to be that and not the desire for massively profitable fossil fuel corporations to defend said profits.
Hard Science is fairly limited in what it can do to prescribe actions humans should or should not be taking to address perceived problems with climate or the environment. There is no "Second Earth" we can use as a control group. It's closer to "healing" done by medical doctors than it is science. A doctor will tell you, "try eating this, try swallowing X mg of this Y times a day, try exercising like this, avoid chemical triggers like that, etc. Come back in 2 weeks, we'll see how you are doing, and then we'll make adjustments." Sure, doctors spanning decades through time and countries across the globe can temper their advice from longitudal studies and statistics across populations. But chances are those any double-blind experiments haven't been done on your unique body, health conditions, and living environment. Often the best they can do is "close enough, you are still a human, after all" and then make adjustments. They don't PROVE to you a particular pill or a particular dosage will work for YOU before they ask you to take it.
Something as nebulous as The Environment needs a similar "healing" approach. "Let's try cutting automobile emissions by X% and see what happens." If we absolutely require scientific proof 100% of the time before we take action with environmental policy, the consequences of such timidness can be disastrous. We don't always have that luxury.
Scientific "consensus" therefore still has merit. I can understand if you want to educate people on the difference between consensus and proof. But to say consensus alone should never spur action is fool's play.
"Love heals scars love left." -- Henry Rollins
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Scientific consensus is an group of scientists agreeing on a proven theory or the proof of a theory.
Political consensus is a group of people ganging together to push their opinions on others.
The latter has a negative connotation which Mr. Crichton is using to taint the former.
No, consensus isn't needed for science to progress, but it is an inevitable result of science. A theory comes out, it is tested, peer-reviewed, and people see that it best describes the data. So more and more scientists in that field will accept that theory until something better comes along.
Now, you can be that one guy who says "here is my theory which contradicts prevailing views." This has happened a lot in the past. However, the key point is that those contradicting theories need an extraordinary amount of evidence to prove them. If your radical new theory was that relativity wasn't actually true and you could explain everything with X, then you'd need a TON of reproducible proof to convince your peers that X is true. This is because we have so much evidence that relativity is true that it would take a lot to unseat it.
What you can't do is insist that a theory with broad consensus is wrong because you have a different theory, offer up little to no proof, and demand that those "in the consensus" provide extraordinary proof that they are right.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
That's what my math prof at the university said after he asked people who thought this or that answer was right (and the majority was wrong): Science is not a democratic process.
Sadly, it has turned into one.
Peer review sadly doesn't mean what it used to mean: That a lot of others who are experts in your field took a look and nodded their heads. What it means to day: A lot of other people in your field of study think likewise.
Scientists are humans, as much as they try to sit on high horses and claim they ain't. They don't like being wrong. They don't like to give someone else the satisfaction of coming up with some paradigm shifting discovery. And most of all they certainly do not want to admit that they wasted their life hunting the rabbit down the wrong hole.
Imagine we'd only discover today that the sun, not earth, is the center of our solar system. You think any of the scientists who invested their whole life perfecting deferent and epicycle calculation would budge to the overwhelming proof that they're wrong?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
... are about Frankenstein's monster. They can be really awesome stores, but they are can be summed up with changing the name of the Doctor.
So it's really all anti-science, science fiction. Why isn't he anti Fossil Fuel studies? Not sure. But if you are looking for a villain we all have our "go to" groups. And I think you can almost describe the shift in attitudes of any age by saying if most of the villains in the movies are corporate, state, scientist, religious institution, third world,.. and the like. We define ourselves by who we most often blame.
I blame Michael Crichton , mostly.
>>"ad space available -- low rates!!!"
For one thing, gotten is a perfectly acceptable word in any context. It's a word I'd feel comfortable using in a job interview for a position teaching English because there's nothing wrong with the word. It's get, got have gotten. And suggesting that it's non-standard is absolutely ridiculous.
As far as American English versus British English goes, American English is English. American English is the largest group of English speakers. And considering how important America is economically, that's just going to continue. The reason why it gets differentiated is because the two dialects are moving in different directions. Think Dutch versus German, at this point BE and AE are still mutually comprehensible most of the time, but there's plenty of times when native speakers of the two dialects might as well be speaking different languages.
It is proper English. It is the difference between the active and passive voice. "He was sick, but he got well." "He was sick, but he has gotten well." The difference is actually tangentially related to the story subject. When I was in university [mumble] decades ago, all scientific papers for publication, and by extension all term papers, were required to be written in the third person past passive voice. This was thought to appear more objective. Printing costs for scientific journals drove the change to active voice, because, in English, that voice uses fewer words. Now that journals are largely electronic, printing costs are less of an issue, leaving aside Dilbert's PHB's concern about using up electrons. Active voice may also be more readable, particularly for those being taught by teachers who say things like, "Me and him went to the store."
Some mornings it's hardly worth chewing through the restraints to get out of bed.
Well, actually, he's dead. He was a fairly crappy science fiction writer.
Watch this Heartland Institute video
Passive voice example should have been, "He has been sick, but he has gotten well."
Some mornings it's hardly worth chewing through the restraints to get out of bed.
I think there is a subtle difference between being right (in the usual sense of providing a model that happens to accurately represent measurable stuff) and the process of scientific discussion. Consensus is just an outcome of a process, ie collaboration. That process is extremely important but does not guarantee being right.
In the end, without resorting to unnecessary complicated terms, if a bunch of people who are supposed to know what they are saying all agree on something that is not immediately testable (say, long-term human impact on the climate), odds are they are more likely to be right than some random wacko or idiot reporter because they spent some time discussing together and have highlighted potential errors.
