= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
brazil84 comments on Parapsychology: the control group for science - Less Wrong
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
= 783df68a0f980790206b9ea87794c5b6)
Loading…= b715d02e85f7b3b4ae65ca3d3e450868)
Subscribe to RSS Feed
Powered by Reddit
= f037147d6e6c911a85753b9abdedda8d)
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (184)
"Parapsychologists make a poor control group of scientists because part of their job is collecting evidence that parapsychology works."
Why is that their job? In theory, they are just studying the question of psychic phenomena. If a parapsychologist found strong evidence against psychic phenonma, he would be doing his job.
Of course, your real point is that such a parapsychologist would be working himself out of a job. But the same danger is there for biologists and physicists. And of course climatologists.
What, they're going to discover there's no such thing as climate?
They might discover that global warming is not a serious threat after all.
Yes, I know that's what you meant, but the point of my comment is that unlike with parapsychology, the object of study for climatologists definitely exists, whether or not AGW is real. Any individual climatologist who started to think that AGW might not be real won't think "this is the end for climatology", because climate exists either way.
And of course if they worry that funding for climate research might drop as a result of what they've found, they can console themselves with the knowledge that their new belief allows them to earn twice as much money working for an oil-industry funded body such as the CEI.
I understand your point, but the analogy still has a good deal of validity since the essential point is that the practical consequences of a negative result are to damage the careers of the scientists in question.
"And of course if they worry that funding for climate research might drop as a result of what they've found, they can console themselves with the knowledge that their new belief allows them to earn twice as much money working for an oil-industry funded body such as the CEI."
I disagree. If it turns out that global warming was wildly exaggerated, why would the oil-industry fund any climatology work at all?
A researcher who thought it exaggerated would know that they would not personally be in a position to change the long-term trends whether or not they report their conclusions, but they could make a lot of money from the CEI in the short term. Denialists whose credentialed academic specialty is specifically climatology are few (I know of none), so they would be very much in demand.
Ok I understand your point. It seems to me that you are distinguishing between long term and short term consequences. Without getting into an argument about the availability of funding for skeptical global warming research, I will concede the possibility that a climate researcher who is publishing skeptical results may do better in the short term than a parapsychologist who is publishing skeptical results.
More than that: a fully credentialed climate researcher who is prepared to back the position of an organisation like the CEI can line their own pockets far more effectively than one who backs the scientific consensus. You'd be celebrated in many quarters as the world's leading authority on the subject, you'd get speaking engagements aplenty, lots of media attention, and more. It's an extraordinary testament to personal integrity that so few go for it - as I say, I know of none who have.
I'm not sure I'd go that far. I don't know who CEI is, but Bob Carter, John Christy ,and Richard Lindzen don't seem to be drowning in oil money.
CEI.
To reduce their currently extortionate insurance premiums.
Assuming the world discovers and accepts that global warming was wildly exaggerated, how would oil-industry-funded climatology research reduce insurance premiums?
I'm told by somebody in the industry, that premiums in cyclone-areas (notably the rigs in the gulf of mexico) are going through the roof right now as climate change predictions mean that cyclone activity is likely to continually increase. If climate change were wildly exaggerated, it could be used to argue for reduced insurance premiums in those regions.
Assuming for the sake of argument that that that's true, so what? After that happens, what's the incentive to fund further research?
Um, I was responding to "why would the old industry fund climatology work at all" - my answer is "they might do it if it would reduce their insurance premiums".
I do not postulate that they would continue to fund further research after that.
Why is research into climate funded? I imagine if the scare of global warming were eliminated, there would be much less funding.
Some people have conjectured in the past that we might be in danger of a sort of global cooling. (Note: some things said about this by those who profess to disbelieve in anthropogenic climate change are false.) Understanding large-scale climate phenomena may help to predict natural disasters like hurricanes. The climate is extremely important for life on earth (human life included). I think there would be plenty for climate scientists to do "if the scare of global warming were eliminated".
(In fact, there is near-total agreement among climate scientists about global warming. So probably most changes in climate-scientist opinion on this topic would make for greater uncertainty and therefore more funding...)
[EDITED to add: At least one person has downvoted this; no one has replied to it. I would be interested to know what about it is downvote-worthy; it looks OK to me even on rereading. If I've made some idiotic mistake, I can't fix my brain unless someone points it out to me...]
I suspect the issue is the vague nature of the 'some things said about this' comment. Yes, some things said about it are undoubtedly false, but some quite incisive things said about the conjecture are true!
Oh yes, for sure. That comment was a lazy shorthand for something like this: "Some unscrupulous people have played up past conjectures about global cooling in order to discredit what is now said about global warming, and a great deal of what they have said on this subject is bullshit. By referring in this context to global cooling, I am not endorsing any of that bullshit." But that seemed like too much to cram into a comment that was actually about something else, and no way of making it much shorter sprang to mind.
What they do in theory isn't much important. Parapsychologists have all their discipline at stake. They can't take one well established effect and gain experience and status by studying it, and then turn to investigation of a more controversial phenomenon. It's a serious difference from climatology.
I don't think the difference is all that big. If climatologists discover that global warming is not a serious threat after all, it will seriously damage their ability to get funding and prestige.