This one picture proves why you must distrust every new boast from every scientist. Scientists’ ideas must be assumed false until they are proven true by people other than themselves. You would not trust your firm’s accountant to audit your books. You hire a disinterested agency. This is not because you suspect your accountant of fraud or embezzlement. It is not because you do not love him. It is because everybody makes mistakes, and the man making them is the one least likely to see him. And because business should be accomplished in a businesslike manner.
Brilliant. Concise. Cogent. Understandable. Repeatable by the lay person. Thank you. (BTW, independent audits of peer-reviewed research shows that about 90% of reported results cannot be reproduced by other, disinterested, scientists. We no longer have “science,” only “scientism.”)
Jun 7, 2023·edited Jun 7, 2023Liked by William M Briggs
The sum total of disinterested scientists can be best expressed in imaginary numbers. They don't make them anymore, dismantled the production line many a decade ago.
That is why an adversarial system like a common law court would be of advantage in examining the merits of the climate panic, so that each claim would be subject to challenge.
The Climategate emails revealed that there was no such quality control mechanism in place, and that confirmation bias and ideological motivation were forcing shaky conclusions. The IPCC is no better, as its remit is to study only possible anthropogenic causes, and to ignore alternative explanations. Along with that, none of 'The Science' in the Assessment Report is permitted to conflict with the Summary For Policy Makers, which, bizarrely, is published months before the main work.
There was talk of a Red Team/Blue Team study under President Trump, but that fizzled out. It is something which ought to be done.
Sure no doubt 🙂 We just need to translate these obvs ought’s into is/are’s—wherein pesky li’l how’s start to enthusiastically throw all kinds of unyielding boulders & tantrums ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
We have a word for science that works. It's called engineering.
Science is an imaginal function. That isn't to say it should not be careful and rigorous, but that of necessity - operating as it does at the edge of knowledge, and trying to push that boundary outwards - it contains much that is speculative and much that is simply wrong. Every good paper has a Discussion section, which indulges in hypothesizing about what the results *might* mean. This is how it has to be.
But it follows from that, that science should never, ever be trusted.
Exactly. The only reproduction of results that matters is the kind that happens under the reality test of the natural world.
Science would, in my opinion, be all the healthier if it dropped its pretences to objective truth, and embraced and emphasized its exploratory, tentative, and conditional nature.
Yes, this is indeed a potential failure mode, although I think a large part of that is the prioritization of mathematical theory over laboratory empiricism, together with the bureaucratization of physics - the experimental components tend to take place inside vast collaborations (LHC, NASA, IceCube, ITER, etc.) built into which there are huge collective action problems along with considerable cultural inertia.
Actually, that's not quite accurate. The main advance that enabled the Ptolemaic and Copernican systems to be distinguished was theoretical - the Keplerian system, which replaced circles with ellipses. The observational data Kepler drew upon were Tycho Brahe's naked eye observations of planetary positions. Advances in telescope optics played a role, but this was mainly things like the phases of Venus (which showed that Venus must orbit the Sun), or the Galilean satellites (which showed that bodies other than the Earth could have orbiting systems of their own).
I can attest to this kind of blindness. I once wrote a paper which contained the phrase "taking the symbols from another alphabet". It was a paper on quantum information theory. I don't know how it happened but the proofs (and the final published version) had this as "symbols from another planet"
I just didn't see it until my co-author finally spotted it some months after publication.
A small and trivial example.
In music successful bands almost always have great producers and mixing and mastering engineers. The people who produce the music can't always tell what "works" the best; they have too much emotionally invested in it and can't always step back and be objective.
I once submitted a paper with a glaring typo in the title that had been missed by myself and all of my several coauthors, despite several revisions prior to submission.
Thank you for the initial image. I got an early morning chuckle from it - recognizing the scam of going to a restaurant with a mask then sitting down to take it off. I'm very glad I live in a rural area where most people had the common sense to know this was ridiculousness.
