When experts fail

Arnold Kling has a good essay on the failure of expert opinion in the realm of public policy.

Key quote:

Expertise becomes problematic when it is linked to power. First, it creates a problem for democratic governance. The elected officials who are accountable to voters lack the competence to make well-informed decisions. And, the experts to whom legislators cede authority are unelected. The citizens who are affected by the decisions of these experts have no input into their selection, evaluation, or removal.

A second problem with linking expertise to power is that it diminishes the diversity and competitive pressure faced by the experts.

I would add another problem to the list: experts often disagree among themselves about the basic nature of a problem, the facts about the problem, and the possible solutions. The notion there is one single "expert" opinion about any given issue is usually false. This problem becomes especially acute when the issue is scientific in nature.

Disagreement among scientific experts is not the problem. The problem is when a biased, scientifically illiterate media picks one side as the One Sacred Truth and ignores (or even demonizes) all other competing opinions.

If you ever read a newspaper story or watch a news report that uses phrases like "scientific consensus" or "a majority of scientists believe ..." it is safe to assume the reporter is trying to pull the wool over your eyes. Consensus is not science. Scientific theories are not voted on, they gain or lose credibility by the weight of evidence - something many journalists do not seem to understand or prefer to ignore.

Heat wave at the North Pole! We're all gonna die!

STOP THE PRESSES!! According to Time magazine, there is a huge temperature surge going on at the North Pole.

Key quote:

Stormy weather in the North Atlantic is set to bring balmy weather to the world’s northernmost point.

Temperatures at the North Pole could hit 40 degrees, according to Discovery News, which would be about 50 degrees higher than average for this time of year. Storms over Iceland and Greenland, fairly common in winter, are pushing warmer air to the Arctic region.

So global warming is real, right? The polar bears are finished thanks to Big Oil, yes? Is it time to put the deniers in prison?

Not so fast. It appears the temperatures are from North Pole, Alaska.

Here is the original quote from Time:

Stormy weather in the North Atlantic has brought balmy weather to the world’s northernmost point.

The temperature in the North Pole hit 42 degrees Fahrenheit on Wednesday morning, which Discovery News says is 50 degrees higher than average for this time of year. Storms over Iceland and Greenland, fairly common in winter, are pushing warmer air to the Arctic

Relying on Discovery News for scientific information is like using the horoscopes to learn about modern astronomy, something the writers and editors at Time will take into consideration.

But don't forget - the science is settled! Even if those from the "settled science" crowd are unsettled about where the North Pole actually is.

The unsettling of "settled science"

John Hinderaker at Powerline Blog has a good article about a new paper in Science Bulletin, which was by Christopher Monckton, Matt Briggs, David Legates and Wei-Hock Soon. Apparently, the computer models used by Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) may be overestimating the rate of global warming.

The paper can be found here.

Unfortunately I fear that the paper will eventually be withdrawn. Not because of errors in the scientists' methodology or erroneous data (so far critics have not made many inroads on disproving the paper's findings), but because the conclusions upset the global warming hotheads. "Settled science" cannot tolerate authentic science, and "deniers" must be muzzled rather than engaged.

Worship science? Not so fast!

According to the online Merraim-Webster Dictionary there are two definitions of scientism. The first is "methods and attitudes typical of or attributed to the natural scientist". The second is "an exaggerated trust in the efficacy of the methods of natural science applied to all areas of investigation (as in philosophy, the social sciences, and the humanities)".

It was the second definition that I was thinking of as I read this article about fraud in peer-reviewed scientific journals.

Key quote from the article:

Some 120 papers published in established scientific journals over the last few years have been found to be frauds, created by nothing more than an automated word generator that puts random, fancy-sounding words together in plausible sentence structures. As a result they have been pulled from the journals that originally published them.

The rise of scientism in Western society - an outright worship of science, in some cases - is one of the most disturbing societal trends in human history. Science has become a religion to many secularists, and is in danger of ceasing to be science at all.

Two examples of this scientism are the theories of evolution and global warming. Both are asserted to be "settled science" (read: holy scripture) by their more fanatical believers. Advocates of these theories in the scientific community are worshipped as priests or prophets. Dissenters, even if they are scientists, are smeared as heretics and enemies of the True Faith. Science is in danger of becoming a sacred priesthood in which only those who state a priori that everything must have a naturalistic explanation, or whose theories conform to what a handful say is real science, will be considered authentic scientists.

