Apropos To Some Of The Discussions Here

[sarge]

Interesting read this morning that, I think, goes to the heart of the discussions regarding Man Made Global Warming we sometimes have here. It goes to my position that the "science" has been perverted by politics and political correctness and is, therefore, unreliable. ( And I think that comparing the present climactic conditions to the projections made by the models of 30 and 40 years ago proves the science unreliable as well, but that's another dicsussion.)

As unsettling as those discoveries have been for society, some research is so politically controversial that few dare to speak of it in public for fear of running afoul of the PC police. And this fear, argues Nathan Cofnas in the journal Foundations of Science, obstructs the self-correcting nature of scientific inquiry.

The article is a commentary on another article written in the journal Foundations of Science by Nathan Cofnas titled
“Science Is Not Always ‘Self-Correcting’: Fact–Value Conflation and the Study of Intelligence” which addresses research in intelligence science,but the conclusions and comments can easily be interpolated into other fields of politically charged science, as the author does here:

“[W]hen hypotheses are regarded as supporting certain moral values or desirable political goals, scientists often refuse to abandon them in the light of empirical evidence.”

Is he right? Absolutely, yes.

Not only do intellectuals refuse to abandon politically correct beliefs in the face of contradictory evidence, but simply questioning them can ruin a person’s career. Lawrence Summers’ tenure as president of Harvard was cut short because he suggested that there are intellectual differences between men and women. As a result of such punitive pushback, some researchers are afraid to investigate differences between male and female brains, which certainly exist. Without a doubt, this reticence is holding back the field of neuroscience.

A similar chilling effect can be seen in climatology. The only politically correct belief regarding the climate is that humans are 100% responsible for everything bad that happens and that the Four Horsemen are already marching toward Earth. Questioning that apocalyptic and unscientific belief has resulted in multiple researchers being labeled “climate deniers.” Climatology would greatly benefit from the more skeptical approach of so-called “lukewarmers,” but far too many are ostracized and demonized.

Cofnas' paper can be found here. In his conclusions he makes this statement:

Finally, as suggested in Sect. 2.1, the practice of rejecting scientific hypotheses because
they have politically unwelcome consequences is likely to undermine social welfare as much
as it undermines science.

[BillyBob66]

Thanks for that link! I have long believed his premise is correct. I would like to point out one thing about the very opening of his article, though it does not change his argument or my acceptance of it one bit:

Off Topic

Science can make us uncomfortable. Astronomy proved that the Earth goes around the sun, upending centuries of geocentric theology.

This is totally true- as far as it goes. However, the Bible makes no claim that the Sun or stars rotate around the earth, or that the earth is flat, or supported by an elephant or Atlas etc etc. All the Bible says about the Sun's orbit is that it indeed has one, through the heavens. Which, for me anyway, says nothing about it going around us, but rather implies something far more far flung, as in through the heavens. Which, modern science has confirmed, that the Sun travels through the heavens, through our galaxy, in an orbit/circuit that takes some millions of years. As we amazingly travel along with it on that journey, doing our own orbit around it as it goes, about every 365 days. That geocentic theology was developed by men, and in fact most likely by men who did not know God's Word very well. As proved by many other of their behaviors, which were not only un-biblical, but often actually anti-biblical.

But, good article!

[sarge]

Thanks for that link! I have long believed his premise is correct. I would like to point out one thing about the very opening of his article, though it does not change his argument or my acceptance of it one bit:

Off Topic

Science can make us uncomfortable. Astronomy proved that the Earth goes around the sun, upending centuries of geocentric theology.

This is totally true- as far as it goes. However, the Bible makes no claim that the Sun or stars rotate around the earth, or that the earth is flat, or supported by an elephant or Atlas etc etc. All the Bible says about the Sun's orbit is that it indeed has one, through the heavens. Which, for me anyway, says nothing about it going around us, but rather implies something far more far flung, as in through the heavens. Which, modern science has confirmed, that the Sun travels through the heavens, through our galaxy, in an orbit/circuit that takes some millions of years. As we amazingly travel along with it on that journey, doing our own orbit around it as it goes, about every 365 days. That geocentic theology was developed by men, and in fact most likely by men who did not know God's Word very well. As proved by many other of their behaviors, which were not only un-biblical, but often actually anti-biblical.

But, good article!

