Forums / General Discussion Forums / Ad Infinitum / Science is not pretty!
Science is not pretty!
By now most of us have heard about the e-mails stolen from servers used by climate researchers. The Associated Press recently posted their analysis of the e-mails. They had five journalists and three climate researchers they categorized as "moderate" read all the e-mails (over 1 million words of text). A link to the story is below:
I'd like to have a discussion about the scientific method and process discussed in the story. Let's keep the politics out of it and try not to comment on whether we think global warming is real or not. If you want to have that discussion, feel free to start a new thread about it. But let's not do that here.
The AP story illuminates some interesting aspects of professional scientists at work (by "professional", I mean they are paid for their work...) and raises some interesting questions. I recommend reading the entire article first. But I'll quote just pieces here:
"The e-mails show that several mainstream scientists repeatedly suggested keeping their research materials away from opponents who sought it under American and British public records law. It raises a science ethics question because free access to data is important so others can repeat experiments as part of the scientific method."
I use that as an example of when limiting data access may make sense. We decided not to do it. But I could see why other organizations may have felt differently. In this case, researchers were concerned that others would take the data and mischaracterize it. That is obviously easy to do. I'm sure everyone here knows how easy it is to tell lies with statistics.
Thus, Question No. 1: If you were in their shoes, would you open your data up to your opponents? Do they have just cause for being protective?
The next quote:
"This is normal science politics, but on the extreme end, though still within bounds," said Dan Sarewitz, a science policy professor at Arizona State University. "We talk about science as this pure ideal and the scientific method as if it is something out of a cookbook, but research is a social and human activity full of all the failings of society and humans, and this reality gets totally magnified by the high political stakes here."
The climate research field is obviously much larger and more explosive, politically, than the astronomical community. But if you would like to read about similar "fun" regarding the Hubble Space Telescope check out "The Hubble Wars" (full disclosure: the author is my physics advisor at Tufts). I once missed a plane flight because I was so engrossed in the book I didn't hear a gate change announcement!
The interesting part of this debate is that it seems to be more about scientists vs. nonscientists than scientists vs. scientists. That is, except for the quote about boycotting a journal that published a competing paper. I have never heard of that kind of thing before (but that perhaps may just reflect my naïveté!). Usually, one would submit a competiting analysis of the data and, in sensitive situations, the journal would allow an editorial rejoinder (this is more common in the social science research where interpretation of results is more flexible than in the natural sciences).
And, Question No. 2: What responsibilities do professional (governmental and non-governmental) scientists have regarding communicating with non-scientists?
Finally, Question No. 3: Regardless of the political ramifications, is the release of these e-mails good or bad for the debate over global warming?
Feel free to post your own comments and questions as well. Just remember, let's not debate whether global warming is real or not in this thread. Let's stick with the issue of the scientific method, process and ethics.
I've read through most of the emails on other websites, and I think the most damaging one is where a scientist admits that he manipulated data to "hide the decrease in warming" - perhaps you saw that one. There are also discussions about how graphs were designed to look worse than the data actually represented. I really think that a lot of this has to do with the funding that the scientists receive. If universities and environmental groups provide funding to the scientists, and those groups want to "prove" global warming, then a lot of scientists are going to let the dollars they receive influence their research, that's all there is to it, no matter how much they might tell themselves that they are doing nothing wrong. But most disturbing in this whole mess is how some of the scientists, government officials and others, who don't believe in global warming, are being marginalized, shut out of journals, vilified, etc. Just yesterday, a reporter who asked a question about the "Climategate" emails at a Copenhagen press conference had his microphone shut off and was threatened with arrest. When Al Gore and others go around saying that "this is settled science" when it obviously is not, then that casts a huge political cloud over the entire scientific debate. And if there is anything we need to keep out of science completely, it is politics.
Hi, Tony. How can a scientist be truly free from the influence of funding (whether it be by an environmental group or by a corporate energy company)? What can be done about it? Along the same lines, how can you read a graph from any side and know that it hasn't been manipulated to prove a particular point? That is, what are the ways you can evaluate a research report to determine if it is bias-free?
That's not an easy question to answer, so I'm still thinking about it! In the meantime, why is the climate change debate different from that surrounding the existence or otherwise of the Higgs boson, for example? I imagine - with no supporting evidence to hand - that the drive to build the Large Hadron Collider came from those who wanted to show that it exists, rather than those who wanted to show that it (probably) did not. In a similar way, again with no evidence to hand, is not the funding for the data gathering regarding man's influence on the climate mainly in the hands of those who believe it is anthropogenic? They will therefore presumably employ scientists who think the same, rather than employ scientists who will try to prove them wrong. On a slightly different point, NASA's 'ICESAT' mission webpage states that global warming could lead to a change in global sea levels of -0.8 cm to +0.8 cm depending upon the quantity 'snowfall - melting' of the Antarctic ice-sheet http://icesat.gsfc.nasa.gov/science_mission/response_to_climate_change.html Why do we not hear about the possible fall in sea levels?
