Except that vaccines are a precautionary measure against known and well-documented risks. Unless there is actual evidence of risk from the vaccinations themselves, “precautionary principle” actually supports the pro-vaccination side of the debate.
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Re: “Good thing you can use empirical observations to check and refine different models, see to what extent the results depend on the particulars of the assumptions, and see whether predictions are being corroborated. Which shows the objection “we don’t understand sunspots so how can we trust modeling the planet we live on” is really and completely beside the point.”
Yes, but let’s not oversimplify what is actually happening with ad hoc modeling today, in practice. Unfortunately, when it comes to phenomena like the Sun, the empirical approach can become constrained by our observational capabilities. And more often than not, what happens in practice is that scientists look to the scientific framework – the paradigm itself – in order to create additional techniques for measurement. And so, what one person who accepts the assumptions and claims might call “empirical” evidence, in truth, now becomes a form of ideology for somebody else who doesn’t, since in due time, more and more systems of measurement which necessarily depend upon the original assumptions build upon this already speculative structure.
We can now see this pattern in many of our most speculative sciences – in particular, cosmology and astrophysics. Notice that even though parallax only works to 1% the diameter of the Milky Way, that rarely stops people from speaking – with confidence – of distances many orders of magnitude further than this.
Humans did not mirror nature when they broke the sciences into specialties. Specialization can actually interfere with the comprehension of whole systems (aka interdisciplinary synthesis). It is a feature of professionalism – a concept which science has borrowed from the corporate world. Specialization is popular today for the very reason that scientists are expected to work for large institutions like governments, universities and corporations.
That’s an important point to realize, because in the world of science, a misunderstanding within the solar sciences or in astrophysics can indeed have an incredible impact upon the climate models. There is no barrier which separates these two types of models, in terms of the physics. After all, our planet exists within the Sun’s atmosphere. It is not at all some abstract exercise to say that a failure to understand what is accelerating the solar wind should affect our confidence within the climate models – reason being that that failure represents an unknown which envelopes our own planet. It takes an enormous amount of energy to accelerate those particles, and our planet rests within that unknown energy. So, what is the cause? If you can’t answer that, then you can no more put a box around it, and declare that it cannot possibly be influencing the planet’s climate in either a direct or even incredibly indirect manner, through some far larger misunderstanding about how the universe works.
Mistakes in models trickle through the artificial walls of our disciplines in ways which we cannot foresee.
How about skeptical that Monsanto is thorough and ethical in testing?
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Sorry, no. When a model based on known principles matches known observations about heating that applies to the troposphere more than the stratosphere, it more or less confirms mysterious effects in space as not important. I know you really like to bring up the coronal inversion and other plasma physics favorites, but we don’t actually have to put all terrestrial science on hold for them, because it doesn’t change our observations of what applies here.
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All belief requires denial. To believe in Jesus, you’re supposed to deny Vishnu, Odin, Zeus, and Ah-Puch. To be a nativist conservative, you need to deny the existence of racism, evolution, that slavery caused the American Civil War etc etc.
Where things have gotten weird is that the anti-GMO movement seems to becoming part of the conspiracy subculture that believes in “chemtrails,” vaccines cause autism (and now so do GMOs), and Morgellons “disease.”:
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As as oft been said, we’re not rational creatures, we’re rationalizing creatures.
Science is all well and good, but let’s be honest, it’s simply a tool to advance my preferred policies, which are based on my ethics and my morality.
Now, I like to think of myself as rational, so on those issues where I disagree with science, I’ll simply say we haven’t collected enough data, or I’ll question the scientists motives based on their employer or I’ll invoke the precautionary principle, which can almost always be used to support either side.
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Actually, not everything can be scientific, while the scientific method is simple enough, being rigorous is hard, that’s why peer review is important. And the idea of “laboratories filled with vats and lab coats” is, I suspect you know, a parody at best.
So what you boil the argument down to is, also at best, a straw man.
Very silly indeed.
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Re: “Sorry, no. When a model based on known principles matches known observations about heating that applies to the troposphere more than the stratosphere, it more or less confirms mysterious effects in space as not important.”
You seem to be attempting to minimize the fact that new important questions are increasingly being asked with regards to Earth’s interaction with space. Processes which have traditionally been assumed to simply be mostly terrestrial or subterranean in origin – like lightning and earthquakes – are currently under investigation as having cosmic origins. We’ve only recently, for instance, conclusively observed lightning to space (sprites), and we can already see evidence for some sort of connection between the Van Allen radiation belts and lightning. There’s a book up on Amazon now titled Ionospheric Precursors of Earthquakes, and the summary reads:
The book aims to explain the variations of near-Earth plasma observed
over seismically active areas several days/hours before strong seismic
shocks. It demonstrates how seismo-ionospheric coupling is part of
the global electric circuit and shows that the anomalous electric
field appearing in active seismic areas is the main carrier of
information from the earth into the ionosphere.
