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Comment by drewbuschhorn | Hacker News Reader

As a former chemist, I think there's always a role for a gadfly in science (or in any profession). But part of being a gadfly is acknowledging you're probably wrong and the majority is probably right, and not trying to intentionally sabotage others' efforts. For a good example of what it doesn't look like, take a read at Scott Adams (Dilbert) blog, where he argues that the mainstream climate science community isn't just factually wrong, but they're actively deluding themselves. That sort of statement doesn't contribute anything to the situation since the only way they can stop 'deluding' themselves is to accept the opposing view.

There's nothing wrong with criticizing the status quo, so long as it's done honestly, with the humility to say: "I 'm probably wrong," and that's where these guys seem to go wrong. They're sure the majority is wrong to begin with.

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I fail to see how Scott Adam's stance "intentionally sabotages" others efforts. Are you suggesting that freedom of speech is a form of sabotage?

Poisoning the well is a well-known rhetorical fallacy. It is really worth the effort to study, learn and be on the lookout for fallacies in public discourse, although doing so will lead to some depressing insights.

False equivalences are also fallacious, and I urge you to desist from employing them.

I think you misread the parent and the grandparent.

Also, I can't understand what you're tying "poisoning the well" or "false equivalence" to.

He suggests strongly that they are delusional (as are basically everyone who disagrees with him). That's a big claim to make under the banner of 'free speech' while not having to defend it.

Can you link to where he says climate scientists are delusional?

I've only recently looked at his blog, but what I've seen him say on the topic has been this-

1. He doesn't have the training to evaluate climate science, so he gives climate scientists the benefit of the doubt in that climate change is happening and is driven by humans.

2. However, his personal experience with complex models is that they're never very good at predicting the future, and so he doesn't trust that complex climate models are either.

3. Climate scientists suck at using persuasive techniques to win people over to their beliefs. This seems to be his main thing as he is attempting to brand himself as a guru of persuasion.

"On the question of trusting experts, my frame of reference is the field of influence and persuasion. From my point of view – and given the examples of mass delusion that I have personally witnessed (including Trump’s election), I see experts as far less credible than most people assume." http://blog.dilbert.com/post/154082416051/the-non-expert-pro...

That same article starts with

"Before I start, let me say as clearly as possible that I agree with the scientific consensus on climate change. If science says something is true – according to most scientists, and consistent with the scientific method – I accept their verdict."

I think we'll have to agree to disagree. I think that opening statement is a rhetorical device.

Oh, it absolutely is. Scott Adams does this kind of thing all the time.

Paraphrased, but this is something else he posted: "Let me say that I am a Hillary supporter..." ok... "because if I supported Trump, then Hillary supports would kill me." wtf?

This is a category error. Freedom of speech is not itself sabotage, but it is obvious that one can use speech to commit sabotage.

Who said anything about freedom of speech?

Perhaps a better example would be Freeman Dyson. Here's a video of him talking about questioning the status quo: Freeman Dyson: Heretical Thoughts About Science and Society. [1] In which, he also questions global warming, or at least to the degree in which it will affect us.

[1] https://youtu.be/8xFLjUt2leM

There are people like Richard Lindzen, who even extends his gadflyism to smoking and lung cancer (and as somebody who sees the DNA damage in whole genome sequencing of lung cancers from smokers, boy is he ever stupidly wrong there.)

Then there are the gadflys that are not in climate research that, when they actually do some science, realize that the field is on the right track:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berkeley_Earth

I'm not sure how much these people have done to help the field become more rigorous. But then I'm not in it so I can't judge personally.

>"There are people like Richard Lindzen, who even extends his gadflyism to smoking and lung cancer (and as somebody who sees the DNA damage in whole genome sequencing of lung cancers from smokers, boy is he ever stupidly wrong there.)"

Is this true or fake news? The closest I could find is this: http://www.climateconversation.org.nz/2011/05/lindzen-dismis...

Also, seeing "DNA damage in whole genome sequencing of lung cancers from smokers" is irrelevant to the smoking-cancer link since you are sampling from the cancers... That only supports a link between cancer and "DNA damage".

"and as somebody who sees the DNA damage in whole genome sequencing of lung cancers from smokers, boy is he ever stupidly wrong there"

Hm, but does the dna in those lungs look much different, than the lungs of nonsmoking people with lungcancer? (Seriously asking)

Yes, the differences are massive. There's a huge signature of "bulky adduct" repair in smokers' samples. This looks different than, say, UV damage. See, for example, signature #4 from this paper:

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v500/n7463/full/nature1...

