When science becomes a priesthood, it is no longer science.
Reference to authority is unscientific, indeed antiscientific, a rejection of the principles of
science. One must appeal to evidence, not authority. What authority says is not scientific evidence.
Independent replication is evidence.
If people all over the world have made observations for the last 100 years about temperature, I can’t replicate them; but other people at the time could replicate them.
The date at which Lake Winnipesaukee ice goes out, is the date at which people can go to their properties, and do go to their properties. If the ice out date was wrong, they would notice and be mighty pissed. I selected Lake Winnipesaukee, because that is the lake whose ice outs receive the most attention unrelated to estimating climate. Of all older climate data, Lake Winnipesaukee ice outs are the best replicated, thus, the most scientific.
And ice out dates on Lake Winnipesaukee indicate no twentieth century warming That I provide the data and method of calculation, and that this data is the most widely replicated data available means that this blog post is far more scientific than anything that could ever be permitted to appear in the journals “Nature” or “Science”.
This is the opposite of the Giss-Hadley-CRU approach, which uses vast piles of data whose validity no one can possibly know, and which there is every reason to doubt, and then capriciously excludes some of that data, includes other of that data, and whimsically adjusts what is included for reasons that are not only not revealed, but which the Climategate files revealed that Hadley-CRU themselves do not record, which large adjustments, even if justified rather than fraudulent, are an admission of the complete worthlessness of the data for the purpose. No one can possibly know, not even Hadley-CRU, whether their adjustments are justified or fraudulent, not that it would matter since if the large adjustments are justified, the data is worthless for the purpose of estimating past climate.
If you have to estimate the veracity of the reports based on the authority of what you know about those making the reports, that is not science, but religion. Those with the greatest authority are always the most religious, thus this approach guarantees acceptance of the most holy doctrine of the consensus of the most holy and eminent synod – which approach is anthropogenic global warming in a nutshell.
“The consensus” is not science.
Science is common sense, observation, truthfulness, and impartiality, with social mechanisms to enforce truthfulness and impartiality. If science becomes a priesthood, if you hear the words “consensus†and “peer reviewed publicationâ€, the mechanisms that enforce truthfulness and impartiality have failed. “Peer reviewedâ€is only an indication of some connection to reality when people do not rely on it as evidence of connection to reality.
There is some tension here. If Michael Mann told you the sky was blue, then you would go outside to check, right? Exactly because it was Michael Mann telling you.
In the first sentence, you don’t mean “what you know about” rather you mean “the academic credentials of.”
It’s OK to downgrade your estimate of the truth of X if known liars and idiots are vigorously claiming X while known truth-telling sages are saying not-X. That *is* part of the scientific method — or at least part of the norm-set which upholds it.
And it is recursive. I believe Einstein’s modifications of Newton’s explanation of Kepler’s interpretation of Brahe’s data largely because authorities which seem very reliable on such matters tell me to do so. Academic disciplines like climate science are a kind of parasite (or mimic) which arise to feed off the reputational capital built up by communities of reliable scholars (here physicists and chemists). But that trust, that capital, that authority really are a part of science. If I have to check *everything* myself, there can’t be accumulation of knowledge.
So, you need to add “trust” to the list of things science is. Maybe “provisional trust,” but still.
Yes, you are right.
If one distrusts all equally, then truth is not rewarded, and lies are unpunished.
Or perhaps: “Trust but verify.”