Friday
Jul132012
by 
Josh
Josh Con Science - Josh 175
Jul 13, 2012 Josh ;)
Click image for a larger version.
There are clearly great scientists doing excellent work. So why do some seem to be ok with all the scams, boondoggles and tricks that pass for science and policy?
Answers on a placard, please.
Reader Comments (25)
"Answers on a placard, please."
Brilliance.
Ponzi science. science evolved through a series of papers and studies lacking archived data, available software, or otherwise inaccessible to audit.
I see that the term was applied in the past but more to the operation of graduate schools and their endless production of PhDs few of which will ever find employment in their fields.
It seems an apt descriptor for the mountain of papers whose bases are unavailable to test against their inferences.
Answers on a placard is indeed cool but another thought occurs: Swindle is the (short) name for an excellent polemic film by Martin Durkin. Andf we aren't done until Scam, Spoof, Boondoggle and the rest are equally recognisable as feature-length videos, from multiple perspectives.
'So why do some seem to be ok with all the scams, boondoggles and tricks that pass for science and policy?'
Because the aim being served is not science but politics and in this realm that is the normal way of working . Read #the Teams' own words you can see how often its advocacy that is their prime concern not science.
When the end justifies the means and your starting form the basis of a 'good lie ' just about anything is possible .
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Edmund Burke: "All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing."
I recall a Josh cartoon portraying a tank labelled "Institute of Physics" smashing over symbols of the global warming scam. The physicists' repudiation of Global Warmery at that time was not followed through.
I'd say that the secret of the scamsters' success (hitherto) is that the hard sciences have failed to dissociate themselves from the soft science of Global Wierding. Intimidated by fellow-travellers of animal-rights extremists and by the 10:10 video "we're prepared to resort to violence - ha-ha, only joking!", good men have done nothing.
Tabu, it's not just a stink anymore.
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Academics don't like to rock the boat.
The Engineering professor has to humour the Gender Studies professor or she will veto his application for new computers. Down the corridor is the Golf Psychology department - he has to pretend that it's a serious field of study.
The Biology professor doesn't want the crazy enviros to smash up his lab - so he signs their petition to Save the Gay Whales in Palestine.
In academia there is no upside to rocking the boat or making enemies. A lot of people are petty, vindictive, and have long memories. You soon learn to sit on your hands and keep schtumm.
The state can be and has often been in the course of history the main source of mischief and disaster.
Ludwig von Mises
I love that the fruits of the Global Warming collective contain the very seeds that guarantee that they will not meet the basic requirements for evolutionary survival.
I despair that the damage that they are causing will make our lives more miserable than if they had not been allowed to root in the first place.
The sun god Ra has sent us his response to the post normal scientists. Feel my wrath. :<)
From Spaceweather.com
The CME launched toward Earth by yesterday’s X-flare is moving faster than originally thought. Analysts at the Goddard Space Weather Lab have revised their forecast accordingly, advancing the cloud’s expected arrival time to 09:17 UT on Saturday, July 14th. Weekend auroras are likely.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coronal_mass_ejection
H/T WUWT
I guess there are some scientists with 'professional integrity' and others with none. Here for example is what emminent physicist Hal Lewis had to say in his resignation letter to the APS (American Physical Society) after reading the Climategate mails and the HSI (Hockey Stick Illusion) -
"...How different it is now. The giants no longer walk the earth, and the money flood has become the raison d’être of much physics research, the vital sustenance of much more, and it provides the support for untold numbers of professional jobs. For reasons that will soon become clear my former pride at being an APS Fellow all these years has been turned into shame, and I am forced, with no pleasure at all, to offer you my resignation from the Society.
It is of course, the global warming scam, with the (literally) trillions of dollars driving it, that has corrupted so many scientists, and has carried APS before it like a rogue wave. It is the greatest and most successful pseudoscientific fraud I have seen in my long life as a physicist. Anyone who has the faintest doubt that this is so should force himself to read the ClimateGate documents, which lay it bare. (Montford’s book organizes the facts very well.) I don’t believe that any real physicist, nay scientist, can read that stuff without revulsion. I would almost make that revulsion a definition of the word scientist.
So what has the APS, as an organization, done in the face of this challenge? It has accepted the corruption as the norm, and gone along with it. ..."
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/10/16/hal-lewis-my-resignation-from-the-american-physical-society/
Oh, so true
"I don’t believe that any real physicist, nay scientist, can read that stuff without revulsion. I would almost make that revulsion a definition of the word scientist."
There are clearly great scientists doing excellent work. So why do some seem to be ok with all the scams, boondoggles and tricks that pass for science and policy?
Why the deference to scientists? As a group they are no different than teachers, cops, politicians or lawyers. Some are greedy, some prostitute for the fame and power, some are corrupt and some are mostly honest, just like the rest of us. We are confusing science with scientist. Do we confuse legal with lawyers?
The answers are simple. Pick any one, or more
Follow the money
Don't rock the boat
Keep on the Gravy train
Snouts in the trough
And my favourate,
Real science is too hard.
