Scientific American Goes Full-On Anti-Science
For several years it has been all the rage for media to accuse President Trump and his people of being “anti-science.” I compiled a collection of such accusations in a post on January 27 of that year, using the title “Who Again Is ‘Anti-Science’?”
Among those I cited as making the accusation was the venerable magazine Scientific American, which had published a piece on January 18, 2017, with the title “Trump’s 5 Most Anti-Science Moves.”
If you look at that 2017 Scientific American piece or the other articles that I cited in my post, you will see that those commenters are conceiving of “science” not as a special methodology, but rather as something more like: “Science is what people who call themselves scientists do.”
The basic complaint of the commenters was that Trump was “anti-science” because he was listening to or appointing people who disagreed with — or worse, sought to de-fund — functionaries in the government who called themselves scientists.
I have a different definition of the term “science.” Here’s my definition:
“Science is a process for understanding reality through using experiment or data to attempt to falsify falsifiable hypotheses.”
Those are my words, but I have tried there to capture the gist of the classic conception of the scientific method articulated by philosopher Karl Popper.
For a somewhat longer articulation of the same thing, here is an excerpt discussing Popper’s principles from the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy:
Popper’s falsificationist methodology holds that scientific theories are characterized by entailing predictions that future observations might reveal to be false. When theories are falsified by such observations, scientists can respond by revising the theory, or by rejecting the theory in favor of a rival . . .
In either case, however, this process must aim at the production of new, falsifiable predictions. . . . [Popper] holds that scientific practice is characterized by its continual effort to test theories against experience and make revisions based on the outcomes of these tests. By contrast, theories that are permanently immunized from falsification by the introduction of untestable ad hoc hypotheses can no longer be classified as scientific.
Astute readers of this passage will immediately recognize that today’s political environment is full of theories that claim the mantle of science — indeed, claim to be scientifically-established truth — but at the same time are “permanently immunized from falsification.”
Exhibit A is the religion going under the name of “climate science.” Or consider Exhibit B, in the field of social science, the hypothesis that “systemic racism” is the cause of all economic underperformance by African Americans. There are plenty more such examples.
In recent years, Scientific American has somehow gotten itself into the position of defending the truth of many such non-falsifiable claims, but most notably in its strenuous advocacy of climate change alarmism.
How to reconcile such advocacy with the use of the term “Scientific” in its title?
If you are wondering how that could even be attempted, check out the piece in the current issue by a guy named Mano Singham, with the title and sub-title, “The Idea That a Scientific Theory Can Be ‘Falsified’ Is a Myth; It’s time we abandoned the notion.”
Singham is identified as a member of the American Physical Society and is apparently a retired professor from Case Western Reserve University.
Singham begins by acknowledging that “[E]ver since the seminal work of philosopher of science Karl Popper, for a scientific theory to be worthy of its name, it has to be falsifiable by experiments or observations.”
However, Singham now understands that that whole approach has become passé. Apparently, there is a new field, going by the name “science studies,” that “compris[es] the history, philosophy and sociology of science.”
People in this new field have now demonstrated that “falsification cannot work even in principle.” Here’s the explanation:
[A] theoretical prediction is never the product of a single theory but also requires using many other theories. When a “theoretical” prediction disagrees with “experimental” data, what this tells us is that that there is a disagreement between two sets of theories, so we cannot say that any particular theory is falsified.
Got that? And now that we’ve deep-sixed falsifiability as having anything to do with science, what’s the replacement?
Science studies . . . show[] that the strength of scientific conclusions arises because credible experts use comprehensive bodies of evidence to arrive at consensus judgments about whether a theory should be retained or rejected in favor of a new one. . . . It is the preponderance of evidence that is relevant in making such judgments, not one or even a few results.
Well, Mano, let’s consider my hypothesis that the thing that causes the sun to come up every morning is my going to sleep the night before.
I formulated this hypothesis a year ago based on some ten thousand consecutive nights where I had gone to sleep and the sun, therefore, arose the next morning.
I then tested the hypothesis for a full year of going to sleep every night and observing that sure enough, the sun arose every succeeding morning, 365 consecutive times. Surely my hypothesis has been established as true.
A friend points out that one time back in college I pulled an all-nighter, and the sun still came up. So what? Under Singham’s “science studies” principles, that’s just putting “one result” up against “the preponderance of the evidence.”
