Understanding The Corruption Of Climate Science

8 Responses to Understanding The Corruption Of Climate Science

1. omanuel says:

   May 15, 2014 at 4:14 am

   That quote is a good summary for the way in which good scientists were led to compromise their own values to be part of the consensus community that reviewed each other’s proposals and papers to decide the

   1. Amount of grant funds received
   2. Number of peer-reviewed papers

   Dr. Marvin Herndon published a good analysis of this corrupt system a few years ago. I will try to find and post a link to his work below.

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   • omanuel says:

     May 15, 2014 at 4:20 am

     http://nuclearplanet.com/corruption.pdf

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   • omanuel says:

     May 15, 2014 at 6:21 pm

     Forgiveness and healing from the trauma of Climategate emails may be aided by sharing:

     a.) Aston’s warning on 12 Dec 1922 of the danger of transforming Earth into a star by uncontrollable release of nuclear energy [See page 20, last paragraph of Aston’s Nobel Prize Lecture]:

     http://veksler.jinr.ru/becquerel/text/books/aston-lecture.pdf

     b.) Information on uncontrolled chaos in the closing days of WWII

     _ 1. Allied atomic bombs destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki;

     _ 2. Japan exploded an atomic bomb off the east coast of Konan, Korea; http://tinyurl.com/my5zsty

     _ 3. Stalin’s USSR troops captured Japan’s atomic bomb facility and took scientists and technicians to Russia; http://tinyurl.com/n3agdan and

     _ 4. A young nuclear geochemist took secret possession of Japan’s atomic bomb plans . . . http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/2170881.stm

     FEAR of death forged the alliance of world leaders and scientists that Climategate emails exposed in Nov 2009.

     Reply
2. Scottish Sceptic says:

   May 15, 2014 at 8:36 am

   But “science” now just means the work of the group of people called “scientists”. This contrasts to what we skeptics means (skeptic science) which is all about using the “scientific” method, data, facts, conservative assertions. Yes SKEPTIC science is a standard – and yes skeptic science has been under attack by those in the group calling itself “science”.

   But how can you corrupt a consensus group called science, or a consensus subgroup called “climate science” – by bringing in people who don’t agree with the consensus!!!

   From their perspective the “corruption of climate science” would be the dilution of their group consensus.

   Yes for a skeptic supporting SKEPTIC science, they are corrupting what we see as “science”. But skeptic science is not what “science” means these days. (Hence the need to create a term for what we do mean)

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   • harrydhuffman (@harrydhuffman) says:

     May 15, 2014 at 2:12 pm

     The “group calling itself science” is more accurately known as “academics” (or “academic scientists”), or, among themselves, “peer scientists”. They reserve to themselves the right to pass “final” or “settled” judgment on all scientific questions and arguments. I am myself now without peer (in areas not previously made scientific by other investigators, but impinging, nevertheless, on all their fields, and correcting of their very foundations; so mine is the discovery of an entirely new field of science–to modern science, that is, but not to those who designed the world). Other comments here express the need for a revolution; the great design I have discovered is the truth and proper goal of the revolution, the newly-uncovered root of all the earth and life sciences.

     Doing away with the universities is not the answer. Confronting, and accepting, my work, and making the Great Design of the “gods” the new paradigm, is the answer. In climate science, it will have to be admitted, finally, that the temperature of the Earth is stable (although highly variable, to man, regionally, diurnally and seasonally, and with transient weather phenomena), and not at all subject to runaway warming OR cooling, because it was designed to be so. And very simply designed, globally–as I have continually pointed out, for 3 and 1/2 years–in accordance with the mass of our atmosphere, the hydrostatic, vertical temperature lapse rate of the troposphere, and the distance of the Earth from the Sun.

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3. Phil Jones says:

   May 15, 2014 at 11:47 pm

   Maybe Steven and others on here should apply for Grants??

   Put forth a plan to study the dire effects of Global Warming and Temperature rise… Then submit results with just the opposite… Hansen’s cooling of the past chart… Or NOAA data manipulation graphs would suffice… Keep it simple… A 2 page report…

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   • Gail Combs says:

     May 15, 2014 at 11:59 pm

     No NO, you do not understand how it really works. Se Scott Armstrong’s paper “Bafflegab Pays”

     From the Philadelphia Inquirer, March 23, 1982.
     Plain Prose: It’s Seldom Seen in Journals

     Written by Dick Pothier

     If you want to publish an article in some scientific or medical journal, here is some unusual advice from Scott Armstrong, a professor of marketing at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School: Choose an unimportant topic. Agree with existing beliefs. Use convoluted methods. Withhold some of your data. And write the whole thing in stilted, obtuse prose.

     Armstrong, who is the editor of a new research publication called the Journal of Forecasting, offered the advice in a serious, scholarly article last month in the journal’s first issue. He said yesterday that he had studied the publication process in research journals for years.

     “Although these rules clearly run counter to the goal of contributing to scientific knowledge — the professed goal of academic journals — they do increase a paper’s chance of being published,” Armstrong said.

     “Some readers may feel that the suggestions here … are extreme,” he wrote in his article. “However, they provide a description of many papers published in the social sciences…. It is not by accident that intelligent and successful scientists produce such work.” Armstrong surveyed dozens of recent studies on how articles in such journals get published, and the result, he said, “was rather depressing, if our job is to get that research information out and have the readers benefit from it.”

     In one study, Armstrong said, academics reading articles in scientific journals rated the authors’ competence higher when the writing was less intelligible than when it was clear.

     In another study, Armstrong said, research papers were mailed to a sampling of dozens of researchers. Half the scientists received a paper that described an experiment confirming existing beliefs; the other half received a paper describing an identical experiment but with a different conclusion that challenged the consensus.

     Although the methods used in the two sets of papers were identical, the scientists surveyed generally approved of the procedures used in the papers that confirmed existing beliefs and generally disapproved of the same methods when they were used to contradict what most scientists believed, Armstrong said.

     “Papers with surprising results are especially important for adding significantly to what is known. Presumably, the editors of journals want to publish important papers,” Armstrong said. “On the other hand, they are concerned that the journal might look foolish — and so they reject many of the important papers.”

     For young academics who wish to be published in such journals, Armstrong said, “the factors that would seem to be a deadly combination would be choosing an important problem and obtaining surprising results.”

     Other studies, Armstrong said, indicate that obscure writing helps those who have little to say. And having little to say may also be an advantage, especially if the author withholds some significant data. “This will allow the researcher to continue publishing slightly different versions of the same research,” which Armstrong says is a common practice…..

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4. Derek Sorensen says:

   May 15, 2014 at 11:52 pm

   Whilst I appreciate the sentiment, the “Burke” quote is bogus. See:

   http://tartarus.org/martin/essays/burkequote.html and http://tartarus.org/martin/essays/burkequote2.html

   Use it, or a variant, by all means; but don’t attribute it to Burke. The closest to this phrasing by Burke, according to Wikiquote, is “When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.”

   http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Edmund_Burke#Disputed

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