In the absence of definitive hard data, which will only be available in retrospect, we have to pick sides. Consensus seems a safer bet than the probability that some random guy is the new Galileo or Einstein.
Yup, the 97% is bollocks, Richard Toll has shown that clearly.
Watch this Heartland Institute video
You are misinformed. American English is not English, it's not about the number of speakers, and never will be (you will find that the form of English spoken on the Indian sub-continent outnumbers your "largest group of English speakers" - maybe time to notice the world outside your borders?). English refers to the form of English spoken in England. Yes there are dialects within this, but the fact of the matter is, the originating country gets to set the baseline.
Can't tell if trolling...
This whole discussion is distorted by the framing around "belief." As long as the result of a scientific inquiry is "belief" it's reasonable (in the "sound reason" sense) to hold the issue open and speculate that Einstein's General Theory (or the current version of Darwin's) might in fact be totally wrong.
But that's where the denialists play word games. They talk about open minds, and how consensus isn't dispositive, etc. and then use that as an argument against teaching evolution in schools or taking steps agains AGW. Or, for that matter, against teaching heliocentrism or plate tectonics.
The "scientific consensus" may not be dispositive in any epistemological sense, but when it comes time to collapse the waveform and make a decision it's certainly the way to bet.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
For climate change skeptics are always attacking the science and the scientists. But they never deal with the known facts.
1. CO2 concentration is measurably increasing year on year and accelerating. If you want a running tally have a look here: http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/
This is one of a number of different high quality analytical chemistry studies that all tell the same story. CO2 concentration is increasing significantly.
2. We know this is because of release of fossil fuel sequestered CO2. By careful investigation of the change in carbon isotopic ratios, and by simply accounting for the CO2 released. Human release of CO2 more than enough accounts for the CO2 increase in the atmosphere, and actually shows that a significant proportion is actually getting absorbed into the ocean and other carbon sinks. But clearly no where near all of it.
3. CO2 in the atmosphere traps heat due to the wavelengths of light it does and does not absorb.
This is all hard chemistry measurement, and are known with a high degree of confidence. These are not up for debate!
The only debatable point is what do these facts mean for the climate and the environment going forward. And here we get into prediction and modelling. The best models and predictions shows that the climate will increase in temperature, and that will have significant and mostly detriment effect on most of the worlds environments and sustainability of human populations going forward.
If you are a climate change skeptic scientist, what you have to come up with is a model that sensibly and scientifically shows why this increase in CO2 won't have any significant detrimental effects. Then put it up for publication in peer reviewed journals. And if your scientific argument has any legs it will change the scientific consensus. All the other stuff being thrown around is political motivated bull shit, with no scientific basis and should be simply ignored.
Harry Potter isn't the only novel describing consistent magical phenomena that can be sufficiently analyzed to become indistinguishable from science. When this science is applied, it produces Magitek. (Don't click unless you have an hour to spend learning about other works that will tickle you the way you say Harry Potter did.)
In common with other articles, TFA makes a rather fundamental mistake. It confuses Science (the discipline) with "the practitioners of Science" or "the scientific community". They're not one and the same thing.
For example, the article states (my bolding):
That kind of sloppy phrasing is what leads to never-ending arguments about a topic that wouldn't provide any room for argument at all if the strongly constrained role for consensus were articulated with precision. There's a very simple distinction to be made:
In fact, it's more accurate to state that consensus can subvert the correct operation of Science if it intrudes, because it can make human factors override an objective assessment of measured results, or it can prevent certain avenues from being explored for any of a large list of reasons.
Consensus is very important for humans, there is no doubt about that, and it impacts strongly on what Science can deliver. But it should never be said or implied that consensus is an actual part of Science. It cannot be, because consensus is a matter of opinion . To make Science become a matter of opinion would be to undermine the core elements which give it its immense power and value: error-bounded measurement and mathematical analysis of data, which are designed specifically to exclude opinion from the process.
Translation: "I've made my mind up after watching some TV, and evidence can go screw itself".
"American English is the largest group of English speakers".
But the consensus is not always right. 8-)
I am sure that there are many other solipsists out there.
>"Science requires only one investigator who happens to be right, "
The one investigator publishes a paper, his work is confirmed by many others, he wins the Nobel Prize, and a new consensus is created. This differs from one loud voice who disagrees with the current consensus. For a handy metric for differentiating the two, see John Baez's Crackpot Index.
Some mornings it's hardly worth chewing through the restraints to get out of bed.
... Doesn't mean you don't need it.
The point that in some softer sciences it is harder to get evidence is not justification for not having any. The fact that they must wait for unusual historical occurrences for example merely means they have to be patient and wait for more data. Does that patience mean they might have to wait hundreds of years to get something confirmed? Absent other means of finding actual evidence... yeah.
Don't like it? Study something else.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
Of course the objectivity of the categorical claims stand regardless of the verbal tense or mood, the adopted style is strictly for the sake of appearances, or some sort of underlying metaphysical commitment to the idea that scientific facts occur indifferently to observation, which does open up some interesting questions. If a tree falls in the woods, and no one is there to hear it, I cannot be sure that it makes a sound, but I'm relatively certain it fell in the passive voice.
I'm reminded of my Lewis Carroll:
Don't blame me, I voted for Baltar.
That reminds me how everyone says wikipedia is no authority. Yet, I find it useful to visit the wiki, and to look at the citations. It's amazing what you can learn just by looking at them. If you actually click the links, and READ the source material cited, even the most educated people can learn something.
