Sausages, and science

Comments (18)

1. I understand the point about publication, but I think you risk conflating epistemic and social dynamics in science. Newton sat on his greatest discoveries for years — it’s not as though publication increased his warrant for accepting them, or the likelihood that his theories were true.

2. fooraw?

   /pedantry.

   This whole beat-up is bad pr for environmental science just before Copenhagen, even though it’s all pretty clearly nonsense.

   Did you see the reports of suspicions that Russian hackers were paid to try to access the scientists’ emails? I am normally suspicious of conspiracy theories, but this one might have something to it.

3. They were unthinkingly parroting the “emails show that scientists doctored results” line on SBS tonight. Needless to say, Nine were flogging it too. Fucking useless.

4. This whole thing was certainly a set-up, but that doesn’t excuse the tone of some of the emails. Neither does the argument “it’s just how business is done!” serve as an excuse either. That’s like justifying the collapse of the financial sector as simply a result of “business as usual”. If this is business as usual, then we need to start doing business differently.

   Some of those emails skirted perilously close to (if not crossed) the line separating “good rucking” from unethical conduct. As a result, a clear tactical victory was handed to the propagandists of the opposition on a crucial battleground issue.

   Instead of making excuses and attempting to dismiss the controversy (which will only have the effect of arousing further suspicion among the laity), we ought to be bringing the hammer down and laying some new ground rules.

   Certainly, some individuals should be sliding down their own swords as a result of this; that’s assuming they really hold the cause more worthy than their individual career-driven egos.

5. This is one of those heads I win, tails you lose situations. The emails were stolen, and yet the victims of what was, after all, a felony are the ones who are under attack. In fact, the rules of this game are even more unfair than that. While the emails may or may not indicate some impurity in the motives of the scientists, we’ve all known for decades that the opposition is led by PR mercenaries paid for by commercial interests with transparently selfish motives. It isn’t just that these criminals in wingtips are like the flacks who fought the good fight for tobacco. In many cases, they have the same Social Security numbers in their wallets. They are the ones who should be “sliding down their own swords.” It behooves the rest of us to remember who are our friends and who are our enemies.
   The emails are what lawyers call work product and should be afforded the same protections. Or do you really want to establish a rule that scientists (but not their corporate enemies in the PR world) are under some sort of obligation to be pure as the driven snow at every moment? After all, the scientists are being accused of something even more ethereal than a thought crime: they are failing to live up to a stylistic norm. Their nouns and verbs are OK; it’s the adverbs that are insufficiently pious. This fight ought to be about carbon dioxide, public health, and the human future, not saintly behavior in private conversations.

6. I can’t comment directly on this issue as I have not looked at it in any detail.

   Some of the claims made with regard to conduct do however look rather familiar.

   My own somewhat obscure subject area is somewhat problematic due to contemporary ethnic politics.

   Many of the leading academics in my subject are also very politicaly active in this area and have a very clear agenda. Which is reflected in research.

   It makes a balanced study of my subject somewhat difficult and at times somewhat stressfull.

   The issue does not go by unnoticed by academics from diffrent subject areas and does nothing for the credibility and reputation of the subject. It is very damaging.

   To study the subject at an advanced level has little to do with knowledge and learning. It seems to be a game of highly repetitive and a somewhat expensive form of hoop jumping.

   Usefull to do if you want a career in the subject but difficult if you wish to understand it in full.

   My own subject area is a particularly bad example of local politics at play in a subject.

7. “It behooves the rest of us to remember who are our friends and who are our enemies.”

   If you’re not with us &c…

   “Or do you really want to establish a rule that scientists (but not their corporate enemies in the PR world) are under some sort of obligation to be pure as the driven snow at every moment?”

   The ends justify… &c

   Mike Hulme, a colleague of Phil Jones, said, “The attitudes revealed in the emails do not look good. The tribalism that some of the leaked emails display is something more usually associated with social organisation within primitive cultures; it is not attractive when we find it at work inside science”.

