Dan Rather: Now, More Than Ever, We Must Stand Up for Science | Hacker News Reader

Dan Rather: Now, More Than Ever, We Must Stand Up for Science

blogs.scientificamerican.com

137 pointslucabenazzi105 comments

These claims that we must do what science dictates are self-serving, and the ongoing chant is getting really tiresome.

Science does not lead inexorably to policy. Science is only the first step, in how it allows us to understand the world around us. What we want to do about that is an entirely value-based decision. Deciding to implement policy demands filtering that understanding through a lens of our collective values as a society. Those values are fluid, and very frequently in controversy. It seems like the demands to "follow science" are an attempt to sweep some of that controversy under the carpet.

In the case of climate change, it's pretending that there's cost/benefit analysis to be done. It ignores the possibility that the cost of doing something will exceed the likely damage expected. (I'm not saying that's the case, I'm just saying that folks are trying to skip that part of the conversation)

It pops up in other cases, too. Virtually every economist will tell you that free trade is almost always a net positive for all involved. It harms a few, but on net the entire society is much better off. If we stopped with the science, then we should remove all tariffs and be done with it. But before we do so, there's still a moral question to be resolved: if a few people are paying the price to improve our overall economy, do we owe any debt to them, to make them whole afterwards?

So stop pretending that a lack of the policy you want demonstrates that we're scientifically illiterate. Instead, recognize that the science can only inform our debate over the values.

If a large portion of the population does not value or understand science, how can you have a rational debate on values?

Let's say that eventually it is the consensus of the scientific community that things like consciousness, pain and free will are just illusions, and therefore, human rights are an outdated concept, and future policy decisions should reflect that consensus.

You'd resist those policy proposals, and I think most people would. You'd base that resistance on your values - values, which in this case at least, you did NOT derive from the scientific consensus.

My point is there are non-scientific origins for value systems, and they are more real and valid than scientifically derived ones - science can only give you facts about the material universe.

> Let's say that eventually it is the consensus of the scientific community that things like consciousness, pain and free will are just illusions, and therefore, human rights are an outdated concept

That last part is a value statement that I doubt science could prove.

Consciousness (and pain) aren't illusions because they correspond to external phenomena, and have a significant objective component. An illusion is something that nobody else can experience, even partially, other than the subject having the illusion.

Even if free will is rule-based at some low-level, that doesn't erase the concept of rights.

We have rights even among inanimate objects. For instance, some server instance has rights to access certain files.

Rights are not pinned to free will. They are mostly about declaring certain unwanted actions of others to be wrong and punishable. Whether those unwanted actions are the result of free will, or whether they are deterministic, is immaterial. At most, that consideration only influences how we regard a violation of right; we might be somewhat more lenient if we believe that it was inevitable.

This is why the criminal courts take a particular view toward defendants who are mentally deficient or insane; in effect, this is based on the belief that those people possess less free will. It is never declared, however, that whatever they did was OK.

We have rights even among inanimate objects. For instance, some server instance has rights to access certain files.

You're really positing this as actual serious intellectual output? Just because it uses the same word does not mean that "rights" in the context of a server instance has anything to do with rights in the context of human rights. <facepalm>

I don't see the difference. Rights is just some security-related descriptor of an object, whether that be a human being or a Wi-Fi router or whatever. I generally don't equivocate over word semantics.

Perhaps you could provide few examples that relate to humans?

A server instance has no legal rights. The human controlling the server has certain legal rights in how they are allowed to configure and operate it. For example, as granted by the first amendment, they can serve a large variety of content to visitors, etc.

This is a pretty important distinction.

Your point is right, but your example is terribly flawed, because as whateveracct notes,

> and therefore, human rights are an outdated concept

is a value judgement that cannot be derived from scientific principles.

That's the very point I'm making, that you can't derive values that way, and yet many people insist we do so anyway. Like climate change - we've proven man is responsible for global warming therefore we must do x, y, and z about it.

The fact that mankind is responsible from global warming has nothing to do with needing to do something about it, or what exactly should be done. But it's always spoken about in terms of "science insists we must do something/this about it".

You've skipped over a key part of the argument for taking action to reduce climate change: we've proven man is responsible for global warming, our models show devastating things a, b and c happening due to warming, therefore we must do x, y and z about it.

Or, its possible to arrive at the conclusion that doing something about climate change would plunge billions back into poverty, starvation and death, and decide against doing those things.

You can certainly have a rational debate on values without much understanding of science, but rational debate on policies to reach those goals would be impossible.

its hard to do an objective value based analysis because it's hard to put a price on environment. That's the problem with capitalism. Making the world better for our kids does not maximize shareholder value. We can at least be honest with ourselves instead of simply denying facts to justify our decisions

Capitalism has no problem with pricing the environment. It is governments which have prevented it from doing so. Privatize the skies, oceans and lands and you would clearly see the prices come into play. Now we could argue about the merits of doing such, but claiming a man tied to a chair is incapable of walking is incorrect.