Yes, I often begin a search on Wikipedia, then look at the sources, then go in search of my own sources to either verify or refute what I found on the Wiki.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
But that hasn't yet stopped someone who feels the evidence has problems from expanding the science in some way and changing the direction. The governments of most of us have little interest in not expanding science honestly, the same goes for other funders of research. The US government can't wait for it's own discovery of interstellar transport at little cost. It doesn't care what science is done honestly. The ones who have cheated have been individual scientists who found a way to obtain income for nothing. Those cases that have been reported where people have been found lying for funding have resulted in very severe outcomes for the liar. Whatever there is in the way of consensus in sciences doesn't undermine their honesty or progress. The group who do behave the way you describe are the chaplains. Let's say there is a god, the Christian faiths are finished exploring it because it is already all defined in full.
True as that may be, people who are absolutely nuts tend to use the perpetual openness of science as an excuse to inject irrelevant, arbitrary insanity into discussions of fact.
You seem to be missing the point of TFA. Science doesn't need you to discuss it - it stands on it's own.
If this were true, we wouldn't have multiple physics/cosmological theories trying to explain observed phenomena or expected attributes on the nature of time and space.
If you have to discuss/debate it you have moved well out of the realm of science and into politics.
Kinda like the time when physicists were divided between those who theorized the Universe to be eternal and immutable vs those who thought of it as having a dynamic nature (expanding/shrinking with a creation starting point)?
Science not only relies on explanations of observations already taken. It also relies on PREDICTIONS (and the theories that proposed them) that are thought to be logical/inevitable based on what is has already been observed. Further experiments take place until these theories are debunked, reaffirmed or revisited. The process by which this takes place is strongly based on debate.
Even mathematical proofs are open to debate. You submit your proof. Peers attack it. If they find a chink in the armor, they send it back to you, and you now have to prove that the error is not fundamental, that your original proof can still be revisited and salvaged.
All politics are discussions. Not all discussions are politics - or are you not familiar with scientific discussions? If discussions have no place in science, then we pretty much close the door in the creation and presentation of scientific theories (which are just discussions and proposals which only become facts when experiments corroborate their predictions.) There is no exception to that and frankly it's disgusting you claim affinity for scientific knowledge and understanding and can't grasp such a basic concept.
Science is not consensus, and therefore my favorite random blog rant is equally credible? Somehow, I just don't see the former point supporting the latter...
In fact, consensus is a very valuable part of the cooperative scientific process.
The bad reputation belongs to those who attempt to use consensus as a substitute for proof. People like the IPCC, EPA, NOAA, NASA, and governments all over the world who are trying to use this climate change bogeyman as an excuse to foist oppressive political and economic regimes on free (and not free) people.
I think there is a difference between what scientists mean by a consensus in the scientific community and how it is understood by the wider public.
If a climatologist says "there is a consensus" (s)he hardly means that a bunch of people came together to have a popular vote on the issue. Rather, it suggests that the majority of fellow climatologists have examined some evidence each and found the collection of all that evidence (and their respective analysis) to be conclusive (as far as statistically possible). However, no individual alone can "convince themselves by looking at the evidence" because the evidence consists of more data than anybody could study in a life time. So we have to put a certain degree of trust into our colleagues. An individual only has partial evidence, which by itself is insufficient to come to far-reaching conclusions about global climate developments. These conclusions can only be reached collaboratively -- in this sense it requires a consensus. Fortunately though I don't even have to trust any individual climate scientist or their data, just that there is no conspiracy by the majority. Furthermore, I know that I could examine any evidence if I wanted to, I just can't examine it all because there is simply too much of it. This applies similarly to other large-scale observational endeavours.
However, to a non-scientificially minded person "consensus" might indeed suggest something weaker (people sharing an opinion) and therefore mistrust the conclusions. And then they can't look at the evidence themselves because there is too much data and that data comes from exactly the people whom they mistrust in the first place. So instead they look at the evidence they can see and understand, which explains why acceptance of climate change drops on snowy days.
There wasn't a learned man in Europe who believed the Earth was flat. It may have persisted much longer in China, but in Europe and among Arab geographers, there was no one who seriously believed in the flat Earth. The Greeks had figured that out nearly 2000 years before Columbus ever accidentally ran into the Americas on his way to China.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
In a lot of ways, consensus in science is what is lacking in both controversy and ignorance. It is what goes into text books. If a subject is controversial then some people know somethings about it but the details have not been worked out and agreed upon. If a subject has had no study, for example is there DNA under the ice on Europa? Then that is a subject of ignorance and perhaps speculation but not subject to consensus.
So consensus forms on topics that feel like they have pretty much been studied to death. It should be noted though that contrarians may remain active even when a consensus exists. That may look like controversy, but really the contrarian's arguments have all been addressed to everyone's satisfaction except the contrarian's. So, basically, the contrarian is the guy who does not get it. The faster a field moves, the more likely a contrarian will still be professionally active.
http://www.skepticalscience.com/print.php?n=57
The ocean heat content is a better (though delayed) measure of global warming than the atmosphere for the obvious reason it has a larger heat capacity and so 'physically' integrates over many fluctuations.
In The Golem, Collins and Pinch argue that science does indeed advance by consensus. I won't attempt to summarise the book here, but it's worth a read. They provide several high-profile examples to back up their points.
soylentnews.org
the point i am trying to make is that it takes more than one scientist to be "right". science is about repeatability. it takes multiple scientists repeating an experiment to advance our knowledge. if no one can repeat it, then that original scientist must have been wrong. When you have multiple scientist repeat an experiment and come to the same conclusion isn't that a consensus?
also there are any number of reasons that others may not be willing or able to repeat an experiment. if the subject matter is too controversial or had major hoaxes which dried up funding, such as maybe cold fusion for example, then even if someone does find something it is possible no one would be willing to verify those experiments as they may either view it as a waste of time or just bad for their reputation to be associated with looking into something that is so controversial and everyone "KNOWS" is wrong. it took a long time for the stigma around cold fusion to die down enough that scientists would begin looking at it again without fear of it being a black mark on their careers. now i am not saying i believe in cold fusion, just that it is an example where controversy can stop other scientists from conducting research into that subject.
