I still don't get this framing...

Skeptics discount science by casting doubts on scientist expertise (@ ars technica):

According to the new study, this isn't necessarily the fault of the scientists, though. The authors favor a model, called the cultural cognition of risk, which "refers to the tendency of individuals to form risk perceptions that are congenial to their values." This wouldn't apply directly to evolution, but would to climate change: if your cultural values make you less likely to accept the policy implications of our current scientific understanding, then you'll be less likely to accept the science.

But, as the authors note, opponents of a scientific consensus often try to claim to be opposing it on scientific, rather than cultural grounds. "Public debates rarely feature open resistance to science," they note, "the parties to such disputes are much more likely to advance diametrically opposed claims about what the scientific evidence really shows."

But even if we have evidence for need of action, this is not evidence for need of government action. Even this evidence I doubt is a scientific one (is it a "scientific" consensus or a policy one?), despite very important. The "policy implications of our current scientific understanding" can be debatable and should not be confounded with the scientific understanding itself. Yes, I agree with the authors that ideological bias can affect our acceptance of the science - but even if I accept the science it is valid to question the policies.

As usual, I must mention that I don't question the scientific evidence, but I really don't like one particular policy being conflated with the science. As far as I know, science alone cannot tells us what we ought to do. And that's what democracy is here for.

credit: René Maltête

(via @brasilciencia)

The wrong tool for solving political disputes

Excerpts of Daniel Sarewitz's column at Nature News:

Of course, during the regime of Republican president George W. Bush, opposition Democrats got surprisingly good political mileage from accusations that science and scientists were routinely suppressed, flouted or abused on issues ranging from stem cells to air pollution. But the political resonance of this subject has mostly died down during the Obama administration. Could this be because less than 10% of US scientists are Republicans? In any case, the fact is that Obama, like Bush before him, is not sacrificing his political agenda on the altar of science. (...)

The decade-long brouhaha over the politicization of science in the United States reflects an incorrigible cultural delusion: that if science were left alone to speak truth to power, it would exercise a purifying magic on the miasma of politics. The delusion serves politicians, who are free to hand over difficult choices to scientists, as they did with Yucca Mountain — and later with climate change. It also serves scientists, who get to maintain their position of high cultural authority and do a lot of research in the process.

Anything goes on the internet

The "Special report: Living in denial" issue of the New Scientist (12 May 2010) has some interesting articles. Two excerpts below.

When a sceptic isn't a sceptic (by Michael Shermer):

A climate sceptic, for example, examines specific claims one by one, carefully considers the evidence for each, and is willing to follow the facts wherever they lead. A climate denier has a position staked out in advance, and sorts through the data employing "confirmation bias" - the tendency to look for and find confirmatory evidence for pre-existing beliefs and ignore or dismiss the rest.
(...)
It has, for example, become fashionable in some circles for anyone who dares to challenge the climate science "consensus" to be tarred as a denier and heaved into a vat of feathers. Do you believe in global warming? Answer with anything but an unequivocal yes and you risk being written off as a climate denier, in the same bag as Holocaust and evolution naysayers. (...) When I say "I believe in evolution" or "I believe in the big bang", this is something different from when I say, "I believe in a flat tax" or "I believe in liberal democracy".
(...)
What sometimes happens is that people confuse these two types of questions - scientific and ideological. Sometimes the confusion is deliberate. Denial is one outcome. Thus, one practical way to distinguish between a sceptic and a denier is the extent to which they are willing to update their positions in response to new information.

Questioning science isn't blasphemy (Michael Fitzpatrick):

As philosopher Edward Skidelsky of the University of Exeter, UK, has argued, crying denialism is a form of ad hominem argument: "the aim is not so much to refute your opponent as to discredit his motives". The expanding deployment of the concept, he argues, threatens to reverse one of the great achievements of the Enlightenment - "the liberation of historical and scientific inquiry from dogma". Don't get me wrong: the popular appeal of pseudoscience is undoubtedly a problem. But name-calling is neither a legitimate nor an effective response.
(...)
Such attempts to combat pseudoscience by branding it a secular form of blasphemy are illiberal and intolerant. They are also ineffective, tending not only to reinforce cynicism about science but also to promote a distrust for scientific and medical authority that provides a rallying point for pseudoscience.

