Re: How science is not done


"Martin Brown" <|||newspam|||@nezumi.demon.co.uk> wrote in message news:405nm.328575$Ta5.232925@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
starburst wrote:
On Aug 30, 7:38 pm, rwalker <rwal...@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Fri, 28 Aug 2009 07:39:18 -0600, Chris L Peterson



<c...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Fri, 28 Aug 2009 11:48:54 +0000 (UTC),
vjp2...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
The only time you can make money in science is when the "experts"
disagree so much they want to kill each other. If they all agree, the
chance of making money is gone.
You obviously have no experience with either science or scientists.
Grants are awarded for interesting research; climate researchers don't
stop getting grants if they reach unexpected conclusions. (They might
have problems if they don't make very good arguments for highly
questionable positions, of course. Arguing against AGW, for instance, is
strong evidence of a lack of reason, and most people don't want to fund
work by somebody who can't think clearly. If you were going to take that
position in a grant proposal, you'd need a very strong argument- which
would be very difficult in this example. But some researchers are able
to do so.)
I know hundreds of scientists, and almost none see "making money" as a
major goal of their choice of profession.
_________________________________________________
Chris L Peterson
Cloudbait Observatory
http://www.cloudbait.com

Right. And further, grant money doesn't go to the scientist's
pockets. It goes for lab equipment, overhead costs, supplies, maybe
assistants' salaries.

This is a red herring, and if you guys are actually in Academe, you
oughtta know better. It's not that grant money goes to enrich the
scientist, it's that obtaining grant money is a key (if not _the_ key)
part of remaining employed.

It does vary from country to country but someone who doesn't manage to write grant proposals that make the top grade to be funded would not last the course. They would also earn a lot more outside academe.


And a top grade research proposal shows how it can help solve today's problems, eg climate change.



The formula is simple: don't bring in
grant money, don't get tenure track gig in research U (or even decent
college anymore), don't get tenure, don't go up the ladder, finish
career either teaching thankless and uninterested brats at Podunk U or
using expensive PhD to get job working at Lowes or insurance company.

In part true.

Arguments pro or con AGW aside, to argue that this system does not
lend itself to a herd mentality in the hard sciences is either
ridiculously simple-minded or specious. In the case of AGW
specifically, one need only peruse the articles linking climate change
to various contrary catastrophes to recognize that few things sell in
grant proposals now as does the gratuitous link to climate change hand
wringing. Scroll through a few of these, for example, and consider the
underlying grant-funded studies that led to many of the predictions:

http://www.numberwatch.co.uk/warmlist.htm

Yes. You will tend to see a tick box mentality that attempts to link anything at all to climate change if it is even thought that it might make a slight difference to getting funding. But you also should know that it is the experiments where the conventional wisdom is convincingly demonstrated to be incorrect that are remembered though history.

Hertz Photoelectric effect
(although history remembers Einsteins explanation more)
Michelson Morely Ether drift experiment
Penzias & Wilson 3K Background radiation

Scientists want to be remembered for getting a ground breaking new result so there is real pressure to do interesting science. There isn't much credit or kudos for doing a me too experiment.


They really aren't trying to prove that the speed of light is or is not invariant according to the ineryial frame of refernce chosen, or even the quantisation of light energy. In many cases, they are trying to get their research proposal on the migration of some species of moth up so they have a job for the next 12 months.


The AGW deniers for hire are mostly paid shills that did the same thing for the tobacco industry to keep people smoking. Now they work for big oil and if you look at their CVs it shows. They are specialists in confusing the general public by spreading doubts and uncertainty.


That is simply untrue. I am an AGW denier, and I am not paid one cent.

Nor is the comparison to the tobacco industry in any way valid; you simply threw that in as an emotional argument, presumably because you think cannot prove your point without an appeal to emotion.


There are a few genuine scientific sceptics too but only a handful of them are respectable academic scientists - the rest would testify to whatever their paymasters want. A striking number have extreme politics.


So, you believe there are "respectable academic scientists" who are "genuine scientific sceptics".

Is this an acknowledgement that it is scientifically legitimate to be skeptical of AGW?




I'm not saying yes or no on anthropogenic climate change. I'm only
saying that science is produced by people who behave as economists
predict that they will.

Nobody behaves quite as economists predict. If people behaved exactly the way economists predicted we would not have had boom bust economics for centuries. Economists are bunch of complete wankers with theories that do not stand up to any serious inspection of the data.


There are many similar examples of groupthink in history and in science. These are becoming more prevalent with the internet.

Two I think are excellent examples. The first was the global cooling scare of the 1970s. A more recent example is Y2K.



In what other field of study could Nobel prize winning economics experts also be responsible for one of the most monumental and catastrophic business failures (LTCM)? It's failure was a preshock for the ever more complex derivative market banking cons and scams that have now wrecked the world economy so comprehensively.


Nobody is saying economics is perfect, but it certainly has a lot more runs on the board in making predictions than does climate science, which is currently batting 0/0 correct predictions.

What has been described to you could most simply be described as human nature or human history, rather than economics. AGW is a religion for the 21st century, and non-believers aren't going to receive any of the billions of favours being handed out.



Regards,
Martin Brown

.

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