Thanks, thats interesting

>"All cancers are caused by somatic mutations"

Its strange that epistasis cites that paper so freely since he has expressed skepticism about this idea in the past. In fact I may have discussed that exact paper with him awhile back. The layperson probably wouldn't realize it but this is a very hubristic first sentence, almost purposefully offensive.

take a read at Scott Adams (Dilbert) blog, where he argues that the mainstream climate science community isn't just factually wrong, but they're actively deluding themselves.

I don't think that's an accurate description of what he's saying -- he's made a point several times (e.g. [0][1]) of challenging the models, not the underlying science, comparing them to economic models, which he feels, having majored in economics (and having studied and built his own [1]) are not reliable. One may disagree with him about models and modeling, but I think it's helpful to understand what he's actually saying.

I'm putting an excerpt here from a recent blog post [0] he did which I think demonstrates my summary above to be a truer understanding of where he's coming from:

I’m not a scientist, but it seems to me that the chemistry and physics parts of climate science are probably pretty locked down. I give that stuff full credibility.

The measurements of temperature, ice, and sea levels over time are probably fairly good, but I observe disagreements among scientists on how best to measure. I’ll give the measurements an 85% credibility.

When it comes to the complex climate models, I’ve never seen a complex, iterative model – of the type that includes human assumptions and human measurements – reliably predict the future multiple years out. I don’t think it has ever been done, and perhaps it never will be. I give the complex climate models a 10% credibility rating. And I am only that generous because perhaps this is the exception to the pattern I observe that says complexity always hides the future, as opposed to predicting it.

BTW, I think the next paragraph, where he describes the psychological aspects of how people evaluate things when they don't have deep expertise or knowledge is interesting and possibly useful for understanding how to get through to people (Adams' blogs a lot about persuasion/psychology and how so often that is more important than facts in shaping people's views of things):

This is a good time to remind you that I have neither the qualifications nor the time to evaluate the climate science models on my own. So I’m stuck with using pattern recognition – which is not science, and it is not reason. And my pattern recognizer says humans use complexity of this sort to hide the truth, not to reveal it. If scientists want to change my mind, they need to show me historical examples in which things “like this” did a good job of predicting the future. You have to work on my pattern memory to change my mind, not my knowledge of climate science.

Again, you may disagree with him about models and modelling, but he's identified why some intelligent people, who are not science-deniers, may have issues with some aspects of climate-science.

[0] http://blog.dilbert.com/post/158778029326/how-to-change-my-b...

[1] http://blog.dilbert.com/post/158549646496/how-leonardo-dicap...

I have a problem with this part:

> "my pattern recognizer says humans use complexity of this sort to hide the truth, not to reveal it"

This kind of presumes that there is some sort of malevolent intent on the part of the scientists. It's not an uncommon stance, but I really wonder what they think the scientists are getting out of it. It's like when the homeschooled devout Christian girl was taking my physics course (smart girl) and said that she thought the scientific view of cosmic origin was a "desperate attempt" to deny God and the Christian view. What is the purpose of denying the truth?

My impression is that people who think climate change is a hoax (or a fashionable delusion) see the benefit to climate scientists and climate activists mainly in terms of money and power: we fund them more or give them political power because they say that they are saving us from catastrophe, maybe much as military leaders gain money and power by promising to defend us from foreign threats. (Maybe sometimes those foreign threats really exist and other times they are imagined or exaggerated, and maybe it's hard to be sure which are which if you're not a military leader yourself, or maybe even if you are.)

I work for an NGO that works on very different issues, and it's clearly important and valuable to us that our supporters agree that the threats we try to mitigate are serious and important. Otherwise, they wouldn't want to pay for our work.

You could also think of medical researchers in a similar way: there is such a thing as a career in medical research because they think both that some diseases are terrible and that there's some possibility that understanding them will be helpful. Apparently this is usually true (e.g., antibiotics, vaccines, medical diagnostics, transplants, ...) but there are presumably some areas that don't make progress and there could be a sociological, economic, or ethical debate about how well researchers can identify when they're not on a fruitful path. I heard some depressing contrarian suggestions that current cancer research may never find a "cure for cancer" because each cancer may, for some purposes, be effectively a distinct disease from each other cancer.

A lot of people in our society have gone pretty far down some rabbit hole or other developing specialized skills and knowledge that aim at saving people from different kinds of urgent problems. An optimistic view of science, or of our society in general, says that typically those skills actually exist and can actually be acquired and practiced; a pessimistic view fears that many of them are, maybe unintentionally, forms of quackery.

I've heard that cancer bullshit since I was a college kid. Now I've lost friends to the disease and I'm married to a medical researcher. The race is to find the cure- not to let people keep dying.