Science is not the answer you arrive at, it's the path you take to get there.
BeauHD. Worst editor since kdawson.
Scientific consensus is like "you cannot exceed the speed of light." If you happen to demonstrate that you exceeded the speed of light, you want to be careful about how you present it--e.g. "we have this interesting result and can someone help show what we did wrong?"--but the community will take notice if you actually show that the consensus is wrong. The more consensus there is, the better the evidence you need to posit the question, but the community still listens.
"CO2 concentration is measurably increasing year on year and accelerating...this is because of release of fossil fuel sequestered CO...CO2 in the atmosphere traps heat...These are not up for debate...The only debatable point is what do these facts mean for the climate."
Here are some more facts. The atmospheric co2 concentration is increasing by about 2 ppm per year. The world currently produces about 4.9 x 10^13 kg of co2 per year from the combustion of fossil fuels. Therefore, the small total amount of co2 in the earth's atmosphere (atmospheric mass x co2 concentration) means that the earth currently sequesters ALL of the co2 produced by living organisms, decay, natural methane seeps, etc. as well as approximately 80 percent of all of the co2 produced annually from the entire world combustion of coal, oil, and natural gas. Based on all known reserves, there are approximately 75 years remaining of fossil fuels at current consumption rates. What this means is that, even if the natural sequestration rate remains unchanged (it is likely to increase with increasing co2 conc), the atmospheric c02 concentration will not increase more than 150 ppm ultimately reaching a concentration of approximately 550 ppm from the current 400 ppm. Even that increase, however, is unlikely, as rising fossil fuel prices and the diminishing returns of production will mean that global consumption of fossil fuels will decline over the next century as they are replaced by solar, wind power, nuclear power, conservation measures, and increased energy efficiencies. Therefore, rather than reach a maximum of 550 ppm and then decline precipitously as the last chunk of coal is burned, the atmospheric co2 concentration will more likely never reach that number as consumption tapers off and consumption continues at a lower rate of several centuries. What this means to an AGW true believer is that you have to believe that the earth's climate would dramatically warm if the atmospheric concentration of co2 went from the current 400 ppm to 550 (or less) and, there is absolutely no scientific basis for that belief. The atmospheric co2 concentration has increased by approximately 84 ppm since co2 measurements began in 1958 and the earth's climate has not changed dramatically. Even the small amount of warming that we have seen during that time is much more likely to have resulted from increased solar activity and long-term climate effects (we are in the middle of an interglacial warming period) than an increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration. Moreover, there are actually signs of climate cooling as both the arctic and antarctic ice extent have increased in recent years. So, no, 'consensus' is not science.
Yeah, sure. And every time I jump, the Earth moves (a little bit) in the opposite direction. Right... No, what is far from settled, is whether the humanity's impact is anything to speak of — or whether a single volcano's eruption produces more "greenhouse effect gases", than the Earth's entire bovine population and thus there is little justification in limiting beef-consumption on that account.
In other words, what's very far from being "settled" is whether humanity's impact matches that of other factors. Counting CO2 — and making predictions based on that — has already been demonstrated to be stupid. By those predictions, for example, Arctic ice should've disappeared this summer — instead, it has grown.
The profits of fossil fuel corporations are not endangered by the "green" moves at all — the demand for oil and gas is unaffected. Besides, for each such corporation, there is a bunch of solyndras peddling their wares to the "green" crowd — you aren't going to convince many, that it is the corporate world, that opposes "green initiatives".
But for the government folks — those, who are sincerely convinced, they know better than their subjects — this is a perfect way to expand their control. And if the already government-heavy countries (like Cuba) are helping persuade the free world's scientists, then all the better. Let's look the other way...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Scientific consensus means that the thing has been sufficiently studied and reproduced that the confidence is extremely high. This isn't just about "soft" sciences. This is true even in high energy physics. You gather some data and there's a statistical chance that it was all due to noise in the measurements or coincidence. Other people gather some more data and the chance that the conclusion is incorrect goes down. Lots of people gather more data, and one of them finds a counter example, but then more people gather more data and that counter example fits with the expected error bar. This is the consensus process. It isn't about feelings or opinions or subjective truths. It's about increasing confidence and reducing error to the point where the entire community of researchers is confident the findings are reliable and can be assumed true.
Scientific consensus isn't the same as truth. It's just the best proxy for truth we can have. Scientific consensus about Newton's Laws was wrong - but it was only wrong at then-unmeasurable scales and precision. The consensus was incredibly useful, even though it was slightly wrong, because the conclusions it gave were widely reproducible and produced predictions with very high confidence that other researchers and engineers could rely on.
Scientific consensus about climate change isn't "consensus" because some scientists "convinced" other scientists or because it's too hard to do repeatable experiments. It is consensus because repeated experiments and measurements and analyses have consistently increased the confidence and reduced the noise in the predictions.
Nothing is ever proven true. Things can be proven false. And things can be proven to be more and more and more likely to be true and less and less likely to be false (because we repeatedly fail to prove them false). At some point things are proven to be SO likely to be true that there is consensus that we might as well treat them as true until someone comes up with a paradigm shift (ala Newton -> Einstein).
