Bishop Hill The trust me crowd and the show me crowd
Jan 7, 2015 Climate: Sceptics Climate: Statistics The Chemist in Langley has another post on type 1 and type 2 errors, which is just as good as his last one. I found this quote particularly perspicacious:
A colleague at work describes the difference as roughly the “trust me crowd” versus the “show me crowd”. The trust me crowd can show that some anthropogenic climate change has happened in the past and that models suggest that future conditions are going to get worse. They produce their documentation via the peer reviewed press and in doing so address all the touchstones of the scientific method. Having met the high bar of “good science” they anticipate that their word will be taken as good.
The show me crowd looks at the “good science” and points out that many historical predictions of doom and gloom (that previously met the test of good science) have been shown to be overheated or just plain wrong. They also point out that the best models have not done a very good job with respect to the “pause”. Given this they ask for a demonstration that the next prediction is going to be better than the last one. This does not mean that they deny the reality of anthropogenic global warming. Rather they are not comfortable with cataclysmic predictions and calls for immediate action prior to a demonstration that those predictions can be supported with something approaching real data.
Reader Comments (70)
johanna, I think being called Russell has gone to his head. Next, he'll be warning us that we'll all be sorry when the revolution comes.
"The Type I versus Type II error avoidance peg is the best I have been able to formulate to date."
How about: "Assume a spherical cow.." vs "That's odd" / "What if..."
Seems to me that great mistakes in science almost always rest on tacit assumptions - assumptions so ingrained that they remain uninvestigated as to their veracity. Eg, "Time is the same for all observers" or "Earth is the centre of the universe", both of which are now known to be false, because of someone asking "what if" or someone showing "that's odd". In most cases, and especially those two cited, the initial response of the estabishment was disbelief at best but eventually the correct idea won out because it explained the "that's odd" bits without trashing the "we know because" bits of the previous theory. And not to put too fine a point on it, "the pause" is certainly a "that's odd" bit of data, as are the variations in climate we can observe not just by various proxies (LIA, MWP etc) but also by direct measurement (early 20th C warming vs late 20th C warming).
The other major concerns (for me, anyway) are: the failure to correct errors that are pointed out - even when the establishment insists these "don't matter", they are not corrected. Surely in "normal" science, one corrects errors, especially those that don't affect the results or conclusions of the paper (no risk of a retraction). And the refusal to acknowledge genuine and germane input from "outsiders" - eg not being named as the source of an error detection simply because it might give you some street cred with "the plebs", or because we need to "stay on message". Both of these are so outside the norms of science it makes my head spin, yet they have repeatedly happened in climate science (well documented too). This doesn't exactly inspire trust in the establishment, so "trust me" is not good enough any more, even disregarding the societal costs.
Finally, most people who understand and revere science will assume that the peer reviewed science, while not perfect or even wrong, is the best guess we currently have. They will also assume that everyone involved is open and honest, and that they are (in groups, if not individuals) open to new ideas and new explainations, ready to defend their own ideas and data against "aggresive disbelievers" and all the other things that go with a belief in the power of science to get it right based on facts. While it's certainly true that this is what normally happens, it doesn't always happen as fast as one might desire, and it sometimes is required in large doses (BIG corrections) because of the perfectly normal and human foibles to which we are all susceptable. In my view, climate science is, to a large extent, currently running down one of those wrong roads - we will eventually get the right answer though. I do not intend to hold my breath waiting, but I am confident it will be corrected sooner or later - and perhaps I too am wrong, and it is me that will be corrected!
"I think it was Carl Sagan who observed that extraordinary scientific claims require extraordinary evidence." That's always seemed to me to be balderdash. Newton's remarkable claims were supported by a wealth of evidence that already existed, Einstein's by a simple astronomical observation.
Kneel:
And what evidence do you have that it is not?The universe has been scientifically acknowledged to be infinite, so anywhere could be its centre, but, as all measurements we know of about the universe are based upon this planet, then the Earth is, de facto, the centre of the universe.