Same with the climate scientists. You would mske your name by proving all was ok, not by saying the same thing the others are saying. I don't get why that isn't obvious.

They may be out there but I've never met a scientist who didn't want to solve the problem they were working on.

I didn't mean to suggest that cancer researchers are insincere or want people to die, just that some people hypothesize that there is no "cure for cancer" even though researchers are looking for one. The possible implication about the researchers is more that they're too optimistic that their current research avenues will be fruitful, rather that they are deliberately deceiving someone or don't want to succeed.

If that turned out to be true, some of the research might ultimately need a reorientation.

I'm sorry for appearing to conflate the notion of researchers in some field being too committed to their field's approach or tradition with the idea of researchers being intentionally deceptive or wishing not to succeed. I started out trying to describe ways that people envision the latter could be true, but in fact I ended up thinking that it's the former that's particularly plausible. I have no specific reason to think either form is the case today for either climate or cancer research.

The basic challenge is that people, including me, have a wide range of incentives to want to believe and even convince others that what we do for a living is worthwhile. Hopefully most people are right about this most of the time.

I totally get your point, and I recall from my past in my naïveté I used to think like that. But now I realize that, for example, with cancer they can cure some of it, but there is not "one root cause" to the problem yet- every problem is different. Like solving physics problems not using equations but just putting in numbers. That's a tough road.

But these climate scientists were employed before this issue. Having a theory that God created the universe doesn't mean we can't try to understand how.

But I'm not trying to argue with you. I know you understand. I'm just rhetorically lamenting the state of humankind. :)

I would understand that viewpoint if scientists made serious money, but they don't. If they are intelligent and unscrupulous there are MUCH better scams to pursue.

It's true that working on research or activism whose value you doubt may not make for an especially lucrative scam.

On the other hand, probably a lot of activities of questionable value, including some scientific research, were begun in good faith by people who found them interesting, exciting, or enjoyable. After becoming well-connected experts in their communities, they now have established careers and a life situation that particularly qualifies them to continue those careers, and a corresponding incentive to believe and argue that their careers are relevant and important.

I don't think this is the case with climate researchers in particular; I'm just considering the question of why people would have reason to continue working in a field that is unproductive or of dubious value. And a basic set of possible answers is that they're good at it, they like their jobs, and it's what they're used to, not that they got into it because they thought it was a scam.

Thinking about another area that people more commonly suspect of being pathological science, suppose you were very excited about an area of alternative medicine, maybe because you yourself had been treated successfully with it, and you went to the trouble of training in it for several years and getting a credential as a practitioner. Now you start a practice, you enjoy your work, your patients are appreciative, you're apparently getting good outcomes, and you're a respected member of your community. You're aware that critics think that your field is unfounded or that its treatment outcomes are ultimately due to the placebo effect, or maybe to lifestyle changes that you inspire your patients to make, but not directly to the treatments you provide.

Are you going to be excited to investigate whether these critics are right about your specialty? Did you ever set out to scam anybody?

I think this issue, in one form or another, affects large swaths of our society; we all tend to think our professions are useful and worthwhile, and few of us ever spend much time entertaining criticisms of them, or arguments that imply that we may have wasted years of our lives.

Scientists - or rather, researchers - don't make huge amounts of money, but it does often require huge amounts of money to facilitate their work.

It's not uncommon to see a researcher at a university in the US who makes $80-$120k per year apply for and obtain a grant that's worth tens of millions of dollars to the university.

> I don't think that's an accurate description at all of what he's saying -- he's made a point several times (e.g. [0][1] )of challenging the models, not the underlying science

Science is the process of developing predictive models. Challenging models is challenging the science by which those models are developed.

Trying to distinguish between these two is fundamentally misunderstanding what science is.

Unrelated to the climate change stuff I think you need to differentiate "the process" and "the models" (which is the result of the process). Epicycles (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deferent_and_epicycle) was a good predictive model used for a while and developed as a part of science process. Yet, I think we all agree that Copernicus was right challenging them and he did it in accordance with the science process.

We came full circle back to epicycles, though. Fourier transforms can be viewed as a way to model any periodic signal as an infinite series of epicycles.

Models are not inherently scientific, just because something is trying to make predictions doesn't make it scientific.

May I ask, what do you think of economic models? Would you call them scientific? They are using similar underlying equations, both complex systems and they both make many assumptions.

> Models are not inherently scientific, just because something is trying to make predictions doesn't make it scientific.

No, but science is about making predictive models, and you can't criticize a predictive model without criticize the science behind it, if it is a model which purports to be produced by science.

> May I ask, what do you think of economic models? Would you call them scientific?

