The Pseudoscience Constellation

Did you ever notice that buying into one form of pseudoscience often begets other kinds of foolishness? Phillip Johnson, the lawyer who had a religious experience after a messy divorce, is not only one of the founders of the modern intelligent design movement; he's also an AIDS denier.

Russell Humphreys, the young-earth creationist, also denies that global warming is a problem.

Recently I learned about another example, possibly one of the most impressive yet. R. Webster Kehr is a Mormon and ex-Marine who

- thinks "evolution is the most absurd scientific theory in the history of science!!"

- denies Einstein's theory of relativity and the photon theory

- thinks that the naturals and the reals are the same size, even though he admits there is no bijection between them. He also describes himself as the author of many mathematical papers, although oddly enough, MathSciNet doesn't list a single one.

- subscribes to cancer quackery

You have to work pretty hard to be so deluded in so many fields simultaneously.

Creationism isn't the Real Enemy; Intellectual Dishonesty Is

Glenn Morton is a former young-earth creationist who could no longer tolerate the endless string of falsehoods put out by creationists, and wrote some helpful pages debunking creationist claims, such as The Imminent Demise of Evolution: The Longest Running Falsehood in Creationism, which I've favorably cited before.

However, he remained an evangelical Christian. And in some ways he continued to argue exactly like a creationist. I remember once on a private mailing list, we had a disagreement about information theory. I quoted definitions from books about information theory to make my point, but these weren't good enough: Morton insisted that he used information theory in the oil industry and was correct and he would not budge from that. No amount of evidence could persuade him.

Now he's had a hissy fit and deleted his own anti-creationism pages. His reason is that most people who fight creationism are "religious bigots" who are taking advantage of his work to further their own agenda.

But take a look at his arguments! They are classic right-wing crackpot stuff:

- "someone got a draft of a book by John [sic] Buell and they were scheming how to put an injunction on his book PRE-PUBLICATION" - Buell's book figured in the Dover trial; I know the people involved and this injunction claim is completely untrue

- "It doesn't matter that the earth stopped warming in 1997 as the UK Met Office reveals in the latest HADCRUT data, one MUST still believe that it is still occurring" - a fabrication, one that was quickly debunked.

- "The president of Chic-Fil-A is not allowed to have freedom of speech or religon if that speech or religion offends the sensitivities of the elitists who think they have a right to hector everyone into their boring conformity." -- Morton clearly doesn't understand freedom of speech; it refers to the right to be free of government censorship, and it doesn't prevent private boycotts of business owned by people you disagree with. The Religious Right puts out boycott requests practically every week; Morton says not a word about these.

- "These same elites will not grant the religious the courtesy and right to put up monuments in the public square." - Morton needs to take a refresher course on the separation of church and state. I defend the right of people to put up religious monuments on private property, but public property is a completely different matter.

- "Why do people think it is ok to ridicule [a Mormon's] beliefs? Debate them, yes, ridicule them? no" - ridiculous beliefs deserve ridicule. Labelling them "religious" doesn't get you a free pass.

- "And if a majority want to teach their kids YEC or that the Martians are living amongst us, they should have that freedom" - How about if a majority wants to keep black students out, or teach that black students are inferior? Still OK? There is a clear public interest in having good science in public schools.

- "Freedom is dear; and you, the religious bigot, are a danger to my freedom." - right! That explains why the ACLU consistently supports the religious rights of Christians. And here is my modest contribution.

I'm sorry to see Glenn Morton leave the fight against creationism, but if his reasons are this intellectually dishonest, I say, good riddance.

When to Doubt the Science Bashers

Former DI flack Jay Richards has a piece over at the American Enterprise's "journal", giving 12 reasons why you should stick your fingers in your ears and say "Na, na, I can't hear you!" when there is strong scientific consensus. So, in the spirit of that piece, let me offer a few reasons why you should doubt the doubters:

1. When the deniers have little or no scientific training. Richards has "a B.A. with majors in Political Science and Religion, an M.Div. (Master of Divinity) and a Th.M. (Master of Theology), and a Ph.D. (with honors) in philosophy and theology from Princeton Theological Seminary."

2. When the deniers worked for groups, such as the Discovery Institute, who have a history of prevaricating, dissembling, and just flat out lying.

3. When the deniers publish their supposedly scientific books with publishers devoted to far-right political screeds.

4. When the deniers have held appointments at so-called universities that advertise "biblically centered education" and offer courses in scientific apologetics designed to "demonstrate the harmony between science and a biblical worldview".

5. When the deniers claim that the very existence of a scientific consensus is a reason to doubt the consensus.

6. When the deniers are well-funded by groups that stand to lose a lot of money when action is finally taken.

7. When the deniers post their claims on web pages that don't allow comments.

8. And finally, when the evidence is strongly against the deniers.

The Great Climate-Gate Debate at MIT

I attended The Great Climate-Gate Debate yesterday at MIT. It was videotaped, so maybe eventually it will be available online, but for the moment, here is a brief and possibly inaccurate description based on notes I took during the event.

It wasn't really a debate. None of the participants really addressed each other in any substantial way. It consisted of 5 10-minute presentations, followed by questions from the audience. My summaries of each speaker are given below, with my comments in italics.

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The first speaker was Kerry Emanuel, a professor of atmospheric sciences at MIT. He contrasted the situation in science with politics. In science the truth will win out; but politics enters the scence because the coal industry will lose billions. They spend lavishly in campaigns to protect themselves. Just like the tobacco industry, which set up fake grassroots organizations to deny the connection between smoking and lung cancer, the anti-AGW [anthropogenic global warming] crowd sets up similar organizations. The tobacco industry's efforts were successful: it took decades before smoking began going down.

