Yes! We speak science (pow!)

kw: science, philosophy, musings

A salutary thing, Climategate. It has long been known, in a hush-hush sort of way, that any scientist taking a view even a little out of step with the "orthodox" view of climate change (AKA global warming) is in for plenty of trouble: lost funding, delayed tenure, can't get published, and so forth. Now it is known just how unethical many of those defending and establishing that orthodoxy have been.

In case anyone out there thought the Ivory Tower was a pristine setting, think again. Here is how science really gets done:

• It starts with a view, a theory, a hypothesis that has become endorsed by most scientists.
• A researcher somewhere notices something that doesn't seem to fit. "What's that?" is the most powerful question.
• Further experiments yield more data, until said researcher (let's use the name Sy) is convinced this is a new phenomenon.
• In the best case, a period of consideration – days, weeks, maybe years – ensues, with or without more experimentation, until Sy formulates a hypothesis that fits all the new facts.
• Sy publishes.
• Sometimes, the new hypothesis is not controversial in the least, and is gradually accepted.
• More frequently, someone takes offense, and Sy's hypothesis is attacked.
• Sy publishes a defense, and may set about further experimentation.
• If any of those taking offense are in Sy's department, Sy could lose funding for those further experiments at this point.
• Sy can always bootleg the work, robbing better-paying work on the sly (nearly universal, by the way; there is always something a researcher wants to do that "the administration" doesn't want done).
• Sy gets more results, and publishes again, perhaps in a less-renowned journal because the first journal's editors are under pressure to quiet things down.
• With luck, at least a few other researchers get miffed enough to do some experiments of their own. In fact, the more miffed they are, the more likely they are to bust their butts to prove Sy wrong, and in the process generate lots of data. Some of it will vindicate Sy.
• Sometimes, everybody has to die before Sy's new hypothesis is finally either confirmed or proven inaccurate or superseded.

Albert Einstein published his explanation of the Photoelectric Effect in 1905. He received the Nobel Prize, primarily for this publication, in 1921, sixteen years later. What took so long? It was a good thing he wasn't working as a scientist at the time. Both Niels Bohr and Max Planck, the powers of the day, hated his hypothesis. They could have got him fired. It took them both a few years to be convinced of the value of his work. He was lucky they took only "a few years". He was also lucky that they and others appreciated his Relativity publication of 1905. The ambiguity protected him during those few years.

Whether the orthodox view of climate change is right or not, the evidence is still a bit weak, and scientists who ought to know better have fudged and falsified to make it look stronger. Don't think scientists are so pure. They are just as bigoted as Archie Bunker when it is their own ox that is being gored.

I happen to think that human-derived carbon dioxide is having some effect, but that it is a minor player compared to water vapor and methane. But nobody in the public eye is allowed to take a mild stance in either direction. Only overt polarization is allowed. But I like Clarke's Law: "When an honored and distinguished scientist says that such-and-such a thing is possible, he is nearly always right. When an honored and distinguished scientist says that something is impossible, he is nearly always wrong."