That...depends. "Economic models" can mean either "models of the economy" or "models produced as part of the science of economics"; the latter are scientific the former may or may not be.

And even among scientific models (in any domain, economics is in no way special in this regard) some are products of different stages of the scientific process; there are speculative models done in the exploratory stage of pre-hypothetical work in science, there are models that are concrete operationalizations of untested (or only loosely tested) hypotheses, and there are models which are themselves tested and represent the best current understanding of the phenomenon they are intended to model; these are all "scientific models", but they have different roles.

I hate the attack on the models.

We don't use simulators for most liquid flow calculations, we have models that approximate liquid flows. Only a few years ago have computers been able to fully simulate a single atom, if Moore's Law were to hold it will still be... a very long time before we could simulate the approximately 1.e+49 atoms on Earth and all the energy flowing into our system.

So of course a model is going to have issues. Models are tuned to reproduce a close approximation, they aren't perfect simulations. The attack at models is a diversion. I doubt even a perfect simulation of our planet experiencing anthropological climate change would convince the majority of deniers.

Perhaps you've never studied chaos theory? Complex systems are notoriously hard to model despite the underlying process being deterministic.

Why do you think we keep having recessions? We know where every dollar is at every point in time, the equivalence would be your atoms in liquid flow.

It's also interesting you point to liquid flow, that is a counter-example of what you're trying to say, as the navier stokes fluid dynamics equations that we use to model liquid flows are chaotic..

I have not studied Chaos Theory, but I think you might be misunderstanding something in my post.

I'm unhappy with people rejecting the accuracy of the models, when the models are going to be inaccurate regardless of the knowledge of the starting conditions. A model is not a simulation. Modelling the Earth is not the same as simulating the Earth.

We know the models are imperfect. Isn't that why the Monte Carlo method exists? Also, I have the strong impression Adams is aware of that and chooses not discuss it much with his readers.

But why should anyone place any stock in Scott Adams' personal experience with complex models?

"When it comes to the complex climate models, I’ve never seen a complex, iterative model – of the type that includes human assumptions and human measurements – reliably predict the future multiple years out."

Since he has never seen such a thing, are we all to nod our heads and agree they don't/can't exist? This is a rhetorical trick I find a little irritating.

> Since he has never seen such a thing, are we all to nod our heads and agree they don't/can't exist?

No, but... which is harder, to model the economy, or to model the climate? Which do we have more people trying to model, more money being poured into attempts to model?

> This is a rhetorical trick I find a little irritating.

It's not a proof of non-existence. I'm not sure it's supposed to be. It is a reasonable grounds for asking whether we're as sure as we think we are.

If you trust Scott Adams to review scientific literature or assess scientific models, then sure, it's reasonable.

Scott Adams, a cartoonist, has given me no reason to trust his capability to review scientific literature or assess scientific models.

That's not to say that a cartoonist could never meaningfully contribute to a discussion on scientific literature or models, but with a background as a cartoonist, the bar for me to trust him on this is a lot higher than, say, climate researchers. "I've never seen..." is insufficient from him. There's probably a lot of stuff he's never seen since he's focused his career on drawing comics.

Does a cartoonist have a duty to contribute constructively to a scientific discussion? If so, does he also have a duty to contribute in any particular way to a discussion that may once have been scientific but has long since been completely politicized?

If I'm blessed with a long life, a special joy of old age will be the various attempts to explain how Scott Adams and a bunch of conservative blowhards got it right while entire university departments got it wrong...

Anyone can try to be a gadfly to the consensus side of science, science is open to anyone. But, if you choose to throw your hat into that ring then you open yourself to criticism of your methods and behavior. You don't get to shout 'free speech' and walk away.

why would you listen to him on climate change? what are his credentials? doesn't the fact that you listen to him over people with more experience and knowledge in the field indicate that you are looking for people who support for a viewpoint, and not for people who are knowledgable?

also, scott adams guaranteed herman cain would be the presidential nominee in 2012. he is a bullshit artist who makes a million claims then picks out the ones that turned out to be right later. why even listen to him at all?

It has been years since I read anything by Adams, or indeed since I've looked at a Dilbert cartoon. "The Truth" isn't really that important to me. I'm not in a position such that it actually matters what I think of global warming, but I'm happy that most people who are in such a position seem mostly to agree with me. That is, we haven't yet made many human lives much worse in an attempt to curb emissions of CO₂. That would be monstrous and inhumane. Of course I have no problem with benign and even beneficial actions like encouraging solar energy production.

> Does a cartoonist have a duty to contribute constructively to a scientific discussion?

No, but neither does he have the right to not be called out when he contributes destructively to a scientific discussion.

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