It may be naïve to hope for better, but the world cannot afford sly pandering to lying propaganda. Failures of epistemic integrity have real practical consequences, and nowhere is this more obvious than in the middle east. Consider this: ‘In August Sweden’s leading daily newspaper, Aftonbladet, alleged that Palestinians were being killed for their organs.… Read More »Shame on Bioedge
Now we move on to virtue in the conduct of enquiry.
There is some evidence giving cause for concern
· There is evidence of dogmatism: ‘The fact is that we can't account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can't. The CERES data published in the August BAMS 09 supplement on 2008 shows there should be even more warming: but the data are surely wrong. Our observing system is inadequate.’[1] Now it is indeed possible that the data is wrong, but the lack of a continued warming trend (since 1998?) is contrary to the predictions of the models on which IPCC predictions are based, and a common variety of dogmatism is to deny evidence that doesn’t fit your preconceived beliefs.
· There is evidence of arbitrary data manipulation: ‘Another serious issue to be considered relates to the fact that the PC1 time series in the Mann et al. analysis was adjusted to reduce the positive slope in the last 150 years … At this point, it is fair to say that this adjustment was arbitrary.’[2]
· In the computer code there is evidence of data manipulation conducted in order to get a pre-conceived result.
· Remarks from a programmer writing code indicate serious problems with collection and recording of original data ‘another problem that's based on the hopeless state of our databases’[3]
· For some time there has been controversy over the selective use of data. For a recent example from a Russian institute commenting on the CRU use of Russian data (report here ): the continuous data records from Russia which taken in their entirety show warming of 1.4 C since 1860 versus CRU use of only 25% of that data to show 2.06C rise since 1860; the use by CRU of stations with incomplete and interrupted data where such data shows warming versus the omission of stations with complete and continuous data which doesn't.
· More broadly, local scientists in Australia and New Zealand have found broadly constant original temperature data on which a rising official temperature record has been based through the use of methods of data manipulation originating in or influenced by CRU practices. See this discussion of the problems in raw data and controversy over claims of inhomogeneity in that data and adjustments made to produce estimates of historical temperatures from weather stations in Northern Australia: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/12/08/the-smoking-gun-at-darwin-zero/
None of these examples demonstrate straightforward dishonesty. For example, all sorts of junk gets left in computer code. People put bits in that they call ‘fudge factors’ because they think they know the broad shape of some other correction process which is not yet coded, so in early drafts a ‘fudge factor’ procedure stands as a proxy for some real adjusting factor. They are, however, evidence that more subtle vices may yet be in play.
Read More »Climate scientists behaving badly? Part 3: the conduct of enquiry.
As promised at the end of part 1 (here ), I shall now run over the evidence for the failings of epistemic character among climate scientists. I shall be breaking this up into loosely related groups: objectivity, the conduct of enquiry, what is owed to other enquirers and virtue in testimony.
The emails show that these particular climate scientists are neither objective nor impartial. One even harbours violent urges towards a critic: ‘Next time I see Pat Michaels at a scientific meeting, I'll be tempted to beat the crap out of him. Very tempted.’[1]
Read More »Climate scientists behaving badly? Part 2: Objectivity
Global warming hawks claim the moral high-ground, claim to speak for what is right against grubby self-interest. It behooves those who take the high ground to behave well themselves. Do they?
Data and email exchanges between climate scientists have been stolen from the servers at University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit and published online. Whether the data or content of these emails tell us anything about global warming is not an issue I am concerned with. Nor, for that matter, am I concerned with bad behaviour in the sense of global warming hawks being rude about global warming skeptics. The bad behaviour of interest is epistemic bad behaviour, and on this matter I think the emails tell us quite a lot. Furthermore, the Climatic Research Unit is one of the world’s leading players and so the behaviour of its members tells us something about the epistemic state of climate science.
