Iain "CO2 is life" Murray complains about politicization of science. No, I'm not kidding.
More seriously, Andrew Dessler gives a definition I agree with:
In the end, claims repeatedly verified by the scientific community (e.g., the earth is warming, DNA is a double-helix, CFCs destroy ozone) come to be accepted as true.
Thus, someone is honestly using science if he or she articulates a position that is supported by the whole of the peer-reviewed literature (e.g., the earth is warming). Misrepresenting the peer-reviewed literature is my definition of politicizing science. That includes cherry-picking, dueling experts, or any of the myriad other methods of pushing faulty science.
More like this
Many of the climate change denialist sites have been up in arms by comparisons of climate change denial to holocaust denial. In particular Marc Morano at climate depot has had multiple articles attacking and expressing hysterical outrage at these comparisons.
We know they don't like the comparison…
A new paper examines what is behind the ~2% of climate change related peer reviewed research that run contrary to widely accepted scientific consensus on climate change to see why those papers are wrong.
There is a scientific consensus that increasing greenhouse gas concentration in the atmosphere…
Another post on John Mashey's virtual blog. Everything that follows is from comments posted here by Mashey, lightly edited.
This long essay grew from a dialog in this thread into something that may be a more general resource than just some answers to Mr Manny.
There are 3 parts so far:
Part 1…
In a piece ironically titled "Be prudent with climate claims" (behind The Australian's paywall, search for the title if you want to read it) George Pell declares that, unlike him,
"many politicians have never investigated the primary evidence."
However, if you look at the sources he cites, you'll…
You (and Dessler) call it "politicizing science." I call it fraud, deception, lying.
OK Tim. You want to discuss politics in science? How do your respond to this post on RP Jr? You come across as a fair, scientifically minded individual, clearly committed to finding the truth of the matter.
"Dear Kevin,
Thank you for your observations.
You write:
"These are solid scientists, and some told me in no uncertain terms that we are not giving full voice to uncertainties; others implied as much."
While all this may be for some a recent "journey to Damascus", others have seen the light almost since the beginning. The compulsion to hide uncertainties and silence "critics" has been a loud whisper in the AGW/political community for an overly long time - from Steven Schneider to Jim Hansen to Al Gore.
The fear of threat to the political orthodoxy of AGW policy-science has spun up such a fury that we are witnessing brazen calls for legal prosecution and personal destruction of scientists (or any organization presenting their research and views), who are labeled as comparable to "Holocaust Deniers" and tobacco-industry-like "hired guns."
Witness Harvard's Daniel Schrag. Last week in a letter to the Boston Globe, Schrag publicly characterized dissenting witnesses - including the gentlemanly Professor Bob Carter - at a recent Senate hearing on climate change as a "gathering of liars and charlatans" spouting "outrageous claims intended to deceive and distort." Schrag completes the now formulaic attack with the motive attribution of the left: "sponsored by those industries who want to protect their profits."
Clearly, few fair-minded would find this indecorous invective the language of scholarship and science. Rather, one is reminded of George Orwell's observation that, "In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act." Or, as Schrag phrased it, an "outrage."
Are these the behaviors of those "certain" of scientifically defensive positions?
It is all becoming a bit too uncomfortable for even some in academia with proactive AGW policy views.
One "solid scientist" who HAS been speaking out for a while, and taking serious public abuse, is MIT's Dick Lindzen. Below is yet another press accounting of what he has personally observed - all of which speaks directly to your well expressed intimations and concerns therewith:
"Dr. Lindzen is proud of his contribution, and that of his colleagues, to the IPCC chapter they worked on. His pride in this work matches his dismay at seeing it misrepresented. "[Almost all reading and coverage of the IPCC is restricted to the highly publicized Summaries for Policymakers which are written by representatives from governments, NGOs and business; the full reports, written by participating scientists, are largely ignored," he told the United States Senate committee on environment and public works in 2001. These unscientific summaries, often written to further political or business agendas, then become the basis of public understanding.