This is correct. The problem isn't capitalism, except in that we don't have enough of it. Our framework for private property won't recognize rights in air or running water, and so they become an easy sink for externalities.

If someone contaminates your land (say, by spilling heating oil), there's a well-defined path for recovering the damages. But since we don't recognize an owner of air or water, when those are contaminated, there's nobody who can claim damages.

By not fully recognizing property rights, we lose the ability to prevent polluters from externalizing their costs.

EDIT: s/Or/Our/

The reason we don't recognize ownership of the air above your land is because we have no way to precisely track its flow and pollution. Land is easy to track, it doesn't go anywhere.

It's a technical problem. Capitalism can't value something if it isn't capable of measuring it.

First: "captitalism" means "the ability of private property owners to gate access to their property to others." What you're talking about is "market economy," which is not the same thing.

Second: For a market economy to lead to the optimal outcome, it requires that rational actors make decisions based on perfect information.

We have large swathes of society set up to reduce the access to "perfect information," under the guises of "trade secrets" and "privacy" and a host of other values. In fact, as soon as there is any information assymetry, there is a very strong incentive to slant the market to favor the information holder, which leads to much less efficiency. We can fight that either by regulating, or by making it a crime to hide any information. Until now, we have chosen the former. I doubt that you are arguing that the latter would be better. That's the reality of the world we live in today.

Third: For the market economy to work, we also need "rational actors." We know from psychology that humans are nowhere near rational, and often act counter to their own self-interest. We also know from sociology that humans in larger groups are often easily misled from their own best-benefit path.

I think a lot of people don't need to infer scientific illiteracy from policy, they can take it from the horse's mouth.

http://edition.cnn.com/videos/politics/2016/09/26/mobile-cli...

http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/ben-carson-argued-ev...

Etc etc

A lot of policies are quite scientifically illiterate or even disparaging. "Teach abstinence, not sex ed." "Don't coddle criminals, lock them up." "Trickle-down economics is the best way to create jobs." "Creationism makes just as good predictions as evolution, so it should be taught with equal emphasis."

It goes on and on, even if we ignore any one of the arguments, the problem is that many people, even people in power, believe that what they and their clique wants to be true is just as important as what can actually be demonstrated to be true. Or to put it another way: If someone says something to be true, that's equally powerful no matter what their basis (repeatable, predictable measurements, or plain dogma.)

> In the case of climate change, it's pretending that there's cost/benefit analysis to be done. It ignores the possibility that the cost of doing something will exceed the likely damage expected. (I'm not saying that's the case, I'm just saying that folks are trying to skip that part of the conversation)

In the case of climate change, we can't even get to the cost/benefit analysis part of the conversation because some people (including the presedint-elect, and important members of the majority party in Congress who lead the committees that where climate action would originate) say that climate change is not happening, or that if it is happening humans are not contributing to it and cannot do anything about it.

> In the case of climate change, we can't even get to the cost/benefit analysis part of the conversation

Sorry? We were already at the "let's bribe farmers to grow extra corn and then burn it for fuel" stage, years ago.

keep in mind though, that was in part a geopolitical security strategy (energy security), as the USA was deeply reliant on foreign oil. (This was before the Alberta oil sands was viable, and fracking wasn't even a known option)

Of course, can't say that's a good reason to continue the subsidies today though.

Good point, some of those policies were sold as different things to different groups.

I hear this a lot and feel like it is a muddled response to a muddled understanding of climate change.

For what it is worth:

    * Science is clear that CO2 causes warming (pure physics), but so do many other gases (methane, water vapor, etc).
    * Science is clear that global temperatures are rising (even if you quibble about the 'pause')
    * Science isn't clear regarding what part of global temperature rise is due to human activity.
    * Science isn't clear on how much and how fast temperatures might rise.
    * Science isn't clear on how to model the climate. Climate models have incorporated a net positive sensitivity to CO2 warming and make predictions that have exceeded actual temperature gains. So the models are not accurately predicting the climate.
    * Science isn't going to provide a definitive policy response to increased temperatures. There are many options.

In particular, the warming due to CO2 physics is NOT the catastrophic warming that we see reported in the news. That warming is based on climate models incorporating a large positive sensitivity to the CO2 warming (as well as many other factors). The models are not "settled science". The actual sensitivity is not something that can be measured with today's scientific understanding of complex climate systems.