Rather than pretend we already know where this train is heading, we’d be very, very wise to encourage scientists to explore the Earth-space connections.
I know that Democrats and environmentally-conscious folk desperately want to align on this issue, but there exists a very real threat that over just one or two decades, these groups could find themselves arguing positions which defy new scientific findings, in order to justify a prior, premature commitment to extraordinarily unprecedented expenditures. If our markets are indeed transformed to accommodate the existing models, then dramatic changes to these models in light of new findings will not just upend the old models, but also millions of peoples’ livelihoods. Every single one of those people will feel inclined and even justified in arguing against the new data, and as easy as that, Democrats can become the new “anti-science” party.
From a 2011 conference, reviewed at http://www.thegwpf.org/the-sun-weather-relationship-is-becoming-increasingly-important/ …
Dr Hari Om Vats of the Physical Research Laboratory in India said at
the conference, “The Sun-weather relationship is becoming increasingly
important. It is true that our understanding of the Sun and solar
processes has increased dramatically during recent years, however, it
is realised that the Sun affects the Earth’s environment [in] a much
more complicated manner than we had imagined.”
Note that measurements which might exclude electric joule heating have yet to even be taken. Mr Wizard demonstrated the principle when he cooked a hot dog by plugging it into the wall. To what extent does this form of energy play a role in heating the Earth? We do not yet actually know. Why does it matter? Because, despite the misleading label, the “solar wind” is not a “wind” at all – but rather a flow of charged particles which continues to accelerate far from the source (very much unlike the mechanical idea of wind).
See the paper titled “Possible reasons for underestimating Joule heating in global models: E-field variability, spatial resolution and vertical velocity”, which states …
It is important to understand Joule heating because it can
significantly change the temperature structure, atmosphere composition
and electron density … It is thought that many coupled
ionosphere-thermosphere models underestimate Joule heating because the
spatial and temporal variability of the ionospheric electric field is
not totally captured within global models.
Re: “I know you really like to bring up the coronal inversion and other plasma physics favorites, but we don’t actually have to put all terrestrial science on hold for them, because it doesn’t change our observations of what applies here.”
Let’s get real here: We’re talking about the expenditure of many trillions of dollars. Why in the world would somebody argue against rigor within the context of the most expensive scientific endeavor in the history of mankind?
Space is pretty much plasma in every direction. The charge density changes from the heliosphere to interstellar space, but everywhere we’ve sent probes, they’ve run into charged particles. The reason this matters is because this presents a philosophical challenge to the notion that the objects in space are necessarily electrically disconnected. The models which are currently in fashion (MHD) propose that the plasma basically behaves as a fluid or gas, but that distinguishes those models from our observations of laboratory plasmas and even consumer products (like fluorescent bulbs and neon signs) – which can also and alternatively exhibit dynamic and electromagnetic properties. We don’t have to go very far from the surface of the Earth to observe regions of space where these idealistic MHD models are not applicable. And yet, we see astrophysicists liberally applying them to just about everything they see in space. There has been a scientific debate for more than four decades now about how these plasmas are being modeled.
See “Why Space Physics Need to Go Beyond the MHD Box” and “Importance of Electric Fields in Modeling Space Plasmas” by George K Parks.
The implications of these approximations extend far beyond the narrow discipline of plasma physics. Given that 99%+ of what we observe with our telescopes is actually matter in the plasma state, it’s easy to see how entire disciplines of study – like climatology and cosmology – can actually hinge on how plasmas are modeled. What we are all being told to accept – without questions – is that cosmic plasmas behave in ways which fundamentally differ from our observations of laboratory plasmas. The consistent refusal to acknowledge the arguments against that ideology within the astrophysical discipline defies the “scientific attitude” which the public imagines is in play. From “Science Education and Scientific Attitudes” …
The current set of scientific attitudes of objectivity,
open-mindedness, unbiassedness, curiosity, suspended judgement,
critical mindedness, and rationality has evolved from a systematic
identification of scientific norms and values … Is it not possible
that these scientific attitudes have been popularised and then reified
as a set of ideal attitudes but in reality is not often found in
actual scientific practices? The following studies raise serious
doubts about the scientists’ adherence to institutional imperatives
…
The climate models do not escape this debate over the plasma physics models and the Earth-space connection, because plasmas represent a physical mechanism which are already known to routinely pump energy from the magnetosphere into the ionosphere-thermosphere system. From the electric joule paper …
During the January 1997 magnetic cloud event, 47% of the solar wind
energy was deposited in the form of Joule heating, while 22% was in
the form of particle heating.
Be careful what you wish for. If you get your consensus, you may in very short order find that your consensus subsequently defies observations. After all, not everybody at NASA is on board with AGW.
