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To an alarming degree, science is not self-correcting

economist.com

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

#71

Post by sparky_z »

timr wrote: post #33
frogpelt wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where did this article mention climate change? If you agree with every fact in the article, why would you look for a hidden agenda? Your comment makes you seem a bit paranoid.

It didn't mention climate change. I know from past experience that this line of argument -- indeed, any that casts doubt on scientific research -- is a favorite of the "climate skeptic" world. Moreover, I know that the Economist has a center-right political bias. Maybe they're advocating for something specific here (it's honestly unclear), but given that the Economist almost never writes anything of substance about s…

They have a "Science and Technology" section in every single issue. Frankly, it contains some of the best, most scrupulously accurate science writing for a general audience that I've seen anywhere.

Also, just two weeks ago, they published a "leader" (primary article expressing the editorial position of the paper) that was very critical of climate change deniers.

[1] http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21587224-all-means-que...

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

#72

Post by mrab »

frogpelt wrote: post #31
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…

Where did this article mention climate change? If you agree with every fact in the article, why would you look for a hidden agenda? Your comment makes you seem a bit paranoid.

With a title "To an alarming degree..." it immediately feels like a persuasive paper. Who thinks it's alarming? From the sound of it, everyone should (or does) think this is alarming.

But it may be a stretch to say this is someone trying to discredit global warming.

Science isn't broken. People claim what they see, sometimes they are wrong, sometimes they are right. But eventually we find out the truth.

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

#73

Post by dmpk2k »

crassus wrote: post #42
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.

Hacker News has climate change "denialists" because climate models are terrible at predicting global temperature[1][2]. Once scientists gain the ability to make accurate predictions, more logic-minded hackers will go along. Hackers like predictive models with a good track record, a la Nate Silver. They dislike emotional bullying. [1] http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/10/14/90-climate-model-proje... [2] http://www.econo…

Nate Silver comes out very clearly in support of climate change theory in his The Signal and The Noise, and elucidates why, although he goes carefully through the problems and limitations with many climate models.

Criticising models is not the same as claiming that anthropogenic global warming is false. Indeed, Nate Silver makes the point that climatologists are their own greatest critics -- they collectively know the limits of their models better than almost everyone else.

So I'm not really sure why he's in your comment. If you've read what he writes, then you'll need to be building counterarguments to much of what he wrote on the topic; "models have problems" is just part of it.

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

#74

Post by gilgoomesh »

pdonis wrote: post #41
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…

the usual HN climate-change critics are in this thread, pointing at and yelling about how science is "broken". I don't think the current situation in climate science shows that "science is broken". I think it shows that climate scientists have been too quick to claim the credibility of Science when their work does not measure up to that standard. (Climate science is certainly not the only field that does this: much o…

> climate scientists have been too quick to claim the credibility of Science when their work does not measure up to that standard

What the fuck are you talking about?

Observations and models are repeated and challenged far more in climate science than most other fields. It is a good example of science working exactly as it should. I'm not sure where you think climate science has gone astray but considering how expensive and difficult controlled experiments in climate science are, I think climate science does an amazingly good job.

To clarify: yes, there are lots of bad papers in climate science (see Sturgeon's Law) but science does not require every paper to be accurate (in fact, you need a few extremist ideas to try to shake things up). Science requires rigorous retesting of theories to narrow the target and climate science is one field where that's happening all the time. Climate science's continuous observations does a pretty good job at sidelining inaccurate papers within a couple years (a quick turnaround all things considered).

Climate science's problem is non scientists misrepresenting, misinterpreting and misunderstanding. The science itself is exactly what you'd want for every scientific field.

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

#75

Post by Brakenshire »

jacoblyles wrote: post #5

The truth machine is broken. How do we fix it? And why is it that whenever I see a list of the "top 10 most important problems" to solve, this isn't on it? Most educated people take the veracity of published science as given, and we clearly know that's a false assumption. I know we need more transparency in science - sharing of data and code, and negative results. But institutionally, I don't know how we get there wi…

> The truth machine is broken. How do we fix it?

