Tag: science

Fred on the limits of human knowledge

And the utter implausibility of evolution by natural selection, among other things:

Humans today are a puffed-up and overconfident species. We know everything, we believe, or shortly will. We have a sense of near-omniscience equaled only by that of teen-agers. For do we not have have smart phones and Mars landers and PET scans, and do we not all speak wisely of DNA? We are, if not gods, at least godlings on the way up. If you don’t believe this, just ask us.

It was not always so. A thousand years ago, mankind cast a small shadow on the earth and lived in a dark and mysterious world. Little was known, about anything. Gods of countless sorts walked the earth. Spirits inhabited sacred groves. Lightning, the moon, the stars were…what? We had no idea. This brought humility.

We now believe that that nothing is or can be beyond our powers. A contemplative skeptic might advert to a few remaining details: We don´t know where we came from, why we are here, where “here” is, where we are going, or what we ought to do. These are minor questions. We only think about them when we wake up at three a.m. and remember that we are not permanent. We are kidding ourselves.

When people become accustomed to things that make no sense, they begin to seem to. Though we no longer notice it as we peck at tablet computers and listen to droning lowbrow shows about the conquest of nature, we still live in a weird and inexplicable universe, an apparently unending emptiness speckled with sparks of hydrogen fire. It is wicked mysterious. More things in heaven and earth, indeed.

We are not as wise as we think. I reiterate Fred´s Principle: The smartest of a large number of hamsters is still a hamster.

It’s a long one. Read the whole thing. It encapsulates why Darwinism, even in its neo-synthesized form, is caught up in crisis and is being increasingly rejected as unconvincing pseudo-science by the secular and the religious alike.

An honest secularist

It’s always interesting to read David Berlinski’s acerbic comments, since his secularist criticism of scientists and professional atheists not only parallels my own, but tends to confound those who believe all secularists should shut up, stop thinking, and obediently follow the instructions of their self-appointed superiors. This interview is amusingly unprofessional, as the interviewer seems to think that he is debating Berlinski rather than interviewing him, but as you can see, the more fool he:

Why do you think the debate about Darwin’s theory of evolution has taken on such a nasty turn? 

Nasty, eh? If so, the nastiness is not entirely
ecumenical. As far as I can tell, only one side is now occupying the
gutter, even though the gutter is, as gutters generally are, more than
spacious enough for two. But you raise a good question. Why are
Darwinian biologists so outraged? Like the San Andreas fault, the
indignation conspicuous at blogs such as The Panda’s Thumb or Talk Reason is now visible from outer space.

There is a lot at stake, obviously. Money, prestige, power, influence –
they all play a role. Darwinism is an ideological system and when such
systems come under threat, their supporters react in predictable ways.
Freedom of thought very often appears as an inconvenience to those with a
position to protect. Look at the attempts made to humiliate Rick
Sternberg at the Smithsonian Institute, or the campaign now underway to
do the same thing to Guillermo Gonzalez at Iowa State. There is nothing
surprising in all this. I myself believe that the world would be
suitably improved if those with whom I disagreed were simply to shut up.
What is curious is how quickly the Darwinian establishment has begun to
appear vulnerable …. 
 

Not to scientists …

No, perhaps not. But to everyone else. Consider the latest Pew poll. “Two-thirds of Americans,” the New York Times
reported, “say that creationism should be taught alongside evolution in
public schools.” But even among those quite persuaded of Darwin’s
theory, “18 percent said that evolution was ‘guided by a supreme
being.’” Now these are astonishing figures. They represent an authentic
popular revolt against elite thought. I cannot remember anything like
it. The fact that so many Darwinian biologists are utterly tone-deaf
when it comes to debate has hardly helped their case. It is no small
thing to have appeared before the American public in a way that suggests
both illimitable arrogance and scientific insecurity.

