==> “But can still be v hard if one is heavily biased in that domain, whether or not (e.g. in the CC case) this is simply inherited from the state of the science.”
And, indeed, more irony.
At least Dan uses the tools of empirical methodology to serve as a control for his “domain”-related biases.
Not sure why you have to click on the first of the two plots in my foregoing (long) post. Here’s what it should have expanded to automatically.
It’s from Wikipedia, source and citation details here.
johnfpittman | June 19, 2015 at 3:45 pm
‘IMO, the moral beliefs…’
Yes. But remember it’s also a feedback system. Moral beliefs can cause bias, but bias can also reinforce (or erode) moral beliefs. This is why it is so easy to get cause and effect mixed up. One good way to perceive the system more objectively, is to abstract the agents of bias: memes.
> The post, in which some of Dan’s quotes, survey data and analysis are embedded, clearly demonstrates that he *does* have baked into his priors an assumption of complete correctness for the consensus.
So now we go from “He arbitrarily *defines* the Consensus and its adherents to be completely correct” to “he *does* have baked into his priors an assumption of complete correctness for the consensus.”
Even that other goalpost is false. Dan’s conclusions are independent from the correctness for the consensus. Whether the consensus is correct or not, his results stand alone. Dan’s work has nothing to do with the consensus, let alone its correctness. He’s studying the public’s perception of it, that’s all.
Not only that, but Dan keeps repeating his same master argument in just about every single post he writes. He then he keeps correcting contrarians about its implications in most comment threads where they pay him a visit.
So no wonder you can’t find any quote where Dan defines the consensus, AndyW.
***
> Well of course that is challengable, so feel free to challenge it.
It’s tough to prove an absence of evidence, and challenging a good cop bad cop story that rests on a strawman would be silly.
No wonder Judy lets you post these stories too.
Maybe trick Word P by serializing, Parts 1 and 2 ?
It’s only a dumb machine after all. Question is,
RoH, who is ter be master?
@RS: The IPCC reports are not a based on a consensus of scientists who have studied the issue.
You raise an interesting question of semantics there, Rob. If you have a group of nine people named 1,2,…,9 estimating that the value of some variable is respectively 671,672,…,679, and you then say that their consensus is that the value lies in the range 671-679, would it be reasonable to call that range a consensus estimate? They’re all in agreement to 2 decimal places.
That’s a simplified version of the provenance of the orange (pink?) area in Figure SPM.7(a) above, which comes from some 30 CMIP5 models all delivering somewhat different results.
mosomoso — When I post (where usually 99% of folks jump on my case), I’m trying to give a glimpse of stuff that current state-of-art engineers and farmers are doing (that a lot of people at CE are probably not aware of).
Biochar is a good example — In conjunction with commercial scale biomass gasification (not Mom & Pop backyard stuff), we are trying to understand the waste product better (as a value added product).
While I don’t blog much, I did talk about this at a post at:
http://greenenergy.blogspot.com/2010/08/biochar-gasification-temperature.html
“That’s a good one. The question (there is perhaps some ambiguity about exactly which question is “this” question) came after the assertion. Is this another example from “the physics” of an effect occurring before its cause?”
not ambiguous at all.
your question was what makes you think.
think harder.
if your question had been what made you think, the answer may have different.
as it stands andywest who accepted the invitation, looks to be having an intelligent conversation. You me not so much.. I blame no one for this.
it’s along different lines than I imagined.. but that’s what happens when you invite strangers to a party.
funny how willis mistells the story.
It was my first time reading all the comments at dans blog.
I read willis’s first comment
I read dmk38 response.
The ONLY way that response made sense was if dmk38 was Dan.
Now, I wasnt primed to reject what dmk38 said. So first I try to figure out HOW does this make sense. It only makes sense if dmk38 is Dan.
So check that.. click the link.. oh.. the site admin.. cute.
But willis didnt read dmk38 response in order to understand it. he read it to criticize it or to criticize the person. Hence he had to ask
“who is this” but he didnt merely do that.. he went on..
personally I viewed it as a funny object lesson that Dan was teaching
CD:
“That is kind of funny since with the past cooling we have already responded to the impact of that warming. There is a neat temporal shift in climate science.”
You’ve pointed out the upside of warming. Yes it is as bad as we thought with the steady significant rise in temperatures. We’ve found that the sea levels, ice sheets and sea ice are surprisingly resilient to such a fast increase. The animals and the plants seem to taken it all in stride. The more alarming the rise to date is, the more adaptive abilities we can attribute to each of the many natural and human systems. Our experience has been an admirable adaptation to the first 1.5 C of warming.
Willis
‘Of course, the more reasonable animals don’t want to totally leave everything they’ve ever known behind and venture out where anything might happen. So they argue with Chicken Little, saying they should study the question some more.
But Chicken Little has painted such scary pictures that many animals argue that an immediate decision on leaving is required. Plus he has the proof, he’s got the mark of the falling sky right there on his head.”
Yes in applied science people often demand an immediate decison NOW.
And other people demand more study Now.
There is no point in denying that in applied science there are deadlines
‘real’ deadlines and false deadlines.
There is no point in denying that while some demand immediate action on the science, other demand immediate appeals to the supreme court.
In applied sciences there is always the possibility that some party may claim a need for immediate action.
These situations exist. you might wish that they dont. But life is not burger king and you dont get things your way.
You might think you can just order people to study more BUT applied science always take place in the context of power: you are not the power. you have no voice. When my boss says the regression must be done by 5pm.. He decides. When a politician funds science to find an answer.. he decides whether action is needed immediately..