Well, he doesn't mention that the geocentric theory was not merely theology, but accepted scientific fact, based in centuries of observation by scholars such as Ptolemy (who was defintely not reading his Bible to gain his knowledge), and the models they created based on the theory seemed to prove it and had been used successfully for navigational purposes. It wasn't until the proper tools for observation were designed to correct these inaccurate models that the scientists of the time changed thier minds, but even then proponents of the then politically unpopular theory that the
Earth rotates around the Sun were berated, and sometimes punished, for expressing thier opinion or even showing thier evidence.

Sound familiar?

[BillyBob66]

Yes, it does! It seems to be the norm, conventional wisdom does not like to be challenged. I have in the past mentioned Ignaz Semmelweiss(sp?). Though I don't know if that was a PC thing so much as an ego thing on the part of the entrenched medical authorities.
( who is this upstart to tell us we have been doing it wrong all these years? ) They say science tends to get things corrected sooner or later, and that is probably true. But it often is way later way too often.

[GregD]

This is but one source of bias in science. There are many other sources as well. Science has always functioned in an environment of bias. And yet, science has managed to progress. So why do you think climate science is special; that it is unable to overcome the challenges of bias when so many other scientific fields have done so?

Further, the primary bias is clearly against the idea that man has influenced climate as evidence by this and the numerous other illogical arguments against this idea. An unbiased evaluation of this idea would focus on well-informed, logical analyses of the data.

[GregD]

They say science tends to get things corrected sooner or later, and that is probably true. But it often is way later way too often.

And when does religious dogma get corrected?

[sarge]

This is but one source of bias in science. There are many other sources as well. Science has always functioned in an environment of bias. And yet, science has managed to progress. So why do you think climate science is special; that it is unable to overcome the challenges of bias when so many other scientific fields have done so?

Further, the primary bias is clearly against the idea that man has influenced climate as evidence by this and the numerous other illogical arguments against this idea. An unbiased evaluation of this idea would focus on well-informed, logical analyses of the data.

I don't, and that's the point.

The problem is that the liberal politicians and the media (but I repeat myself) act as if its Gospel, much like in Socrates day---which was the point of the article.

[GregD]

I don't, and that's the point.

The problem is that the liberal politicians and the media (but I repeat myself) act as if its Gospel, much like in Socrates day---which was the point of the article.

Many actual climate scientists are quite confident in anthropomorphic climate change, and not because of politics or media, but because that is what their investigations indicate.

With respect to genetically modified organisms (GMOs) the science community is at odds with liberal politicians and liberal media in that the latter think GMOs are bad and the former point out that GMOs and non-GMOs are, for most intents and purposes, indistinguishable. Clearly scientists are able to overcome the liberal political and media bias.

[sarge]

I don't, and that's the point.

The problem is that the liberal politicians and the media (but I repeat myself) act as if its Gospel, much like in Socrates day---which was the point of the article.

Many actual climate scientists are quite confident in anthropomorphic climate change, and not because of politics or media, but because that is what their investigations indicate.

With respect to genetically modified organisms (GMOs) the science community is at odds with liberal politicians and liberal media in that the latter think GMOs are bad and the former point out that GMOs and non-GMOs are, for most intents and purposes, indistinguishable. Clearly scientists are able to overcome the liberal political and media bias.

Let's toss Fracking into the mix as well, and you start seeing the problem---

There's a whole lot of manipulation of science to further political goals going on.

Perhaps some scientists should speak a bit louder?

[GregD]

Let's toss Fracking into the mix as well, and you start seeing the problem---

There's a whole lot of manipulation of science to further political goals going on.

Perhaps some scientists should speak a bit louder?

I bump into fracking professionally. An awful lot of energy is generated at the surface by a fleet of pumping trucks, and if all that energy is delivered to the target formation hundreds to thousands of feet below any formations with fresh water there isn't much opportunity for the well-executed frac job to cause problems with fresh water sources. HOWEVER that energy must travel down a well, and if that well is not properly constructed and undamaged, some of that energy can very easily leak out and cause problems. Wells are expensive, and proper construction increases the expense. In the interest of profits at times corners are cut. So fracking can be done safely, when safety is given adequate priority, but safety often conflicts with business priorities, and sometimes corners are cut...

The problem, as illustrated by the above paragraph, is that the answer from science is often a long, boring, technical, "it depends", and that has poor marketability.

Please consider being more precise with what you mean by, There's a whole lot of manipulation of science to further political goals going on. If you are referencing the misrepresentation of scientific results to further political agendas, then yes that happens all the time, but it is not so difficult to identify that and filter it out if you try. If you are referencing the scientific process itself getting manipulated, it happens, sometimes, in small, temporary ways, but such efforts are inevitably overwhelmed by the process. A substantive inaccuracy cannot stand for long; data begins to pile up against the inaccuracy until it is abandoned.

