99% of modern scientific papers are politicized pseudoscience
“I used to think that maybe 10 percent of papers in my field…were maybe useful. Now it looks like maybe, one tenth of one percent follow the scientific method.” In particular, Armstrong talked about the proactive “alarmism” some scientists encourage regarding man-made climate change. He argued that scientists are more politically motivated or perhaps too focused on their own career advancement to want to publish accurate data.
Armstrong built on criteria he initially set in his 1982 paper called, “Research on Scientific Journals: Implications for Editors and Authors.” According to him, there are eight criteria that qualify a good scientific paper:
- Objective
- Useful findings
- Full disclosure of methods
- Comprehensive review of prior knowledge
- Valid and reliable data
- Valid and simple methods
- Experimental evidence provided
- Conclusions that are consistent with evidence
According to Armstrong, “the goal of objectivity is one that is sought but seldom achieved because the bias of the researcher is always present. [One researcher, Mitroff] concluded that scientists [become] famous not by being objective, but by being advocates. This appears to be true. Advocacy is a good strategy for career advancement. However, I believe that it is bad advice for making scientific contributions.” Armstrong stated that the forecasts from the world-recognizedIntergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) violated all eight criteria.
“What’s happening now is, government research, universities — they’re asking for what I call advocacy research. They have something, they want you to prove it, make sure you prove it, [and when] you do, you keep getting paid,” he said in a separate article on Breitbart.com. “Advocacy research is the bulk of these 99 percent of non-scientific studies and they’re not done for scientific development, they’re done to support a political idea. If you want to make money in universities these days, you publish papers that support global warming and you live handsomely.”
On why no one has called out the IPCC on their alleged blatant disregard for scientific research, Armstrong replied with: “Why is this all happening? Nobody asks them! You send something to a journal and they don’t tell you what you have to do. They don’t say ‘here’s what science is, here’s how to do it.’”
“Truth” has a price tag
This is such a fascinating idea to consider; particularly as the base motivation for these “scientists” appear to be more focused on capitalism rather than accuracy. Armstrong argued that being politically convenient is more rewarding both financially and in terms of one’s career.
“[Scientists] cheat. If you don’t get statistically significant results, then you throw out variables, add variables, [and] eventually you get what you want,” he concluded.
When NASA released a “scientific consensus” which supposedly claimed that 97 percent of the scientific community believed that climate change was a real and dangerous threat, controversy ensued. The remaining three percent — of which Armstrong was included — asked for proof. A proposal was recently reviewed by a Congressional committee last April 2017 which would set up “red teams” which would be funded by Congress to investigate the exact claims of climate change. The proposal, called, “Climate Science: Assumptions, Policy Implications, and the Scientific Method,” was set for review by the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology.
Committee Chairman Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas) said in his opening statement that there are certain elements in climate science which were made by scientists who “operate outside of the principles of the scientific method,” as reported on BigThink.com. Smith said that the proposed idea would reduce the number of “scientific” articles being passed as true.
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Joseph A Olson
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ECUMENICAL COUNCIL of SCIENCE
We are approaching a time when the science community intervenes on errant branches of science that have adopted political based, and NON EMPIRICAL based philosophy with hypothesis that are unsupportable using First Principal science. Climatology must be branded as modern alchemy, all degrees should be revoked.
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Robert Beatty
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What a frightening conclusion: “99% Of Modern Scientific Papers Are Politicized Pseudoscience”. According to Armstrong there are 8 criteria that qualify a good scientific paper, with number 4 being: “Comprehensive review of prior knowledge.”
By adopting this approach, one is biasing the research in favour of existing paradigms – which may be where the main problem lies.
My preference is to rely on general knowledge before conducting the research. After drawing the conclusions, do the comprehensive literature review. If the conclusions are compatible – fine. Otherwise you may have found a useful new approach.
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Deano
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Okay, serious question here… How is this not blatant and outright fraud, which should be chargeable and punishable by existing fraud statutes??
if there aren`t real penalties for this malfeasance, it will just keep happening!!
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Fern Potter
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Item 3 – “Full disclosure of method” is an example of something that is for the most part not possible today because both the Super-Computers & the Computer Models they use to process data are for the most part protected by National Security Fears, Patents, and Copyright. Operators of these systems and others granted access to use them must sign non-disclosure agreements. Often publishing of the results is controlled by an Agency, like the IPCC that funded the effort.
I hoping for someone to create Open Source Computer Models, Crowd Funded that will make it possible for anyone with basic computer knowledge to do their own Climate Research. Kinda like Windows vs Linux.
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Drewski
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A junk science website wants us to believe all science is junk.
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John O'Sullivan
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Drewski, Reading and comprehension evidently aren’t your forte. Otherwise you’d note the word “all” isn’t applicable here.