Should scientists be allowed to publish anything, even when it is wrong? And should there be journals willing to accept everything, as long as it seems interesting enough? That is the core of a debate that has blossomed since the journal Medical Hypotheses published two aids-denialist papers. Medical Hypotheses is a deliberately non-peer reviewed journal: the editor decides whether to publish not based on whether papers are true but whether they are bold, potentially interesting, or able to provoke useful discussion. HIV researchers strongly objected to the two papers, making the publisher Elsevier withdraw them. Now there are arguments for removing Medical Hypotheses from PubMed, the index of medical literature. Ben Goldacre of Bad Science and Bruce G Charlton, editor of Medical Hypotheses, debate the affair on Goldacre's blog. Are there scientific papers that are so bad that there should not be any journal outlet for them?
Anyone who wishes to work with children, including even a parent who wishes to help out in the school their child attends, is required to undergo vetting by the Independent Safeguarding Authority. The politicians responsible say that this will protect children from paedophiles.
Philip Pullman (children’s book author) has refused to be vetted because “It is insulting and I think unnecessary, and I refuse to be complicit in any scheme that assumes my guilt.” (here) As a result he will be banned from reading his books to children in schools. The Children’s Laureate thinks that ‘the scheme [is] "governmental idiocy" which [will] drive a wedge between children and adults’. Arguably, then, believing it right to vet the enormous number of people that will be vetted (11.3 million by November 2010) is corrupting of the relations between adults and children, and is in part a manifestation of something poisonous in our attitude to adults. So there is a broad question over whether the ISA, simply through existing, has bad consequences and is unjustly disrespectful. That is not what I want to discuss. I want to consider only the issue of the epistemic duty of the politicians who have created it and of the authority itself.
In the last six months I have heard that the current economic crisis proves that free market capitalism is a failure. I have also heard that it proves that government intervention is responsible for market booms and busts. I have read that the causes of the current crisis are greed, irrationality, easy money, low interest rates, preverse incentives, complex financial instruments, subprime mortgages, people believing that house prices would always rise, people insisting that houses must be made affordable, the US congress laws that force banks to provide a certain percentage of subprime mortgages, the capital ratio requirements on banks being less for subprime mortgage backed securities than for prime mortgages, the distortion of mortgage lending by government sponsored entities (Freddie Mac and Fannie May), the lack of an exchange for credit default swaps creating un-noticed systemic counterparty risk, mark to market valuation of bank assets, too little government regulation, too much government regulation, the government scaring us, the government not scaring us enough, the lack of a bail out (stock market falls) , the delay of a bail out (stock market continues to fall), and the bail out (stock market carries on down).
Why am I talking about this? Because these circumstances are precisely the kind in which we in general and experts in particular indulge in a certain kind of epistemic irresponsibility: over-confidence in belief. When the stakes are high and circumstances highly uncertain it appears that we can hardly bear to conform our belief to the uncertainty. Paradoxically, uncertainty turns us to dogmatism.
Testimonial power is the power we have to determine the opinion of others by testifying. To testify is to make sincere assertions in such circumstances under which we are understood to be offering those assertions as to be worth relying upon. When things go well, we tell people what we know and they come to know it through our telling them. We all have varying degrees of testimonial power relative to subject matter, to circumstance, to our knowledge and to what we are known by others to know.
Forensic experts are granted immense testimonial power. Their testimony is taken to be sufficient for conviction in the absence of any other evidence. Judges are reluctant to delve into the grounds of their expertise or into underlying disagreements among experts on the meaning of forensic evidence or the basis of interpretation. Their claims are taken to be backed by the epistemic authority of scientific method.
I do not think that forensic experts presently warrant the testimonial power they have been granted.
Conspiracies against the laity frequently operate with an inverted morality. For example, honour among thieves includes the obligation not to snitch, that is to say, not to tell the truth about the wrongdoing of each other. By contrast, the professions have an epistemic duty to speak the truth about the success and failure of the deployment of their particular profession’s expertise, and about the success and failure of the professional activities in which they are engaged and for which they are responsible.
Margaret Haywood, a nurse, had sought to fulfil this duty, but the Nursing and Midwifery Council has treated her as a snitch.
Read More »Epistemic duty and conspiracies against the laity 2