How would you react to the argument that Dawkins has made that any form of religion that goes beyond the scientific facts about the universe really represents a form of brainwashing …

He’s probably right. Most education is a form of brainwashing – so much better in French, by the way, lavage de cerveau. Give a child to the Jesuits, they say, and ten years later the man will cringe when he spots the Cross. But look, ten years or so spent studying physics is a pretty effective form of brainwashing as well. You emerge into the daylight blinking weakly and talking about an endless number of universes stacked on top of one another like an old-fashioned Maine pancake breakfast. Or you start babbling inanely about how meaningless the universe is. But if you ask me just who is the more credulous, the more suggestible, the dopier, the more perfectly prepared to convey absurdity to an almost inconceivable pitch of personal enthusiasm – a well-trained Jesuit or a Ph.D. in quantum physics, I’ll go with the physicist every time. There is nothing these people won’t believe. No wonder used-car salesmen love them. Biologists are, of course, worse. Tell them that in the future Richard Dawkins is going to conduct a personal invasion of Hell in order to roust the creationists, and The Panda’s Thumb will at once start vibrating with ticket sales.

Perhaps this isn’t the most productive of topics to pursue …

Well, no, it’s not productive if you’re trying to convince everyone that biologists can be relied upon because physicists have very accurate models, anyhow. This post brought to you on the basis of John C. Wright’s recommendation.

Evidence for nature

It appears “gayface” is a legitimate scientific concept.

Previous studies have shown that homosexual men differ from heterosexual men in several somatic traits and lay people accurately attribute sexual orientation based on facial images. Thus, we may predict that morphological differences between faces of homosexual and heterosexual individuals can cue to sexual orientation. The main aim of this study was to test for possible differences in facial shape between heterosexual and homosexual men. Further, we tested whether self-reported sexual orientation correlated with sexual orientation and masculinity-femininity attributed from facial images by independent raters. In Study 1, we used geometric morphometrics to test for differences in facial shape between homosexual and heterosexual men. The analysis revealed significant shape differences in faces of heterosexual and homosexual men. Homosexual men showed relatively wider and shorter faces, smaller and shorter noses, and rather massive and more rounded jaws, resulting in a mosaic of both feminine and masculine features.

If substantiated by further research, this would tend to suggest that homosexual orientation is not only a physical abnormality, but is at least potentially fixable with either genotherapy or prenatal treatment. And just as there are far fewer children with Downs Syndrome than there were prior to prenatal tests, it’s not hard to imagine that there will be even fewer homosexuals once the condition is more fully understood by medical science.

This, of course, would provoke the mother of all activist storms in the West. But that may not be particularly relevant, as in the East, it will be adopted as a matter of course.

Vaccines are raciss

Or perhaps it is only the viruses that discriminate on the nonexistent basis of “race”:

[T]he HPV subtypes included in the existing two HPV vaccines — Gardasil, developed by Merck, and Cervarix, made by GlaxoSmithKline — are most common among white women but are significantly less common in non-white women. Within Hoyo’s trial, 65% of white women with HPV had the subtypes known as 16 or 18 , while only 36% of African-American women did. That means African-American women are only half as likely to get the type of HPV against which the vaccine works.

The findings highlight the complex role that race plays in medicine, especially as genetic studies reveal more biological reasons behind why racial and ethnic groups may have different propensities for disease, and respond in varying ways to drugs. “We don’t like to admit that race and ethnicity count, but they certainly do in the distribution of infectious diseases,” says Dr. Arthur Caplan, a bioethicist at the University of Pennsylvania. “Not to sound like a dope, but when [race] matters it matters.”

HPV infection is hardly the first disease to be linked to race. Tay-Sach’s is more common in Ashkenazi Jews, sickle-cell anemia is found mostly in Mediterranean or African populations, and cystic fibrosis has a higher incidence among people with Irish or English ethnicity. But all of those conditions are driven by genetic mutations that can be detected through testing. What makes the HPV findings trickier is the fact that the vaccine is designed to protect women before they become infected, and there is no way to tell which strains a woman will get — except, as Hoyo’s findings suggest, by her race.

That suggests that medical predictions should be based on some type of racial profiling; is it ethical to recommend different vaccines for different women based on race?

It’s fascinating that the magical belief in the nonexistence of something that is materially and scientifically observable appears to be on the verge of being elevated to an ethical principle that trumps medical science.

We already know that this magical belief trumps statistical correlation. But it is remarkable to observe that some of those who otherwise claim to value science uber alles should reveal themselves to have elevated their fixed ideas on human genetic and cultural sameness to a state of ethical priority.