"As an example, Dr. Lindzen provided the committee with the summary that was created for Chapter 7, which he worked on. "Understanding of climate processes and their incorporation in climate models have improved, including water vapour, sea-ice dynamics, and ocean heat transport," the summary stated, creating the impression that the climate models were reliable. The actual report by the scientists indicated just the opposite. Dr. Lindzen testified that the scientists had "found numerous problems with model treatments -- including those of clouds and water vapor."
"When the IPCC was stung by criticism that the summaries were being written with little or no input by the scientists themselves, the IPCC had a subset of the scientists review a subsequent draft summary -- an improvement in the process. Except that the final version, when later released at a Shanghai press conference, had surprising changes to the draft that scientists had seen.
"The version that emerged from Shanghai concludes, "In the light of new evidence and taking into account the remaining uncertainties, most of the observed warming over the last 50 years is likely to have been due to the increase in greenhouse gas concentrations." Yet the draft was rife with qualifiers making it clear the science was very much in doubt because "the accuracy of these estimates continues to be limited by uncertainties in estimates of internal variability, natural and anthropogenic forcing, and the climate response to external forcing."
"The summaries' distortion of the IPCC chapters compounds another distortion that occurred in the very writing of the scientific chapters themselves. Dr. Lindzen's description of the conditions under which the climate scientists worked conjures up a scene worthy of a totalitarian state: "throughout the drafting sessions, IPCC 'coordinators' would go around insisting that criticism of models be toned down, and that 'motherhood' statements be inserted to the effect that models might still be correct despite the cited faults. Refusals were occasionally met with ad hominem attacks. I personally witnessed coauthors forced to assert their 'green' credentials in defense of their statements."
"To better understand the issue of climate change, including the controversies over the IPCC summary documents, the White House asked the National Academy of Sciences, the country's premier scientific organization, to assemble a panel on climate change. The 11 members of the panel, which included Richard Lindzen, concluded that the science is far from settled: "Because there is considerable uncertainty in current understanding of how the climate system varies naturally and reacts to emissions of greenhouse gases and aerosols, current estimates of the magnitude of future warming should be regarded as tentative and subject to future adjustments (either upward or downward)."
"The press's spin on the NAS report? CNN, in language typical of other reportage, stated that it represented "a unanimous decision that global warming is real, is getting worse, and is due to man. There is no wiggle room."
"Despite such obtuseness Lindzen fights on, defending the science at what is undoubtedly a very considerable personal cost. Those who toe the party line are publicly praised and have grants ladled out to them from a funding pot that overflows with US$1.7-billion per year in the U.S. alone. As Lindzen wrote earlier this year in The Wall Street Journal, "there is a more sinister side to this feeding frenzy. Scientists who dissent from the alarmism have seen their grant funds disappear, their work derided, and themselves libeled as industry stooges, scientific hacks or worse. Consequently, lies about climate change gain credence even when they fly in the face of the science that supposedly is their basis."
Source: http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/news/story.html?id=bc93abca-79cd-4a7…
Warmest regards
Posted by: Bob Ferguson at December 23, 2006 07:08 AM"
I see Prof. Lindzen is up to his usual claims of misrepresentation and biased funding.
Bruce, read this. Prof. Lindzen is entitled to his opinion, but it's not one shared by other climatologists.
The "gentlemanly" Bob Carter [coined the term "Hansenism"](http://timlambert.org/2005/06/bobcarter2/) for people who believe that man-made warming is happening. Carter is one of the worst cherry pickers out there. [See here](http://timlambert.org/category/science/bobcarter/).
"The 11 members of the panel, which included Richard Lindzen, concluded that the science is far from settled: "Because there is considerable uncertainty in current understanding of how the climate system varies naturally and reacts to emissions of greenhouse gases and aerosols, current estimates of the magnitude of future warming should be regarded as tentative and subject to future adjustments (either upward or downward)."
