Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

To an alarming degree, science is not self-correcting

economist.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 145 posts

Re: To an alarming degree, science is not self-correcting

#101

Post by pdonis »

lamontcg wrote: post #98
pdonis wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for the links. I'll add one link, direct to the project page, since it has links to the actual data, as well as much more detail than is in the articles: http://berkeleyearth.org/ I note two things on a first read-through: (1) The project confirmed the data on temperature trends, but the error bar sizes are only reasonable back to about 1860; further back than that, the error bars get quite large. This is glos…

They looked at siting effects as well: http://www.scitechnol.com/2327-4581/2327-4581-1-107.php They used Watts own siting data and showed that both poor and good sites showed the same temperature trend over time. The data back to 1860 are also sufficient to establish the current warming trend and through other analysis (e.g. Meehl, et al's work) to establish the climate sensitivity. Climate science as a discipline do…

Thanks for the link, I'll take a look at it.

The data back to 1860 are also sufficient to establish the current warming trend

Only if you assume that there are no significant cyclic effects on longer time scales.

Climate science as a discipline does not hinge on knowing exactly how warm it was 250 years ago within +/- 0.5C.

It does if you're claiming, as the IPCC does based on the input of climate scientists, that temperatures now are warmer than they have been in at least several thousand years.

Re: To an alarming degree, science is not self-correcting

#102

Post by icelancer »

tensor wrote: post #99

The only important discussion to have is "how can we improve our scientific method." Complaining about deficiencies without offering improvements is not particularly useful. There is no alternative to science. The posters here that are suggesting that people should not trust science ought to be shunned. It is good to be skeptical of particular studies, but if you discard "science" you are reverting to a position of c…

>Always remember that without an alternative model, if you discard a body of research the only valid fallback is that you don't know anything.

In the field I am in (sports biomechanics), this would be a vast improvement on things.

Re: To an alarming degree, science is not self-correcting

#103

Post by icelancer »

haberman wrote: post #63

The fundamental problem as I see it: science can either produce a high rate of unreliable results or a low rate of reliable results, but the market demands a high rate of reliable results. The market produces the current situation because the rate of results is much easier to observe than their reliability. No one wants to fund a study only to get no result out of it. So they end up getting an unreliable result inste…

>The fundamental problem as I see it: science can either produce a high rate of unreliable results or a low rate of reliable results, but the market demands a high rate of reliable results.

Well said, but the market will accept a high rate of unreliable results because no one knows better.

Re: To an alarming degree, science is not self-correcting

#104

Post by icelancer »

timr wrote: post #24

What a weird article. I agree with nearly every individual fact within it, but after reading it, I still don't know the point of the piece. I don't want to jump to conclusions, but given that this piece is mostly criticism of science the part of me that associates "conservatives" with "anti-intellectual reactionaries" suspects a hidden agenda to undermine science or give climate change "skeptics" something to point a…

>Science proceeds slowly, and bad papers tend to be forgotten unless they're easily replicable. It just takes time.

Tell that to the large group of anti-vaccine zealots.

Re: To an alarming degree, science is not self-correcting

#105

Post by icelancer »

capnrefsmmat wrote: post #86
cousin_it wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's great work and I want more of it!

The version I linked to is about half the size of my work-in-progress, and I'd be happy to share the draft with anyone interested in 25,000+ words on doing stats wrong. My email is in my profile. Right now I'm a first-semester graduate student in statistics, so my writing has slowed down a bit; once I get some confidence in what I've learned I'll try to wrap it up. I'm not sure how or where to publish it, though.

Start a blog and publish it openly. That's what I will be doing with my lab research. My mind was swayed when a friend's brother (aaronsw) took his life for at least partially this reason.

Re: To an alarming degree, science is not self-correcting

#106

Post by sdoering »

cousin_it wrote: post #66
shanusmagnus wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This beautiful (parent) comment, in contrast to the main article, actually contains links and references to the items it refers to. Is there some compelling reason I don't understand why _so_ many magazines / websites, even high profile reputable ones, cannot manage to link or cite?