I'm also glad that period is over but we must remain vigilant. The people that believed that scam didn't magically disappear. It won't take much to create another COVID-like response from those people. I suspect it will happen around the term climate change. Thank you for the reminder as well as the morning chuckle Mr. Briggs!
I've mentioned this before but I've thought for at least 15 years now that if the "experts" tell us something the opposite is likely true.
In my field (home building), during the mid 2000's every expert told us that home prices weren't in a bubble and home prices would just go higher. They ignored all the bad lending and historical pricing and told us we were "in a new paradigm". Screw that, I knew they were wrong, I just didn't know when the house of cards would topple.
That experience led me to wonder in what other fields the experts had it wrong. Health, medicine and nutrition became a favorite topic. you would not believe the terrible science in those fields. And yes, when it comes to food and chronic disease, everything they tell you is wrong. LDL is actually good, meat is good, saturated fat is good grains are bad, vegetable oils are probably the worst thing you can eat. All this is plain to see if you just look at the evidence for yourself.
And then there's manmade global warming (I refuse to call it climate change). I used to think anyone who didn't believe was a fool or a crook. And then Climategate happened and I began poking around with an open mind and wouldn't you know it, the science was terrible and likely fraudulent.
Unless it's proposed by people who have a history of going against the monied consensus I consider everything to be a scam. I didn't believe a word about COVID from the beginning and lived my life normally. It wasn't too hard to push back against the hysteria, the fear porn videos coming out of China were so obvious it was a laugh riot. I rolled my eyes at every mask wearer and on occasion told them they were being stupid and cowardly. I don't care anymore... people need to wake the eff up or they're going to take us down with them. I view the willfully ignorant as my enemy, a danger to my existence.
Brilliant. Concise. Cogent. Understandable. Repeatable by the lay person. Thank you. (BTW, independent audits of peer-reviewed research shows that about 90% of reported results cannot be reproduced by other, disinterested, scientists. We no longer have “science,” only “scientism.”)
The sum total of disinterested scientists can be best expressed in imaginary numbers. They don't make them anymore, dismantled the production line many a decade ago.
That is why an adversarial system like a common law court would be of advantage in examining the merits of the climate panic, so that each claim would be subject to challenge.
The Climategate emails revealed that there was no such quality control mechanism in place, and that confirmation bias and ideological motivation were forcing shaky conclusions. The IPCC is no better, as its remit is to study only possible anthropogenic causes, and to ignore alternative explanations. Along with that, none of 'The Science' in the Assessment Report is permitted to conflict with the Summary For Policy Makers, which, bizarrely, is published months before the main work.
There was talk of a Red Team/Blue Team study under President Trump, but that fizzled out. It is something which ought to be done.
Sure no doubt 🙂 We just need to translate these obvs ought’s into is/are’s—wherein pesky li’l how’s start to enthusiastically throw all kinds of unyielding boulders & tantrums ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
We have a word for science that works. It's called engineering.
Science is an imaginal function. That isn't to say it should not be careful and rigorous, but that of necessity - operating as it does at the edge of knowledge, and trying to push that boundary outwards - it contains much that is speculative and much that is simply wrong. Every good paper has a Discussion section, which indulges in hypothesizing about what the results *might* mean. This is how it has to be.
But it follows from that, that science should never, ever be trusted.
Exactly. The only reproduction of results that matters is the kind that happens under the reality test of the natural world.
Science would, in my opinion, be all the healthier if it dropped its pretences to objective truth, and embraced and emphasized its exploratory, tentative, and conditional nature.
Amen.
Yes, this is indeed a potential failure mode, although I think a large part of that is the prioritization of mathematical theory over laboratory empiricism, together with the bureaucratization of physics - the experimental components tend to take place inside vast collaborations (LHC, NASA, IceCube, ITER, etc.) built into which there are huge collective action problems along with considerable cultural inertia.