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jerry krause
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Hi Fellows and Fern,
Not one of you commented about the 8 criteria that Armstrong used as the basis of his analysis. Not one of you commented about the fact that his 1982 paper was 21 pages long and published in Journal of Forecasting, 1, 1982, 83-104, 1, 1982, 83-104. Both the 21 pages and the 1 of the reference are of some importance. Scientific articles, because of their numbers in 1982, and today, cannot practically be 21 pages long. The 1 of the reference is important because the Journal of Forecasting was someone’s dream and this was its first publication. The 8 criteria may be applied to a Ph,D, thesis but not to a scientific article for the practical reason of their commonly respective lengths (pages). But I hasten to state that all thesis need not be longer than a brief scientific article.
But the criteria of ‘useful findings’ should never be applied to either thesis or scientific article.
Scientists do research because they don’t know and they are curious. And if the research to satisfy this curiosity requires some financing they should do a literature search to be sure that what they do not know is actually not known. So, because a scientist cannot not know what the result of the research might be, it cannot be described as how it would be useful to anyone but the curious scientist.
For my thesis research I studied the simultaneous diffusion of two divalent cations in two different alkali halide single crystals. In my thesis I did not attempted to describe how my results would be useful. When the results of my research were published, there was no suggestion how (or where) the knowledge gained by my research would be useful. Hence, Armstrong, based on the criteria he, himself defined, would conclude that my research did not follow the scientific method.
Enough said.
Have a good day, Jerry
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Nicholas Scott
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“Scientists do research because they don’t know and they are curious.”
This is just plain wishful thinking. Scientists do research because they are paid to do research.
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geran
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Very interesting!
It’s good that someone is documenting the absolute crap coming out of “institutionalized science” these days.
The immediate answer is an across-the-board cut in GOV funding to universities. That will help shutdown the pseudoscience mills.
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Science or Fiction?
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The thing with science is that no scientific enterprise has really defined the scientific principles that guide its conduct.
IPCC is among the worst, by introducing subjective levels of confidence into science. A method for evaluation that has no sound basis in philosophy or theory of science.
The lack of formalized principles is noted by National Academy of Sciences:
“The basic and particular principles that guide scientific research practices exist primarily in an unwritten code of ethics. Although some have proposed that these principles should be written down and formalised, the principles and traditions of science are, for the most part, conveyed to successive generations of scientists through example, discussion, and informal education.” – Ref.: Responsible Science, Volume I: Ensuring the Integrity of the Research Process; Panel on Scientific Responsibility and the Conduct of Research
It took me and a great helper and scrutinizer a few years to define a set of principles, these are the principles we derived:
§P1 The clarity principle
§P2 The traceability principle
§P3 The logical validity principle
§P4 The deduction principle
§P5 The logical construction principle
§P6 The definition principle
§P7 The validation principle
§P8 The context principle
§P9 The data availability principle
§P10 The measurement reporting principle
§P11 The prediction reporting principle
Freely available here:
https://principlesofscience.wordpress.com/2018/07/31/free-pdf-version-principles-of-science-and-ethical-guidelines-for-scientific-conduct/
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James McGinn
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The course of science is largely determined by what will appeal to the lowest common denominator of science consumer. Thus, many models are dumbed down so that they are easier to teach to students, insuring that the government funds continue to flow. When there is a conflict between truth and mass appeal the latter always wins. Teachers have learned to gloss over details that are inconsistent with these dumbed down models to maintain the illusion of empirical credibility. Climatology is only the most obvious example of this. Try to get a meteorologist to address the shortcomings of their vague model of storms. They won’t debate/discuss it. it is sacred.
Here is something to ask yourself. If climatology did not attach a huge price tag to their pseudoscience would you have noticed? The answer is, no, you would not have noticed or cared. If not for the price tag you would be just as blissfully ignorant about climatology as you are now about meteorology and water science.
Humans are sheep intellectually.
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jerry krause
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Hi Nicholas,
How much was Horace de Saussure paid to do his research. How much was Galileo paid to do his research? As far as I know he had a teaching job. How much was Newton paid for doing his research? As far as I know he had a teaching job. How much was John Dalton paid for doing his research. As far as I know he was a teacher. And Robert Boyle was independently wealthy and he even financed the publication of his book: The Sceptical Chymist. I worked for three years being a teaching assistant to earn my food, clothes, and lodging while I did research to earn my degree.
Is this enough evidence that all scientists do not doscience because they are paid to do research?
I agree that some scientists do research because they are paid to do research. And I agree Thomas Kuhn that many scientists are merely painting by the numbers because they have little creativity to see things that they should be curious about. I was one of these people as a science student, as a paid research associate, but not as a chemistry instructor. For immediately I question the GHE which I was expected to teach by the numbers. And I began doing experiments with students and by myself. And I learned that just because one can see stars does not mean that the atmosphere is cloudless and that the water of the experiment did not freeze during the night until I gave up about 1am and went home to bed. But a few days later, I learned that the weather observer at a nearby airport had observed and reported that a 10% cloud cover disappeared at above 3am or so and the air temperature began to drop as expected if there were no discernible cloud in the atmosphere. Was I able to do anything with this knowledge, not immediately for maybe 35 years and maybe now I am delusional because no one seems to consider the quality data of the NOAA USCRN project which I call to their attention. It seems few wanted to consider what Galileo had observed either. That is the life of an actual scientist who actually sees things that others have not recently seen.
Have a good day, Jerry
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