Scientists have louder voices in some venues than in others. Political discussions and even media reports often poorly represent the science. While I don't expect the US National Academies to be perfect, I think there are lots of reasons to believe that they are fairly well aligned with the best science available.

Getting back to the OP, I disagree with the referenced paper. Yes, cultural and political biases are present in the practice of science but many other biases are also present and the scientific process does, in fact, deal effectively with biases of all types.

[sarge]

Well, here's a more precise definition then:

The Democrat Party, particularly the far Left Wing, is using "science" as a cudgle against people of Faith and to further leftist political objectives and the media, for the most part, cooperates with them.

From GMO, to Fracking, to MMGW (or AGW if you prefer), to anti-vax, there's a current running through that entire side of the political spectrumthat seeks to demonize and marginalize their politcal opposition by casting them as ignorant anti-science troglodytes.

In short, science is being perverted by politics and seems helpless, or unwilling, to prevent it.

[GregD]

Well, here's a more precise definition then:

The Democrat Party, particularly the far Left Wing, is using "science" as a cudgle against people of Faith and to further leftist political objectives and the media, for the most part, cooperates with them.

From GMO, to Fracking, to MMGW (or AGW if you prefer), to anti-vax, there's a current running through that entire side of the political spectrumthat seeks to demonize and marginalize their politcal opposition by casting them as ignorant anti-science troglodytes.

In short, science is being perverted by politics and seems helpless, or unwilling, to prevent it.

And similar tactics are employed by factions with other political persuasions. The name calling and related behaviors are nothing but bullying.

Your example set is incoherent. Science and "the left" agree on some of the topics you list and disagree on others.

With regard to "people of Faith" the enemy isn't the Democrats or lefties because they are also largely "people of Faith". Religious lefties may preach a different dogma than religious righties but they are equally passionate about their religiousness. The sole enemy of religion is science. The foundation of science is the rejection of religious belief as evidence of truthfulness. Science IS anti-religion. By definition. Whether a "person of Faith" is ant-science depends entirely on the person's concept of religion; if the person rejects scientific evidence based on religious belief then that person is very much anti-science. By definition.

[BillyBob66]

They say science tends to get things corrected sooner or later, and that is probably true. But it often is way later way too often.

And when does religious dogma get corrected?

Never if it is truth, if correct. For example, Moses( or actually God's) quarantine or sanitary laws never changed, though they were probably not generally accepted until the late 1800s.

[BillyBob66]

Well, here's a more precise definition then:

The Democrat Party, particularly the far Left Wing, is using "science" as a cudgle against people of Faith and to further leftist political objectives and the media, for the most part, cooperates with them.

From GMO, to Fracking, to MMGW (or AGW if you prefer), to anti-vax, there's a current running through that entire side of the political spectrumthat seeks to demonize and marginalize their politcal opposition by casting them as ignorant anti-science troglodytes.

In short, science is being perverted by politics and seems helpless, or unwilling, to prevent it.

And similar tactics are employed by factions with other political persuasions. The name calling and related behaviors are nothing but bullying.

Your example set is incoherent. Science and "the left" agree on some of the topics you list and disagree on others.

With regard to "people of Faith" the enemy isn't the Democrats or lefties because they are also largely "people of Faith". Religious lefties may preach a different dogma than religious righties but they are equally passionate about their religiousness. The sole enemy of religion is science. The foundation of science is the rejection of religious belief as evidence of truthfulness. Science IS anti-religion. By definition. Whether a "person of Faith" is ant-science depends entirely on the person's concept of religion; if the person rejects scientific evidence based on religious belief then that person is very much anti-science. By definition.

But which scientific evidence are you talking about when you say that? Your data set is incoherent. Science changes through the decades, and what was unquestioned science 50, 100 or 300 years ago becomes very much questioned today if not outright ridiculed. If 150 years ago the religious person believed the Sun had an ORBIT through the far away heavens because the Psalmst said so, but if science did not believe that at the time, then the Christian might have been anti-science back then, but now it turns out they are in full agreement. Science was wrong(science was anti-science?), not the Bible. Correct?