What else the NAS said:
"How climate will change in the future is inherently uncertain, but far from unknown. If scientific uncertainty about climate change is used to delay action, the risks and costs of adverse effects of climate change could increase significantly." http://dels.nas.edu/basc/Climate-HIGH.pdf
"Scientists who dissent from the alarmism have seen their grant funds disappear, their work derided, and themselves libeled as industry stooges, scientific hacks or worse."
If they are getting money from Exxon-Mobil for writing position papers on global warming, they are industry stoodges.
Exxon-Mobil's position in the whole AGW "debate" is hardly a secret -- and it certainly has little if anything to do with science, any more than the tobacco companies' declarations about cigarette smoking had something to do with legtimate science.
If a scientist takes money from such companies to do "research", he or she should be prepared to have his or her research -- and motives -- questioned.
Many of these people have brought the derision on themeselves and why we should feel sorry for them is not at all clear.
"Disappearing world: Global warming claims tropical island
For the first time, an inhabited island has disappeared beneath rising seas.
Environment Editor Geoffrey Lean reports
Published: 24 December 2006
Rising seas, caused by global warming, have for the first time washed an inhabited island off the face of the Earth. The obliteration of Lohachara island, in India's part of the Sundarbans where the Ganges and the Brahmaputra rivers empty into the Bay of Bengal, marks the moment when one of the most apocalyptic predictions of environmentalists and climate scientists has started coming true."
http://news.independent.co.uk/environment/article2099971.ece
Anyone, like Tim L., who remains in steadfast denial of the unscientific influence of the anti-Darwinian Left in the academy and media is in no position to credibly bewail the politicisation of science. Although his criticisms of metereological denialists are well taken.
The culturalist Left opposes the use of Darwinian naturalistic assumptions in social science. It is committed to a false Blank Slate view of man, one that assumes bio-diverse groups are identical in mental capacity and that the mind is more or less plastic to social construction. These social constructivists (post-modernists and standard social science modellers alike) deny the biological conservation of underlying human nature. That world view will not pass scientific muster these days.
This view can cause a lot more harm than good in the academy and polity. For some reason its purveyors do not appear on Tim L.'s radar. Perhaps because Tim L. does not want friends to the Right and enemies to the Left?
PS To pre-emptively refute Tim L.'s knee-jerk fallacious response, I do not claim that all Leftists are un-scientific anti-Darwinians. Chomsky, a Leftist alright, is one of the more formidable Darwinian social scientists. Likewise there is no shortage of unscientific anti-Darwinians on the Right eg Creationists.
Ummm, Jack, Tim L. was talking about "science" and not "social science". As for his stance on Darwin, Tim L. never said he disagreed with Darwin's conclusions. You sound like you've been blinded by ideology, or just so caught up in it that you've made things up.
You allege that Tim L. tries to make friends on the left and enemies on the right. I am no lefty, and although I disagree with his virulent anti-Iraq war stance (though I am not wholly in favour of it either), I empathise with his concern for Iraqi civilians.
Also, since when did concern for the environment become solely a phenomeonon of the left? Many evangelicals of the Christian Right in the US are showing great concern for the state of the Earth, thinking that pollution and climate change are threats to the Creation (see http://www.creationcare.org and http://www.thegreatwarming.com/revrichardcizik.html for proof of this). Environmentalism is a multi-partisan issue, not a uni-partisan issue. (Even some neo-conservatives are concerned about foreign oil spending in the US being funneled into the bank accounts of terrorists and are also concerned that the US will lose some of its wealth as a result of increased extreme weather and climate events.)
Posted by: Stephen Berg | December 24, 2006 11:54 PM
These two classifications are not exclusive and I am unaware of Tim L. insisting otherwise. Science contains as its subsets both natural and social science. Any empirical event that can be the subject of observation and generalisation can be a science, more or less.
It is false to assume that science is only concerned with the study of mindless objects. Although a psychologist attempting to treat anti-Darwinians might beg to differ.
The politicisation of social science has grave policy implications, as can be seen by the catastrophic consequences of Iraq-attack and the slow-ticking time bomb of multicultural immigration rackets. Epidemeology is, in part, a branch of social science and is the subject of numerous posts on this blog.