By the way, I am in full agreement with Paul Matthews, and we should acknowledge Blair’s efforts (I am sorry, but, though not having met you, personally, the name does still make me shudder).
Still not understanding the concept of "thermodynamic strain".
I'll tell you what, though, I really hope that Russell isn't in charge of anything involving engineering and thermodynamics.
Thermodynamic strain can be quite painful, but treated with deep heat it usually clears up in a few days.
Yes credit to Blair, for being mostly reasonable. Even though in the main blogpost he still shows remnants of warmist dogma in the over extrapolation of things from the "could be" category into the "proven" category
"Don't trust 'THEM !' " is 3rd categpry Blair could add to his "trust me" & "show me"
- With the "Don't trust 'them!' " category it
is used to walk away from any examination of possible flaws in an argument, by shouting "they are deniers, your are acting like a denier"
.. A 4th category would be "don't show them !" where some climate issue researchers like Phil Jones refuse to show us the data on the grounds "you'll only tear it apart" yet on other occasions it has been shown yhat that refusing to show data has covered up flaws in results which should have been exposed much earlier ..Lewandowsky being the latest example.
"Don't show them" is also used in excluding skeptical arguments from public forums like the BBC, in the "don't show the public anything else than all climate change components are anything than cast iron settled." mode of thinking.
Thanks, Old grumpy. I think I've got it now. :)
It's like a sprained ankle - which happens all the time in atmospheric physics. Especially when the physicists are jogging.
They should stick to golf and croquet, thereby avoiding causing climate catastrophes.
Blair,
I found your articles thought-provoking.
I share Paul Matthews' view that your metaphor with hypothesis testing is more an obstacle than a help to communication. Most skeptics are averse to Type I error if the null is framed along the lines of nothing unusual is happening.
More interestingly, you seem to believe that the "trust me" vs "show me" dichotomy derives from innate characteristics of individuals (in broad terms). In context, I am not sure that this is a useful generalisation. I suspect that if we could design a perfect psychometric test to discriminate between these innate characteristics, it would not prove to be a useful predictor of whether people tend to fall into the sceptic or warmist "camps".
One blog site - I think it was Climate Etc - invited its readers to explain why they became sceptics. I was struck by the similarities in many of the stories, and particularly among the well-qualified technical people. Most of these people did not start as cynics - quite the opposite. They started (like myself) by trusting what they were being told, since they were used to certain standards being applied in their own disciplines. They were then triggered to do some investigation of their own and found a science which was "too important to be wrong"; a science unwilling to open itself to scrutiny, unwilling to share data to allow replication, a science which has closed ranks to avoid correcting known errors and which, instead, attacked its scientific critics with all possible ad hominem weapons available, a science that shows positive evidence of systematic bias, overconfidence in its conclusions and a lack of willingness to consider alternative hypotheses. After climategate, we discovered as well that the anecdotal evidence of gaming of the peer review process in the more respected journals formed part of a sytematic process.
Given all this, whether an individual starts out as innately trusting or not is somewhat irrelevant, I believe. Irrespective of your initial level of trust, it would be positively irrational to buy a used car from the same salesman that fleeced you last time.
On a final point, I found it wryly amusing that, for many people, the trigger that led them to initiate their own investigations was the fact that they posed some questions on sites like RealClimate and received snarling abuse for so doing. Although, it is not an entirely rational reaction, it is very difficult to maintain trust in people who are calling you a clueless anti-science denier or worse in response to simple exploratory questions. I note that, in many quarters, you are now described as a denier for having the temerity to hold lukewarmer views. This puts you into the same camp as "serial disinformers" like Judith Curry, Lucia, the Bish, Nic Lewis, Roy Spencer, etc. It will be interesting to see whether your own nature is sufficiently resilient for you to maintain your existing level of trust in climate science if you continue to write anti-science articles which support this willfully malicious and heretical lukewarmer perspective - or whether you will find yourself moving rather more firmly into the "show me" camp. From your articles, you still hold the view that climate science has "addressed all of the touchstones of the scientific process". I hope that your own future research will offer you further insight into the distinction between the appearance of scientific process and the reality in much of climate science research.
