Ridiculing ridiculous science commentary

Sometimes it’s pointless to debate rationally with critics. When their approach and arguments are ridiculous it may be better to ridicule them rather than treat them seriosuly.

Simon Jenkins, Guardian columnist

It seems some British scientists have decided to do this with one of The Guardian’s columnists, Simon Jenkins. The last straw was a silly article of his Martin Rees makes a religion out of science so his bishops can gather their tithe. In this he made childish attacks on The Royal Society and its President Lord Martin Rees, the Large Hadron Collider, the BBC for running science programmes, the UK Centre for Medical Research and Innovation, investment in science education, science advise on the H1N1 flu virus, nuclear power and “mad cow” disease, and so on.

Truth getting it’s boots on!

Sharon Begley introduced her Newsweek article Newspapers Retract ‘Climategate’ Claims, but Damage Still Done with:

‘A lie can get halfway around the world while the truth is still putting its boots on, as Mark Twain said (or “before the truth gets a chance to put its pants on,” in Winston Churchill’s version), and nowhere has that been more true than in “climategate.”‘

Yes, reaction to the “climategate” scandal and resulting climate denial offensive has been slow coming. Inevitable, I guess, becuase it has required investigation and reporting. We had the Pennsylvania State University inquiry which cleared Michael Mann (see Spinning exoneration of Dr. Michael Mann Into “Whitewash”) and the UK parliamentary and independent Royal Society inquiries which cleared Phil Jones and the Cimatic Research Unit at University of East Anglia (see Climate scientist Phil Jones exonerated and Officially a fake scandal from science perspective).

Now some of the main stream media newspapers are withdrawing articles they previously published misrepresenting the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), climate scientists and climate science in general. The UK Sunday Times published a correction acknowledging they had misreported the “Amazongate” story, had misreported Dr Simon Lewis, a Royal Society research fellow at the University of Leeds and leading specialist in tropical forest ecology. They had in fact changed their story after it had been checked by Lewis and admit their changes “did not give a fair or accurate account of his views.”

Similarly the German Frankfurter Rundschau has withdrawn a story attacking the IPCC over “Africagate.” What is the moral of all this – don’t trust any “climategate” story?

Lies sometimes survive exposure

However, these retractions haven’t come easily. They were the result of shoddy, if not completely biased, journalism and/or editing (see “AmazonGate”: how the denial lobby and a dishonest journalist created a fake scandal and Sunday Times admits ‘Amazongate’ story was rubbish. But who’s to blame?). The Sunday Times retraction only came after Dr Lewis made a complaint to the Press Council which was upheld. And the retractions have taken months to occur. As Sharon Begley says it is just simply psychology that people will often continue to believe a lie even after the truth has arrived.

Well – I guess it helps that these newspapers have published retractions and apologies. But what about all those blogs (including several New Zealand ones) and conservative newspapers and websites throughout the world who faithfully repeated the lie – but remain silent now?

That’s not ethical.

See also:

British Newspaper Apologizes to Climate Scientist – NYTimes.com

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• Leakegate: A retraction (realclimate.org)
• UK Sunday Times Retracts Bogus ‘Amazongate’ Story, Apologizes to Simon Lewis (desmogblog.com)
• George Monbiot Rips UK Sunday Times For ‘Amazongate’ Lies And Stonewalling (desmogblog.com)

A question of expertise and credibility

In my last post Climate scientist’s register, I mentioned the new paper Expert credibility in climate change. Several other bloggers have described the findings in the paper, particularly the finding that 97–98% of the climate researchers most actively publishing in the field support the IPCC conclusions and that the “relative climate expertise and scientific prominence of the researchers unconvinced of [the conclusions] are substantially below that of the convinced researchers”.

The paper analysed the publication record of the two groups to get a handle on the expertise and credibility of group members. I have pulled out the data and combined them into the graph below. This summarises the difference in expertise between scientists accepting the IPCC conclusions on human contribution to climate change (convinced researchers = red bars) and those who reject the IPCC conclusions (unconvinced researchers = blue bars).

Briefly, approximately  80% of the unconvinced group had fewer than 20 climate publications while less than 10% of the convinced group had fewer than 20 climate publications. The mean number of publications in the unconvinced group was 60 (median 34) , half that for the convinced group – 119 (median 84).