If the Christian believed that you should always wash your hands after touching anything unclean(such as a sick person or dead human or animal found dead) because the Laws of Moses said so, and that certain unclean objects should be burned in the fire(sterilization) but the doctors(medical science) at the time of Semmelwise(late 1800s) furiously rejected such a concept in multiple European countries, punishing/persecuting the upstart Semmelwise, then the believer(along with Semmelwise) was anti science then, but turned out to be pro science say 50 years later when science finally caught up and admitted Semmelwise was right all along. Turns out the anti-science ones ( i.e. anti true science) were the so called scientists. However, even though they later admitted they were wrong- or more likely just acted like they knew it was good to wash your hands all along- probably most of them never had a clue the Bible even contained these statements, laws, commands by which God said He would heal His people from the diseases of the Egyptians, and which were scientifically correct. Too bad, for millions of people, they did not know these laws and accept them sooner.

You say "The foundation of science is the rejection of religious belief as evidence of truthfulness.", but you are wrong to use foundation, as many of the first scientists were pretty strong Christians who only wanted to explain how God's world worked, not disprove His Word. But, if it is NOW The desire of science to reject religious belief as evidence of truthfulness, then poor old science has failed miserably on several occasions, has it not? But, science has often gone a long, long time before the evidence arrives showing how wrong it was all along.

I have been dealing with this in medical science for much of my career. For example, look at dietary advice. This speaks to the political and economic influence on science, or at least scientists, mentioned earlier. Do you remember how medical authorities( aka scientists) allied with our government and agriculture(USDA) to brow beat the public and businesses like McDonalds to replace saturated fats with vegetable fats and butter with margarine, which meant replacing with trans-fats? Liquid vegetable oil altered by science to look like butter, aka margarine? And do you know NOW that there is no telling how many they killed with that advice? Turns out the trans-fats were far more harmful than the natural fats- saturated or otherwise. Now we never heard an apology for that gross malpractice fully backed by science and government working together, did we? All that happened was the commercials and government advice to replace butter and animal fat with margarine more or less ceased. But the products are still on the shelf! Trans-fat free now, but still oils that turn into trans-fat when heated.

Or how about the low fat/high carb(as in bread/pasta etc) recommendations as being good for your over all health and especially heart health, resulting in an epidemic of obesity and type 2 diabetes? ow, finally, the science in steadily proving this to be just the opposite of what we should hav been doing. NOW the occassional doctor can be found who says lowering fat at the least probably does not help, and most especially if those calories are replaced with carbohydrates(sugar). But for 30 danged years you could hardly find a doctor or gov health official who would recommend differently. Get rid of that butter and steak and bacon, replace with bread and margarine! There might be millions of early death and disease related to this advice, but hey at least business has remained good in the medical field, not to mention agriculture! What the heck is with all of these so called scientists giving such advice for 30-40 years? But at long last, like you say, they are starting to get it right. In the meantime, they probably killed or injured a whole lot of folks. Science(or at least so called science that is influenced by politics and business or other things) is often great, even amazing, but often has it dead wrong. Finally, we are starting to see many, many more articles and studies like this(just the most current example being discussed at a health forum I go to):
http://www.theepochtimes.com/n3/2112771 ... urated-fat

Off Topic

For years, health experts have blamed the standard American diet for rising rates of diabetes and heart disease. But when it comes to finding a fix, even scientists can’t agree on what we should or should not eat.

Take fat, for example. Over the last few decades, doctors have recommended a diet low in saturated fat to avoid chronic disease.

Saturated fat is found in animal products like dairy, eggs, and meat, and tropical plants such as coconut and palm. These fats have been a fundamental part of many traditional diets around the world for centuries, but doctors today insist saturated fat will harm our health.

The American Heart Association recommends restricting saturated fats to no more than 5 percent of everything you eat. On its website, the organization states that “decades of sound science” has proven saturated fat “can raise your ‘bad’ cholesterol and put you at higher risk for heart disease.”

However, some researchers question whether saturated fat is really as bad as the medical establishment says it is. One such scientist is Dr. Deanna Gibson, an immunologist, microbiologist, and associate professor of Biology at University of British Columbia (UBC), Okanagan Campus....In a culture obsessed with thin, eating fat doesn’t sound very attractive. But Gibson says our biology requires that we eat some quality fat every day for good brain function and a healthy body.

“We only have three things to eat: carbohydrate, protein, and fat. For some reason, we’ve chosen in the last few decades to focus on how bad fats are in general,” Gibson said. “Your whole body depends on fat. All of our membranes are made of phospholipids. Your hormones depend on the types of fat and the amount of fat that you eat.”
Nutrition Research

The stigma against saturated fat in particular is so strong that up until the 2000s, trans-fat was promoted as a healthy alternative to saturated fat. Today, dietary guidelines set by the U.S. Department of Agriculture recommend eating fat from vegetable sources such as soy, corn, sunflower, and canola instead of meat and dairy fats. But Gibson suggests that conventional wisdom may be wrong again.