Even if the climate models were making correct predictions. It doesn't automatically follow that the policy solution is to reduce CO2 emissions to 0. The costs of clean energy have to be borne by someone and cutting off energy supplies (because energy is more expensive) to developing economies, for example, also has consequences. The negative affects of warming can be mitigated also via relocating people, communities, and changing our land-use patterns, etc. The correct policy mix is going to depend on many factors, most of which are going to vary from place to place. A single global policy proscription isn't likely to be feasible for lots of reasons.

Finally, criticism of policy proscriptions shouldn't automatically be interpreted and characterized as rejecting the climate change hypothesis. In many cases there are argument for or against policy proscriptions that aren't even related to climate change, such as improving air quality, increasing the efficiency of our energy systems, using market based approaches to avoid crony capitalism and favored industries, and so on.

    * Science isn't clear regarding what part of global temperature rise is due to human activity.
    * Science isn't clear on how much and how fast temperatures might rise.

I believe science does have confidence intervals on the ranges, and even the lower ends are pretty bad. As in, it's not a question on "whether" the global food supply pipeline will collapse, but "when" -- 2035 to 2070, depending on the side of the confidence interval you pick.

    * It doesn't automatically follow that the policy solution is to reduce CO2 emissions to 0.

Nobody is arguing for reducing CO2 emissions to 0. Most of the majority arguments are actually quite tame -- leading to a reduction of profits in coal and oil industries, not a wholesale dissolution. Yet, even that, is seen as an unacceptable cost of increasing the chances of civilization survival by the right-wing party of the United States.

It isn't clear to me what a confidence interval is for a prediction from a complex climate model. What are the sources of error for a software model? How can they be quantified?

In any case, my understanding is that global warming increases that are at the low end of predictions is not catastrophic and that is actually where measured changes fall.

Here is a report from the NOAA that says: > The “pause” in global warming observed since 2000 followed a period of rapid acceleration in the late 20th century. Starting in the mid-1970s, global temperatures rose 0.5 °C over a period of 25 years. Since the turn of the century, however, the change in Earth’s global mean surface temperature has been close to zero.

https://www.climate.gov/news-features/climate-qa/why-did-ear...

That report is interesting because it argues against the pause indicating a true slowdown in global warming because the period of time is too short, that climate change works on much longer intervals. Perhaps that is true, and the 15 year pause is temporary. Time will tell.

While this response seems 100% reasonable, I don't see how this it is any more effective in the face of "Climate change is a Chinese hoax" level absurdity. At this point with deniers it is religion so reason is out the door regardless.

You are misrepresenting the opposing argument being made.

The opposing argument is that people are making is as follows: 'climate-alarmists' misuse climate-science as a means of making political change.

It is not a denial of all climate-change science.

I don't care to argue this topic because I'm not expert nor do I care to pretend to be one on the topic of climate change, but this misrepresentation of the opposing views is part of the liberal-bubble so many people live in - all while smugly assuring themselves how much smarter they are than everyone else.

Are you unaware of the hundreds of times Trump has literally claimed all climate change science is a hoax, or are you saying his view is unimportant?

Trump and many other people don't seem to clearly understand the difference between the 'settled science' part of climate change and the 'unclear science' part. As such Trump and many others have very muddled and confused responses to those advocating various public policy changes due to climate change.

Some clarity about what is and isn't 'settled' would certainly improve the public debate on policy but I'm not holding my breath.

I disagree, what has Trump been unclear about? He doesn't think humans cause climate change, but he also doesn't think the planet is getting warmer. He doesn't even seem to think that CFCs are a real problem. He wants to cut the EPA. He thinks asbestos regulations are pointless.

Trump has been clear and consistent for decades on this stuff, which I'm not sure you can say about any other belief of his. A new clarifying statement from the IPCC would not suddenly clear everything up for him.

I'm familiar with some of his statements, but I can't claim to know them all.

Could you please refer me to where he said that 'all climate change science is a hoax'? I would agree that would be a factually incorrect statement though I could not find anything where he said that. My interpretation of what I've read from what Trump has said, is that Trump believes that Climate Change Alarmists (from his perspective) utilize it to for political/policy reasons beyond the purely environmental reasons that they claim.

i would love to dive into this further (both the science itself, and how we cross the bridge from science to policy), can you recommend any resources or papers (DOI if possible)?

Can you elaborate on this part?

    * Science isn't clear regarding what part of global temperature rise is due to human activity.

I just want to contrast the above with this statement by the IPCC [1]:

"Human influence has been detected and attributed in warming of the atmosphere and the ocean, in changes in the global water cycle, in reductions in snow and ice, and in global mean sea level rise; and has been extremely likely been the dominant cause of the observed warming since the mid century. In recent decades, changes in climate have caused impacts on natural and human systems on all continents and across the oceans."

[1] https://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar5/syr/drafts/SYR...

