Comment by Udik | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Udik | Hacker News Reader

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> there doesn't really seem like that big of an incentive to sell a "lie" that CO2 is fucking the climate.

The article we're commenting on argues there's been a huge pressure towards researching ways to stop beta amyloid plaques; and yet there's no obvious "incentive" to do so. It's just a catchy hot topic on which many have invested their careers.

In the case of climate change, you have to factor in both the scientific pressure, similar in everything to what's been described here; and the media pressure, absent in the alzheimer's case: the media absolutely loves to sell a scare story, and the climate change story is just the perfect one: it's everywhere, it's invisible, it carries an enormous amount of consequences and huge risks. Most of the predictions are decades away in the future, so the story can go on unchecked for decades. And so on.

I'm not saying climate change science is wrong (although some of it certainly is: "climate change science" goes from the basic physics of CO2 greenhouse effect to ecology, economy and social and political predictions far away in the future). I'm saying that you must factor in all the inevitable effects of a story everybody just loves to tell.

>Most of the predictions are decades away in the future, so the story can go on unchecked for decades. And so on.

It's not just the sea level rising stuff in the future though, now basically any adverse weather event is blamed on climate change. Powerful hurricane, big mudslide, wild fires, etc. I'm not saying climate change doesn't play a role in any of these, but the news media plays it a little loose with any of these events and citing them as being caused by/evidence of climate change with 0 proof. But again, if you question any of if then YOU are the one painted as being against science.

How exactly is media pressure influencing climate science? Most of the foundational research was done long before climate change was being discussed in the media. And as far as I am aware, the media continues to have zero influence in how NSF grants are awarded.

Another fun fact, Fox News, a nakedly partisan cable network that adamantly denies the existence of climate change is the most watched channel on cable TV. They just recently hit their highest viewership[1]. And the President of the United States has been known to set his policy priorities based on things he sees on Fox News. So who's influence should we be worried about?

In the spirit of acknowledging potential sources of bias and influence that originally started this thread, I will acknowledge that the "mainstream media" occasionally gets it wrong and does have a tendency to sensationalize stories about climate change. But I would like you to acknowledge that the "other mainstream media"[2] like Fox News and Sinclair Broadcasting Group are just as bad (if not worse), and are just as powerful and influential (if not more so) as their counterparts in the "mainstream media".

[1]https://www.axios.com/fox-news-record-ratings-2019-msnbc-cnn... [2] Calling it "right wing media" does disservice to the fact that these media outlets likely have more collective viewership and readership than the "mainstream" outlets.

> How exactly is media pressure influencing climate science?

Exactly through the same mechanism that skewed Alzheimer's research. Some topics are "hotter" and scientists know that to obtain grants, be published, and attract unspecialised media attention they better mention climate change in their articles and possibly highlight some major consequence (even with qualifiers as "may", "could" etc.).

This stuff is then picked up by mainstream media and spread to a much larger public, making the topic even hotter. Finally, scientists are a subset of the mainstream media consumers, and might not be much better than the average public outside their domain of expertise. So they are likely to be influenced by sensationalistic reporting outside their field. (For example, a physicist cannot evaluate the soundness of an economic study on the consequences of climate change- but might be influenced by it when deciding grants or publication worthiness of something related to his field).

> Most of the foundational research was done long before climate change was being discussed in the media.

The foundational research is tiny compared to the mass of research on the myriad consequences of climate change. And the effects are what concern us.

> Fox News, a nakedly partisan cable network that adamantly denies the existence of climate change

Yes, Fox News. I am European, I have never watched a single minute of Fox News. I can assure you that almost all news outlets I follow just love to publish news about climate change, the scarier the better. The situation of the US might be different- on the other hand last time I checked 40% of Americans believed in creationism, so maybe the US public opinion and media are not a good sample.

In the case of the Alzheimer 'cabal', there was a large minority of researchers that were being locked out of funding by the cabal. Can you point to a single credible climate science researcher that has contrarian views on the consensus and also lacks access to funding for research? As mentioned in another post, the oil industry is very wealthy and is spending large sums of money in this domain. So while there are plenty of contrarians, I highly doubt the credible ones are having any issues with funding.

Whether you realize it or not, you are making some fairly extraordinary claims. While the academic world is subject to politicking and influence like any other domain, it tends to get things right in the long run. If your issue is with media over sensationalizing climate change headlines, well that is a separate issue, and quite frankly seems like nitpicking considering how little progress we have made in solving the problem and how dire the consequences can potentially be.

> In the case of the Alzheimer 'cabal', there was a large minority of researchers that were being locked out of funding by the cabal

I think the most important thing here is to remember that the term 'cabal' is completely improper. The article this thread is about says explicitly that "despite being described as a “cabal,” the amyloid camp was neither organized nor nefarious". So what happened is just the result of an un-organised majority of scientists applying a selective pressure on the type of research that was funded and published, often without even realising it. This effect is always a risk in science. There isn't hotter topic in science, politics and information today of climate change, and I don't need to produce any example of scientists who were "locked out" to be certain that the effect is strong in the field.

This article might give you an idea of the most extreme example (for which the term 'cabal' might even be appropriate):

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2010/feb/02/hacked-c...

But most of the pressure is probably implicit: everyone wants their research to be sexy, and there's nothing sexier than linking the hottest topic of the time and pointing to some coming existential threat. Scientist do it all the time, no nefarious intentions but it's part of the game.

Finally, you seem to have a very restrictive idea of climate change science. There's a pretty much established physical base to it, but the quantification and consequences concern a myriad different disciplines: from statistics to botanic, ecology, ethology, economics, medicine, social sciences, agricultural sciences, engineering, etc. These offer enormous space for speculation about the future, with results that are much less solid than those of the physical foundations.

> This article might give you an idea of the most extreme example

Ahh, yes. A link to a 10 year old climategate article. Nice one.

> everyone wants their research to be sexy

This is flat out wrong. There are plenty of people who care more about money, prestige, and power than they do about producing sexy research. Right now, the easiest path to achieve that would be to produce contrarian research. There is no shortage of funding from the oil industry, and the right wing media will give air time to anyone that sounds like they have a plausible sounding argument.

> you seem to have a very restrictive idea of climate change science

I am well aware that there is a large amount of uncertainty regarding the predictions of the future. Pretty much everyone, including the 'academia establishment' acknowledges that. If anything, that fact that they are so open about these uncertainties makes your argument of 'cabal-group-think' weaker.

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