Of course, this is very dangerous ground for the equalitarians. Once one admits that different racial and ethnic groups not only exist, but have different propensities for disease, it becomes considerably harder to deny that both logic and history dictate that different human population groups have different propensities for things like crime and building, maintaining, and participating in advanced civilizations.

Dark matter is still dark vapor

It proved impossible not to laugh at Bad Astronomy in light of the fact that actual scientific experiments are proving the science skeptic, and not the so-called astronomer, correct.  Back in 2008, the intrepid space expert wrote: 

“I happened to notice I was getting some traffic sent my way from Voxday,
an ultraconservative blogger who has a history of saying ridiculous
things — sometimes so ridiculous it’s indistinguishable from satire.
Unfortunately, of course, willful ignorance has quite an audience these
days, and just in case it’s not satire, I decided to reply….

“Your conclusions are way off the mark, for two reasons: you
misinterpreted/misunderstood what scientists did, and then you
misapplied it.

“First, 5% of the Universe is normal matter and energy. About 23% or
so is dark matter. While we don’t know precisely what it’s made of, its
existence has been conclusively proven, and it was using scientific
methods that proved it (its existence was speculated due to odd motions
of galaxies, its impact on observations predicted and then confirmed).”

Needless to say, I was unintimidated by the conventional “you just don’t understand sicence” response to which insecure scientists usually retreat when those they consider to be outside the secular priesthood dare to approach the sacred mysteries they reserve for themselves. How dare anyone point out the lack of evidence for their assumptions! After all, the consensus is settled and the matter is therefore conclusively proven!

At the time I wrote: “I do so enjoy seeing their unmitigated faith in scientific snapshots
landing the stupidly arrogant scientific faithful on their asses yet
again. What passes for science these days is beginning to sound like a
Monty Python skit:

“Dark Matter and Dark Energy…Dark Matter
and Dark Energy…. Our two explanations are Dark Matter and Dark
Energy…and Dark Vapor…. Our three explanations are Dark Matter, and
Dark Energy, and Dark Vapor…and an almost fanatical devotion to Karl
Popper…. Our four…no… Amongst our explanations are such elements
as Dark Matter, Dark Energy…. I’ll come in again.”

But it gets better, thanks to science:

A US team that claims to have built the world’s most sensitive dark matter detector has completed its first data run without seeing any sign of the stuff.

In a webcast presentation today at the Sanford Underground Laboratory in Lead, South Dakota, physicists working on the Large Underground Xenon (LUX) experiment said they had seen nothing statistically compelling in 110 days of data-taking. “We find absolutely no events consistent with any kind of dark matter,” says LUX co-spokesman Rick Gaitskell, a physicist at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island.

Physicists know from astronomical observations that 85% of the Universe’s matter is dark, making itself known only through its gravitational pull on conventional matter. Some think it may also engage in weak but detectable collisions with ordinary matter, and several direct detection experiments have reported tantalizing hints of these candidate dark matter particles, known as WIMPs (Weakly Interacting Massive Particles). Gaitskell says that it is now overwhelmingly likely that earlier sightings were statistical fluctuations.

Now, with whose hypothesis are the results of this experiment consistent? The astronomer who knows, he just knows, that dark matter exists? Or the skeptic who, while open to the possibility that said material exists, understands the probability is that dark matter is nothing more than a mathematical fudge factor that allows the equations required by the current physics paradigm to balance properly?

Nor is this the first time the hunt for dark matter has failed since 2008. “In 2011, XENON-100 also saw no evidence for dark matter,
but had been criticized for not being sensitive enough to very low-mass
dark matter particles tentatively reported by other experiments. LUX
has five times the sensitivity of XENON-100 in the low-mass realm, which
should allay those concerns, says Gaitskell.”

Bad Astronomy has made a fundamental logical error that is increasingly common in scientistry, which is to adopt a scientific paradigm, accept a theory that is supported by mathematical models rather than by actual scientody, and then assume that the material evidence will eventually be found to support the model. But there are three potential problems there. If there are any flaws in the paradigm, the theory, or the model, then the evidence will not be found.

I don’t know if any of those three things are flawed, as I have neither the training nor the level of interest to delve into the matter in sufficient detail. But logic, combined with a knowledge of scientific history, is sufficient to conclude that if the predictive model repeatedly fails, there is, at the very least, a possibility that there is a mistake in the assumptions somewhere between the overall paradigm and the specific predictive model upon which the experiment is based.