>"[human activity] has been extremely likely been the dominant cause of the observed warming since the mid century."

This is worded strangely so that it doesn't mean anything. Of course human activity has been the dominant cause of humans observing something. Why don't they say CO2 emitted by human-made machines or something more specific?

That reply doesn't address my original comment, but the IPCC do say just that -- although not in that paragraph. You will find statements all over the IPCC about how climate change is nearly certain to be caused by people, and in particular, by people burning fossil fuels. If you go to the link I posted and search for "fossil" you will that in those notes. You can also read the official IPCC reports yourself to get a clearer idea.

Maybe I'm misunderstanding you, but there's no anthropic principle at work. It would be perfectly fine to say (although it would not be true) that "plasma fluctuations on the surface of the sun are extremely likely to be the dominant cause of observed warming since the mid century."

I was just commenting on the strange word choice used for that statement. Almost like whoever was editing that section wanted a way to weasel out of the implications later, if need be.

"climate change" isn't caused by people unless you think the climate never changed before humans were involved.

The question is what portion of the change is contributed by recent human industrial activity and I don't think that is particularly well quantified.

I was pointing out that the human induced part of the rise isn't quantified very well (large error bars, lots of handwaving), not that there is no human induced warning.

That's alright. I just want to know why you say that it's handwavey. As far as I knew there was almost no dispute that CO2 had huge and well-quantified warming potential. Nor was there a debate about the origin of the CO2 in the atmosphere (from the ratio of carbon-14/13 to carbon-12, you can tell it's from fossil fuels.) Please correct me if this is mistaken, because it's not my field of expertise.

The amount of CO2 in the atmosphere is well quantified and there are estimates regarding how much of this is caused by human activity that don't appear to be source of too much controversy. The warming caused by CO2 is relatively clear, and not seriously disputed.

But the direct warming due to CO2 is not what triggers all the public debate about climate change. That comes from the indirect warming associated with hypothesized positive feedback mechanism within the Earth's climate. There is no settled science on this indirect warming so the net affect of human-activity (the measured CO2 in the atmosphere contributed by human activity) is unclear. The climate models have historically over-estimated this net affect when their predictions are compared to the actual measurements.

This page has a graph that shows how global temperature changes are part of cycle that has existed longer than humanity.

http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/GlobalWarming/page...

You can either wait around for the market to catch up with reality and account for the externalities of environmental damage, or you can pass government regulations that help fix or mitigate the damage NOW. Case in point: the bans on CFCs and agricultural DDT.

Science needs another ally as well - we also need wholesome support of science. Not just pick and choosing to support a particular ideology, liberal or conservative. For some (my friends on the right, whom I understand and have empathy for more than your average HN reader), scientific thought unfortunately has been so closely tied to liberal ideologies that middle America sees as destructive to families and local economies. Additionally, there is growing intolerance for scientists to hold opinions of faith or conservative ideals in our universities. This is unacceptable. (This is a great article on the matter http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/08/opinion/sunday/a-confessio...)

In short, we need to stop treating that being "scientific" and "liberal" go hand-in-hand. They don't.

To quote the great Serj Tankian:

Science fails to recognize the single most potent element of human existence

> growing intolerance for scientists to hold opinions of faith or conservative ideals

Conservative ideals and science don't have any inherent conflict, but uhm, that other thing...

Some of the greatest scientific discoveries in history were made by people thinking they were glorifying god by doing their work.

Faith and science go together just fine, and I say this as a hard atheist.

Doesn't that depend on the religion though? Like evangelicals don't think human made global warming is real because humans can't alter gods creation. I think most people will accept the evidence as long as it doesn't go against some of their core beliefs (which can be expanded beyond religion). It's just that for a lot of scientific discoveries there is at least one group that refuses to accept it.

> Like evangelicals don't think human made global warming is real because humans can't alter gods creation

Certain types of Christian denominations tend to strongly profess biblical literalism, which encourages this type of thinking, but this isn't representative of the entire group. This type of thinking is what enforces the problem I mentioned. I am an Orthodox Christian, and I have yet to find some type of scientific discovery incompatible with my faith -- how silly would this be regardless. If science is true observation of God's earth, and God is indeed the creator of all, the contradictions only arise when we use flawed logic or reasoning (for example -- biblical literalism and mis-interpretation). The problem is, as I mentioned, when we use science as political tools, or to draw vague conclusions or hasty generalizations.

Side note: evangelicalism, while being the loudest and most representative form of Christianity in the states, doesn't even crack the top 10 of largest denomination of Christians in the world. Catholic is first, Eastern Orthodoxy is second, then the various Protestant denominations are all after.

not even top 10? there are 280 million pentecostals alone in the world and roughly the same number of eastern orthodox christians: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Christian_denomination...

