Tuesday, April 02, 2013

The Real Problem With Quick Claims of Malfeasance

As I was waiting for my not-even-three-years-old-and-already-sclerotic computer to reboot (*), I reached over to a pile of things I had printed months ago and found this article near the top: "The Real Holes in Climate Science" from Nature, over 3 years ago. It contains this:
"Of course there are gaps in our knowledge about Earth's climate system and its components, and yes, nothing has been made clear enough to the public," says Gavin Schmidt, a climate modeller at NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York and one of the moderators and contributors to the influential RealClimate blog. "But this climate of suspicion we're working in is insane. It's really drowning our ability to soberly communicate gaps in our science when some people cry 'fraud' and 'misconduct' for the slightest reasons."
And there it is: the real damage done by those who are quick to claim misconduct or worse.

If it gets to the point where climate scientists need to retain a lawyer every time they publish a paper, there is going to be a lot less openness of the real state of the science, uncertainties and all. Perhaps there already is.

The usual suspects who immediately jump on any inconvenient result, who root around until they find something -- anything -- to whinge about, no matter how trivial or silly, are helping to shut down the science, not, as they like to claim, just criticiquing it. It goes without saying that there is, of course, the need for honest and direct scientific critique, but you have to wonder if any science can properly develop in an environment like this.


(*) But I do ask a lot of her.

4 comments:

dhogaza said...

"The usual suspects who immediately jump on any inconvenient result, who root around until they find something -- anything -- to whinge about, no matter how trivial or silly, are helping to shut down the science, not, as they like to claim, just criticiquing it."

Shutting down the science is, of course, one of their goals. The primary one being to make sure we take no action. Shutting down the science is a very effective way to advance the primary goal.

Victor Venema said...

If the usual suspects were interested in advancing science they would not publish so much nonsense. If they would publish a valid point, you would not notice it in the enormous heap of ruminant dung. And to be able to find any valid points, you would expect that the people commenting would be critical of misinformation and at the very least complain in clear cases of misquotations. If someone will find a problem in climate science, it will be a scientist and not this hopeless bunch.

David Appell said...

Good point(s), Victor.

gallopingcamel said...

If the science were valid it would not matter what the skeptics or anyone else said.

Gavin is sore because his position is being challenged. He needs to "Mann Up".