Bad Astronomy’s unseemly scientific arrogance not only invites public humiliation, but indicates an inability to learn from the mistakes of past scientists. After all, it wasn’t all that long ago that scientists were certain about the existence of luminiferous aether. It hardly seems impossible that one day, future Bad Astronomy types will attempt to disavow the notion that real scientists ever believed in anything so obviously nonsensical as “dark matter”.

A wiser professional cosmologist wrote the following on Slashdot:

“Any of this could be down to a modification of gravity. We know the
nature of gravity roughly up to the position of the Voyager craft —
call it 300AU to be generous. We are extrapolating that a thousand times
to get to galactic scales, a million times to get to cluster scales,
and a thousand million times to get to cosmological scales, all without
evidence. Of course, without a better theory to replace relativity, it’s
the best we can do, so we do it – but don’t try and claim that
instruments have detected that it is matter (they haven’t), nor that we
are wedded to particulate dark matter.”

UPDATE: A physicist bitch-slaps Phil Plait aka Bad Astronomy in the comments:

“Most scientists do not believe the current model of the universe or anything about it is proven.
That’s Plait’s opinion, and it’s frankly astonishing that anyone with a
PhD from a respectable university would make such a plainly stupid and
irresponsible statement. Plait is grossly misstating the situation, and
his statements do not represent the views of most particle
physicists / cosmologists, who willingly distinguish between that for
which there is ample evidence, that for which there are problems, and
that for which there is proof (nothing).”

Yeah, that’s what she said….

In defense of Intelligent Design

While I am an evolutionary skeptic rather than an Intelligent Design advocate, (by which I mean that I am skeptical that the Theorum of Evolution by Natural Selection as per the current Neo-Darwinian Synthesis is the correct factual explanation for the way in which one species is transformed into another), one thing that has always struck me as strange about the attempts of evolutionists to criticize the advocates of Intelligent Design as an alternative is that their criticisms were consistently irrelevant.

The various proposals of ID never struck me as markedly less falsifiable than those of TENS, considering how many tenets of TENS have been historically falsified and subsequently “revised”, to be polite. But not until I read Thomas Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions was I able to articulate what was bothering me about the common evolutionist criticisms of ID, which tend to revolve around ID not being a science because it is untestable and does not involve research, experimentation, and observation.

For example, the Union of Concerned Scientists explains why Intelligent Design is not science and attempts to refute what it describes as ID’s primary claims:

There is scientific controversy over evolution: There is no debate about evolution among the vast majority of scientists, and no credible alternative scientific theory exists. Debates within the community are about specific mechanisms within evolution, not whether evolution occurred.

Structures found in nature are too complex to have evolved step-by-step through natural selection [the concept of “irreducible complexity”]:  Natural selection does not require that all structures have the same function or even need to be functional at each step in the development of an organism.

Intelligent design is a scientific theory: A scientific theory is supported by extensive research and repeated experimentation and observation in the natural world. Unlike a true scientific theory, the existence of an “intelligent” agent can not be tested, nor is it falsifiable.

Intelligent design is based on the scientific method: Intelligent design might base its ideas on observations in the natural world, but it does not test them in the natural world, or attempt to develop mechanisms (such as natural selection) to explain their observations.

Setting aside the very arguable point of whether one can reasonably consider TENS a science under these parameters, when one reads how Kuhn describes the way in which one scientific paradigm gives way to another, it should be more than obvious that even if ID is complete and hopelessly incorrect, such criticisms are wholly misplaced and betray a basic failure to understand the philosophical foundations upon which all science rests.

In XII. The Resolution of Revolutions, Kuhn writes:

“Any new interpretation of nature, whether a discovery or a theory, emerges first in the mind of one or a few individuals. It is they who first learn to see science and the world differently, and their ability to make the transition is facilitated by two circumstances that are not common to most other members of their profession. Invariably their attention has been intensely concentrated upon the crisis-provoking problems; usually, in addition, they are men so young or so new to the crisis-ridden field that practice has committed them less deeply than most of their contemporaries to the world view and rules determined by the old paradigm. How are they able, what must they do, to convert the entire profession or the relevant professional subgroup to their way of seeing science and the world? What causes the group to abandon one tradition of normal research in favor of another?

