It’s amazing what’s not apparent when you cover your eyes with an agenda.
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Actually, what’s apparent is that a system of training which is designed to generate ideologically-disciplined thinkers (“professional” scientists) should be expected to also generate things like scientific consensus. Where is the mistake in the logic? What I suspect is that the people here don’t truly understand what a “professional” actually is. Here’s a clue: It’s somebody who is trained to think within a strictly defined cognitive box.
Here’s another important clue: The notion of scientist clashes with the notion of professional in a few very important ways.
What you excerpted had zero to do with global warming, it had to do with an issue of disputing consensus. Now does he believe that all of science is wrong about everything that large numbers agree on, and only agree because they are ass kissers, or is it just this one topic that he takes issue with regarding a consensus? That isn’t remotely clear. And also you mentioned a consensus of Amazon readers liking it (the book), so I’m guessing the idea of a consensus isn’t entirely bothersome.
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It takes a specialist to imagine that we can break all of reality up into little pieces, and none of them have any influence upon each other.
From what I can tell thus far, his claims affect basically all science PhD programs.
The mistake is in the premise, as with most agenda driven arguments.
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Except that still doesn’t answer the question, not even at 5%. All it says it that 700 people had a consensus that they disagree with a consensus (or consensus in general) and somehow I feel like I’m watching an episode of the Kids in the hall.
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If this is not about me, then why am I still the subject of your comments? I am just the person pointing you to Jeff Schmidt’s critique. He’s the one explaining exactly how the PhD program manufactures consensus. Perhaps you should be ad hominem’ing him …
BTW: We could alternatively talk about the claims being made. That would probably be more in line with critical thinking on this subject.
You’ve drastically misunderstood his thesis. The critique pertains to the system of education. Manufactured consensus is an implication of his critique.
It still doesn’t answer what the opinion is on global warming. Now if you want to argue that all science is crap because of the education, then fine, just say it, or say something directly as to what the point is. Criticizing education and consensus may have a point, but we’re not getting to that point, other than that you are unhappy with the way things are now and it’s almost non sequitur in the context of the article, unless you want to argue that you have no opinion because you don’t believe in opinions in general. That’s what I’m getting out of this.
It has nothing to do with global warming, it’s setting up innuendo without having to argue a point, know what I mean?
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Manufactured by whom? From what seems to be generally available on the subject, Schmidt is talking about how research programs have been corrupted through monied interests, which can be a real problem. But here we’re talking about global warming. There are very wealthy parties with a strong interest in disputing the current consensus, and very little interested in supporting it; some give idle talk of what governments could get out of fighting AGW, but none have actually proven eager for it.
So briging up such corruption would seem at best irrelevent to this case, at worst the common but reversed portrayal of what position is being held up by financial backing alone. Does Schmidt actually talk about global warming at all? Because if not, it’s hard to see any reason to bring him up save obsession.
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I hate to repeat myself
No you don’t, I’m 95% sure of that.
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As others point out, Seth’s argument is interesting but ultimately does not explain uncertainty. It just groups together sciencey things with the same uncertainty and then asks, 'See, you accept these, why not that?"
For me, the key to understanding uncertainty is through the construct of multiple time lines. Given what we know about what causes climate change, if 100 time lines spiraled off from the beginning of the Industrial Age, all ending up with the same amount of climate change, in only 5 of those time lines would the change have occurred completely naturally.
But I think for many detractors, it’s not that climate scientists admit to a 5% uncertainty, it’s that the detractors don’t believe the uncertainties have been calculated correctly. I will at least give them that much benefit of the doubt.
Jeff Schmidt is actually just the latest to critique higher education. Before him was Fred Hoyle and Peter Woit, among others, who have made corroborating remarks to the effect that there are problems with our scientific theories that originate in how we train science PhD’s.