The quote in this article assumes that there's never an error bar on scientific measurements. There always is.
http://xkcd.com/882/
People believe what they want to believe. Humans are fallible and will act in their self-interest. The question are:
(1) Is science and are scientists responsible for "explaining" themselves and their discoveries?
(2) Is the scientific community responsible for calling out charlatans that pose to use the scientific method, but don't?
(3) Are scientific discoveries constantly open for debate? And does it make sense to have proper channels for inquiry and discussion, or can anyone jump in?
An absence of proof is not overcome by consensus. Albert Einstein, patent clerk, was never taken seriously, until he was proven right - once proven right, the consensus changed and he was heralded as one of the greatest minds of the 20th Century.
If it weren't for scientists coming to a consensus, that frozen shitball, Pluto, would still be a planet.
The lack of context is obvious. Which is why both this thread and the general public are doomed (evil grin).
Scientific knowledge gains traction by building a consensus of scientists that agree because it aligns with their theory or because they were able to reproduce the results. Will there be a consensus of non-believers or even disagreeing scientists? Of course!
There is a political element to science, but most of the time the correct scientific knowledge wins. Why? Because of the weight of the consensus' knowledge of the subject matter counts more than a simple popular vote. If the theory is sound then eventually it will gain traction. Otherwise it will simply become obscure waiting for someone else to take another stab it.
Scientists are not automatons that instantly gravitate to the new correct view. They are opinionated and stubborn. They (rightfully) need to be convinced. This is where consensus building takes place. A paper is published and presented at a conference. The author(s) explains the theory behind their paper and if the subject is popular enough in their niche and the theory is correct (or more correct than current understanding) it will eventually become part of the common knowledge in that field or at least have enough followers. Eventually the new theory will overtake the momentum of the out-of-date one, and become the prevailing theory.
Once you understand that there are scientific politics involved but in an arena where the argument isn't about "feelings" or "power" but about the correctness of one's theory, you should appreciate the fact that so many climatologists have agreed with the concept of global climate change.
The contextual part of consensus:
The reason there is a large consensus of scientists that believe climate change is real is not because of some political argument or personal passion but because they were convinced by the theories and data handed to them. The reason there is a large consensus of climate deniers that believe Michael Crichton is correct isn't because he gave any credible theories or provided conflicting data. It is because they want him to be correct because it conforms to their political views or personal opinion. They both are consensus of people but the motives behind the consensus is what differentiates the two.
These comments are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of my employer or colleagues...
Scientific progress consists of someone showing that the current scientific consensus is wrong.
Shouldn't that be "He had been sick, be he has gotten well"? I think with what you wrote it implies he is still sick ("He has been sick") which would disagree with the second part ("he has gotten well"), whereas "He had been sick, but he has gotten well" seems to me to reflect the sequence more directly.
How come Slashdot never gets Slashdotted?
I believe that you have nailed it.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
Wow a chartered accountant that makes money from selling climate skeptic books and being a professional climate skeptic said it? And he published it as a 'paper'? In a paper published by a climate change denying think tank who has tried its best to hide the source of funding despite being legally obligated to reveal it, where the owners lied and said it mostly many private individuals donating when a review later revealed only 1% of their funding came from such a source? Good lord! That's Scientifimifical! On those kinds of grounds, sign me up to whatever they are selling - it must be totally accurate! Totally beyond any reasonable doubt.
It isn't a paper, it's commentary at best, but looks more like a blog post to me. Valid or not, it doesn't demonstrate anything beyond reasonable doubt, I'm afraid to inform you.
Nothing in science should ever be taken as anything but conjecture until ther is no possible doubt, and any and all competing theories are completely disproven,
You know, like the Bible. Every word correct, proven absolutely true without error since October 4004 BC.
Which until science proves otherwise beyond any shadow of a doubt, must be taken as how things happened.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
In a perfect world, I would verifyâ"through experimentationâ"all facts I am required to base my actions on in order to verify their accuracy and be sure I'm making the best decisions possible. I don't have that kind of time, of course. Someone else may have the time and inclination to do what cannot, and the results of their experimentation can also inform me. However this introduces their biases and mistakes into the equation. To rectify this, I find as many people as I can that have performed the same tests and combine their results. This marginalizes the errors and presents a better representation of reality than a single external source could provide meâ"or even my own all-the-time-in-the-world self testing results, which also wouldn't be without bias or error. It's not the authority or opinion of each expert (defined as the people that have actually done the experimentation) that provides the benefit here as it is the aggrigate of the results those experts share with us. The more sources that are collected, the more experiments repeated, the more methodologies used, the more accurate the aggrigate consensus is. But don't confuse fact with opinionâ"if you can't tell them apart, you aren't using rigorous thought. And to confuse the content (knowledge) with the containers (the experimenters) is a sure way to make avoidable mistakes. I don't want a "consensus of opinion." Reality is not up for vote. It is the aggrigate of acquired knowledgeâ"a consensus of factsâ"that is needed to make informed decisions in a complicated world.
"he has been" is no more passive than "he was" is ... it is only a different tense.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Then all of the teachings in the Q'ran must be true, because more people believe that religion than anyone else. If a hundred scientists all agreeing on something makes it true, then what is it if 1 billion people believe the same thing? It must be true ! ;^)
It may only take one scientist to come up with the "right" conclusion, but politics and money can and do corrupt what is called scientific consensus. Global Warming, Global Colding, and Climate Change certainly fall into the category or corrupted by politics and the money that goes to support scientific investigation.
Same in China ... they circumnavigated the earth long before Maggelan. There is evidence that they had expeditions to south america, too.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
The Greeks had figured that out nearly 2000 years before Columbus ever accidentally ran into the Americas on his way to China.