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I think this is the most important omission in the article. The first response to any claim of hypocrisy is to determine whether the two equivalents are indeed equivalent. In this case, no. One is a realm of technological development, and another is a realm of discovering and defining a phenomenon. These are very different parts of the big umbrella of “Science”. One can see the false equivalence here without even invoking the more complex and murky social and economic considerations. In this case, making the defense against the hypocrisy label rest on such a difficult-to-encapsulate argument actually weakens it and distracts from the more concrete response.
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Where things have gotten weird is that [a small, fringe, loud, decidedly un-dedicated-to-scientific-rigour element that nonetheless serves as a convenient strawman to weaken some real and reasonable concerns that have been raised about a new technology, but I guess could be considered part of] the anti-GMO movement seems to becoming part of the conspiracy subculture that believes in…
FTFY
Pretty much the same theme applies with climate change.
Science can tell us that the world is warming. Science can offer some fairly well documented and tested reasons why.
But what science cannot do is decide what should be done about it, whose lifestyles are going to have to change, and who is going to foot the bill.
Like it or not these are all political decisions, and get decided by politicians and those who (in some countries) get to elect them.
“We need to enact policy X because … science!!!” is not going to be very successful until a majority of those affected are convinced they will be better off with policy X than without it.
A lot of people who don’t like Exxon don’t much like Pfizer or Monsanto either. Is this a surprise in some way??
Again, no. All that on your pet theory about space, and you didn’t touch what I said, which is that we don’t need to worry about it because the global warming models we have now are substantially in agreement with observation. Sure, there’s some uncertainty about certain factors and in theory plasma energy transfer could be one of them, but we’ve already discovered enough to be sure they don’t change the basic result.
Pretending otherwise, that results that allow uncertainty can never be considered trustworthy, is a disingenuous take. I’m not sure whether you’re doing it to deny the well-established results, or just to shoe your favorite astrophysics into a separate question; but talking about global warming as if it were a purely theoretical result of models is completely failing to recognize why nearly everyone believes in it.
Not impressed, any more than I am by any of the other denialists who seize up on a few inches as a way to dismiss the whole mile. And no, talking more about how great plasma physics is and how awful scientific institutions must be to neglect it in matters that don’t even depend on it does not help.
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It’s not in any sense a “strawman,” it’s that the antiGMO movement is stuck literally in the same place it was 30 years ago. Because even the mainstream groups are repeating the same urban legends for decades, and their beliefs have not changed to include any new information. So of course that leaves the door wide open to people who are whackos with their own myths and fairy tales. They see the opportunity to push their beliefs among a audience that is susceptible to their conspiracy theories, and you can connect the dots for yourself.
And there’s no pushback against the conspiracy nuts because that would be too much actual work as well as a fundamental overhaul of the 20 year old stuff that Greenpeace peddles. So it’s not as if we see any effort to dissociate antiGMO activism from the antivaxxers or chemtrails or raw milk crowd nor do we see anyone on forums like this telling them to have a tall cold glass of STFU.
For an example of people who feel they are qualified to opine on the hazards of science, see the recent post on gene patents, which had major errors from start to finish. Not that I want to dispute the author’s conclusions, but they felt entitled to have an opinion on a fairly technical subject. However, the area of BRCA gene patents has changed little in the last 15 years, so the author tried to write authoritatively on a subject where they have not been paying attention for the last 15 years. So it’s not as if they failed to keep abreast of some recent development - they had never been following this subject for the last 15 years.
This is par for a lot of “science” writing on biology. It just ends up referencing something 20 years old from Greenpeace, or a homeopathy site, or a conspiracy web site. This would not be acceptable for someone trying to write about network security, but it’s just taken for granted in biology.
fair enough. I certainly haven’t taken stock of the wacko-to-informed-and-resonable ratio within the antiGMO movement, or the broader “Let’s be careful with GMO” movement. I guess with Dr. Oz doing a 2 parter on what foods to keep your family away from, “small” and “fringe” were a little hastily applied on my part. Movements do seem to have a difficult time doing this crucial dissociation, and perhaps it’s a harder task than we know. It begs the interesting question of how much responsibility the sane voices on either “side” of an argument have to tame the more fundamental elements of those who happen to fall closer to their conclusions than the others.
They’re ad hoc models. That’s the point: They are fit to the observations. There are sufficient free variables to simply fit these models to observations within the confines of the accepted scientific framework(s). That unfortunately isn’t the same as saying that causation has been definitively established, since causation does not exist within the confines of any particular scientific framework. Causation pertains to reality, which is a more fundamental concept than any scientific paradigm.
It’s the causation that we care about – not the fact that we can create models which exhibit some apparent correlation to observations, after certain free variables have been fixed, based upon assumptions about how the universe and climate work.