So we circle back to the pragmatic question> How does one do science
under pressure. You cant wish the pressure away willis. you cant say “there should be no pressure” The question is how do you “do science” and do it under a deadline?. Guess what. The answer is not found in popper or kuhn or Willis..
So, you can either live in the real world and make an intellegent suggestion as to how to do science better under unreasonable time pressure or you can rant that it cant be done.
while you rant decisions are being made.
Willard | June 19, 2015 at 5:01 pm
Yes, he arbitrarily defines the Consensus and its adherents to be completely correct… due to his baked in bias.
“He’s studying the public’s perception of it, that’s all”
He’s analyzing public perceptions, and drawing conclusions from his analysis. If his analysis of those perceptions is wrong, due to bias, then his conclusions will be wrong too. And despite some bias in instruments he has gathered some great survey material to input to the analysis too. But then his bias during analysis proves too much, and produces results surprising even to him. Well much kudos for expressing that, but not for a little sober reassessment. The conclusion he draws, that many millions of US citizens must be suffering from a rare condition, ‘knowing disbelief’, is a direct result of the biased analysis.
This condition exists, but requires very specific development conditions and maintenance of those conditions. To date, he has no evidence that this could be a mass effect. He uses the ‘Kentucky Farmer’ example to try and demonstrate it might be, but the main paper quoted in this model does not support his position. I (and others) have pointed this out many times, and after much to and fro he finally replied to me:
“I would not expect anyone to treat the evidence I have adverted to as reason to adjust their priors if they have different ones from mine. If I have am able to attain evidence of that sort, I will make it known.”
Well, I guess that’s progress. And reasonable conduct too. So he’s still looking. Nothing wrong with that either. But… by *not* building in early in the analysis that the consensus position is completely right, which assumption distorts the map of cultural influence (of 3 not 2 cultures also) out drops an explanation that does *not* result in the necessity of a strange condition, but requires only vanilla cultural and emotional bias effects, which are known to sway populations.
Stephen Segrest,
“EPA’s certification fuel is indolene, a standardized test gasoline free of additives. One source cites an indolene MON of 87 and RON of 96.5, thus yielding a pump octane of 91.5; another, a pump octane of 92.9.”
You will notice that this is a gasoline free of additives. No xylene, no toluene, no benzene.
However, I wouldn’t be surprised if it is far more expensive than the gasoline I buy. It also is free of various additives such as surfactants (detergents) which increase engine efficiency.
To partially answer your last question about the gasoline industry, this quote from the Royal Society of Chemistry may help –
“Today the UK’s fuels boast among the highest detergent levels in the world, causing correspondingly low levels of deposit buildup. This contrasts with the US, where minimum additive levels are set by legal mandate and commercial fuel producers raced each other to reach that minimum, again to reduce their costs.”
Manufacturers generally maximise profit, and why not?
For example, the EPA tried to ban asbestos in automotive brakes, but manufacturers were not happy, and fought back in court –
“. . . the court rejected the EPA’s efforts to ban existing uses of asbestos including: asbestos-cement, corrugated and flat sheet, asbestos clothing, pipeline wrap, roofing felt, vinyl-asbestos floor tile, asbestos-cement shingle, millboard, asbestos-cement pipe, automatic transmission components, clutch facings, friction materials, disc brake pads, drum brake linings, brake blocks, gaskets, valve and pump packings, non-roofing coatings, and roof coatings. On-going uses of asbestos pose a serious danger to human health.”
So the use of octane boosting additives in gasoline used in a sealed system might be the least of your worries!
So if I am plotting a course to Mars, do I take a “consensus” or do a calculation?
Are there in fact, any scientist who doubt that HIV causes aids? Can you find one for me on scholar.google.com?
Besides, it is beside the point. Which model is right? Which model uses correct physics? Why do they all disagree if they are all in fact correct? Guesses about how much of the recent warming is natural are nothing but hunches.
> So if I am plotting a course to Mars […]
If you are plotting a course to Mars, either you’re an engineer or a robot that just woke up.
If your calculations can’t be shared corroborated by others and nobody gets the same ballpark as yours, either this means there’s a problem with your calcs or you’re the new Ethon Musk.
In any case, you’re not doing science. Science is about understanding life, the universe and everything, not conspiring a semester on Mars.
Here you go:
Since 1984, when the hypothesis that HIV-causes-AIDS was announced, many scholars have questioned the premise and offered alternative explanations. Thirty years later, competing propositions as well as questioning of the mainstream hypothesis persist, often supported by prominent scientists. This article synthesizes the most salient questions raised, alongside theories proposing non-viral causes for AIDS. The synthesis is organized according to four categories of data believed to support the HIV-AIDS hypothesis: retroviral molecular markers; transmission electron microscopy (EM) images of retroviral particles; efficacy of anti-retroviral drugs; and epidemiological data. Despite three decades of concerted investments in the mainstream hypothesis, the lingering questions and challenges synthesized herein offer public health professionals an opportunity to reflect on their assumptions and practices regarding HIV/AIDS.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4172096/
You’re welcome.
> Yes, he arbitrarily defines the Consensus and its adherents to be completely correct… due to his baked in bias.
Then quote where he defines the Consensus as completely correct.
Unless it’s too baked in?
If you could give me any example of how we can define something as completely correct, that would help too.
***
The idea that an author’s bias can viciates an analysis is interesting, AndyW. Does it mean that I can disregard your own conclusions because they are produced by someone with an obvious contrarian bias?