Please accept my sincere best wishes, and I look forward to more of your articles.
It is the degree of certainty displayed by the AGW faithful that proves their dishonesty.
Hi johanna - no I love maths - I even won a maths prize at school. It's the queen of the sciences.
But what I read in the Langley Chemist's stuff (and elsewhere) is a caricature of science as I understand it.
The caricature goes like this (this is not just Langley):
Links to @Paul_K references on Judith Curry's site
1 Climate Etc - invited its readers to explain why they became sceptics.
2. my transition from a “high priestess of global warming” to engagement with skeptics and a critic of the IPCC.
Hey, Jack, it's hard for me to dislike people who love maths.
There are exceptions, of course.
Nipping a distraction in the bid. Blair, the Chemist in Langley, has simplified his second post (linked to above) mainly by taking out his generous reproduction of a large chunk of my comment on his previous one and a few further sentences of his own. As Paul Matthews notes (Jan 7, 2015 at 10:29 PM), his stepping back for further review is admirable, especially in the too often febrile climate debates. Accordingly, I am not going to comment on the error analysis stuff any further here.
The second part of my draft notes for the comment I had minded to make today is about a different aspect, and that is the coarse division of warmists being in the 'good science' camp in academia, as if it were some kind of citadel around and about which the sceptics are fussing and making critical comments. But in my view there is a great deal of scientific evidence and research within the 'citadel' that supports a calmer viewpoint about the rise in greenhouse gases and the possible consequences. The heroic efforts of for example the Idsos, Andrew K at Popular Technology, and Fred Singer,SEPP and the Heartland Institute with their NIPCC work to draw attention to this is worth noting here. (Perhaps I should note here that I played a very modest part in the preparations for 'Climate Change Reconsidered II' by reviewing some of the draft chapters.). There seems to be no doubt that the massive expenditures of recent decades in the compound field of climate science have been motivated by and focused on finding or hypothesising about effects of rising CO2. But despite that disproportionate (in my view) tendency, there are still researchers who are willing to point to the lack of clothing on CO2 as an Emperor of the Climate System. This role for CO2 is being paraded by for example those who construct the SPMs of the IPCC, and by those who see great political and/or financial advantage in bigging-up this would-be emperor. They have been very successful for a long time, but the lack of decent clothing is getting harder and harder for them to conceal.
Here are some links to scientific research supporting a calmer perspective on rising CO2 levels:
(1) Craig, Sherwood, and Keith Idso: CO2 Science
(2) Popular Technology: 1350+ Peer-Reviewed Papers Supporting Skeptic Arguments Against ACC/AGW Alarmism
(3) NIPCC: Climate Change Reconsidered II
@Stewgreen
thx for the references!
Oh there was another post on how skeptics became skeptics on Jo Nova
I also appreciate that Blair is seeking a common ground people of various stripes--alarmist, warmists, luke warmists, skeptics, distrusters, etc.--can look for some foundational truths regarding the changing climate. I wish such could be possible, but unfortunately, 2015 is a time when all CO2 believers will be on the playing field, pushing to get the ball over goal line into the end zone in Paris. I am afraid that the months ahead will be full of cacophony and outrageous claims.
@Paul_K a new list Converts to scepticism stories Bish just put it on the "seen elsewhere" list (top right of the BH pages)
- readers should check it to see if they are famous enough to be on it.
In reading the comments at the Chemist in Langley, I get the impression that Michael Tobis, theneverendingaudit and ATTP are not very smart, though smart may not be the precise word I'm grasping for in my current state.