House of Eratosthenes

Anyone who has studied the history of science knows that scientists are not immune to the non-rational dynamics of the herd. Many false ideas enjoyed consensus opinion at one time. Indeed, the “power of the paradigm” often shapes the thinking of scientists so strongly that they become unable to accurately summarize, let alone evaluate, radical alternatives. Question the paradigm, and some respond with dogmatic fanaticism.

We shouldn’t, of course, forget the other side of the coin. There are always cranks and conspiracy theorists. No matter how well founded a scientific consensus, there’s someone somewhere—easily accessible online—that thinks it’s all hokum. Sometimes these folks turn out to be right. But often, they’re just cranks whose counsel is best disregarded.

So what’s a non-scientist citizen, without the time to study the scientific details, to do?
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Your best bet is to look at the process that produced, maintains, and communicates the ostensible consensus. I don’t know of any exhaustive list of signs of suspicion, but, using climate change as a test study, I propose this checklist as a rough-and-ready list of signs for when to consider doubting a scientific “consensus,” whatever the subject. One of these signs may be enough to give pause. If they start to pile up, then it’s wise to be suspicious.

(1) When different claims get bundled together.
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(2) When ad hominem attacks against dissenters predominate.
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(3) When scientists are pressured to toe the party line.
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(4) When publishing and peer review in the discipline is cliquish.
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(5) When dissenting opinions are excluded from the relevant peer-reviewed literature not because of weak evidence or bad arguments but as part of a strategy to marginalize dissent.

There are twelve items on the checklist. I think #9 might be my favorite.

Paging Alanis Morissette…. The irony is: This doubting-of-the-consensus stuff is the “paradigm shift” Thomas Kuhn, who invented the phrase, was talking about. According to Kuhn, science functions within paradigms; he calls this “normal science.” But then discrepancies, contradictions, etc. build up, and the paradigm shifts…. at which point the new scientific consensus is The Truth, full stop, until the next paradigm shift.

When Kuhn laid all of this out back in the Sixties in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, the Left got a collective chubby, because now poetry majors could opine on scientific matters without having to, you know, do math and stuff. The radical academic left got an even bigger chubby, because it affirms their faith in the talismanic power of words. See, Kuhn didn’t say “the previous paradigm was wrong; the new paradigm is closer to the truth.” He said that paradigms ARE truth — no paradigm is truer than another, and we can’t evaluate science in terms of conflicting paradigms, because we literally can’t understand the old paradigm.

So, once again, the Left finds itself in the odd position of impeding progress. They’re the Ptolemaic astronomers, desperately inventing “retrograde motion” and “epicycles” to preserve their precious paradigm, while people with actual evidence — you know, the temperature readings that keep failing to go up, the Arctic ice that keeps not melting, etc. — are Copernicus and Galileo.

Fun times.
- Severian | 02/03/2015 @ 07:36
Alternating, or direct current?
“Science” says AC can kill an elephant,
- CaptDMO | 02/03/2015 @ 17:40

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When to Doubt a Scientific ConsensusTuesday, February 3rd, 2015

When to Doubt a Scientific Consensus
Tuesday, February 3rd, 2015