by eye of einstein
Are skeptics of climate consensus anti-science?:
[Via CEJournal]
Some climate activists think so, but skepticism is what gives science its power
I found myself agreeing with much of the criticism directed at Nicholas Dawidoff’s profile of theoretical physicist Freeman Dyson in the New York Times Magazine last Sunday. Although he wrote an engaging and fascinating story, Dawidoff was out of his league when it came to
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An interesting discussion. The comments are also very educational and ably describe the difference between a useful skeptic and a simple contrarian. The former helps move science forward, while the latter often only acts to mess up the works.
People often mistake the place of a skeptical scientist with that of a contrarian. Simply saying ‘You are wrong’ adds little to our knowledge. One has to add something else. Something like ‘…because you left out this’ or ‘since this explains the data much better’ or ‘ because you made an inaccurate assumption.’
These add to our knowledge of the world around us. Refusing to accept data without reason or not trying to find an alternate explanation for the facts are sure signs of being contrary simply for the sake of it.
Some people get more recognition for knocking over the house of cards than trying to build a better foundation.
Science often works by removing the things that are incorrect in a model, discarding the things that it can not be.
Anyone who has watched House knows what a differential diagnosis is. A scientist often works similarly. When given a set of data, a scientist works through models, discarding ones that do not fit the data.
At the end, there may be a couple of hypotheses left, maybe even one that is the researcher’s favorite. After all, we are human and have our bias.
But a good researcher recognizes they have bias, and also recognizes that other hypotheses may be the favorites of other scientists. So they work very hard to design experiments to discern between the choices that are left.
In fact, researchers gain stature by designing experiments that can discern between hypotheses, that can tell which model comes closer to describing the natural world more accurately.
If done well, this ‘competition’ , whether done by the original scientist who wants to make sure their hypothesis is correct or by others doing their own work, eventually arrives at a semblance of the real solution. In some cases, the results are so close to reality that no meaningful difference can be revealed.
Now, some hypotheses may not initially be totally correct because the useful data are not as accurate as needed. This often drives the search for new and better data. This new data moves a particular description of the natural world further towards reality. Or new data demonstrates that the model is actually not correct at all and a new model must be developed. But the new model also needs to explain all the data, both old and new.
So, a good scientific skeptic might look at a hypothesis and try to figure out what alternative models have not been examined or might also explain the data. In an episode of House, they often try to figure out what illnesses were not on the list at the beginning and never considered.
Useful skeptics look for the holes in logic, faulty assumptions or things unexplained by the models. Then they suggest research to discern why and how a new model may be developed. They help get us move closer to what is really going on, either by strengthening the model or finding ways to create a new one.
Every skeptic of relativity who suggested experiments to find out whether it was correct helped us gain a better understanding of the world around us.
A contrarian, on the other hand, just likes to say ‘wrong’, usually as an attempt to gain attention. They are not interested in really doing any work to correct the current model, to suggest how another model would explain things better, or what work could really be done to help us understand.
They do not engage in any of the competition of ideas that foster good science. They do not want to really do any work. They deprecate the research of others, who are spending years of their own lives on exploring a problem, but seldom devote much energy themselves to the problem. They simply sit back and say ‘wrong.’
It used to be much more the case that these sorts of contrarians were usually the old men of science, the ones who had done great things when young. But, having achieved greatness, they no longer had the time to spend on new data that might invalidate their old models.
As Max Planck said:
A scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.
This describes not the skeptics but the contrarians who seldom add to human knowledge when they spend so much time saying ‘No.’
The media, unfortunately, does a poor job discerning the difference between a skeptic and a contrarian. But most people who work to find better ways to describe the world around us – let’s call the ‘scientists’ – can see the difference.
The skeptic makes many of us want to start a set of experiments to demonstrate who is right. The contrarian simply makes most of us heave a big sigh, shake our heads and get back to work.
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