Pentecostalism is as about as a specific term as "christianity" or "monotheism" or "paganism" comes when it comes down to actual beliefs, practice of worship, doctrines, etc. The largest of those groups, "Assemblies of God" defer in key areas of doctrine, faith, and worship from the next 8 or so on that list. You may argue the differences aren't worth the seperation, but consider even in the American Protestant landscape -- even the Presbyterian Church, which is a specific kind of Protestant is heavily fractured between it's more liberal wing, the PC-USA, and it's more conservative group, the PCA. Baptists not apart of the Southern Baptist Convention differ heavily from those not a part of the SBC. Methodists and Lutherans face similar key distinctions. If all of these groups were united in belief, practice, doctrine, and key tenants of the faith, I would agree with your statement, however this is not the case.

Growing up, I was a practicing Evangelical. I won't go into it here, you can find some more info in my posting history, but in the 1970s, for my area and in my churches, that wasn't a bad thing. It was a generally healthy and positive mindset for me and most of the people around me. In short, it didn't much resemble the 'Evangelical' many people think of today, even though I believe that particular belief system is a loud minority.

I no longer practice evangelism, but a part of me is still walks in the same faith I had growing up, not because it's scientifically sound, but because it's a useful and positive thought model and world view for me.

To my point: looking here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evangelicalism

"Evangelicalism, Evangelical Christianity, or Evangelical Protestantism is a worldwide, transdenominational movement within Protestant Christianity maintaining that the essence of the gospel consists in the doctrine of salvation by grace through faith in Jesus Christ's atonement."

That's nicely spells out the kind of 'Evangelical' I was and am.

Those who believe the Bible says that humans can't alter God's creation, at least among the protestant community with which I am most familiar, are pretty rare and they're reaching long and wide to come up with scriptural justification for that belief. I've only run into one or two people who held this belief.

However, quite a few self-identified Evangelicals don't think that humans can change God's creation, but they don't take that as a religious teaching. This disparity, I believe, comes from the decades of politicization of various Protestant sects in the United States and elsewhere.

Indeed, up until the election last week, they were, by and large, a direct arm of the Republican party.

Even then, I think an evangelical scientist likely wouldn't bother working on an experiment/in a field that strongly disagrees with some of their faith. They may try to craft an experiment to prove their faith, but that's fine with me as we should have reproduction of experimental results and other scientists reviewing.

I really don't see a problem there as far as religious scientists.

The problem isn't faith, it's narrow-mindedness about how the divine interacts with the world. God is bigger than you and doesn't hew to your preconceptions of them.

I can agree with this 100% as an Orthodox Christian. One of the core tenants in understanding Orthodox Theology is human, created logic does not apply or cannot happen to even hope to describe God in his entirety, this is indeed the root of many of the early heretical teachings about Christ, such as he wasn't actually a man, but just a divine apparition (Docetism), or he wasn't fully divine (Arianism). We merely have words for the attributes He has decided to reveal to us, even using the word "He" when describing him with caution.

Faith is believing in something despite evidence to the contrary not because of it. So, there really is a conflict.

People are not robots they can accept ideas in conflict to both be true. That does not mean faith has no cost.

EX: So as not to offend anyone. If you believe that god's true name is 'Zual' and that she wants you to do a handstand on your 20th birthday. And you agree there is no evidence that this is the case, well without evidence the default assumption is for a less complex world without that requirement.

PS: No, that chain of logic does not disprove the idea. But it does mean picking 'Zual' over 'Zuam' or 'Zuak' ... without evidence is less likely to be true than false.

That's not at all what faith is. There are some definitions of faith that include "belief not based on proof", but that is still far removed from "belief despite evidence to the contrary".

Suppose someone said I am going to roll a fair six sided dice. So, 1,2,3,4,5,6.

I will give you a 50/50 bet. You can write down a number 1,2,3,4,5, or 6 and then chose if it will be that number or will be another number. AKA pick 2 and say it will be 2 or will not be 2.

Baring any evidence the first choice is random, but the second is that number or is not that number should not be random.

Logically faith is the same thing. It's picking a very specific result and saying baring any evidence I will pick a small set of outcomes and say this more likely true instead of not true.

Now, having evidence changes things. If you can show the dice is biased for 4, then picking not 6 is a better choice than not 4.

PS: Now if you believe picking is that number is a better option in my game, then I would be happy to play this game with you.

> Logically faith is the same thing.

According to you.

Do you have a logical counter argument?

I heard the incoming Vice President, Mike Pence, does not believe in evolution. In fact there's a video of him, admittedly a long while ago now, making a speech where he seems to not understand what the scientific meaning of "theory" is.

Are people not concerned about this at all? People in high positions ought to know basic things about how science functions, yet as the article points out, barely a word was said about science.