“To see the urgency of those questions, remember that they are the only reconstructions the historian can supply for the philosopher’s inquiry about the testing, verification, or falsification of established scientific theories. In so far as he is engaged in normal science, the research worker is a solver of puzzles, not a tester of paradigms. Though he may, during the search for a particular puzzle’s solution, try out a number of alternative approaches, rejecting those that fail to yield the desired result, he is not testing the paradigm when he does so. Instead he is like the chess player who, with a problem stated and the board physically or mentally before him, tries out various alternative moves in the search for a solution. These trial attempts, whether by the chess player or by the scientist, are trials only of themselves, not of the rules of the game. They are possible only so long as the paradigm itself is taken for granted. Therefore, paradigm-testing occurs only after persistent failure to solve a noteworthy puzzle has given rise to crisis. And even then it occurs only after the sense of crisis has evoked an alternate candidate for paradigm. In the sciences the testing situation never consists, aspuzzle-solving does, simply in the comparison of a single paradigm with nature. Instead, testing occurs as part of the competition between two rival paradigms for the allegiance of the scientific community.”

As puzzle solvers wholly engrossed in the existing paradigm, biologists and evolutionists are the very last people that we should expect to either have a reasonable perspective on the limits of their consensus paradigm or to be able to appreciate the potential superiority of the new one.

Intelligent design represents a potential new paradigm, not a better way of solving the existing puzzles under the current paradigm. To expect it to do so is irrational. And while it may be true that biologists are not yet cognizant of the second crisis of Darwin, the fact is that TENS is observably awful at the sort of puzzle-solving that most more reputable sciences reliably deliver.  As per Kuhn, if ID ever begins to show a superior ability to solve the puzzles that TENS can’t, then and only then should we expect to see its advocates begin to abandon the old paradigm in favor of the new one.

None of this should be taken as a statement that I am an advocate of Intelligent Design. I am not; I have not considered the matter in any significant detail and I see little reason to do so unless and until it can solve some of the problems that TENS cannot. But anyone with even a reasonable amount of intellectual honesty should resist the urge to dismiss a proposed new paradigm for reasons that cannot possibly be considered relevant to the matter.

“Science has lost its way”

At this rate, the science fetishists who lob accusations of “anti-science” at everyone who notices the dishonesty, fraud, and shameless rent-seeking in modern professional science are going to find themselves at war with the entire world. One can hardly describe the Los Angeles Times as an organization of Bible-thumping Republicans who hate science because they believe humans rode dinosaurs.

In today’s world, brimful as it is with opinion and falsehoods masquerading as facts, you’d think the one place you can depend on for verifiable facts is science.

You’d be wrong. Many billions of dollars’ worth of wrong.

A few years ago, scientists at the Thousand Oaks biotech firm Amgen set out to double-check the results of 53 landmark papers in their fields of cancer research and blood biology.The idea was to make sure that research on which Amgen was spending
millions of development dollars still held up. They figured that a few
of the studies would fail the test — that the original results couldn’t
be reproduced because the findings were especially novel or described
fresh therapeutic approaches.

But what they found was startling: Of the 53 landmark papers, only six could be proved valid.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t unique. A group at Bayer HealthCare in Germany
similarly found that only 25% of published papers on which it was basing
R&D projects could be validated, suggesting that projects in which
the firm had sunk huge resources should be abandoned. Whole fields of
research, including some in which patients were already participating in
clinical trials, are based on science that hasn’t been, and possibly
can’t be, validated.

Remember this the next time someone tries to claim there is “no evidence” because the evidence isn’t scientific. Because, based on the ACTUAL DOCUMENTARY EVIDENCE presented here, published, peer-reviewed science has between a 75 percent and an 89 percent chance of being FACTUALLY FALSE.

In addition to making it clear that science is not even a serious contender for being a means of determining the truth, this also explodes what I have repeatedly pointed out concerning the myth of science being self-correcting. The more scientists pout and cry about criticism rather than getting their house in order, the more people will come to understand that they are little more than a professional union attempting to coast on the achievements of their predecessors.

An agnostic’s perspective

Brett Markham reviews The Irrational Atheist on Amazon:

I am not on either side of the atheist/religionist camp. I have enjoyed some of Dawkins’ work (such as The Blind Watchmaker) but personally I do not consider creationism and evolution to be mutually exclusive. Could not a deity, for example, create through evolution?