I never said he did, or didn't for that manner. Please quote me. He has remained curiously quiet on the explosive topic of the applicability of evolutionary biology to social science.
I said that Tim L.'s frequent bewailing of the politicisation of science ignores the baneful influence of unscientific anti-Darwinian cultural Leftists. I specifically excluded some Leftists from this classification eg Chomsky and Tim L. for all I know. Read what I wrote.
Pot, meet kettle.
I never made this claim. Quote etc??? THe first great environmentalist politician was Teddy Roosevelt who, if he were alive today, would be classified as a foaming at the mouth right-winger. Many environmentalists are strongly anti-immigrant and would probably accept a right-wing, or conservative self-description. Again, read what I wrote.
Still, it is clear that environmental pseudo-science is mostly a preserve of the Right these days, especially those in the pay or sway of large petrochemical companies. Tim L. deserves credit for calling this part of the politicisation of science. And debit for his silence on the anti-Darwinian Left's intellectual mischief.
Wheels are well known to be round. So why must I always have to re-invent them when this topic comes up?
I hate to break it to you Jack but one can accept the science on variation in human intelligence and still reject your particular (and peculiar) political and social views even though you claim incessantly that the latter derive inevitably from the former.
"Anyone, like Tim L., who remains in steadfast denial of the unscientific influence of the anti-Darwinian Left in the academy and media is in no position to credibly bewail the politicisation of science."
Anyone -- whatever thair beliefs or political leanings is certainly capable of politicization of science.
This is not to agree that the above claim (that Tim L. is in "denial ...of anti-Darwinian Left" ) is true, just to point out that, even if it were, it would not invalidate observations he makes regarding political interference with science, which one must consider on the merits (not based on who is making the observations).
Jack:
The two classifications are not entirely exclusive, but in my experience are mainly so. Scientific hypotheses tend to be falsifiable, whereas hypotheses in the social sciences tend to be worded as "tendencies" e.g.
This means they are not strictly falsifiable. One can of course find both types of hypotheses in sciences and social sciences, but in my experience the former tend to be found mostly in the sciences, and the latter in the social sciences.
Social sciences have always been politicized, the most obvious example being economics.
Jack:
There are loonies on both the left & right, both in academia and outside. When has Tim Lambert, or anyone else here, ever denied it?
Re: the unscientific influence of the anti-Darwinian Left, love the breasts. Thanks Jack, makes a change from someone who's serious.
Also re: the unscientific influence of the anti-Darwinian Left, once I recovered from those breasts, I couldn't help noticing the creationism advert. Do you get it? Something complaining about anti-Darwinism, advertising creationism at the same time. Jack's also a master of irony. Thanks Jack, you're a lot of fun.
I guess you don't understand that the ad was from Google AdWords and the author/publisher of the article had nothing to do with that specific ad other than to generally agree to have Google ads presented on the web page.
What amazes me is that he had to go back to 1999 for that article. Surely there are more modern examples?
I'd love to see a proper study done comparing political leanings and anti-science stuff with the actual impact. I doubt very much that a few post modernist yahoos actually have much impact outside their universities, and any student that takes them all that seriously will have problems later on. But the impact of anti-climate science screeds in newspapers and on astroturf is somwhat clearer.
"I guess you don't understand that the ad was from Google AdWords and the author/publisher of the article had nothing to do with that specific ad other than to generally agree to have Google ads presented on the web page."
I know you didn't understand that I understood that. It doesn't stop the irony.
Posted by: Ian Gould | December 25, 2006 07:11 AM
Its nice to see that you are not in dispute with evident facts of science. Thats a start. But you can save your faux-pity for someone actually suffering remorse.
My "particular political and social view" is conservative social democracy. This is not "peculiar" to me, it is identical with the norm or mainstream of Australian political culture.
I voted ALP last election and will do so this election. The ALP is, following the LN/P, slowly distancing to the stupid and counter-productive rubbish pumped out by pseudo-scientific social activists over the past generation.