As a European, I think if someone went on a show like Question Time (a UK live debate show) and revealed they didn't believe in evolution, they would be finished in politics. And there would be even more mockery if they said they thought the earth was 6000 years old (though I don't know if Pence believes that).

he also wanted to spend tax payer money on 'Conversion Therapy' for gay people. This is absurd and a huge step back for us.

http://www.politifact.com/california/statements/2016/jul/28/...

There are plenty of Americans who would disqualify a candidate that doesn't believe in evolution, global warming, or some other widely known scientific fact.

Unfortunately, there are just as many ill-informed Americans that share these views. It's sad and depressing, and is usually just the result of being in a conservative bubble. If you live in rural America, your friends and family all regurgitate the same things they hear from Fox News, Glenn Beck, Alex Jones, Breitbart, and other conservative sources, which, for whatever reason, seem to hold a lot of scientific things in contempt.

They're ignorant, sure, but it's hard to see things from another perspective if you've never really been exposed to anything else.

> If you live in rural America, your friends and family all regurgitate the same things they hear from Fox News, Glenn Beck, Alex Jones, Breitbart, and other conservative sources

It's funny that conservatives 'regurgitate', while liberals are simply repeating things they've thought about deeply after hearing John Oliver say them.

Both sides have people who don't think critically. It's a huge problem. I consider myself a liberal but I dislike sites like Huff Post. It looks to me just like Breitbart. I don't know why it's popular. John Oliver is funny and can give some insight into many topics but no one should use it as sole source of information, I don't think many do but I'm not on the receiving end of their argument so it's hard to tell.

    > They're ignorant, sure, but it's hard to see things 
    > from another perspective if you've never really been 
    > exposed to anything else.

Are you sure they're ignorant?

Could they not be intelligent, rational individuals with the personal agency to have looked at the same facts as you and come up with different conclusions?

> Could they not be intelligent, rational individuals with the personal agency to have looked at the same facts as you and come up with different conclusions?

No. Just as someone that says 2 + 2 = 457 is also wrong.

Not on that subject, no. It's not reasonably possible for a person to look at the known facts of modern biology and not believe in the process of evolution.

Things intelligent, well-read people can disagree on: fiscal policy; democracy versus republic; abortion rights; single-payer healthcare.

Things so overwhelmingly shown to be factually true that it's not a sign of reasonableness to debate them: Earth and life are old; vaccines don't cause autism.

There are 'liberal' biases in science too, especially when it comes to 'evolutionary' differences between races and genders.

I can echo this sentiment and pile up on it by saying that a self-proclaimed atheist could not be president of the United States. It could happen in France, Germany, the UK, Sweden though (and has).

By the same token, there are hordes of Americans who affect a belief that there are no races, and think any attempt to apply Darwinism to human nature is the quintessence of evil. Liberal Creationists.

Race is a social construct.

Edit: I'm 50% Ashkenazi, we are prone to Tay-Sachs disease, caused by a genetic mutation. Does that make me a member of a separate race.

Science is a "social construct". As is anything else we talk about. Try telling someone with sickle-cell anemia that race is just a social construct.

http://www.hematology.org/Patients/Anemia/Sickle-Cell-Trait....

Yes, you are therefore a member of a well-defined breeding population (deme) and that membership gives us useful information immediately. Not only do you have a greater chance of getting certain diseases, your group also has higher intelligence, with a mean almost a standard deviation higher than gentiles. If race was arbitrary it would not give us predictive validity of that kind.

The impression that schools and media gives of how "science" is being implemented these days is inaccurate enough that I would call it propaganda. The reality is that the research literature is filled with over 90% junk, and a small percent of value, just like everything else.

The funding and publication system is set up to force this junk percentage as high as the public will tolerate, so I do not think this "positive-spin" type of propaganda is a good thing.

I think your interpretation of the situation is a bit off. The 90% number, best I can tell, comes from a rather limited meta study which found the papers they tried to replicate had a low repoducablity rate. Note this doesn't immediately make them "junk" just adds another data point in support of the null hypothesis or in some cases points to the existence of confounding factors [0].

Looking at research literature at the single paper level is the realm of pulp science and media puff pieces. In terms of the larger field having a broad corpus to check your results against gives context to an experiment's result and makes it easier to weed out outliers.

It's my opinion that a funding system that ends up with more noise than ideal is still a better state than just giving the reins to the pundits of the world who make conclusions without even pretending to have any experimental foundation.

[0]https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/speaking-of-science/wp/2...

>"this doesn't immediately make them "junk" just adds another data point in support of the null hypothesis"

Unless the null hypothesis happens to correspond to someone's actual hypothesis, chances are your study was designed to be junk from the beginning and anything of value that occurred was despite that.