An acquaintance has come up with a killer blow against the CO2-AGW scam. It's beautiful. CO2 at present levels in air is well into the self-absorption regime, a standard bit of spectroscopy, the absorption of internally-generated EM energy by unexcited molecules.
If you illuminate the atmosphere with IR energy in the 4 and 14 micron bands, it excites molecules that would normally absorb thermal radiation from further away. So, more IR in those bands arrives at the earth's surface. This switches off many of the states that emit that radiation. The same applies to all the other GHGs. Total GHE settles at a constant level: there can be no CO2-AGW.
Hello Andrew,
It seems that you've worked out that accusing scientists of involvement in (or even passive acceptance of) a 'scam' or 'trick' tends to rile them.
So I'll bite. In my experience, this does not happen, and just saying it does not make it so.
It seems unfair to make a scientist responsible for every statement or possible policy action that might reference their work, but there there are certainly cases where individuals have called out inappropriate interpretations. Can you point to any solid evidence that supports you arguments that scientists are involved in a 'boondoggle'?. And I mean incontravertible, rather than just cherry picked and misinterpreted.
Otherwise, It's just you making baseless accusations, everybody gets upset with each other, and we're back where we started.
Thanks,
Doug
Doug
Are you talking to me? Cartoons are drawn by Josh.
Ok, fair enough, I'll direct my previous comment to Josh.
As a point of interest, doe this mean that you aren't always in full agreement with content posted to your blog? Perhaps I've not hung around here for long enough to be aware of the subtleties.
Doug
Marginally off-topic, but I read in 'The Sunday Times' this week that wind farm developers are using photographic tricks to indicate to planners that their development will have less of a visual impact than it does in reality...
Also, the Treasury and our beloved Department of Energy and (chuckle) Climate Change are at loggerheads over how much the 'feed-in' tariff for onshore windfarms should be reduced. George Osborne is all for a 25% reduction (not nearly enough) whereas the DECC want to settle for 10% (ludicrous). Knowing the PM's and the deputy PM's respective family involvements, I suspect the 10% lobby will win the day....
Doug, I think we tweeted the other day and I said the cartoon was not meant to be a criticism of science or scientists but more that parts of science seemed to have accompanying scams that scientists seem ok with. It's a puzzle.
There are lots of examples from all kinds of science and, of course, climate science: from the IPCC, to climategate, to the hockey stick, carbon trading, carbon taxes, wind farms, solar, pal review etc etc.
Sceptics point out the things that are clearly wrong and then get accused of being anti-science when the opposite is true. I think most sceptics are motivated by wanting to see better science not just throwing brickbats for the fun of it.
Hope that makes sense.
A major reason is that most of today's university scientific and medical research is funded by grants and the amount of grant money brought in is a large factor in determining promotions and hence salaries. Human nature determines that, who is funding research probably affects, at least in some cases, the published conclusions.
Re: Jul 17, 2012 at 1:36 PM | Jonathan Bagley
Jonathan, Totally agree - this is an interesting (and detailed) article on one of the main players -
http://www.hoover.org/publications/policy-review/article/43291
Hi Josh, thanks for responding.
I'm struggling to interpret this cartoon. If it means, as the text (written by you or Andrew?) says, that scientists are happy to be associated with 'scams' or 'boondoggles', then I disagree. Nobody I know would be happy to turn a blind eye to something that they thought was a deliberate distortion of the truth. In fact, there are many cases where scientists interject if they think something is even a bit wrong, never mind deliberate (see e.g. Greenland map error).
I take the point that many skeptics are motivated by wanting to see 'better' science. I would say that the noisiest skeptics are sometimes, erm, misguided in their views, and therefore it can be hard to pull the signal from the noise. Frankly, throwing around words like 'scam' and 'fraud' doesn't help, if you want to be taken seriously by the scientific community.
The other interpretation of the cartoon is that it can be difficult to be a scientist, when everyone around you is shouting 'scam!' and 'fraud!'. I think I prefer this interpretation :)
Doug - the scientist appears in the cartoon clearly worried about all the troubling bandwagon around. Note also where the light is, and where it is dark. So I wouldn't go as far as to say that Josh is accusing anybody of being "happy" with the tricks and scams done on the back of climate science.
The question IMNSHO is, why is the scientist not moving his desk elsewhere, and I feel it's got an obvious answer even if it's un-answerable.
If I were a scientist with a rich family behind me and/or just beyond pension age, I would throw all my toys out of the pram at the antics of the Manns and Karolys of this world. Come to think, many pension-age scientists have done just that.
Why?
It took a while to connect the dots and courage to face the picture that began to emerge on 1 Aug 2010:
http://omanuel.wordpress.com/
Today I am rather certain that government scientists were trained with research funds and awards after 1945 as Pavalov's dogs had been trained with dog biscuits.
http://omanuel.wordpress.com/about/#comment-720
I was and still am a left-wing environmentalist who had contempt for conspiracy fads, but the concurrent loss of integrity in government science and constitutional limits on government is no mere coincidence.