I suspect the reason is that outbound links drive traffic away from ads and internal links. The more visitors you have, the more profit you lose by adding outbound links... It's sad and I wish there was some way to fix the incentives.

That's exactly what people in charge fear in my industry (working in online publishing). The do fear, that the people find the linked ressources better, so that they may never even return.

Kind of like the fear of becoming obsolete. But instead of testing and maybe even becoming better, they just forbid us to link out.

Re: To an alarming degree, science is not self-correcting

#107

Post by snowwrestler »

pdonis wrote: post #100
snowwrestler wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

a) I'm not the author of the study. b) You expect us to believe that you have developed substantive critiques of a 3-year research project in 24 minutes of reading. (the delta between our post timestamps) c) IMO whatever credibility you might have had to debate the science in detail is forfeited by your un-ironic reliance on the blog of a retired TV weather guy. EDIT: this is wrong, I confused you with another poster…

You expect us to believe that you have developed substantive critiques of a 3-year research project in 24 minutes of reading. I don't expect you to "believe" anything. I expect you to look at the items I pointed out and see what you think of them. If you don't agree with them, feel free to give specific reasons why not. your un-ironic reliance on the blog of a retired TV weather guy. I didn't bring Watts into it; the…

Sorry, that was a snap response. Once again I've taught myself the value of posting slowly.

c) is wrong; I mistook you for someone else in the discussion. I noted so in an edit.

For the rest, I think lamontcg put it better than I could have.

Re: To an alarming degree, science is not self-correcting

#108

Post by sien »

sergiosgc wrote: post #79
saraid216 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It sort of amuses me that there are HN climate change denialists, but there aren't really any HN creationists.

It all starts with the term "climate change". Back in the day it was global warming, but when reality didn't fit the models, suddenly climate change became more palatable. That is a minor peeve, actually. The killer factor is the hysteria. It's not that I deny that man is changing the climate - heck, we change just about everything else in our environment, climate would be the exception. I just can't bring myself to…

The IPCC - which was set up in the 1980s. Note the name.

The questions you ask are legitimate.

Re: To an alarming degree, science is not self-correcting

#109

Post by sien »

timr wrote: post #64
crassus wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah yes. I need to listen to authority and ignore the fact that observed data are falling out the bottom side of their models' 95% confidence intervals. This is how science is done in the modern age.

Prove your claim. Cite something other than a picture you found on a blog.

This is from another blog, but the figures are from draft versions of the latest IPCC report:

http://climateaudit.org/2013/10/08/fixing-the-facts-2/

The figure that was removed shows that measured temperatures are falling outside a 95% confidence interval from the multi-model mean.

This does not mean the climate will not warm, that C02 is not the major factor (or at least a major factor), but it does mean the models that are used for 100 year projections have failed after after 15 years and are running too hot.

It should be cause for celebration. The highest warming scenarios are considerably less likely.

This also does not mean that an emissions tax and spending on R&D on low emissions energy sources is unwise. But it should be factored into cost benefit analysis of climate change response.

Ultimately response to climate change is a public policy problem and is not just based on scientific data and projections.

Really, the response boils down to one question, how much is each of us willing to pay per year to respond? $10, $100, $1000, $10000?

Re: To an alarming degree, science is not self-correcting

#110

Post by tensor »

DanielBMarkham wrote: post #3

Technology development is going through a revolution over the last decade or two. The process of teams creating things that have a high degree of precision and detail has been found to overwhelmingly social in nature. That is, while technical skills are irreplaceable, it's the social aspects of developing new things that are much more critical to success than the technical aspects. Many technologists do not get this.…

Given the tech community's tendency towards populism over genuine technical merit, I don't think it is a good model for discovering truth about the world. The tech community is still busy reinventing the 70's poorly, let alone making any real progress.

Social is only important in so far is it facilitates communication and progress towards technical understanding.

Post reply on HN