And IIRC, academician gave Columbus lots of trouble because the ignorant fool believed Cathay to be way closer than it was. He really conned Queen Isabella.
ID: the nose did not occur naturally, how would we wear glasses otherwise? (apologies to Voltaire)
Consensus does not make for good science. It just happens that the current consensus supports your personal views so you like it. If the consensus was against your views you would not be so happy. I prefer hard core science, consensus be damned. Science is not a popularity contest.
As to the other answers, they're just Me-Taoism: the argument that my culture did it to, did it earlier, did it better. It's as bad as political correctness.
Scientific consensus has not received a bad reputation. The scientific method has existed for hundreds of years. However, sometimes science makes people mad for the conclusions it has drawn. I bet you that "Americans for Progress" would not even venture to understand science. Others want it to be wrong, but they can't use the scientific method to disprove science. Flaimbat of a summary. Even for those who do not understand science, let us not try to weaken its conclusions by acting like it "has gotten a bad reputation".
A reputation is a little like science in that it takes several observations to come up with a reputation because there is something to it as opposed to an inkling or a hunch. The title "Some people have a hunch that science is not sound.", however false, would be more true but the real story here is "Some people want science to have a bad reputation because it serves their interest".
Society use your Sciences
The only way it's "far from settled" is to play willfully ignorant and deny the fact that humanity is not a trivial force on this planet.
Don't go citing the Daily Fail as if they had credibility.
I see you don't think long term.
Oh the paranoia! Please, cite some more credibility-free sources, would you?
Passive voice example should have been, "He has been sick, but he has gotten well."
AAAAArg. This is NOT passive voice!! Does really nobody have the fainstest idea of grammar anymore?
Both sets of models do not match the current (last 15-20 years) of recorded data.
Funny that everyone complains now the majority of model runs are running hot but didn't bitch so much when they were running cold.
Hint: Models can't predict ENSO. Model runs that get ENSO right (by accident) fit observed warming very well.
Watch this Heartland Institute video
If a hypothesis is proven, reproduceably, there can be no denial. It is a fact.
If a hypothesis is not able to be proven reproduceably, it is an opinion.
People back opinions for self-serving reasons, and a consensus is when a majority of people see the most personal advantage in taking up a particular opinion.
Scientific consensus, is a political consensus. No more, no less. Doubt it? Look at the history of tectonic plates to name but one valid hypothesis that was, at times savagely, repressed by those whose academic careers had been made on another hypothesis (the consensus). Look at the history of neural network theory.
"Consensus" in science is _always_ a political construct.
Really? So a scientist postulates a new theory, devises an experiment to test the theory, performs the experiment, and notes the results match the theory. He did this all on his own, without any help. His experiment is repeatable, and it's verifiable. But he hasn't shared the results with anyone yet, so there is no consensus. So what you're claiming is this scenario is impossible?
People believe what they want to believe. Humans are fallible and will act in their self-interest.
True, but non sequitur to the nature of scientific debate (true scientific debate, not just "debate").
The question are:
(1) Is science and are scientists responsible for "explaining" themselves and their discoveries?
A) Yes they are responsible for explaining, and B) yes, they do explain themselves. But just because a explanation for a complex thing exists, that does not mean the explanation can be made to simple enough to reach a large untrained audience. Try creating an explanation to Wiles's proof for Fermat's Last Theorem that can reach anyone without any exposition to Algebraic Number Theory.
(2) Is the scientific community responsible for calling out charlatans that pose to use the scientific method, but don't?
Of course.
(3) Are scientific discoveries constantly open for debate?
Most of the time, of course. Just because something is discovered, that does not mean we know the mechanisms that make such a discovery a part of reality. Like, when we discovered that Archaea was a branch of life completely different from Bacteria (and not just a form a Bacteria). Then we have to debate, why are they different, how they came to exist, are they even closely related or separated from each other in a similar degree to which each of them is related or separated from from Eukaryota? Do they have a common ancestor (very likely) or they arose independently and their commonalities are just the result of lateral gene transfer?
Think a simpler question: what is electricity? We more or less have an idea of what it is, but for a very long time after its discovery we didn't quite know.
So, for as long as new discoveries and observations are made that cannot be taken into account from predictions made out of existing theories and discoveries, everything is up to debate by a) qualified people using b) the scientific method in c) a manner that is correct.
And does it make sense to have proper channels for inquiry and discussion, or can anyone jump in?
Of course. The scientific community must have channels to discuss the nature of, say, HIV, by qualified individuals (virologists, health specialists) using methods and observations that are reproducible by other qualified people.
OTH, the scientific community must not have a channel for someone like me (who has no fucking clue how to conduct virology studies) to come and say that HIV doesn't exist and that it is just a flu can be cured by eating peyote while looking at the stars from Stonehenge.
It is funny, you said the same thing, but I got modded down... go figure.
Of course no learned person believed it, but on the other hand over a hundred years in 1633 later Galileo gets tried for supporting the Heliocentric model.
What someone believed, vrs what one would say publicly, was very different at the time. After all, no one expects the Spanish Inquisition!
Never answer an anonymous letter. - Yogi Berra
Nuf said. but fMRI and the like are working on making them science.
"There is no god but allah" - well, they got it half right.
His monthly Skeptic article [Sept's Scientific American] is a sensible look at reality. He simply identifies some problems we are facing, and how much it might cost to deal with each of them them. I found that... sensible. A lot more sensible than my "Hyperventilating Climate Change Crowd" friends.
The entire purpose of this story was to bring out the cut and pasters to argue with each other.