This is evident from the steady rejection of New Left cultural constructivism by the Australian electorate, in 1996 and so on. Only a completely comatose person would find these views "peculiar" nowadays.
So far as the Culture Wars go, I vehemently oppose the hard-core multicultural policy. The concept is self-evidently oxymoronic, not that a little defect like that would stop status-hungry intellectuals from lapping up fashionable nonsense.
Its proponensts are also a party to growing social dysfunctionality whereever they turn their peculiar theory into practice. Particularly bitter fruits are being reaped over the parts of the world where it has been sown eg London Bombings, Cronulla Bashings, Danish Bannings.
Competent social scientists and policy advisors in afflicted countries are rapidly ditching these "peculiar social and political views". But "progressive" social analysts are so politicised they cannot bring themselves to connect these dots. Instead they try to shoot the messenger, albeit with sloppy marksmanship.
Posted by: Meyrick Kirby | December 26, 2006 01:33 AM
Tim L. never denies "left wing loonies exist in academia and outside". He just never affirms, or even admits, it in most obvious and damaging contemporary examples, the un-scientific anti-Darwinian Left.
His ideological lop-sidedness (attacking only un-scientific Rightists) suggests Tim L. is more worried about attacking Rightists rather than defending science.
Posted by: Chris O'Neill | December 26, 2006 05:17 AM
I don't see, or smuggle in, any "breasts" with the inserted link. Perhaps I am not on the look-out for that sort of thing in this context. Or perhaps Chris O'Neill is just channelling other web sites, more suited to his mentality.
Posted by: Chris O'Neill | December 26, 2006 05:41 AM
I supposed if one tried hard enough one could "get" the joke played by the juxtaposition of a algorithimic advertiser at odds with an actual author. But there are surely other funnier things to do, such as watching grass grow or observing a Chris O'Neill trying to extricate himself from a foolish blunder.
Posted by: Chris O'Neill | December 26, 2006 09:17 PM
Acknowledging a conscious error may not stop the irony but it does start the stupidity. That means the jokes on you, Chris.
At this point Chris O'Neill seems happy to bypass any dealings with fact or logic in favour of sticking strictly to fabrications eg non-existent images, irrelevant ads and contrived ironies. I suppose next he will be telling us about the voices joking inside his head. It shows the line between inanity and insanity is finer than you'd think.
He has my deepest sympathy.
PS If any serious commenter can put up argument or evidence to show that the unscientific anti-Darwinian Left is not not unscientific, not anti-Darwinian, not really Left or not that important then I would be happy to hear it.
Well, Jack, since you're obviously triumphant in every arena, there's obviously no need to continue to prattle on endlessly in a futile attempt to convert the last few benighted souls.
Jack, what is this hard core multicultural policy you are blithering on about? Whats it got to do with the July bombings? What have the July bombings got to do with social disfunction? Are we to regard all criminal activities as social disfunction?
"If any serious commenter can put up argument or evidence to show that the silly, anti-rational Jack is not not silly, not anti-rational, not really Jack or not that important then I would be happy to hear it also"
Eli might be able to help you with the last point, but other than that, the thing speaks for itself.
That's one of the hazards with linking to a page that shows variable adverts, including pop-ups, completely out of your control.
including reading Jack Strocchi.
Yeah sure Jack.
Guthrie reminded us that "What amazes me is that he had to go back to 1999 for that article."
So along came Jack who wanted to give an example showing how biased Tim Lambert's selections of news items were and since there is so much example news available to show this bias he didn't have to go back very far at all, like just, 7 years. Right...
Jack:
Actually, I believe the critiques are determined by choice of issue, rather than political bias. This blog has tended to concentrate on particular issues, e.g. gun control, epidemiology, climate change, etc.
To start concentrating on the philosophical issues such as social constructionism and phenomenology would be a rather radical change in emphasis, and given Dr Lambert's background in mathematics, statistics, & computer sciences, probably not one he would be happy with.