I believe than most scientists are distressed by the fraud uncovered in the aforementioned article. One of the forces driving this fraud is the "publish or perish" mentality in most major universities, in which young faculty members seeking tenure must publish a certain number of articles in peer-reviewed journals. In those circumstances the temptation to cut corners is powerful. But despite what many scientists may have come to believe, publication in a peer-reviewed scientific journal is not part of the scientific method. Perhaps it is time to reconsider the unusual emphasis many universities have on publication in journals.

Yet the real problem posed by scientism is not from those in the scientific community, although hucksters and hotheads like Dr. Michael Mann and Dr. Richard Dawkins don't help science very much. Instead, it is non-scientists in politics and the media who pose a bigger danger. These individuals see science (or, to be more accurate, scientific-sounding jargon) as a weapon that can be used to squelch ideas and opinions they disagree with. The use of the phrase "settled science" is revealing, since it indicates the speaker knows little or nothing about actual science. If they did, they would know that outmoded scientific theories are abandoned because they no longer attract any defenders, and not because some talking head on TV says so. Evolution and global warming are on shaky ground because - contrary to their advocates most fervent beliefs - the scientific evidence for both is weak.

Scientism asserts that science is supreme, the one human pursuit that holds the promise of being completely free of bias and error. The truth is exactly the opposite: science can be just as biased and inaccurate as any other human endeavor - and all the more dangerous because some of its advocates are bogus enough to claim otherwise.

The Scopes Trial

A summary of the case:

This month marks the 88th anniversary of the Scopes "Monkey" Trial, a famous legal case in 1925 in which a high school teacher, John Scopes, was accused of violating Tennessee's Butler Act, which made it unlawful to teach human evolution in any state-funded school.

The trial was the subject of a 1960 movie Inherit the Wind. According to some accounts the movie was never intended to be an accurate portrayal of the events of the Scopes trial*. As this article shows, that was something of an understatement. The real Scopes trial was far different from the hazy image of Christianity versus science that is relentlessly promoted by popular culture.

A few important quotes from the article:

When the Butler Act, a law which forbade the teaching of evolution in Tennessee's public schools, caught the attention of the ACLU they sent out a press release stating that they wanted to challenge the act in court. Dayton resident George Rappelyea, who was both a church goer and an adherent of evolution theory, saw an opportunity to garner some attention for the small mining town. After consulting with several town leaders, Rappelyea sent a telegram to the ACLU notifying the organization that they would provide the test case.

Although John T. Scopes was the plaintiff in the famous trial, he was not the regular biology teacher but a football coach who only taught the subject as a substitute. When Rappelyea approached him about being the 'sacrificial lamb' Scopes hesitantly agreed to go along with the PR stunt. Local prosecutors — who were also in on the plan — swore out a warrant for Scopes who was arrested and immediately released on bail pending trial.

The biology book that was used by Scopes was George William Hunter's Civic Biology. Although a standard biology text, it included the author's championing of eugenics and white supremacy, his contempt for people with disabilities, and his dislike of charity for the "inferior."

* - Supposedly Inherit the Wind was really an attack on "McCarthyism", which was (and still is) another name for anti-communism. But that explanation is worse, given what we know about the horrors of communism and the debunked myth of a 1950s anti-communist witch hunt. An anti-anti-communist film would be just like an anti-anti-Nazi or anti-anti-KKK film: an attempt to implicitly rationalize an ugly and inhuman monstrosity. It would be better from a public relations point of view to view Inherit the Wind as botched history rather than a defense of mass murder.

The war on science - Regnerus edition

The University of Texas finds no evidence of scientific misconduct against associate professor of sociology Mark Regnerus. I have written about this subject in the past.

Key quote:

"I think it's a just and wise decision, and I'm certainly pleased with it," Regnerus told the American-Statesman in an email. "It was a thorough and fair process, and conducted professionally."

Regnerus found that the adult children of gay parents reported significantly different, and often worse, life experiences than the children of married, heterosexual biological parents.

While it is good that Regnerus was cleared of wrongdoing, the damage has been done. The next time a university professor does something that annoys a homosexual activist, will he or she have to worry about having their name and reputation dragged through the mud?

Also, will there be any legal consequences for Scott Rosensweig, a "freelance writer" who leveled these false charges against Regnerus? Or is he free to re-group and try again? In the article quoted above Rosensweig didn't exactly sound contrite for his attempted smear of Regnerus.

The war on science

The following article caught my eye this morning: Pakistan and the Higgs boson.

Key quote:

Have you heard about Pakistan’s contribution to last week’s discovery of the Higgs Boson? No, thought not. Remarkably, the reason you probably won’t have is because Pakistan doesn’t want you to.

Dr Abdus Salam, a theoretical physicist, carried out pioneering work in the 1960s to suggest the existence of a hypothetical particle after creating a grand unification theory for weak forces and electromagnetic fields. He won the Nobel Prize in 1979 for his efforts, the only Pakistani to have ever received the honour.