Murphy was an optimist
I have no problem believing that climate is changing. I have seen millions of years of evidence for that. I even have no problem believing that anthropological climate change is significant, although my own informed opinion is that it began when agriculture became a widespread practice, not when oil and gas became commonly used. I do have a problem with the concept that there is "scientific consensus" about climate change. First of all, that term often includes many scientists who did not study hard science, especially when it is from the IPCC. There is much more nuance in the scientific community than is ever acknowledged in the media. I for one, believe (and have millions of years of evidence at my disposal) that Milankovitch Cycles are much more significant of a factor in climate change than greenhouse effects. I also believe that albedo is much more significant. I have built computer climate models. I understand the data (and see many many problems with it) and I understand the numerous assumptions that go into building any model.
I realize some will dismiss me when I say this- but I tell oil companies where to drill wells. I apply millions of dollars of data to that effort, and have access to databases that number over one million wells in some cases. I have the best computer software at my disposal that costs hundreds of thousands of dollars and I have had access to supercomputers in times past. I have millions of dollars worth of very detailed seismic data to work with. I look at the rock with scanning electron microscopes and spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on laboratory tests. I use satellite data, and surface geochemisty, and I fly planes around detecting hydrocarbons with spectrometers. I model everything in time, tracing events over millions of years. I work with a team of geologists and engineers. Each time we drill an exploration well, we reach a consensus. And probably nine out of ten times, our consensus, based on engineering studies, geologic studies, and seismic studies is WRONG. Even the largest oil company in the world only has a 1 in 3 success case on all wells drilled (and that includes wells that are much less risky than exploration wells). With complicated Earth systems like geology or climate, consensus is not a guarantee of anything. It is a group opinion, often obtained after much interaction where each individual has compromised by trying to consider the data brought to the table by other workers. Consensus is not science- it might be political science- but it is not an indication of fact or reality.
Reason 1 - Treating theories as 100% verified facts/laws
Remember, a theory is not 100% verified. A hypothesis with evidence but not 100% proven is a theory. Once it is 100% proven, it is a Law.
http://chemistry.about.com/od/...
- Gravity is a Law. It is 100% proven. Hence we call it the "Law of Gravity". Even defying gravity doesn't disprove gravity.
- Evolution is a theory, hence we call it the "Theory of Evolution." Not 100% proven but very good evidence to support it. However, there are gaps in the evidence.
- The big bang is a theory, hence we call it the "Big Bang theory."
Science is about observation. We observe what we can and try to determine why something happens or happened or how it happened.
We don't have to understand laws fully. While Gravity is a law, we can't yet explain how it works.
REASON #2 - To the lay person, science is just another religion.
In a religion, a very wise and righteous person sees something amazing (vision, God, taken up to heaven, whatever) that the average person could see if only they would be righteous enough. They call them a prophet. The prophet "preach" to the masses to get them to believe. The average person has to "trust" the prophet. The average person never gets the amazing experience but is asked to think about it and believe. Certain believes become so indoctrinated that they become zealots and lose rational scientific thought. Teachings are misconstrued by religious zealots.
There are a few very wise people who have seen something amazing that the average person could see if only they would be rich or educated enough. They call them scientists. Scientists "preach" to the masses to get them to believe. The average person just has to "trust" the scientists. The average person could never go to CERN and witness all that is happening there, but they are asked to think about it and believe. Certain believes become so indoctrinated that they become zealots and lose rational scientific thought. Certain believes become so indoctrinated that they become zealots and lose rational scientific thought. Certain believers become so indoctrinated that they become zealots and lose rational scientific thought. Teachings are misconstrued by scientific zealots.
REASON #3 - Using theories to disprove something they don't disprove (Usually by misconstrued scientific zealots)
I firmly believe in the the theory of evolution. We have evidence of changes in species over time. We still do not have proof that evolution was the result of an outside influence. We do, however, have evidence of evolutionary jumps--jumps meaning evolution that occurred faster than scientists suspect would be possible, hence there is the possibility that some outside influence gave evolution a bump. Contrary to popular belief (by scientific zealots), evolution and intelligent design and not contradicting theories. DNA looks like biological code and the way it is used in different species looks a lot like good code reuse or self-learning biological code.
The point is, claiming that the theory of evolution disproves intelligent design, or God, or some higher power, is not scientific. There is little correlation between the two ideas. Scientifically, God and evolution could both exist. God (or ancient aliens or a powerful race from a different dimension, or some entity outside of space and time, whatever) could have created the world/universe, whatever, and uses these scientific laws to do so.
Science observes and makes hypothesis, tests them, forms theories, and hopefully discovers scientific laws. It doesn't make brash statements that evidence for one theory disproves a completely unrelated theory.
REASON #4 - Science ignores the unexplained or calls the observer a liar.
Here is one example, but there are many more . . .
A person has a spiritual experience. Their mother returned to them as a spirit and gave them a bit of wisdom. Science scoffs at this exp
Einstein was a known scientist, although not working professionally in the field. He was heralded as a great mind long before relativity was "proven right" (meaning that the evidence had convinced almost all physicists). In 1905, he published papers explaining the photoelectric effect and Brownian motion, as well as one on relativity (later called special relativity), and was acclaimed for the first two. In fact his Nobel wasn't for relativity (still too controversial at the time) but the paper on the photoelectric effect.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Science is hard. In some cases scientific investigation might be fundamentally impossible. That's no excuse to water down the meaning of science, though, to make it more convenient.
Crichton had it exactly right. Science is the process of testing theories through hypothesis and experiment. It has nothing to do with consensus, or publishing, or going to school, or getting degrees. All of that may be in the human-created chaos that often occurs around the scientific process, but it is not science.
The entire point of science, as my field uses the word, is to free us from having to rely on these elements of human drama.