Likewise, I am keenly aware that on the sentience quotient scale (SQ), which is logarithmic, it is entirely possible for entities to exist that are as much more sentient than humans as humans are more sentient than rocks, meaning we could understand such entities about as well as rocks understand humans. And to such entities, our “science” would be as meaningful as the “science” that rocks formulate is meaningful to us. So the concept of deity falls, in my opinion, within the realm of theoretical possibility without contradicting science.

At the same time, the idea that some person’s interpretation of the meaning of an unverifiable deity’s words should regulate my choices seems disconnected from reality. I do not appreciate proselyte atheism (which seems more like an intolerant religion than science to me) any more than I appreciate someone informing me that his deity’s will is for me to burn in Hell. At the same time, I appreciate that it is difficult if not impossible to create self-referential moral codes and can see both the benefits and harms attributed to both deistic religions (such as Catholicism) and non-deistic religions (such as atheism and feminism).

That having been said, I truly and thoroughly enjoyed this book. A lot. For truly intellectually curious people who don’t want to live in an echo chamber, this book is truly thought-provoking in a number of important realms.

As a scientist and engineer, I am keenly aware of the fact scientists and technologists of various sorts are paid every day to apply their skills and knowledge to ethically dubious ends. It is extremely common for such people to adopt an attitude of moral agnosticism and effectively do whatever they are paid to do. Witness, for example, the fact that fields of science gave us nerve gas, biological weapons, Xyklon B and nuclear bombs. It is science that, in the future, may well produce breeds of post-humans that hold mere humans in thrall or create custom humans as slaves. Though followers of deistic religions may well have wreaked havoc, it is only science that holds the promise of efficient and achievable genocide, and the vaporization of untold hundreds of thousands or millions of people in the blink of an eye.

Though this book spends a lot of very entertaining time pointing out the contradictions, inconsistencies and even hypocrisy of self-proclaimed Atheists who make a big deal of their atheism, the major contribution of this book, in my opinion, is at the intersection of science and morality. It takes a deep breath, takes a step back, takes a hard look, and asks meaningful and important questions.

Science and technology are powerful, and their application has profound implications for the nature of human life in the future.

Though the atheist/religionist debate is often framed in terms of a war between reason and mysticism, Vox Day shows the irrationality that likewise underlies atheism — and then exposes science to the blinding glare of observation and asks the important moral questions.

I consider this book to be important. Very important. It is not particularly important from the perspective of debate, but rather for the questions it raises concerning the junction of science and morality as well as the future of human societies.

The reviewer rather presciently focuses on an area that has been of increasing interest to me in the time since I wrote TIA. The blithe assumption on the part of many scientists and science fetishists that science is somehow beyond good and evil on the basis of its effectiveness is potentially disastrous.

Already, we are seeing limits imposed on scientific publishing, as in the case of the recent court decision in the Netherlands concerning a ban on the scientific publication of research related to viruses. “For the first time, it is now clear that with this regulation, the distribution of scientific knowledge can also be restricted.”

This genuine limitation on scientific research hasn’t stirred much anywhere nearly as much outrage among the scientific community as stickers on various biology schoolbooks, which indicates that many, if not most, scientists are far more concerned with defending their present scientific paradigms than they are with defending science itself. Which, in itself, poses a fairly serious philosophical problem.

The philosophical failure of science

If he’s not careful, the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Scientists is going to round up James Delingpole for excess public brutality. His demolition of the BBC and its so-called science experts borders on pure sadism:

The Beeb constantly resorts to ‘experts’ whose arguments are bigoted, feeble, fatuous, fallacious and stupid

‘Well, you’re arguing facts against opinions. OK, I
mean, the fact that the amount of carbon dioxide in the air has rocketed
up since the Industrial Revolution, and continues to rocket up, is a
fact. Now, it’s so much a fact that even the climate change deniers look
away from it and don’t deny it.’
— Professor Steve Jones, Feedback, BBC Radio 4, 18 October

Have a look at that last sentence. It represents such a cherishably
stupid, rude, fatuous, crabby, bigoted, ignorant, petulant, feeble,
fallacious, dishonest and misleading argument that if it turned out the
speaker in question was a professor of logic or philosophy you really
might want to shoot yourself in despair.