Yet, his name is largely airbrushed from textbooks in Pakistan and is rarely mentioned in public debate. The problem is that he belongs to the Ahmadi sect, a branch of Islam which is officially regarded as heretical by the Pakistani state and which is constitutionally discriminated against. Ahmadis cannot call themselves Muslim or build mosques, and are frequently the victims of violent attack.

After Salam died and was buried in the Punjab his headstone recorded his legacy as: ‘the first Muslim Nobel Laureate’. The word ‘Muslim’ has since been forcibly scrubbed out.

Can't happen in the West, right? We are so much more tolerant and dedicated to the scientific method, yes? No religious or political bigotry to worry about in scientific research and institutes of higher learning, eh? Thank goodness (or Darwin) that can't happen here.

Think again.

Mark Regnerus, an associate professor of sociology at the University of Texas-Austin, recently published a study about the children of homosexual parents and the problems that they experience. The study has provoked a backlash against the professor, who is now the target of a fact-finding "inquiry".

Key quote from the Inside Higher-Ed article:

Regnerus disclosed the Bradley Foundation and Witherspoon Institute’s sponsorship of the study, acknowledging their conservative pedigrees and asserting that “the funding sources played no role at all in the design or conduct of the study, the analyses, the interpretations of the data, or in the preparation of this manuscript.”

His disclosure squares with the code of ethics of the American Sociological Association, which does not prohibit sociologists from taking research funding from any particular funding source as long as the researcher discloses that relationship.

However, UT-Austin's standard appears to be stricter. “It is the policy of the University of Texas that research is conducted with integrity and free from any actual or apparent institutional or personal conflict of interest,” says the university’s Compliance and Ethics Guide. Texas researchers, the policy says, “must insure that there is no reasonable expectation that the design, conduct, and reporting of the research will be biased by any significant financial interest of an investigator responsible for the research or other educational activity.”

The university is currently conducting a pre-investigatory “inquiry” in response to a formal complaint lodged by Rosensweig. (The writer posted a copy of his complaint to his blog on The New Civil Rights Movement, a website dedicated to LGBT activism.) The difference between an inquiry and a full-blown investigation is that “the scope of the inquiry does not include exhaustive interviews or extensive analyses of research records,” according to the university’s Revised Handbook of Operating Procedures.

Aside from the ominous if vague terminology - just what the heck is a "pre-investigatory inquiry”, anyway? - the clumsy actions by the University of Texas have opened themselves up to the charge that the inquiry is political rather than scientific. The complaint against Regnerus was posted on a left-wing Web site, which appears to be an effort to undermine due process. Even more frightening, these "stricter" standards at UT seemed to have conveniently materialized out of nowhere.

As Glenn Reynolds, a law professor and supporter of gay/lesbians rights,wrote at his blog Instapundit:

I don’t know if the study’s any good or not — but I’m positive that if it had found that children of gay couples do better, there would be no such inquiry, regardless of who had funded it. And the point here is mostly to warn other researchers that it’s just better not to look into certain subjects, or to come up with the wrong conclusions if you do.

In many universities the so-called soft sciences (sociology, economics, psychology, etc.) have been largely ruined by political activism, and nowadays seem to do little more that ratify the prejudices of the majority of professors who make up those departments. But now there is a serious effort underway to break STEM (science, engineering, technology & mathematics) to the saddle of political correctness. Professor William Jacobson recently wrote about proposed efforts to apply Title IX to STEM enrollment. The underlying assumption is that the lower enrollment rates for women in STEM subjects represents discrimination, although proponents fail to explain why lower enrollments of men in (say) education do not also demonstrate anti-male prejudice.

For those who think this is no big deal, I would ask you the following: would you drive across a bridge or enter a skyscraper designed and built by someone who was enrolled because of Title IX and who graduated at the bottom of her class? Get ready, because you may have to face that situation some day! Mathematics and physics bow to no one, no matter how many lawsuits are threatened.

All of this is made much worse because of the fact that the secular media - whose scientific and engineering credentials are usually nonexistent - normally act as cheerleaders in the witch hunts against Professor Regnerus and others who reach the "wrong" conclusions. To be seen as even remotely critical of the homosexual lifestyle, global warming, or evolution is to invite personal attacks as a homophobe, a "denier", or a fundamentalist wacko. The self-described watchdogs of the press have become the attack dogs working for a narrow-minded few.

There is a war on science. The irony is that in true Orwellian fashion it is being waged by the very people who claim to represent scientific reason and progress.