>> Scientists getting things wrong isn't some gotcha that proves science is broken, it shows that science is working.
See this is the attitude that causes people to give up in disgust:
If scientists make correct predictions, that's science working!
If scientists make wrong predictions, that's also science working!
Literally no matter what they do or what happens, they cannot lose.
>> People don't like uncertainty
People are fine with scientific understanding being uncertain. They are not fine with being told by scientists that The Science is so certain it's undisputable, that the only people who disagree are paid to do so, that the world should undergo massive changes on the back of this 100% certain science and then when their predictions are all invalidated it's "hey, being wrong is all just part of the process, if you don't understand that you don't understand science!".
If scientists make a confident prediction and then turn out to have been woefully misjudging their own competence, it is correct and right that their reputations are trashed and they should get defunded. But that doesn't happen. Instead we get the Believe Science brigade who insist that all those bad predictions never happened, if they did happen it wasn't a problem and anyone saying otherwise needs to be suppressed.
And BTW both quotes come with literally an entire article of context, and Hansen wrote a whole article for the Guardian in which he makes the same predictions about Arctic ice. So please don't try to claim he never said these things. He's on record as doing so, many times in many contexts.
> Literally no matter what they do or what happens, they cannot lose.
Well... yeah, because either way we learn something! When predictions work out, it strengths a theory, but getting some new piece of data that shatters a current theory and changes how we look at something forever is way more exciting. Science just isn't about winners and losers.
> They are not fine with being told by scientists that The Science is so certain it's undisputable,
No scientist ever says this. In fact, they're more likely to say "Please prove me wrong!"
> that the only people who disagree are paid to do so
They don't say that either, but let's face it, people getting paid to lie and spread misinformation is a big problem. Scientists disagree with each other all the time and that's totally fine! It's desirable even! Here's the catch though, if you want dispute science and be taken seriously, you have to be able to back that up with evidence. Blindly questioning or disagreeing for no reason or for purely emotional or ideological reasons is worthless. You can always fight science with science, but somebody has to be able to check your math, review your methods, and reproduce your results. If your data or your work is weaker, it's not going change many minds.
> that the world should undergo massive changes on the back of this 100% certain science
Again, science isn't going to be 100% certain about anything, but realistically, based on what information we have, it can still be pretty damn sure about things. It's only logical to take advantage of the best understanding we have and to let it guide our choices and our policy. "Ignore what we know is most likely correct" is just a bad strategy.
> If scientists make a confident prediction and then turn out to have been woefully misjudging their own competence, it is correct and right that their reputations are trashed and they should get defunded.
If a scientist continuously makes careless mistakes, then I'd say it should tarnish their reputation and that funding should to go to better qualified researchers, but predictions can turn out to be wrong without there being any mistakes at all and without misjudgements about competence too. Testing our understanding of how we think things work is a critical part of the process, and by necessity sometimes those tests fail and those failures further shape and refine our understanding leading to new tests.
Getting something wrong doesn't make a scientist a failure, and we're supposed to have guardrails in place to help prevent and catch avoidable errors. We should have people performing meaningful peer-review, and there should be many eyes on important research, with many people replicating studies to confirm results, and others trying to poke holes in those theories wherever they can.
Right now, we absolutely aren't doing enough of that. There's a lot of problems with how science is being done and how it's funded, but again, if something has become widely accepted and you want to dispute it, you'd better come with data and be ready to accept that disproving someone's theory isn't going to turn into a witch hunt. Even if you are successful at proving that a popular theory is wrong, people are just going to adjust their models, update the text books, and use it as an example of science working as intended, because that's literally a case of science working as intended. I do wish we did more about cases of actual fraud though.
>> No scientist ever says [the science is beyond dispute, that only people who are paid shills disagree], you can always fight science with science
I wish real scientists behaved in the way you imagine they do. The world would be a better place for it. Unfortunately, real scientists do all these things and more. They call themselves scientists, but don't live up to the role. Here's the same article I cited elsewhere in the thread (beyond a now flagged/killed post), by James Hansen in 2008. A famous scientist indeed but just one example of many possible examples.
- "Now, as then, I can assert that these conclusions have a certainty exceeding 99%."
- "fossil companies choose to spread doubt about global warming, as tobacco companies discredited the smoking-cancer link. Methods are sophisticated, including funding to help shape school textbook discussions of global warming."
Impossible to get clearer than that: exactly the kinds of statements I was complaining about.
And what of checking their data, reviewing their methods, reproducing their results? In short, why not fight science with science? Again, sadly you're describing imaginary scientists, the sort of people we would hope do climatology. Actual climatologists do NOT allow their science to be fought with science and actively go out of their way to prevent people checking their maths, reviewing their methods and reproducing their results.
Here's an old story that sums up what happens when someone - an invited IPCC reviewer no less - actually tries to do that kind of review
One of the most important IPCC representations is the supposedly tremendous quality control of its review process. I’ve mentioned in passing on a number of occasions that, when I sought to obtain supporting data for then unpublished articles, IPCC threatened to expel me as a reviewer.
[...]
Osborn immediately replied, calling the request that the data be archived an abuse of my position as an IPCC peer reviewer. Rosanne D’Arrigo (CG2-2590) wrote to Osborn and Briffa, advocating that I be “fired” as an IPCC reviewer. D’Arrigo urged the Climategaters to be “very cautious about our emails as Lord V will stop at nothing”
Universities don't care if their professors are engaged in pseudo-science so these stories never have happy endings. The bad apples always win, are never fired and media/politics repeats their bogus claims ad nauseum.
It really does seem IPCC has some bad actors, and a huge transparency problem. I'd like to think however that the kinds of politics and incentives for corruption that exist at that international scale don't apply to most scientists in their day to day work. Especially in areas where the science doesn't threaten the fossil fuel industry or the profits of multinational corporations.
See this is the attitude that causes people to give up in disgust:
If scientists make correct predictions, that's science working!
If scientists make wrong predictions, that's also science working!
Literally no matter what they do or what happens, they cannot lose.
>> People don't like uncertainty
People are fine with scientific understanding being uncertain. They are not fine with being told by scientists that The Science is so certain it's undisputable, that the only people who disagree are paid to do so, that the world should undergo massive changes on the back of this 100% certain science and then when their predictions are all invalidated it's "hey, being wrong is all just part of the process, if you don't understand that you don't understand science!".
If scientists make a confident prediction and then turn out to have been woefully misjudging their own competence, it is correct and right that their reputations are trashed and they should get defunded. But that doesn't happen. Instead we get the Believe Science brigade who insist that all those bad predictions never happened, if they did happen it wasn't a problem and anyone saying otherwise needs to be suppressed.
And BTW both quotes come with literally an entire article of context, and Hansen wrote a whole article for the Guardian in which he makes the same predictions about Arctic ice. So please don't try to claim he never said these things. He's on record as doing so, many times in many contexts.