For example, no one actually believes humans have exactly zero impact on climate, or smoking has exactly zero impact on cancer incidence. Yet the vast majority of studies on these topics will be testing those "hypotheses". That is the junk.

> The reality is that the research literature is filled with over 90% jun

Based on what? There is a problem of non-replicated papers - but where exactly are you getting your claim of 9 out of 10 - particularly in high quality journals?

Personal experience. It is great that the replication issue is getting attention, but really that is a minor aspect of the problem. Producing reproducible reports of your research is supposed to be the easy part... The real difficulty is how results are interpreted.

What I was taught to do (along with basically my entire worldwide cohort of research colleagues) is test a "null hypothesis" rather than my hypothesis. Then when the null hypothesis was deemed to be inconsistent with the data, I was supposed to conclude my hypothesis was supported, with at most some hand-waving about other explanations.

A crucial part of scientific research is distinguishing between different explanations for the results, and this is almost never found (at least for fields like medicine, psych, etc). If we can get the public eye to look behind that curtain, oh man...

Most of the comments here are focused on climate change denial and smattering of evolution denial. It often gets painted that science denial (and evolution denial) is something that conservatives do, that liberals are the tribe of science.

Here's a link to a talk from Jon Haidt that puts a different perspective on that [0]. I don't want to do his eloquence a disservice, but suffice to say, every group has their own flavors of science denial. The discourse just seems to mostly focus on calling out the conservative forms of it while ignoring the liberal forms.

[0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n9kJkuuedw0

Understanding science requires some scientific mindset.

The climate scientists talk about 1 degree Celsius increase in global temperatures and some react with "I am fine if the temperature would increase by a degree Fahrenheit".

Instead, what a person should realise is that an increase in global temperature of a mere 1C is shorthand to trillions of trillions of Joules (energy).

Funny, today on the Drudge Report, I read that we've had record cooling in the past 8 months.

http://realclimatescience.com/2016/11/record-global-cooling-...

There's a large online anti-global warming movement that needs to be addressed. Actually, there's an anti-everyhing movement (e.g vaccines). The general public is not going to know who to believe.

Do more people read Drudge or Scientific American?

What we need not better debate, but better dogma. It shouldn't be necessary to argue that climate change is real every time the topic comes up. Just like we dogmatically accept that cigarettes cause cancer, we should dogmatically accept that climate change is happening and it's caused by us. The science that establishes this fact is far beyond anything that the general public should be expected to understand. I don't understand the first thing about lung cancer, yet it doesn't bother me to accept that cigarettes cause cancer. The general public needs to be comfortable accepting this fact without proof. The world is too complex for everyone to understand every issue.

>"we dogmatically accept that cigarettes cause cancer"

The truth is that using the colloquial definition of "cause", everything seems to "cause" cancer:

>"These considerations of mechanism suggest that at chronic doses close to the toxic dose, any chemical, whether synthetic or natural, and whether genotoxic or nongenotoxic, is a likely rodent and human carcinogen. Not all chemicals would be expected to be carcinogens at high doses; the MTD may not be reached (101) or the chemical may be toxic without causing cell killing or mitogenesis." https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC54830/

There is value in having a nuanced understanding. For example, just as a kind of random additional fact, did you realize lung cancer is a pretty common diagnosis even amongst non-smokers? "if lung cancer in non-smokers had its own separate category, it would rank among the top 10 fatal cancers in the United States." http://www.cancer.org/cancer/news/features/why-lung-cancer-s...

What about the reports that the most common time for smokers to be diagnosed with lung cancer is right after quitting: "Several reports indicate that the risk of lung cancer increases slightly for a short period of time after cessation of smoking while the risk of adverse cardiovascular events drops immediately." http://www.medical-hypotheses.com/article/S0306-9877%2805%29...

How does that build/refute the position that dogma is required to deal with anti-science in public discourse.

I ask because while I think its an awful conclusion, I've seen and experimented enough for more than 2 decades, to recognize this same appeal from the days people first started spreading climate FUD which has metastized to what we see today.

The conclusion is that this is NOT a scientific communication problem - because science has been DESPERATELY trying to do that in whatever fair and logical manner they can.

It's been met by concerted efforts to confuse, muddle, emotionalize, subvert, defund, ridicule, and physically attack people on what used to be "boring nerd territory".

This is a political/emotional problem, and for that, isn't dogma a horrid but simplistic solution.

>"dogma is required to deal with anti-science in public discourse."

You want a ministry of science devoted to spreading dogma? Do people still know about the book 1984?

No I don't.

I am well aware of 1984, and I am also keenly aware that many people seem to be applying it like a manual as opposed to a warning.

Its easy to tell me, a random person who mentions that he thinks its a horrid solution, "remember 1984". I am already on this site, and already disposed to that vein of thought.

