3/13/2010

Climate Scientists Should Stick to Avocacy. I Mean Science.


In chemistry, you try to isolate the variables. Hydrogen and oxygen plus a spark and POOF! You have water. You mustn't introduce impurities that might obscure what is going on, might bias the amount of heat generated and every other measurement. Only by being a careful, impartial observer can the untainted truth be learned.

The same is true with the scientific process itself. There are advocates and there are scientists. When the two are intertwined, they cease to be credible as either. The purity of the scientist is lost. And the advocacy falls into disrepute too, because the basis in science is no longer trustworthy.

It's entirely human to have a hunch, a purpose and follow one's convictions. These motivate scientists to dig deeper yet raises the probability of biasing them toward a preconcieved notion, especially if the community is already biased in the same direction.

Separating sciency and advocacy seems impossible, so the best we can hope for is checks and balances. Verifiability has been the most obvious one lacking in the climate debate. Work needs to be duplicated, not lost or destroyed. The other lacking piece has been the one-sidedness of the research. There wasn't much demand for verifiability, since the majority of climate work was slanted toward the warming thesis. There was no "market" for research of the opposite thesis. It's not quite as exciting so it wasn't missed. Now we see the error in our ways.

To continue the H2O analogy, we don't want scientists to say, "Hydrogen reacts with water and you are very bad people for those of you doing this. Too much heat is generated! And too much water! And it uses up valuable oxygen!" When we get science from scientists, we are eternally grateful. And I do mean eternally, since the purest truths are enduring, whereas opinions mixed in often contaminate the whole story.

No comments:

Post a Comment