“We base our hypotheses on previous literature or previous assumptions, and it turns out wrong when you do the studies,” she said. “I’m often shocked about how little is scientifically known in nutrition. I wonder how we get to these assumptions, because I can’t come up with a good answer from the scientific perspective.”.........“We have to be more critical about the studies that we interpret. Most of the nutrition clinical trials that are out there are very poorly done, and most of the rodent studies never led to a clinical study. It doesn’t inform the next step,” she said.
Chronic Inflammation

We may not have to worry about infections or nutritional deficiencies like our ancestors did, but the modern world has its own set of health problems. The diseases that plague people today stem largely from chronic inflammation, and based on the evidence she has seen, Gibson believes that our Omega 6-heavy diets are partially to blame.

“When you eat a diet really rich in things that promote those inflammatory responses, then your body really doesn’t know how to shut that down anymore,” she said. “If we had a mixed diet, a combination of all these fats together, then it probably wouldn’t be a problem. But people today have diets that are very rich in Omega 6 and are deliberately avoiding saturated fat. That’s when it becomes really problematic.”............Another nutrition researcher at UBC, Dr. Sanjoy Ghosh, points to other problems with high PUFA vegetable oils. A study he published last year finds that these vegetable fats contribute to sedentary behavior and a predisposition to insulin resistance, similar to that observed in Type 2 diabetes.

“I’ve been studying fat for 12 years,” Ghosh said. “In earlier studies I found that sunflower oil was worse than palm oil, and people couldn’t believe it. But I’m convinced, and I think other people now understand, that saturated fat is not as bad as we thought.”................

The Rise of Vegetable Oils

While many believe science alone informs dietary guidelines, Ghosh says such advice is often shaped by social, political, and economic forces. In fact, it can take decades for good scientific evidence to overcome these other influences...............“It happened with trans-fats,” Ghosh said. “We’ve known they were bad since the 1980s, and 20 years later the government finally agreed. But then all the big food companies said, ‘Hey, we can’t change our oil so fast. We need time, because the new oil changes our flavor profile.'”

According to Ghosh, the demonization of saturated fat is more of a story spun to benefit industry, rather than facts based on science. He urges people to read the article, The Oiling of America by the Weston A. Price Foundation, a food advocacy group dedicated to promoting traditional diets. The article gives a detailed history of vegetable oil marketing in America, and unpacks many unscientific reasons for why saturated fat is shunned today.

“In the 1950s and 1960s, the North American oil crop farmers were getting hammered by the Malaysian and Indonesian imports of coconut oil. It’s the same thing that’s happening to the U.S. manufacturers with stuff from China today,” Ghosh said. “Essentially, no saturated fat containing plants can grow properly in North America. What we do grow is sunflower, safflower, canola, corn, etc. So from the 1950s on, saturated fat was considered to be bad.”............
But what about all that “sound science” the American Heart Association says links saturated fat to heart disease? Ghosh says that when you consider how long we’ve restricted our saturated fat intake, the case against it doesn’t hold up.

“In the last 30 years, North American fat consumption has changed drastically. People used to cook with lard, but nobody does this today. We eat what is available. Everything in the market has consciously taken saturated fat out,” Ghosh said. “Our saturated fat intake has not increased over the last 30 years. So why is heart disease still rising? If saturated fat was causing this, logically it should drop if we take it out of the diet. But it’s still going up.”

According to the American Heart Association’s 2015 Heart Disease and Strokes Statistics Update, cardiovascular disease is the leading global cause of death, accounting for over 17 million deaths per year. That number is expected to grow to nearly than 24 million by 2030.

So with all the saturated fat reductions of the last 40 years, combined with all the increased consumption of healthy corn oil and such, combined with the docs wanting us on statin drugs from the womb, what the heck are CV deaths increasing for? Not to forget diabetes and obesity? Something stinks. And science seems to be at least partly behind it. Yes, sure, science will eventually get it right. But in the meantime 50 years may go by and millions may die early. ( Hey, at least they can keep us alive longer with our heart disease via bypass surgery and stents! Business is good! )

[BillyBob66]

Considering all of the above and much more, and considering how many scientists were calling for a new ice age in 1979 right before it started heating up, is it reasonable to suspect the scientists might occasionally be dead wrong on other things they seem very sure of, and that they might be influenced by politics and business and any number of things? Seems possible.