When the investigation was restricted to the 50 most-published researcher in both groups the mean number for the unconvinced group was 89 (median 68) and for the convinced group 408 (median 344).

Considering citation numbers for each researcher’s most cited paper this was a mean of 105 for the unconvinced group and 172 for the convinced group.  To avoid anomalies when single papers are considered the paper also considers citation numbers for the 2nd to 4th most cited papers for each researcher. The mean for the unconvinced group was 84 and for the convinced group 133.

For more information on methodology and results you can download the paper here – Download “Expert credibility in climate change.”

See also:
Sceptics face yawning credibility gap
New study reaffirms broad scientific understanding of climate change, questions media’s reliance on tiny group of less-credibile scientists for “balance”

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Climate scientist’s’ register?

A comment from Tom Harris, Executive Director of the International Climate Science Coalition (ICSC), on the syndicated version of Open Parachute raised the question of how much scientific support there is for the conclusions of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Of course his group campaigns against the IPCC so he is trying to “prove” overwhelming scientific opposition to the conclusions (the ICSC was one of the sponsors of the recent Heartland Climate Conference).

Tom Harris, Ex. Dir. ICSC

His current campaign is a Climate Scientists’ Register. This is a petition listing people prepared to sign up to the declaration “We, the undersigned, having assessed the relevant scientific evidence, do not find convincing support for the hypothesis that human emissions of carbon dioxide are causing, or will in the foreseeable future cause, dangerous global warming.” He currently has 109 signatures.

Reminds me of the Discovery Institute’s Darwin Dissent petition (see Who are the “dissenters from Darwinism”?, Dissenters from Darwinism in context and Scientific dissent from . . . science?).

We know science is not determined by petitions and such “registers” are not a reliable way of judging consensus. But in the battle for public opinion they do have some influence. That’s why groups like the Discovery Institute and the ICSC produce them.

Kids – it’s OK to be different!

Book Review: Why Don’t We Go to Church? by Gail Miller (Author), Rosalind Eagle (Author), Angela Seear (Illustrator).

Price: US$8.99; International US$10.99
Reading level: Ages 9-12
Paperback: 51 pages
Publisher: Art Bookbindery; First edition (May 6, 2010)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0986587605
ISBN-13: 978-0986587603

Book website: Why Don’t We Go To Church?

Adults, even parents, are probably unaware of most of the issues children face in their day-to-day interactions with their social groups. Often school children confront moral issues, social pressures and hostility which they don’t discuss with their parents. Even those lucky children who have open, non-judgemental parents may not share their worries because of shame or perceived social disapproval.

I think this is common for children from families where parents are known for being “different.” Their political, religious or social views may not accord with those common in society and the kids can take some flack for that. In today’s pluralist society many children must have to face these sort of dilemmas because they interact with children who very likely have different religious or cultural backgrounds.

Twinning with Venus

Saw this on Universe Today and thought it was quite nice (Nancy is Now on Venus).

It’s actually an article about naming craters on Venus. But what struck me is that the crater Nancy it discussed is on a plain called the Hinemoa Planitia.

I just wasn’t aware of the connection with New Zealand. Does that give us some sort of twin status?

For non-locals here is  a brief description of The Legend of Hinemoa from Te Ara, An Encyclopedia of New Zealand

“Tutanekai lived on Mokoia Island, Lake Rotorua, where of an evening he and his friend Tiki used to play – the one on a “horn”, the other on a “pipe”. The sound of this music could be heard across Lake Rotorua at Owhata and it charmed the beautiful and noble-born Hinemoa who lived there. When Tutanekai visited the mainland with his people, he met Hinemoa and they fell in love. The young man had perforce to return to his village, but the lovers arranged that every night he would play and that Hinemoa would follow the sound of his music to join him.