BTW: I know that Bayes’ Theorem is really in vogue right now, and is enjoying enormous success, but there are certain aspects of science which do not get encoded into our data fitting algorithms. There are philosophical caveats which never go away. The philosophical problem of unconceived alternatives cannot be solved with any algorithm, to date.
See the paper on electric joule heating. The data has clearly not been taken. You’re being dismissive about the expenditure of many tens of trillions of dollars. It’s reckless. You can data-fit all day long, but if you don’t collect all of the data, then you’re steering the models.
It’s not exactly clear what you’re referring to, but the history of the theory fares no better. Carl Sagan’s “Super Greenhouse Theory” managed to survive discrepant data from four separate probes which descended through Venus’ atmosphere – all four of which showed very large infrared fluxes upwards from the surface of the planet. That would plainly suggest that the incredible temperatures observed on Venus are – for whatever reason – originating from the planet’s surface. Of course, since these were not the results which were expected, all four separate datasets were thrown out as faulty. The desired conclusion was “forced”, regardless of the data …
The magnitudes of the corrections for both instruments are determined
by forcing agreement with a range of calculated net fluxes at one
altitude deep in the atmosphere, where the net flux must be small
because of the large density of CO2.
(This quote comes from one of two articles from Icarus magazine dated 1982 and 1985, the first by H.E. Revercomb, L.A. Sromovsky, and V.E. Suomi of the Space Science and Engineering Center, Univ. of Wisconsin at Madison, the second by the same three gentlemen along with R.W. Boese of NASA-Ames (Icarus 52, 279-300 and Icarus 61, 521-538)
Ted Holden poignantly remarked, “The idea that four separate instruments of two different sorts, three carried externally and one internally all telling the same story MIGHT possibly just be correct does not even occur to the scientists.”
In simple terms, it appears that we should be skeptical that Venus is actually in thermal equilibrium. It appears to be releasing more heat than it is taking in. Given that thermal equilibrium was assumed as a pre-requisite for Sagan’s Super Greenhouse Theory, the notion that Venus is some sort of example of what can happen to Earth should be viewed with some skepticism.
The greenhouse theory is definitely worth elaborating, but the mistake that has been made is to put so much money into this model and its “implications”, to the almost complete exclusion of competing ideas. This appears to be a pattern though which follows from how we train scientists today. The graduate programs tend to toss out those students who question the political framework within which they are assigned, for the very reason that this is what large organizations who hire scientists want.
And again all about space, and nothing about the most-studied planet in the universe. From this post, it seems like you are saying that:
- it is not remarkable that models should fit observations because they could be an ad hoc fit, even though measurements taken after the models were made are their best support;
- the evidence of anthropogenic global warming could be thrown into question looking at old data from Venus, even though more or less all modern discussion is based on countless observations and models of Earth;
- spending money on fighting global warming is a huge risk, so it wouldn’t hurt to wait until the whole solar system is understood to take action, even though there is a huge body of data suggesting that waiting is much more dangerous;
- nobody has put any work into alternatives to global warming, and large organizations don’t want scientists who will question things like that, even though there is a large amount of funding and publicity for think-tanks who do exactly that.
Very nice. I don’t know much about Hannes Alfvén beyond his opposition to standard cosmology, but I suspect his name deserves better than such disingenuity.
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To do that, you have to ignore the very basic fact that evidence-based decision-making has to take into account more than just scientific data.
Great article, and Maggie has put her finger on the crux of the issue in this quote. People often conflate scientific un/certainty and political un/certainty, but they’re two totally different things. Scientific certainty is not attainable on any issue; political certainty, on the other hand, can be attained provisionally–at least long enough to make policy. Scientific uncertainties are questions of knowledge; political uncertainties are questions of conviction. Values–voters’, lobbyists’, politicians’, etc.–have to be attached to a technical argument before policy can be made from it.
We forget this distinction for a lot of reasons but chief among them is laziness; if we present political uncertainty as automatically reduced when scientific uncertainty is reduced, if we present policy as an extension of science, then we can push our tough political choices off onto the shoulders of technical experts.
This is a really old problem, and I’m glad Maggie and Alice Bell are calling attention to it. I get into this question in some depth in my new book Scientists as Prophets: A Rhetorical Genealogy (Oxford, July 2013): http://www.amazon.com/Scientists-Prophets-Rhetorical-Lynda-Walsh/dp/0199857113 The upshot: Western democracies have always left a “bully pulpit” open for prophets to manufacture certainty for them in times of crisis: now, we frequently expect science advisers to play that prophetic role for us.
If you think there’s a significant chance that existing GM foods will cause health problems for people who eat them, I think there’s enough evidence to the contrary that this is a fairly anti-science position, not unlike believing that vaccines cause developmental problems like autism. On the other hand, my impression is that the science on their impact on ecosystems should they escape into the wild is less certain, and there’s nothing anti-science about worrying that they’ll give corporations that have the patents too much control over the business side of farming.