Its not that effective at countering, or dealing with people who are not here, some of whom are coders who have never read those books, or think the books are over hyped.

>There is value in having a nuanced understanding

No doubt. People should try to understand the nuance of things. But there's a difference between understanding nuance and actually trying to refute expert opinion using specious and simplistic arguments. Non-experts will never be able to understand all the science needed to establish a judgement such as "humans are causing climate change". It requires training in atmospheric science and years of experience as a scientist.

There's a different between better understanding the conclusions of medical researchers and questioning the validity of their opinion. Sure, there is no doubt areas where there is disagreement and more research is needed, but it's useless for an amateur to judge those issues.

The only information that the general public really needs about climate change is the opinion of experts. Sure, they can learn more if they are inclined, I hope they do. But when amateurs start questioning the validity of experts' opinion, we are hopelessly lost. An amateur will never be able to judge the validity of an experts opinion on an issue that requires expertise. Never.

Even Martin Luther wasn't some random lay person when he questioned the doctrines of the church. He had specialized knowledge of theology and used it to engage in the discussion the same way a member of the church would.

>"Even Martin Luther..."

I think this is a good point to bring up. Consider the centuries upon centuries when the intellectual aspects of Western Civ spent most of their time thinking and arguing about things today we would find rather pointless (eg was Jesus begotten by the father or not). Not only that, the result of these (pointless) arguments drove political activity.

Nowadays we say "go think or argue all you want about that type of stuff, but no particular sect should be supported by our government." I hope the same will be achieved for other intellectual pursuits at some point. You seem to be arguing for the opposite.

Sadly, you probably already intuitively know the answer.

Scientific American annual circulation[1]: 425,000

Drudge Report monthly unique visitors[2]: 25,000,000

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_American

[2]: https://www.quantcast.com/drudgereport.com?country=US

You're comparing the circulation of the physical magazine to online metrics of Drudge Report. Not good, my friend, not good.

Do the right thing, and compare unique visitors of SciAm website to that of Drudge Report.

OK, point taken... so maybe still roughly 25:1 in favor of science isn't real? [1]

[1]: https://www.quantcast.com/scientificamerican.com

> There's a large online anti-global warming movement that needs to be addressed. Actually, there's an anti-everyhing movement (e.g vaccines). The general public is not going to know who to believe.

IMHO the problem is that the conservative leaders (political and otherwise) and media have made a norm, a social requirement, out of ideology uber alles - over facts, wisdom, respect, the welfare and lives of others, and even democracy.

It's not the first time that's happened in history, but the results often have been very bad. We can no longer stand by and let it pass politely and passively; that only further legitimizes it.

I don't object to conservative ideas, but ideological movements of any stripe are a danger to society, and the current one exists among conservatives.

It is said that, in a war of ideology, you cannot bring facts. But, what if facts are your ideology? This is the conundrum we're facing.

Taking Dan Rather's advice on a responsible attitude to science is like going to Bill Cosby for dating advice, or asking Rolf Harris to run your kindergarten. Booted from CBS in disgrace for confusing journalism with character assassination. Read the original CBS report. "This man is a truth teller". Indeed. Here is the full report.

http://www.cbsnews.com/htdocs/pdf/complete_report/CBS_Report...

I'm glad somebody brought this up. Rather is no Cronkite, Murrow or Brinkley: the Killian documents debacle demonstrated that he was sloppy at best, and was more interested in pushing a political agenda than digging for the truth. That's the antithesis of science.

This doesn't invalidate the need for climate change research -- not by far! -- but he shouldn't be the poster boy for any fact-based cause at this point.

This doesn't deserve down mod. If Hacker News is going to cite Dan fucking Rather about anything then pointing out the intellectual fraud this guy is guilty of is 100% legitimate.

I don't see one mistake (assuming it is that; I don't know the details) in a long career as discrediting him, or else everyone is discredited. We have nobody left.

Integrity isn't binary; it's not all or nothing.

If you don't know the details, that is easily remedied by reading the CBS Report, which I linked to. It is free. I followed this controversy at the time, and it is very revealing precisely in those details, which I read in full as soon as it came out. Rather was guilty of assisting fraud in the service of a cause, no other conclusion is reasonable. That certainly disqualifies him as a serious commentator going forward. Trust matters. Yet now he is being resurrected to lecture us about science.

Please take your https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem somewhere else, it only suggests ignorance on your part.

"suggests ignorance" == ad hominem. Rather is a discredited hack. Get a clue.

I don't care if he is insane, who he is says nothing about his message. At most a speaker simply calls into question the evidence they are using to support an idea, not the idea.

> Get a clue.

Please stop this. We need you to comment civilly and substantively on Hacker News or not at all.

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