“Tutanekai kept up a nightly serenade but Hinemoa’s people, suspecting something was afoot, had hidden all the canoes. The maiden, however, was not to be deterred and, selecting six large, dry, empty gourds as floats, she decided to swim to the island. Guided by the strains of her loved one’s music, Hinemoa safely reached the other shore and landed near a hot spring, Waikimihia, in which she warmed and refreshed herself – the pool is on Mokoia Island to this day. Just at that moment Tutanekai sent his servant for water. This man disturbed the girl who, pretending to be a man, spoke in a gruff voice and, when she learnt his errand, begged for a drink from the calabash which she smashed as soon as she had had her fill. The servant then went back and reported to Tutanekai what had happened. He was ordered back again and again, each time with the same result, until all the calabashes were broken. The now irate young man himself went down to the pool and to his joy discovered Hinemoa. Like all good stories, the legend has a conventional ending – they lived happily ever after.”

by Judith Sidney Hornabrook, M.A., National Archives, Wellington.

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Avoiding grown-up discussion

Cosmologist Sean Carroll has announced a break from blogging on Cosmic Variance. I picked up this news from Jerry Coyne‘s blog Why Evolution is True! (also the title of his book) (see Sean Carroll says goodbye).

Like Jerry, I think that is a great pity. I find Sean Carroll’s blog posts interesting. I don’t necessarily always agree – as, for example, in his debate with Sam Harris on morality. But they are clearly written and refreshing to read. His lecture’s on cosmological questions are fascinating and I am looking forward to reading his recently published book From Eternity to Here: The Quest for the Ultimate Theory of Time.

However, Sean does say his hiatus will not be permanent (see Downshifting). And other contributors to the Cosmic Variance blog will continue.

I agree with Jerry that Sean’s last major post, “Reluctance to let go”, was impressive. It’s worth reading in full – but here’s an extract:

A competition for Aussie science blogs

I wonder how many science blogs there are in Australia. How do the numbers compare with New Zealand?

Anyway it looks like organisers of the Australian National Science Week are taking their local blogger seriously. They have launched a competition to determine the National Science Week 2010 blogger. All Australian-based science blogs are eligible and anyone can nominate their favourite blog (or their own blog).

NOTE: Nominations close 28 June 2010.

The Prize

Besides being named the official National Science Week 2010 blogger the winner will receive a four-day blogging trip to their choice of events during National Science Week (14 – 22 August). As the official National Science Week 2010 blogger the winner will have the opportunity to blog about the events they attend, the people they meet and some of the interesting things they learn.

Seems like a great idea.

Have a look at  Big Blog Theory for more information and the nomination form.

Can anyone suggest suitable blogs to nominate?

How about?:
Watching the Deniers
Deltoid
10 Days of science
Australian Science Media Centre
Homologous Legs
Moth incarnate

Click here to nominate your favourite science blog. Nominations close 28 June 2010.

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Apologies would be nice

Blimey! This whole climate change issue is so political – you have to be very careful what you say.

Climate scientists, especially, are being quoted out of context, or even misquoted. Remember the distortion of Phil Jones’ comment on the increase in global temperature in the last decade not being statistically significant?

I guess that’s the nature of a political mind set which wishes to find evidence (or distort evidence) to support a preconceived position. Rather than derive a conclusions from the facts. (I might start calling that the “theological” method).

Mike Hulme

The Deep Climate blog discussed a recent distortion of a quote from Mike Hulme, professor of Climate Change in the School of Environmental Sciences at the University of East Anglia (UEA). This was just a warning that it was counterproductive to make excessive claims of consensus. The IPCC reviews of the literature on climate change draws conclusions about the overall picture but this does not mean that every single statement in these reports is signed off by every single author of the papers reviewed, or every single reviewer. (The quote is in his review paper Climate Change: what do we know about the IPCC?)

Seems a quite reasonable comment to me.

Alarmist con

Book Review: AIR CON: The Seriously Inconvenient Truth About Global Warming by Ian Wishart

Paperback: 296 pages
Price: US$16.93; NZ$29.90
Publisher: Howling At The Moon Publishing; first edition (May 4, 2009)
Language: English
SBN-10: 0958240140
SBN-13: 978-0958240147

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LEGAL NOTICE: Criticisms of individuals in this review reflect the author’s honest opinion, for reasons outlined in the text or generally known at the time of writing.

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You might think “alarmist” is a cheap shot. Aren’t I just mimicking this book’s constant use of such disparaging and emotional terms to discredit climate science and scientists? But I think I am justified. After all the author’s message is alarmist – but about the politics, not the science.