Archive for the 'Science' Category

What Would Charlie Munger Say About Global Warming?

Posted on November 21, 2009, 11:03 pm. 1 Comment

If you haven’t heard by now, hackers (or an insider) broke into The University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit and downloaded 156 megabytes of data including extremely damaging emails that show how data supporting the global warming thesis was manipulated and/or fabricated.

Here is just some of the coverage I’ve seen from various blogs:

The Washington Post also has posted a story about this, but I find it very interesting the slant they take to the story. Instead of focusing on the manipulation/fabrication of data for the purposes of proving a highly controversial hypothesis (what I think could become known as one of the greatest hoaxes advanced by mankind), the Washington Post article merely focuses on how the stolen e-mails deride and disparage the skeptics of warming. When there’s even a whiff of fraud on such an important subject, how can than NOT be the focus for a newspaper? Why focus on the pettiness of these scientists and not on the apparent fraud and manipulation? Could it be the Washington Post writers and editors have an agenda of their own?

Anyways, to get to the title of this blog post, I’m not sure if Munger has said anything about global warming in the past. But I do know Munger’s views on responsibility for social problems, which I think applies to so-called global warming or climate change (or whatever you want to call it):

I’m all for fixing social problems. I’m all for being generous to the less fortunate. And I’m all for doing things where, based on a slight preponderance of the evidence, you guess that it’s likely to do more good than harm…

What I’m against is being very confident and feeling that you know, for sure, that your particular intervention will do more good than harm given that you’re dealing with highly complex systems wherein everything is interacting with everything else.

Our climate system has to be one of the most complex systems on this planet. Consider just all the big and small factors on the planet that affects the weather. Then consider all the factors outside this planet that has an effect on the climate. Consider the millions of possible ways these factors can interact with each other. Consider the fact that global temperatures have always fluctuated without man-made pollution and carbon dioxide. It’s been been much hotter than it is now and it’s been much colder than it is now.

I would like to believe that Munger would be against doing anything to “fix” the so-called problem of global warming or climate change given that it is such a highly complex system and given that anything we do would most likely have zero positive effect and would very likely have serious negative consequences.

The Good, the Bad, and the Junk Science

Posted on June 3, 2008, 11:45 pm. Closed

Uranium waste bacteriaI’ve recently been thinking about the meaning of skepticism and what constitutes good and bad science, so I thought I would go back and look at my notes for my public health law course I took last semester. One of the lectures was devoted to junk science and our professor gave us some very good definitions of good, bad, and junk science. He also gave us a good list of factors of which we ought to be mindful when confronted with something somebody proclaims to be “science.” This post is largely derived from that lecture.

First, there is the cynical view of science. If you’re a scientist working for private industry, you earn your money by inventing something useful, or at least something that people will buy regardless of usefulness. On the other hand, if you’re a scientist dependent on government grants, you have to clamor about how bad things are in order to get your money. It’s more likely the government will give away money to someone who wants to solve a “problem” rather than to someone who wants to study how great things are. Furthermore, these horrible problems or disasters scientists predict often never never happen. There was no Y2K chaos and there was no disaster on 3 Mile Island – there weren’t even any deaths or radiation leaks.

AristotleSo what is science? My professor defined science as the rigorous, systematic use of observations and logic in an attempt to support or falsify possible explanations of natural phenomena. Science, he said, is a way of doing things, a way of thinking. To illustrate what he meant, he compared science to religion. With religion, knowledge is acquired via revelation and the thought process is characterized by intuition and faith. With science, knowledge is acquired via the scientific method and the thought process is characterized by rational or logical thought.

Now that we have a definition of science, we can go into a little more detail about the factors that comprise “good” science. Good science is consistent meaning that it is built upon previous science. Good science is parsimonious – the more complicated an explanation the less likely it is to be true (think Occam’s razor). It is empirically testable – if it can’t be tested, its not science. Good science is also progressive, and useful.

Because science and scientists can command a great deal of respect and because there are many people out there who blindly accept and defer to whatever has been labeled as “science,” there have been unfortunate occurrences throughout history of pseudoscience or bogus science. Despite the often confusing nature surrounding science, the impressive credentials of scientists, and the astounding “discoveries” that have been made, there are some factors that anyone can use to help determine what might be good or bad science.

The first factor to consider in determining whether a recent discovery or study is real is whether there is an over reliance on surveys and statistical arguments. Another is whether there is a high degree of data filtering, i.e., is there a “grab bag” approach to the data. Also, is there a grab bag approach to gathering evidence? Does the scientist appeal to mysteries or myths. These two factors are fairly obvious but still worth mentioning: (1) is there a lack of controlled experiments and (2) has the scientist refused to revise his findings despite being proven wrong?

Continuing on, the following factors deal more with the actions of the scientist and how he portrays and presents his findings. Does the scientist make a pitch to the news media instead of bona fide scientific journals? Does the scientist make claims of suppression? Does the scientist propose an effect that is nearly impossible to detect? Is the supporting evidence mostly anecdotal? Does the scientist work in isolation? Does the scientist propose a new law of nature to explain the discovery?

These are all questions everyone should ask when confronted with science. Though science should certainly be treated with respect, bad or unproven science not be treated like religion. Wherever possible there must be independent confirmation of the facts. When the facts can’t be confirmed or if you sense the presence of one the previous factors, then it is most likely the facts or the scientist is bogus.Acupuncture

So now you would probably like some examples of bogus science? I won’t go into details, but here is a cursory list:

  • Acupuncture
  • Astrology
  • Biorhythms
  • Hollow Earth
  • Hypnosis

Two examples that are a bit more interesting to me are the Russian polywater controversy of the 1960s and the cold fusion controversy of 1989 involving Fleischmann and Pons.

The last example, I promise, is the hockey stick graph controversy. If you watched Al Gore’s recent propaganda piece, the hockey stick graph played a rather dramatic part. Al Gore depicts the huge horizontal graph that spans the entire stage. However, with the last couple of centuries (the hockey stick part) Gore hops on to a mechanical platform that raises him up so he can show how much temperatures have risen.

The international kilogram conundrum

Posted on April 19, 2008, 8:21 am. Closed

In the more than a century since ‘perfect’ platinum-iridium cylinders were first used as the world’s kilogram standards, their weights have mysteriously fluctuated.

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