That one conflicting observation does not tell us that my hypothesis has been falsified, but rather only that “there is a disagreement between two sets of theories.” (Another thing that it might be telling us is that Singham is not very bright.)
Anyway, there is an obvious purpose for Singham’s piece appearing at this time in Scientific American, which is to attempt to defend the climate “science” scam against attacks that it is not real science because it lacks falsifiable hypotheses. Singham:
[The] knowledge [of science studies] equips people to better argue against anti-science forces that use the same strategy over and over again, whether it is about the dangers of tobacco, climate change, vaccinations, or evolution. Their goal is to exploit the slivers of doubt and discrepant results that always exist in science in order to challenge the consensus views of scientific experts.
I don’t know how Singham chose his examples of arguments used by what he calls “anti-science forces,” but a look at those examples demonstrates what his exercise is really about, which is exempting climate “science” from the requirement of falsifiable hypotheses.
The hypothesis that cigarette smoking is a significant factor in causing lung cancer could definitely be falsified by a study of thousands of randomly-selected non-smokers who developed lung cancer at the same rates as smokers.
The hypothesis that life forms change over time through a process of evolution could be falsified by the discovery of “fossil rabbits in the Precambrian,” in a famous formulation of J.B.S. Haldane that is actually quoted by Singham in his piece.
And vaccinations are subjected to double-blind clinical trials, which are explicit attempts to falsify the hypothesis that they are effective.
So the only one of the four examples selected by Singham that actually lacks falsifiable hypotheses, and that seeks to be “permanently immunized from falsification,” is climate change.
Overall, this is a thoroughly embarrassing performance, not just by Dr. Singham, but by Scientific American.
It is beyond explanation how the editors of this once-prestigious publication, with the term “Scientific” in its name, could have so completely lost track of what makes science.
And then to top it off, they call the people who actually understand what science is “anti-science.”
My message to the editors is this: The proponents of climate change alarmism, if they want to make any kind of legitimate claim to the mantle of “science,” need to specify the falsifiable hypothesis that they claim has been established, and also the evidence which, if it emerged, they would agree had falsified the hypothesis.
Until they do that, their assertions have no more claim to the label of “established science” than does my hypothesis that my going to bed is what causes the sun to come up the next morning.
Those of us who understand what the scientific method is are onto the climate scammers. As for Scientific American, your reputation at this point is beyond rehabilitation.
Read more at Manhattan Contrarian
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Michael Adams
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All we hear from climate alarmists are references to climate models which predict the future. Surely we need a proper investigation in to the theory that CO2 actually is as powerful a reflector of heat as is claimed. This goes to the very heart of their argument..Very little is said about that but it should be a fairly easy repeatable experiment to carry out.
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Alan
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No investigation is needed because we have the Laws of Thermodynamics. Heat cannot be reflected and return to the original source and cause more heating. It is so fundamental that every student of physics should know this. The same applies to the theory that somehow CO2 acts like insulation and increases the temperature of the surface. Insulation does not increase temperature, it reduces the heat loss, which is not the same at all. Consider a home – the temperature at which the fuel burns is not changed by insulation. Insulation just changes the temperature distribution. The other error that is made is the assumption that the energy in is equal to the energy out and since the average temperature at which the earth radiated energy is known, it is assumed that the sun can only heat the surface to the same temperature., which is -18C and therefore the atmosphere must provide the extra heat to create the average of 15C. We all know that the sun heats the surface to much higher temperatures except for the IPCC and NASA “scientists”. There is a practical observation of this on frosty mornings. The sun will thaw the frost but in the shade the atmosphere does not produce any heat to thaw the frost. Hardly surprising, temperature can only increase when there is an energy input and this comes either from adding thermal energy or by doing work. The atmosphere cannot generate energy, but gravity does work by compressing the atmosphere and increasing the surface temperature. This is why the temperature decreases with height. No experiment is needed, only a basic knowledge of physics.
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Kurt Lettau
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Agree, especially the false claims of CO2 and the “greenhouse effect” that is not challenged.
The same can be now said for the “New Scientist” magazine these days, which I used to subscribe to. Check out their relentless weekly multiple articles and news bytes, obsessing on climate alarmism – with contrary or balanced views not ever being presented. They too have also irredeemably trashed their reputation as a serious “science” publication in my view.
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Tom O
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Sadly, “climate science” is not now or never has been about Science or climate. It has always been about something else – most believe one world government and population reduction, basically the same things that “COVID Hysteria” is all about. Both happen because we appear to have given up individuality and responsibility for “consensus.”