Can you see what the problem is? Let me explain. This angry professor
character wants us to believe that there are people called ‘climate
change deniers’ who are so far outside the pale of reasonable discourse
that even when they are right it’s another sign of just how wrong they
are.

Atmospheric CO2 has been rising since the Industrial
Revolution, Jones is telling us, but those pesky deniers are so slippery
that they refuse to deny this fact. If they did, presumably, it would
make Jones’s job a lot easier because then he’d be able to provide a
clear example of these wrong ‘opinions’ deniers supposedly hold.
Apparently, though, Jones is unable to produce such a clear example. So
instead he has to fabricate one and — in the very next breath — to
discount it by conceding that actually this is a point on which ‘even’
the ‘deniers’ agree.

It’s a bad sign for the state of science when the average anklebiting blog troll can produce arguments that are more coherent, credible, and convincing than the official mouthpieces of scientific consensus. But then, that’s what happens when scientists show they are more dedicated to scientistry than scientody.

Appeal to authority are inherently problematic. But appealing to the climatological authority of a biologist whose specialty is snails? It requires years of J-school to produce that quixotic form of genius.

The Economist notices bad science

I look forward to all of the science fetishists who have shrieked with outrage every time I pointed out the uncomfortable fact of the increasing departure of scientistry from scientody finally realizing, with all due horror, that I was correct about modern professional science, all along as the mainstream media begins to repeat my previous criticisms. Science has gone wrong, badly wrong. And it has done so by abandoning the method that gave it its reputation.

A simple idea underpins science: “trust, but verify”. Results should always be subject to challenge from experiment. That simple but powerful idea has generated a vast body of knowledge. Since its birth in the 17th century, modern science has changed the world beyond recognition, and overwhelmingly for the better.

But success can breed complacency. Modern scientists are doing too much trusting and not enough verifying—to the detriment of the whole of science, and of humanity.

Too many of the findings that fill the academic ether are the result of shoddy experiments or poor analysis (see article). A rule of thumb among biotechnology venture-capitalists is that half of published research cannot be replicated. Even that may be optimistic. Last year researchers at one biotech firm, Amgen, found they could reproduce just six of 53 “landmark” studies in cancer research. Earlier, a group at Bayer, a drug company, managed to repeat just a quarter of 67 similarly important papers. A leading computer scientist frets that three-quarters of papers in his subfield are bunk. In 2000-10 roughly 80,000 patients took part in clinical trials based on research that was later retracted because of mistakes or improprieties….

One reason is the competitiveness of science. In the 1950s, when modern
academic research took shape after its successes in the second world
war, it was still a rarefied pastime. The entire club of scientists
numbered a few hundred thousand. As their ranks have swelled, to 6m-7m
active researchers on the latest reckoning, scientists have lost their
taste for self-policing and quality control. The obligation to “publish
or perish” has come to rule over academic life. Competition for jobs is
cut-throat. Full professors in America earned on average $135,000 in
2012—more than judges did. Every year six freshly minted PhDs vie for
every academic post. Nowadays verification (the replication of other
people’s results) does little to advance a researcher’s career. And
without verification, dubious findings live on to mislead.

As in the case of university degrees, scientistry has been badly diluted. Scientists of a wide variety of disciplines are cashing in on the reputations of physicists from more than sixty years ago.  The science of Bohr and Feynman is simply not the pseudo-science of Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennett.

This is not a surprise. I’ve been reading Kuhn’s landmark Structure of Scientific Revolutions and it is eminently clear that we are rapidly approaching a crisis in biology, the sort of crisis that has historically led to new scientific paradigms. It may take a long time for the crisis to resolve itself, but this Second Crisis of Darwin should be sufficient to put the theory of evolution by natural selection in the dustbin of scientific history with phlogiston, heliocentrism, and other erstwhile scientific “facts”. Instead of salvaging Darwinian theory through a synthesis, the continued refinement of Mendelian genetics will destroy it once and for all.

And it’s not a coincidence that the growing awareness of bad science is occurring as the global warming debacle continues to unravel. Those who attacked the skeptics of global warming and staked science’s reputation on the idea that Man was cooking the earth are directly responsible for the public’s increasing dismissal of scientific authority.