I also liked Jim Giles's article about how easy it is to spread a lie, and how hard to fix it nowadays.

Going green is not enough. Specially if you're running for president

There is a very positive article on The Economist about the Brazilian presidential candidate Marina Silva, a strong environmentalist. But one of her weak points is her permissive view towards religious issues, as described in the comment I dropped there:

You also forgot to mention her proximity with the creationist movement: when asked about it, she used the "teach the controversy" strategy, saying that the children should be free to decide. She also breached the religion-state separation a couple of times when lecturing at religious events as a minister.

I understand she fits well with the liberal saviour character that western academics enjoy, but they (and the media outlets) should not forget that she also represents a good share of the retrogressive religious wackos. I don't have quarrels with her being an outspoken person of faith, but she should also be outspoken about what is her stance on these (religious) issues, in such a way that voters and political pundits can know what to expect --besides going green, whatever that means. (IOW, she must show if she can control her clergy or if she is the one below the strings).

I am also suspicious about her connections with the Natura cosmetic firm's president (since we don't know if he's just a successful entrepreneur or he wants a legal platform to sell his snake-oil) and with a lame self-help writer (a medical version of Deepak Chopra).

(PS: I apologize but almost all the links are in portuguese)

Data sharing not so easy at NASA

NASA planet hunters may only be releasing limited data set:

Although the CRU researchers appear to have had an attitude towards data sharing that breached generally accepted scientific ethics, the process of actually sharing the data would have been anything but straightforward. The CRU had no procedures in place for data sharing, the data came from a variety of sources with no standardized data format, it was a mix of published and proprietary information, etc. In short, it's one thing to decide to share the data, another challenge entirely to actually do so.

You can contrast this with NASA, which has procedures in place for sharing data and a standard policy for publishing it. But, according to a report produced by Nature News, the agency may only be sharing a deliberately limited version of the data from its planet hunting probe, Kepler.

Sharing data is considered an essential part of science because it allows others to verify and build on a research group's work. In most circumstances, however, researchers are allowed to keep data confidential until publication. This enables them to receive credit for their work, and allows them to perform a rigorous analysis before turning work over to the wider field for consideration.

I can see two differences: 1) in the CRU affair they've failed to share the data after publication - including those necessary to replicate their results, while NASA (as far as I can tell from the article) is only withholding data that might be spurious signal and does not interfere with the other conclusions presented in the articles; 2) NASA scientists are not pushing any particular policy based on the confidential datasets, as it was claimed to be the case with CRU.

I personally don't like embargoes and other bureaucratic policies in research, but I understand that sometimes they are the only feasible solution. specially for large scale analyses. This article at Ars Technica gives us a good example. But we must also recognize that the (real and perceived) relevance of the work is also dependent on how transparent the data are.

A disclaimer, which unfortunately is necessary to avoid future misunderstandings: I have no deep knowledge of climate sciences and I wholeheartedly trust those who know it; I know (it's not only a belief) that the climate is changing, while I disagree with the framing of overconfidence of some engaged scientists. There are many, many reasons to worry about the way we deal with the environment, anthropogenic global warming in this sense is just a diversion. But I don't think that whatever the scientific conclusions are, they lead to an inexorable government-sponsored solution (this step wouldn't be science-based). I am allergic to these lazy (almost irresponsible) solutions.