I have decided it is a natural fallout from “democracy,” which is closely related to “rule by consensus.” And the operative word is RULE. Once “consensus” gains control, it moves to stop any opposition and passes the “rule” portion to a smaller and smaller group, ending up in anything but “democracy”. It approaches religion in reality, where “his high holiness” will determine what is to happen to everyone in the name of the “State.”
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Chris
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Math exposes their theory. Their theory is that CO2 reflects all IR light that reaches it. They claim that the Earth gives off IR, which it does, but CO2 reflects it back to Earth heating it up, which it doesn’t. To start, first pretend that CO2 does reflect light and set emmissivity to 1, setting emmisivity to 1 is against entropy but we are pretending for the benefit of the climate alarmists. Take, say, 340 W/m^2 flux leaving the Earth. It heads out to space but gets reflected back, right? Well that depends on if it hits CO2, here we have a concentration problem. There is only .04% CO2 in the atmosphere. So multiply 340 times .0004 = 0.136 W/m^2 is being returned to the Earth. You can use the SB Law to figure out the temp but it is cold. Very cold. Below zero cold. Does adding material to the sky that has a temp below zero increase the atmospheres temp or decrease it?
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Zoe Phin
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0.0004 by volume. To get interception by surface area you raise it to the 2/3rds power. A A square with edge length X has X^(2/3) the area of the volume of cube with side X.
0.0004^(2/3) = 0.0054288352
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Zoe Phin
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‘could be falsified by the discovery of “fossil rabbits in the Precambrian,’
To be fair, this is non-falsifiable circular reasoning because the definition of precambrian precludes finding a fossil rabbit there.
If you found a fossil rabbit in a spot, by definition, it can’t be precambrian.
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LLOYD
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Time Travel Rabbit????
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Herb Rose
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Hi Lloyd,
How about the fossil with both human and dinosaur footprints? Did the dinosaur travel forward in time or the human back in time?
Herb
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josh
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circular reasoning starts with dating strata into era via the rocks near it with a preumption set in your flawed dating method that eolution is true, evolution is a joke
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olegro
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Measurement of Data are NOT THEORIES … they are MEASUREMENTS …
Theories are HYPOTHETICAL EXPLANATIONS.
The VALIDITY of THEORIES have to be held up against MEASURED DATA
If Data do not confirm Theory.. there is something WRONG with Theory
It is not more complicated than that …
all other deliberations are SOPHISTIC SMOKE SCREENS ….
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Tom Anderson
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We owe Francis Menton a debt of gratitude for so clearly distinguishing the characteristics of “consensus” science from what has gone before. There is a further consideration usually omitted from these discussions. It is the political context that supports and encourages this consensual mutation and why it elicits obdurate fanaticism in its defenders. Very briefly it is part socialism’s current broad advance against the West.
Anyone familiar with the rise of socialism in pre-Hitler Germany would recognize exactly what is happening in science today. The oppression of intellectual diversity never happens in a political vacuum – today any more than it did during the decline of Weimar Germany. Most troubling, however, is that most of people who should be concerned now are not only unaware of it, or unwilling to admit the possibility of so ominous a parallel, but are outspokenly hostile to the suggestion. Even seeing this problem requires familiarity with “abandoned” scholarship, particularly an old book: Friedrich A. Hayek’s “Road to Serfdom.”
A Nobel Laureate in economics, Hayek analyzed this part of socialism in “The End of Truth,” Chapter 11 of his study. Consensus is sine qua non to the socialist necessity for complete ad pervasive control of the individual.
Where science fits in is (paraphrasing), “Truth itself ceases to have its old meaning. It no longer describes how an individual, as sole judge of a piece of evidence, or of its proponent’s credibility, decides if experience or analysis warrants believing it. The “truth” becomes something laid down by authority, something that must be believed in the interest of the organized effort’s unity.”
He continues, The moral consequences of totalitarian propaganda go even deeper. They destroy past morals by undermining a major pillar of morality: the sense of, and respect for, truth. To attack that, totalitarian propaganda must be about more than values, individual opinion and community moral convictions. It must settle questions of fact that call for the critical use of intelligence – Reasoning.
Rather than belaboring the point, I can only recommend getting a copy of this seminal takedown of what is now roiling life in the West in order to reach the totalitarian roots of the problem.
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