   One glance at opinion polls will reveal that we were already winning against Sauron’s hordes and their recalcitrant propaganda machine on the climate issue, in large part because a substantial section of the public certainly does reserve a healthy distrust for corporate chicanery. In order to maintain that momentum, I think it’s absolutely vital to express a tangible air of piety within the scientific establishment, so that it may be all the more contrasted with the racketeering of the opposition.

   It’s funny, really, but all you need to do is change the labels and we could just as easily be talking about torture and whether it serves or undermines American influence in the world.

8. DSKS manages to suggest that the authors of the emails were suggesting something morally equivalent to torture. They simply weren’t.

   The bit about the ends justifying the means is what used to be called cant, a bleat that takes the place of an axiom. Of course ends justify means. What else is supposed to justify them? That doesn’t imply–and no one is implying–that it is licit to use any and all tactics in the pursuit of any and all purpose. I may be an immoralist on this issue from DSKS’ point of view–as I have often said, the categorical imperative is not a suicide pact–but I do think there needs to be a proportionality between what you should be willing to do and the importance of what you are trying to accomplish. In the case of the emails, the moral failure imputed to the authors appears to be the crime of recognizing that the climate debate will be won or lost by manipulating public opinion. In fact DSKS implicitly agrees with them, “it’s absolutely vital to express a tangible air of piety within the scientific establishment.” Now, since we all know that scientists aren’t pious, DSKS is promoting public deception, which is presumably OK because–all together now–the ends justify the means.

9. Any of us who know anything about science know that, for better or for worse, there’s always a certain amount of tribalism. One of my areas of interest for many years was Neandertals, and I can only imagine the kinds of emails that were being sent between multiregionalists and OOAists.

   As John says, science is a messy business, and in the (assumed) privacy of email, scientists, like any professionals, may be stating things in a fashion that might raise eyebrows, particularly when taken out of context, which, most certainly has been done here.

   It’s an unfortunate blow to climate research, particularly with the proximity in time to the Copenhagen talks (no doubt this was intentional), but what really does any of this show? The data is still the data. And even if I were to accept the worst case scenario that these guys were malignant and malicious villains out to destroy Western civilization (or whatever rubbish the pseudo-skeptics are spreading at any given moment), they are just two people. Are we going to throw out cloning research because Hwang Woo Suk faked his results, or dismiss hominid paleontology because that scoundrel Teuku Jacob messed with the H. folresiensis bones?

   But everyone who has any familiarity with this whole thing knows that there was no actual wrongdoing. Unguarded words in a private communication that were artfully leaked by propagandists for the purposes of casting FUD (fear, uncertainty and doubt). Yes, it’s a huge win for the pseudo-skeptics (whose own unethical behavior would make most peoples’ hair curl), and I imagine it’s going to set things back a bit, but at some point the climate changes are going to become so pronounced that even Middle America, desperate to hear that they can happily vomit CO2 out of their tailpipes, will have to take notice.

   1. Their is an old saying where my partner comes from, but it’s I’ been (It’s always been that way)

      Unguarded words on a highly political and somewhat important issue that makes every Conspiracy nut feel they have the sword of truth and shield of rightiousness firmly in hand.

      I think it shows that due to public perceptions when science has to take part in highly politicaly charged waters it needs to take particular care and show some common sense with regard to what it utters in communication, which has the potential to go public.

      1. To be sure researchers must be cautious, but a lot of the furor here is over usage of words that, to a layman, mean one thing, but may have a somewhat differing meaning for the researchers. How does any specialist guard against this? If the pseudo-skeptics and pseudo-scientists decided to turn on mathematics or engineering, would they end up in the same boat.

         Besides, these were private communications. What the hackers did was the equivalent of bugging the room, then sifting through hours of recording looking for juicy tidbits.

         Science has always had a very difficult time with public perceptions. There was a period during the 1950s and 1960s when it was certainly seen in a much more positive light, because everyone believed it would save them from the big bad Russians. But since then, certain branches of science have had to literally fend themselves against what amounts to professional pseudo-skepticism, where every word written or spoke has the potential to be a weapon used against them.

         We’re dealing with skilled liars who are paid obscenely large amounts of money. I honestly don’t think you can fend against that unless you stop writing and talking. I know that many scientists in the fields the pseudo-skeptics have in their sights have simply decided not to respond at all.