Hi, David. Regarding the LHC, there is lots of scientific merit in null results as they can be used to constrain theories. For example, the LHC isn't able to detect all permutations of a possible Higgs Boson. So even if it doesn't find one, that won't rule it out. But it will rule it out at a bunch of energy levels, which will have other implications for physics. Now, whether the funding is warranted or not is a policy question that I want to keep out of this particular thread so as not to confuse the issue. (But feel free to start another thread on that topic if you wish.) Global warming research is not only funded by believers. There are plenty of studies funded by fossil fuel companies, conservative political groups, etc. And, guess what? Those are the studies that disagree with global warming. My complaint is that both global warming skeptics and believers usually get all their news from sources that support their respective beliefs and they do not consider it biased, yet it is simply because of the selection process. So how can you detect this selection-effect bias? There are ways... Science developed a process that is transparent and reproducible to avoid just these types of issues. The problem is people are not considering that aspect. If they see one paper that supports their claim, they believe it. But what they should do is wait to see other papers show the same results using the same experiment, preferably by organizations independent of the original one. Once it is verified, then it's much more believable. This process, over time, usually filters out erroneous or poorly conducted studies. But most of us don't have the access & ability to read scientific papers to make the call ourselves. So what can we do?
1) A scientist who postulates a theory is obligated to share his data, methods, experiments and results. If it can't be duplicated, it falls into the 'low temperature super-conductor' category. 2) If a scientist publishes his work or is interviewed about his work he's obligated to answer questions about it. When you step into the public arena you have no right to be secluded from it. 3) The release (NOT theft) of the information saved untold billions of dollars, lives, and quality of living for billions of people. It exposed the biggest hoax on man-kind, ever. In the final analysis, Mark Twain had it right: "There are lies, damned lies and statistics." Climatologist use various and creative methods of computer statistical analysis of data sets in accounting for a wide variety of *inferred* data. In those algorithms lie their political beliefs and to a large part, their fortunes. Anyone that's ridden a motorcycle across town knows the measurement of air temperature to come up with one, certain temperature for that town is nearly impossible. Until natural spring waters show an increase in temperature the *climate* is doing nothing we can detect or control. RELAX!
Hi,Getting one representative temperature for one bike rise across town would not mean much on its own. However, what if your pillion passenger carried a thermometer and recorded the air temperature every 1/10 mile on the journey? The numerical average of these could be said in some way to represent that particular journey. Now repeat this, at the same time every day, for a year. These average temperatures would then reflect the changing seasons; warmer in summer and cooler in winter but with a lot of fluctuation in the data as individual weather systems moved through. Now do this for a century. Again, seasonal variation with random fluctuations, but - what if there were a trend? Still only one location on the globe, so repeat the whole experiment at a million points distributed over the world, both in cities and the open country. Any trends in this data set would then be of some significance and would need explaining.I think I've just invented the next Citizen Science project!:-)David Conner.
I agree with #1 and #2. But it wasn't data that was disclosed/stolen. All of the independent analysts in the original AP article said that the new information doesn't change the science. What it changes is how the scientists represented the data. Which is, of course, quite important. But you don't want to throw the baby out with the bathwater. Also, don't forget this nugget from Carl Sagan's Baloney Detection Kit: "Absense of evidence is not evidence of absence".
Whole affair is about how people (scientists) are raised, educated and how much and what kind of knowledge do they have! Also there are political, economical, social, cultural and other pressures on them. If you are not strong person you easy fell under influence of yourself (overestimating yourself), professional group, media, etc. 1) Now about data. Internet an other communications are here to transfer data! Scientific data (raw and all the other), they must be available to everyone. We don't know what could be hidden in them. Naturally personal, medical, dangerous (like weapons), etc. data must protected. 2) If scientists are asked, they should answer. But again, not to please. They must tell what they know, not what they think to know or government or public want to hear. 3) It is not only good for debate, it was high time. It also show the weakness of media, education, political system and also of our values in the society. This e-mails show, as Byron said in "Epitaph to a Dog": " The sculptor’s art exhausts the pomp of woe, And storied urns record who rests below. When all is done, upon the Tomb is seen, Not what he was, but what he should have been."