Actually, that's not quite accurate. The main advance that enabled the Ptolemaic and Copernican systems to be distinguished was theoretical - the Keplerian system, which replaced circles with ellipses. The observational data Kepler drew upon were Tycho Brahe's naked eye observations of planetary positions. Advances in telescope optics played a role, but this was mainly things like the phases of Venus (which showed that Venus must orbit the Sun), or the Galilean satellites (which showed that bodies other than the Earth could have orbiting systems of their own).
Common sense is so rare!
Fox behavior in a henhouse is so predictable.
Former FBI Exec's and DOJ Exec's investigating FBI and DOJ is so useless.
Democrats investigating Republicans are so crass.
Bureaucrat scientists investigating the science bureaucarcy is so duplicitous.
It's all fake. And, for this month, gay, too.
*ghay 😏
I think we are talking about Ghee
I can attest to this kind of blindness. I once wrote a paper which contained the phrase "taking the symbols from another alphabet". It was a paper on quantum information theory. I don't know how it happened but the proofs (and the final published version) had this as "symbols from another planet"
I just didn't see it until my co-author finally spotted it some months after publication.
A small and trivial example.
In music successful bands almost always have great producers and mixing and mastering engineers. The people who produce the music can't always tell what "works" the best; they have too much emotionally invested in it and can't always step back and be objective.
Good stuff as always Master Briggs
I once submitted a paper with a glaring typo in the title that had been missed by myself and all of my several coauthors, despite several revisions prior to submission.
Been there.
The tribulations of a fallen world.
That's impressive 😄
It's amazing how we miss this stuff.
For years I would have sworn on all that is holy that the jewellery store was swarkovski.
I bought gifts from there. Passed their stores often. My mind always put that superfluous k in there.
Just like Bearenstein (stain? I can never recall which is native to this timeline....)
Sums up my attitude now. “They” have lost all trust - everything needs to be audited. (including the typos in your last two paragraphs!)
My enemies are ceaseless in their energy. They could put typos in haiku.
typos in haiku
preposterousities abound
my enimies swarm
See how they attaq!
Thank you for the initial image. I got an early morning chuckle from it - recognizing the scam of going to a restaurant with a mask then sitting down to take it off. I'm very glad I live in a rural area where most people had the common sense to know this was ridiculousness.
I'm also glad that period is over but we must remain vigilant. The people that believed that scam didn't magically disappear. It won't take much to create another COVID-like response from those people. I suspect it will happen around the term climate change. Thank you for the reminder as well as the morning chuckle Mr. Briggs!
I've mentioned this before but I've thought for at least 15 years now that if the "experts" tell us something the opposite is likely true.
In my field (home building), during the mid 2000's every expert told us that home prices weren't in a bubble and home prices would just go higher. They ignored all the bad lending and historical pricing and told us we were "in a new paradigm". Screw that, I knew they were wrong, I just didn't know when the house of cards would topple.
That experience led me to wonder in what other fields the experts had it wrong. Health, medicine and nutrition became a favorite topic. you would not believe the terrible science in those fields. And yes, when it comes to food and chronic disease, everything they tell you is wrong. LDL is actually good, meat is good, saturated fat is good grains are bad, vegetable oils are probably the worst thing you can eat. All this is plain to see if you just look at the evidence for yourself.
And then there's manmade global warming (I refuse to call it climate change). I used to think anyone who didn't believe was a fool or a crook. And then Climategate happened and I began poking around with an open mind and wouldn't you know it, the science was terrible and likely fraudulent.
Unless it's proposed by people who have a history of going against the monied consensus I consider everything to be a scam. I didn't believe a word about COVID from the beginning and lived my life normally. It wasn't too hard to push back against the hysteria, the fear porn videos coming out of China were so obvious it was a laugh riot. I rolled my eyes at every mask wearer and on occasion told them they were being stupid and cowardly. I don't care anymore... people need to wake the eff up or they're going to take us down with them. I view the willfully ignorant as my enemy, a danger to my existence.
This is why I always use the scare quotes around "climate change", to indicate it has no fixed meaning.