When Science meets politics and likes it - update on Climategate

This week's round-up of interesting commentaries:

• Professor Judith Curry's lucid commentaries on the dotearth and ClimateAudit blogs
• Janet D. Stemwedel nails down the relevant ethical implications of the case - she elegantly avoids politically contentious issues
  
• The Curmudgeon is not happy about the vindication of the creationists (great read)
• Phil at Andrew Gelman's blog is surprised at how scientists buy the skeptic arguments (his analogy was not appropriate, but this was fixed in the comments)
  
• Daniel Henninger talks about the danger of allowing for a postmodernist politicization of Science
• Andrew Revkin shows that the "contrarians-deniers-skeptics" are not alone in having too many strings attached (here, here, and here you can see examples supporting this view)
• Chris Mooney and Matthew C. Nisbet seem to be outraged that the "contrarians-deniers-skeptics" dared to frame Climategate. And they thought that they had a monopoly on this rhetoric trick... to make things worse, they try to fix it by reframing it as a dispute between left and right wings. This name-calling always work against reason (in this case, science).
• Gavin Baker points that the solution to many of these issues relies on Open Access.

update 2009.12.14: I just realized that Andrew Gelman is not the only one to write on his blog, some posts are written by a mysterious "Phil". I corrected the entry.

The climate is getting hot on the blogosphere

I have been following this climategate imbroglio since the beginning, and was really appalled by some of the e-mails. This week both Nature and Science magazines stepped into the discussion, with a balanced account from Science. Nature, OTOH, preferred a smoke and mirrors approach focused on the media, writing a sloppy and loaded editorial: they call for "better support in face of public scrutiny", against "paranoids", "obstructionist politicians" and "denialists' conspiracy theories", even while they acknowledge that some of these denialists are practicing researchers:

...when the [IPCC] assessment report was published in 2007 it referenced and discussed both papers [one from McIntyre and McKitrick and the other from Soon and Baliunas].
If there are benefits to the e-mail theft, one is to highlight yet again the harassment that denialists inflict on some climate-change researchers, often in the form of endless, time-consuming demands for information under the US and UK Freedom of Information Acts.

Did Nature's editor realize that the very same researchers who had peer-reviewed material incorporated  into the IPCC report were "demanding" data through FOIA requests? Tell me about straw man and ad hominem... they are in desperate need of reading David Goldston's last column on their own magazine (the one in which he says that "credibility is scientist's to lose").
But anyway, my purpose was to write down here a list of articles worth reading on the subject, together with a few links. They speak louder than I could explain:

• Curtis Brainard's article on Columbia Journalism Review about the uncritical coverage of the case (HT Matthew C. Nisbet)
  
• Excellent analysis of Peter Kelemen on Popular Mechanics discussing the scientific and ethical implications of the leakage (HT Carl Zimmer)
• A few observations from Maggie Koerth-Baker on BoingBoing with several relevant links (HT Massimo Pigliucci)
  
• John Tierney's commentary on the New York Times pointing to some contradictory statements of the researchers involved
• One of John Graham-Cumming's posts explaining some of the source code (spoiler: these climatologists are dreadful programmers, but not charlatans)
• Chad Orzel correctly reproofs and reminds us that sometimes Science must move despite the scientists
• Phil at Andrew Gelman's blog tells us a side story about scientific misconduct
• Bill Sakovich (the most relevant blog about Japan IMHO) describes the lack of coverage about the climategate in Japan
• Bret Stephens comments on the Wall Street Journal how charging the contrarians of having a political agenda can backfire (he is off the mark on the scale of misconduct, though) (HT @nuin)
  
• A short introduction to the history of Climate Science, by Stephan Ramstorf at the Project Sindicate
• The full-fledged IPCC report with the scientific basis for Climate Change (2007 edition)
  
• list of publicly available climate databases
• Leaked e-mails from CRU at East Anglia,  browsable and  searchable
  

The first thing that came to my mind when I saw the news about the leaked data was the (heavily criticized) article from Lawrence Lessig "Against Transparency". On it, Lessig maintains that a "naked transparency" (whose only concern would be a complete open government, without oversight) is potentially harmful because of the low attention span of the general public eye. People will consistenly find the same correlations, despite spurious. 

But if you like to compare AGW critics to creationists, be careful: that's exactly what cdesign proponentists are longing for.


update 2009.12.14: I just realized that Andrew Gelman is not the only one to write on his blog, some posts are written by a mysterious "Phil". I corrected the entry.