> And why is it that whenever I see a list of the "top 10 most important problems" to solve, this isn't on it?

The truth machine has always been substantially broken, what has distinguished the scientific process is that it works at all. Our historical view of science suffers from absolutely enormous selection bias, in general we are only ever interested in following the stories which trace the threads of truth as they track through an absolute maelstrom of error, caused by nepotism, cronyism, prejudice, or a thousand other uncorrected human faults. 'Publish or perish' is only a modern progression of faults which have always been there.

That's not to say that finding improvements to the scientific process is not a hugely important question, but we should spare ourselves the drama of thinking our age has broken the system in some uniquely terrible way.

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

#76

Post by dredmorbius »

0xdeadbeefbabe wrote: post #22

The guy who wrote Zen and The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance had a problem with the scientific method too: "Through multiplication upon multiplication of facts, information, theories and hypotheses it is science itself that is leading mankind from single absolute truths to multiple, indeterminate, relative ones. The major producer of the social chaos, the indeterminacy of thoughts and values that rational knowledge is…

Robert Pirsig.

I'm re-reading ZatAoMM now, first time in about 20 years.

I'm not entirely convinced that Phaedrus's dilemma poses a true conflict. Science is evolution toward a more complete truth, and it's expected that any given step will be incomplete. Of conflicting or alternate theories, often one will be simpler than the other (Occam's Razor). In other cases, there may be more than one correct answer (wave/particle duality). I don't see either circumstance toppling science.

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

#77

Post by StavrosK »

0xdeadbeefbabe wrote: post #27

And this is why http://xkcd.com/836/ could have a fourth scene at the graveyard. Top hat man and his girlfriend stand by his tombstone. Girlfriend says to top hat man something like, "that study turned out to be bogus" or "he was in the control group"

Science isn't a study, it's the way to make a study. That's like saying the coin toss is bullshit because you didn't win it.

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

#78

Post by lamontcg »

pdonis wrote: post #41
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…

the usual HN climate-change critics are in this thread, pointing at and yelling about how science is "broken". I don't think the current situation in climate science shows that "science is broken". I think it shows that climate scientists have been too quick to claim the credibility of Science when their work does not measure up to that standard. (Climate science is certainly not the only field that does this: much o…

+1 on "what the fuck are you talking about?"

Climate science even got a physics prof from Berzerkely (who was convinced that only physicists knew how to do science right) who went in with an anti-climatology bias, and was funded by the Koch brother, and he replicated climatology results in the "BEST" study -- to the point where journals like Nature turned down publishing the BEST study because it was not new information and only confirming already well known scientific facts. So a Koch-backed study has actually determined that climate science really is science. That's like the Catholic church in the 1600s funding someone to investigate Galileo and publishing that it looks like the Earth goes around the Sun after all...

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

#79

Post by sergiosgc »

saraid216 wrote: post #37
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…

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 defend the position that we must reduce per capita energy usage. Reducing energy usage is equivalent to de-evolution.

Putting it another way, environmentalists defend that we can't change anything about the environment to such an absolute extreme, that I smell religious-like zealotry.

Fortunately, the solution is a couple of decades away, through electric transportation, coupled with solar/wind renewables. No CO2 but also no "pristine Earth" nonsense.

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

#80

Post by ISL »

gilgoomesh wrote: post #74
pdonis wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the usual HN climate-change critics are in this thread, pointing at and yelling about how science is "broken". I don't think the current situation in climate science shows that "science is broken". I think it shows that climate scientists have been too quick to claim the credibility of Science when their work does not measure up to that standard. (Climate science is certainly not the only field that does this: much o…

> climate scientists have been too quick to claim the credibility of Science when their work does not measure up to that standard What the fuck are you talking about? Observations and models are repeated and challenged far more in climate science than most other fields. It is a good example of science working exactly as it should. I'm not sure where you think climate science has gone astray but considering how expens…

> Observations and models are repeated and challenged far more in climate science than any other field.

That may be an overstatement; see the Standard Model of physics.

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