The fact is that the PhD program is generally designed to create “professionals”. A professional is an ideologically obedient thinker who will work on assigned problems within large institutions. Professionals do not question the paradigm. That is not “thinking like a scientist”. Questioning the parameters of the problem assigned is considered a political act. Professors keep tabs on their graduate students to ensure that they confine their discussions to the technical points. Jeff suggests that students who “get political” are simply purged from the PhD programs – either along the way, or at the very end, where they are conferred a master’s instead of a doctorate. The qualifying exam scores can be ignored, if necessary. The reason this system exists is in part because large organizations are not looking for independent mavericks who will stray off topic. There’s really not too much up to this point that should be controversial.
So, within that context, what is the meaning of this consensus and confidence which the public is told about day after day? We live in an era of Big Science. There are no more armies of “lone wolves” in science today being generated by our universities. All scientists are trained to fit into larger organizations, where they are expected to work on assigned problems that come with assigned ideologies. This training begins at the very start of the graduate program, and they live this reality to the day they receive their PhD. The large bulk of them will then go on to work in corporations, where they will continue to work within an assigned ideology.
The profound question which arises from Jeff’s book – but without him directly asking it – is: If the PhD’s who stop to think about what it is that they are memorizing are simply being booted from the programs, then isn’t the consensus just an artifact of this training?
This is not a very complicated question, and it’s a question which we better be sure to ask if we’re about to fiddle with our global economy or pump chemicals into our atmosphere. Are grad students actually allowed to disagree with the consensus, to begin with? If not, then the consensus is not the result of free will, as is generally assumed by the public. And what is being sold as consensus is really something very, very different.
There’s much, much more to this story that pertains to the roles of memorization and specialization (among others) in this process, but that is the shortened version.
Yeah, but if you give scientists an actual financial disincentive to disbelieve in global warming, what will the confidence level be?
He does state that, but PhD’s are generally trained to work within large organizations today. We don’t train PhD’s to go out and be all mavericky. We train them to be disciplined thinkers, so that they can effectively contribute to whatever organization they end up in. I’m not sure how to be more clear on this. It should be common sense really, and it’s an incredibly important point, but apparently very few people talk about it.
For example:
Beginning physics graduate students must devote an entire year or two
of their lives to homework. Indeed, the first part of physics
graduate school is well described as a boot camp based on homework.
One characteristic of any boot camp is that the subject matter the
instructors present in their day-to-day work is not really the main
thing they are teaching. Teaching the subject matter is certainly one
goal, but it is not the main one. In military boot camp, for example,
drill instructors make recruits spend large amounts of time learning
to dress to regulation, march in precise formation, chant ditties,
disassemble and reassemble rifles, carry heavy backpacks, and so on,
yet the main goal of all this is something much more profound: to
create soldiers who will follow orders, even to their deaths.
Similarly, the most apparent goal of graduate physics courses is to
indoctrinate the students into the dominant paradigms, or theoretical
frameworks, of physics. But the primary goal is to train physicists
who will maintain tremendous discipline on assigned problems.
(Jeff Schmidt, Disciplined Minds, p129)
So of course keeping on doing something nearly everyone says is causing serious problems is your default approach. It wouldn’t make sense to say, stop pumping out the gases that are being considered very hazardous until they’re established safe. You wouldn’t want to quit smoking until you were sure all the doctors who told you it was carcinogenic weren’t being overly conservative, right?
The problem isn’t that you’re not being clear on this, it’s that your argument doesn’t make sense. Ok, so there are problems with students being discouraged from questioning dominant paradigms, and maybe this has led to cases like string theory not being sufficiently questioned. But there is lots of support for people who question AGW, for what little they have found; and there is a huge risk from ignoring the problems nearly everyone has agreed exist.
And yet you advocate just that. Evidently you have some kind of assumption that the current model is almost surely one that would topple with a better PhD program, despite the fact that it has been withstanding constant criticism, and so care much more about the unsubstantiated idea that doing something would cripple the global economy. It simply doesn’t follow from what Schmidt says, which is why going on about him here is pure nonsense.