Scientific consensus is not political consensus.
Scientific consensus is an group of scientists agreeing on a proven theory or the proof of a theory.
And therein you've described a political process.
Any group of people seeking agreement is an example of politics, the very human activity of men attempting to convince each other to hold the views that each individual wants others to hold. Whether the rhetoric alludes to observations of the world or appeals to morality is beside the point that it is, in fact, a rhetorical process, not a scientific one.
Reality doesn't care what a group of scientists have agreed to think is true. Our experiments will turn out the same way no matter what we've managed to convince each other to believe.
Ah, I see you're bringing in rules used in philosophical debates and legal arguments :)
The thing is, the "one investigator who happens to be right" is still doing science. It doesn't matter what anyone else in the world thinks; so long as that one investigator is abiding by the scientific method, he is behaving scientifically.
Meanwhile, for others to point to the beliefs of groups of people as grounds on which to attack the work of that one investigator is necessarily anti-scientific. It is attempting to put rhetoric and democratic notions of discovery above the actual experimental work of the investigator--above the actual science.
So yes, let's not game the system. The scientific method does not appreciate the injection of rhetoric.
In my field we'd rather say that verification and reproduction are confirmation that science has taken place, not actually part of science in themselves.
To us, science is only theorizing, hypothesizing, and experimenting. All the rest--from grant writing through publishing--are merely the very human drama that surrounds the drama-free search for knowledge of the scientific method.
We do science to avoid human biases. Verification and reproduction of results tend to be very human processes.
Tell this to the Portuguese. I don't agree with you.
"From the article: "Fiction author Michael Crichton probably started the backlash against the idea of consensus in science. Crichton was rather notable for doubting the conclusions of climate scientists—he wrote an entire book in which they were the villains—so it's fair to say he wasn't thrilled when the field reached a consensus."
It's almost like TFA doesn't know that at best, consensus ~= truth but they're often just nothing to do with each other. Jury is still out on whether Crichton was right, certainly no warming in sixteen years doesn't help the other side.
Also: "97%+ of geologists agreed the continents were stable. It was Settled Science. Hundreds of research papers supported it. Overwhelming consensus. And wrong. And, oddly (not really, if you think about it a moment), it was not a geologist but a meteorologist, Alfred Wegener, who ultimately showed all the mutually agreeing geologists they had it all wrong; the continents move." - Dr. Michael K. Oliver
Need Mercedes parts ?
"American English is the largest group of English speakers".
But the consensus is not always right. 8-)
Nor is the writer of that comment.
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
I recommend you consult your friendly "history & philosophy of science" major to explain this topic to you. As a second-best option, please read the book "the history of scientific revolutions". As a worst, last resort, please consider this explanation of mine:
--- define the terms:
* bertrand russel said (I paraphrase): "things that can be known are the domain of science, things that cannot be known are the domain of theology and things and the stuff in between is the domain of philosophy"
* the difference between science and engineering is that science tries to explain stuff and that engineering tries to predict future environments and optimise a solution for that expectation
--- describe the process:
* science obtains (repeatable) experimental results, then develops a theory to explain those results, then takes the theory to its extremes (where it breaks) and repeats the cycle
* a fine example of this cycle is kepler-newton-einstein
* do a basic course in logic: deduction is not the same as induction; the scientific process includes a step which amasses a convincing body of evidence and argument to get us to a consensus that something which has a clear correlation is also in a causal relationship; deduction is applicable in areas of causality; any single contradicting (repeatable) experiment is qualified to undo this consensus
* please observe that the more accurate model (in the kepler-newton-einstein cascade) still holds for all previous results and that the observed error is not allowed to grow with the next acceptable model
* when you have multiple theories from different corners of science that finely explain their respective experimental evidence, yet they contradict each other, then we acknowledge the situation and keep looking
* a fine example is relativity vs. quantum
* climate science is where a mix of multiple disciplines have recently come together; they can't even explain what they do themselves, let alone explain what happens at the intersection
* rising sea levels is a fine example: apparently rising sea levels are the least disputed observable phenomenon from "global warming"; and water is a fine energy store and is snarfing up a lot of energy; yet water volume depends on both temperature and pressure; it seems that we don't know where (which layer of water) the absorbed energy ends up in -- yet this affects gravely how much expansion we see
--- conclusion & recommendation
* please keep collecting facts
* please propose ever more outlandish models and check them against the collected data
* talk to each other, discuss and debate
* try to find experiments which break existing theories
best regards,
os10000
Oh yes, the old "everyone involved in the field is a part of a hive-mind deceiving you, their entire professional life is lie" argument.
Really, it's pretty close to the "pharmaceudical companies discovered a cure for cancer," "9/11 was an inside job," and "the moon landing was a hoax" conspiracy theories.
There's nothing wrong with challenging consensus and proving it wrong. However, at that point the burden of proof is on the accuser, and until the consensus is actually proven wrong, the rest of the world can go about their business with the assumption that it's right.
Symptoms of Narcissistic Personality Disorder continued:
* Has a very strong sense of entitlement, e.g., unreasonable expectations of especially favorable treatment or automatic compliance with his or her expectations
Previously
Academics gotta publish. Novel results are more publishable than confirmations of previous research. "If you torture the data enough, it will confess." Even honest researchers will mistake randomness for a pattern, especially if they like the result for ideological, personal, or professional reasons.
Combine these and other things, and you get the reason for this paper: " Why Most Published Research Findings Are False"
http://www.plosmedicine.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pmed.0020124
This was from 2005. I wonder if since then any published research findings confirm his conclusions?
There's no time like the present. Well, the past used to be.