The anti-AGW efforts are even more successful. The scientific consensus is clear. All scientific organizations agree. Yet polls show that the percentage of the American public who believes that global warming is human-caused is decreasing. How did this come to pass? By deployment by vested interests of advertising techniques. Terminology is controlled. Deniers are called skpetics. Most of the people called skeptics are not really skeptics, since no evidence would persuade them. By contrast, people who take the problem seriously are called "alarmists". The public relations machine has been successful in branding atmospheric scientists as out-of-touch liberals who want to return to an agrarian society. On the other hand, deniers are compared to Galileo.

The thousands of e-mail messages that were stolen show scientists at work. Among them are a few lines of scientists showing human failings. Scientifically it means nothing. But it is a windfall for the anti-AGW machine.

The next speaker was Richard Lindzen, professor of meteorology in the Department of Earth Sciences at MIT. He started by denying that there is an anti-AGW machine. [Hard to take this seriously: exactly who does Lindzen think is behind ads like the ones reported here?] He doesn't know what AGW has to do with smoking. [It's because, as Emanuel clearly stated, the techniques used by the deniers on both sides are similar. Also, Lindzen himself -- a smoker -- is famous for his skepticism on the link between smoking and cancer, so I imagine it was a little dig at him.] It's a red herring. What we're here to talk about is e-mail and computer code. There's no chance that some machine unknown to Lindzen is behind this.

The relaeased documents are unambiguously dealing with things that are unethical and illegal. There is no good in any scientific organization endorsing this. The documents show scientists manipulating raw temperature data. [Uh, manipulation of raw data goes on all the time; that's why it's called raw data.] They refused to allow outsiders access to data. [Uh, because they signed a non-disclosure agreement]. They destroy data rather than release it. They don't allow responses to their papers to be published. This is not ethical.

What are the implication? It won't have much influence on Copenhagen. You don't get 20,000 people to change direction. Very few people can read these documents and not conclude that there was something bad going on. There is diminishing popular support for this issue. This is not mass hysteria, this is elite hysteria. The notion that science is prone to cheating and if Kerry [Emanuel] is right, that this is endorsed by scientific organizations, is detrimental to science. If your information environment is NPR and the New York Times, you believe one thing. If your information environment is talk radio, you believe another. He recommended Anthony Watts' blog. It's good that ordinary people can check the temperature measurements; people are discovering bizarre changes to the data.

Next was Judith Layzer, who is a professor of Environmental Policy at MIT. [I didn't get much out of what she was saying.] She is an observer of science. She concluded by saying that scientists are fallible but offer the best hope of understanding the natural world.

Next was Stephen Ansolabehere, professor of Political Science at MIT. [I didn't get much out of what he said, either.] Scientific evidence hasn't been vetted the way it should. So far it's in scientific journals, congressional committees, etc., not vetted in public the way it should be. However, the e-mails don't affect most of the data people are using. But it does raise a fundamental question of science - the importance of scientific standards. It raises the question of how science can maintain its standards as it gets pulled into public debates. Who is going to police scinece and maintain its public credibility? One of the great crimes is the violation of the standard of replicability. Who is going to discipline the scientists? What will the response be from scientific academies?

The last speaker was Professor of Atmospheric Science at MIT. He began speaking about the hockey stick. In answer to Lindzen, we care about a few tenths of a degree because it is important to compare current temperatures with historical data. He looked at the emails and was disturbed. He discussed the disagreement between Michael Mann & McIntyre-McKittrick. Around 1850, the blade "sticks out" (referring to rise in northern hemisphere temperatures). It did disturb him when looking at the emails to see the personal nature of the discussion. Are some of the e-mails unprofessional? Yes.

Were the people successful in preventing publication? Five papers by McIntyre were published and discussed in the 4th IPCC. There's a signficant case to be made that temperatures are higher - the "blade" has survived the scrutiny. It's unclear if the "handle" is straight or broken. People will think of other proxies. Were the people successful in the endeavor that seemed to be stated in the emails? No.

Was the research at E. Anglia critical to the case for climate change? He looked at this because he gave testimony about climate change. There are many different lines of evidence. Several independent data sets exist - the work at UEA is not the only group. Without even including analysis from UEA the conclusion that most of the warming is human-caused remains robust. Since 1997 to 2007 when he gave testimony in the House Ways and Means Committee, he changed his mind. The new data was enough to convince me that there was statistical significance to the conclusion. His view is that we have no other planet to retreat to if we are wrong. If we screw up this planet, what do we do?

Has the integrity at the IPCC been compromised by these revelations? UEA people were involved at IPCC. IPCC is arguably the most influential. Those emails did not lead to McIntyre-McKittrick papers not being discussed. Answer is no.

Is public perception of climate science affected? Media ability to scrutinize is a problem. E-mails contain a lot of juicy soundbites who want to write stories. Answer is yes.

Can we do better? Climate researchers need to step back from the tendency to polarization. Scientists have got to stop that process. That means having mutual respect. I have great respect for both of these guys (Lindzen and Emanuel) as excellent scientists. Find additional ways to communicate conclusions and the ways conclusions were reached. A single paper is not enough. Many results needed before consensus is reached.

Peer-reviewed literature is where science is done. Not in blogs or opinion pieces. These should not be the source of information. Can we do better? The answer is yes.

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After the presentations, there were many questions. I did not take notes during the Q & A. If the event video is ever shown, you can see me asking a question towards the end.

Finally, one minor note that bugged me. Speakers referred to each other using their first names, making it hard to follow. If only the organizers had bothered to put a card in front of each speaker, with their full name, the audience would have been much better off.

Update: the video of the event is now available.