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It seems that not even 700+ researchers + Noam Chomsky can convince the people of BoingBoing to learn about the politicization of our PhD programs.
You’re hustling a Gish Gallop, please knock it off. Noam Chomsky agrees there’s too much institutional influence within PhD programs, but he also isn’t even remotely a climate change denier.
The failings of PhD programs is exactly why you don’t take seriously many scientists until their research has been rigorously peer-reviewed by a large number of other scientists so that cogs in their research can be found. If studies hold up after proper peer-review then we can make a reasonable assumption that the studies have value and can be used as precedent. That’s also very much how open source software works and that’s why openness and transparency is the best disinfectant to institutionalized decision-making.
That’s why climate scientists are continuing to study climate change. They all haven’t stopped and said it’s all settled and they know exactly how climate change is going to specifically affect the weather, sea levels, droughts, ice melt, etc.
The lie that climate change/impact deniers often propagate is that climate scientists refuse to even discuss climate change and global warning from a critical point of view anymore when that’s the furthest from the truth. There is ongoing, widespread research from climate scientists all over the world to continue to study climate change and bring new models forward for peer review.
On the other hand, you have fringe elements that manufacture consensus by positing fake peer-review and if they conduct real science they lose their funding from industry. Have you considered that’s what Jeff Schmidt (whom I know is who you are referencing with your Chomsky drivel) is also warning about? That if scientists don’t tow the industry line, they can get rejected? These industry-sponsored “think tanks” thrive on being closed and having a lack of transparency. Why would you give these people equal credence to 97% of the world’s climate scientists who mostly work in the open with full transparency and proper “open source” peer review?
It’s a great way to muddle the waters instead of focusing on real science, that’s for sure.
What do you propose is better than peer-reviewing each other? Just taking each other’s conjecture on things and calling that science?
Bringing up Noam Chomsky in such a way was a ridiculous blunder on your part. Here’s Noam on climate change:
Synopsis:
" … In this sixth video in the series “Peak Oil and a Changing Climate” from The Nation and On The Earth Productions, linguist, philosopher and political activist Noam Chomsky talks about the Chamber of Commerce, the American Petroleum Institute and other business lobbies enthusiastically carrying out campaigns “to try and convince the population that global warming is a liberal hoax.” According to Chomsky, this massive public relations campaign has succeeded in leading a good portion of the population into doubting the human causes of global warming.
Known for his criticism of the media, Chomsky doesn’t hold back in this clip, laying blame on mainstream media outlets such as the New York Times, which will run frontpage articles on what meteorologists think about global warming. “Meteorologists are pretty faces reading scripts telling you whether it’s going to rain tomorrow,” Chomsky says. “What do they have to say any more than your barber?” All this is part of the media’s pursuit of “fabled objectivity.”
Of particular concern for Chomsky is the atmosphere of anger, fear and hostility that currently reigns in America. The public’s hatred of Democrats, Republicans, big business and banks and the public’s distrust of scientists all lead to general disregard for the findings of “pointy-headed elitists.” The 2010 elections could be interpreted as a “death knell for the species” because most of the new Republicans in Congress are global warming deniers. “If this was happening in some small country,” Chomsky concludes, “it wouldn’t matter much. But when it’s happening in the richest, most powerful country in the world, it’s a danger to the survival of the species.”
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Climatology is interdisciplinary. So while no one scientist can know all the evidence in all the branches of it, no one discipline’s attitudes can shape it. If someone is publishing studies of ancient climate, or publishing models of it, they’re going to attract interest from physicists, ecologists, archaeologists, historians, and so on.
“We don’t train PhD’s to …” “We train them to…”
Who is this “we” you refer to? Do you train them?
Between you and I, i can safely say that I don’t train PhDs at all, although some of my best friends are PhDs.
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“95% certain” also means that there is a statistically significant amount of doubt.
(I kid. Seriously: I’m kidding!)
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