      2. I can agree with that, somewhat sadly.

         I still have some difficulty grasping the extent to which people buy into such crap.

         The illogical leaps of faith in any number of subjects you have to undertake to arrive at such a position is breathtaking.

         Many people seem to have no critical reasoning skills, which should allow them to deal with conflicting information in a more balanced manner.

         I think it is something that the whole education system needs to respond to rather than science in particular. Science has the un-enviable position of being in the front line of such attacks from a number of interest groups.

         I can understand why some scientists do not wish to respond and give the impression such views share the same platform and have some degree of credibility as science.

         But education and engagement must hold the key to move forward I hope.

         These issues are too important to ignore.

10. Jim,
    “DSKS manages to suggest that the authors of the emails were suggesting something morally equivalent to torture. “

    I don’t believe I did (at least, I didn’t intend to). I was drawing a parallel between the argument that expedience sometimes makes it necessary to abandon moral and ethical principles. A strange thing to do when one is often voicing one’s moral and ethical principles in order to differentiate them from an opponent, be it a terrorist or a climate denier or a creationist.

    “We must use whatever ticks we can to prevent a legal request for the release of our publicly funded raw data because we fear the opposition might behave unethically…”

    It deserves a laugh track, doesn’t it?

    Which leads on to “the ends…”, in which I don’t at all disagree with the innate truth of,
    “Of course ends justify means. What else is supposed to justify them?”

    I was merely sending up the common invocation of this bleat, cant? (I’ll have to look those up) in the political arena whenever a person or group is short of a sturdier argument. The point being that his appeal is evoked often but rarely with a full understanding of what the means, the cost, really entails. And inevitably, when we thing the ends justify the means, we later find out that in fact this is not so at all.

    And thus we some scientists that, for The Greater Good, determine that unethical conduct is sometimes called for, but who had not correctly anticipated the true political cost of their actions. Admittedly, time will tell what that cost actually was, or whether we might have escaped a near miss.

    Aaron,
    “Any of us who know anything about science know that, for better or for worse, there’s always a certain amount of tribalism. “

    Of course. Anyone who is human and is part of a human establishment is going to be privy to our species natural tendencies in that regard. However, I’ve spent 12 yrs working in what is considered to be a highly competitive and certainly downright rowdy field of physiology that has its fair share of colourful characters, but still managed to be pretty shocked by the content of those emails. They are not in the least bit reflective of how science is generally done nor how scientists generally behave. Which is why it’s particularly aggravating for people to suggest that it is.

    1. Of course. Anyone who is human and is part of a human establishment is going to be privy to our species natural tendencies in that regard. However, I’ve spent 12 yrs working in what is considered to be a highly competitive and certainly downright rowdy field of physiology that has its fair share of colourful characters, but still managed to be pretty shocked by the content of those emails. They are not in the least bit reflective of how science is generally done nor how scientists generally behave. Which is why it’s particularly aggravating for people to suggest that it is.

       Did you actually watch the YouTube video? These very few published “excerpts” (in my talk.origins days, we called them quote mines) were few, and certainly taken out of the general context to show wrongdoing.

       In short, “Climategate” claims are the fraud, not the emails.

       I’ll wager I could open up any professional or academic’s mailbox for any lengthy period of time, and probably find what would look like misdeeds. Those of us who have spent any amount of time with the Creationists have seen this sort of thing countless numbers of times. I suppose, in a way, this is anthropomorphic climate change’s coming of age. It’s finally get the full array of dishonesty and immorality that the pseudo-scientists and pseudo-skeptics can throw at it.

11. second quote was a paraphrased example, not a true quote (apologies)

12. In 2059 Andromeda Aliens pop up with Cosmic Catalysmic Digipublication with full of alien previewed scientific lookalike articles.
    Is it science ? Can they deny our pre 2059-so-called-science to be real cosmic science because not published in cosmos science society ?

    😉

13. second quote was a paraphrased example, not a true quote (apologies)

14. p.s potholer54 vids are awesome John! Thanks for that. I just watched the creationist junk debunked part 1.

    Still laughing 10 min after watching it. Youtube gold.

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