James Hrynyshyn is a freelance science journalist based in western North Carolina, where he tries to put degrees in marine biology and journalism to good use.
And now we turn to a voice of reason. Ken Caldera, discussing the nuts and bolt of science, and climatology in particular, as part of a group interview with Discover magazine, reminds us all just how silly it is to argue that anthropogenic global warming is bothing but a conspiracy theory propagated by disingenuous researchers (and former vice-presidents) who are only trying to line their own pockets:
There was a climate contrarian who testified before the Senate last week. He made the claim that climate scientists were some kind of club and they all made money by somehow supporting each other's findings. The reality of science is that a scientific career is made by showing that all the people around you believe something that's not true. If a scientist could provide evidence that the climate theory is incorrect and that global warming is not a product of human activities, he or she would be held up as the Darwin or the Einstein of climate science. We're highly incentivized to show that all our colleagues are wrong. If we could come up with good evidence that they're wrong, we would be out there publishing it. The evidence just doesn't exist.
Ken Caldera studies the climate at Stanford University and the Carnegie Institution of Washington. It shouldn't be necessary for such scientists to make such observations. But it is.
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That is a nice ideal, but in practice grants which blatantly aim to disprove the conclusions and theories of the people sitting on the study section that will review it will receive low scores and won't be funded. For the most part, taking down an erroneous or fraudulent bit of science is something that is essentially done with funding from another project.
Posted by: hibob | July 2, 2009 10:35 AM
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/globalwarming/5715354/Earth-faces-Waterworld-as-global-warming-lasts-centuries.html
Posted by: paulm | July 4, 2009 12:11 PM
My own experience (limited as it is) doesn't support hibob's conclusion. I have participated in only 6 grant panels (NIH and NSF) but I have been consistently impressed with how open minded panels are to alternate theories. If there is a weakness to the system it lies in a very different place. In trying to avoid theoretical narrowness many review panels tend to focus on methodological detail. This tends to give an advantage to research that makes marginal gains over research that is riskier or more theory driven.
Posted by: cynicism-isn't-always-realism | July 4, 2009 11:59 PM
I have two things to note for hibob's benefit.
1) If evidence against AGW as a good model came up in a project grant that was 'meant' to investigate some other aspect of climate, it would be published. The scientist would certainly have no trouble getting further grants. No such evidence is published. If it was there, it would be.
2) There's plenty of people getting funded by vested interest groups for the express purpose of debunking the AGW model (or there used to be, before the vested interest groups found out the model was essentially true). These people certainly would have published had they found anything.
None of this in itself means that someone won't eventually find something to shoot holes in the AGW model; it's merely indicative of that being increasingly unlikely.
The "scientists have a conspiracy club" argument is denialism in almost its purest form. Anyone who spouts it should be immediately disenfranchised from the discussion in which they are attempting to participate.
Posted by: Nils Ross | July 5, 2009 8:42 AM
The evidence that there is no open scientific debate and discussion re: AGW is evident in the panel assembled for the discussion. There are a significant number of climate scientists who agree that the climate is changing, but that human contribution to AGW is not as significant as the four panelist in the discussion. There may not be a conspiracy around, but the advocates have gotten tired of arguing about their position and have made a few institutional changes. For example Science, and Nature and a number of other "premier" journals will not even send for peer review any paper that does challenge AGW. We have done this before on other topics a few times, "cold Fusion" is a topic that made it onto the "we will not consider it" list. In fact almost all work for the past ten plus years on cold fusion has not been funded by any government agency openly, proposals were not considered and so most people bootlegged the work behind the scenes. In this hidden fashion probably about 10 Million dollars has been spent, but the results had to published in the underground. Last year the ACS had the first symposium on the sly. So you are welcome to delude yourself that all is well and fair in climate change science, but to some of us it looks like the science process is actually broken.
Posted by: 123andy | July 5, 2009 10:38 PM
Thanks .
Posted by: Sohpet | July 27, 2009 4:54 AM
cynicism, Nils: My experience is in chemistry, in a pretty specialized enough so that there aren't many people in it. When I said "conclusions and theories of the people sitting on the study section", I meant conclusions and theories that those people originated and published themselves, their babies, not merely ideas common in the field that they subscribe to.
Posted by: hibob | August 9, 2009 2:18 AM