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Cecil comments on You're Entitled to Arguments, But Not (That Particular) Proof - Less Wrong
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I was wondering how long it would be until the AGW issue was directly broached on a top-level post. Here I will state my views on it.
First, I want to fend off the potential charge of motivated cognition. I have spent the better part of two years criticizing fellow "libertarians" for trivializing the issue, and especially for their rationalizations of "Screw the Bengalis" even when they condition on AGW being true. I don't have the links gathered in one place, but just look here and here, and linked discussions, for examples.
That said, here are the warning signs for me (this is just to summarize, will gather links later if necessary):
1) Failed predictions. Given the complexity of the topic, your models inevitably end up doing curve-fitting. (Contrary to a popular misconception, they do not go straight from "the equations they design planes from" to climate models.) That gives you significant leeway in fitting the data to your theory. To be scientific and therefore remove the ability of humans to bias the data, it is vital that model predictions be validated against real-world results. They've failed, badly: they predicted, by existing measures of "global temperature", that it would be much higher than it is now.
2) Anti-Bayesian methodology accepted as commonplace. As an example, regarding the "hide the decline" issue with the tree rings, here's what happened: Scientists want to know how hot it was millenia ago. Temperature records weren't kept then. So, they measure by proxies. One common proxy is believed to be tree rings. But tree rings don't match the time period in which we have the best data.
The correct procedure at this point is to either a) recognize that they aren't good proxies, or b) include them in toto as an outlier data point. Instead, what they do is to keep all the data points that support the theory, and throw out the rest, calling it a "divergence problem", and further, claim the remaining points as additional substantiation of the theory. Do I need to explain here what's wrong with that?
And yet the field completely lacks journals with articles criticizing this.
3) Error cascades. Despite the supposed independence of the datasets, they ultimately come from only a few interbred sources, and further data is tuned so that it matches these data sets. People are kept out of publication, specifically on the basis that their data contradicts the "correct" data.
Finally, you can't just argue, "The scientists believe AGW, I trust scientists, ergo, the evidence favors AGW." Science is a method, not a person. AGW is credible to the exent that there is Bayesian evidence for it, and to the extent scientists are following science and finding Bayesian evidence. The history of the field is a history of fitting the data to the theory and increasing pressure to make sure your data conforms to what the high-status people decreed is correct.
Again, if the field is cleansed and audited and the theory turns out to hold up and be a severe problem, I would love for CO2 emissions to finally have their damage priced in so that they're not wastefully done, and I pity the fools that demand Bengalis go and sue each emitter if they want compensation. But that's not where we are.
And I don't think it's logically rude to demand that the evidence adhere to the standard safeguards against human failings.
You claim there are significant issues with the climate science process, but admit there are no journal articles criticizing the process. If you know enough to find faults with their science, why haven't you yourself written an article on the matter?
Do you think there is something inherent in the culture of climatology science that introduces these anti-Bayesian biases? Why is climate science subject to this when other sciences are not?
Are you saying the field is systemically politically driven from the top down?
For the same reason I haven't personally solved every injustice: a) time constraints, and b) others are currently raising awareness of this problem.
Other sciences are affected by anti-Bayesian biases, and this will be a tendency in proportion to the difficulty of finding solid evidence that your theory is wrong. Which is why I claim e.g. sociology and literature are mostly a waste of time.
Generally speaking, science is in some ways too strict and some ways not strict enough. Eliezer_Yudkowsky has actually pointed out before the general failure to appropriately teach rationality in the classroom, and so scientists in general aren't aware of this problem.
Politics, of course, does play a part. When it's not just about "who's right" but about "who gets to control resources", then the biases go into hyperdrive. People aren't just pointing out problems with your research, they're fighting for the other team! The goal is then about proving them wrong, not stopping to check whether your theory is correct in the first place. ("Ask whether, not why.")
Have you followed the climategate email leak story at all? One of the more damning themes in the leaked emails is the discussion of ways to keep dissenting views out of the peer reviewed journals. One of the stronger arguments used against AGW skeptics was that there were not more papers supporting their claims in peer reviewed journals. Given the prevalence of this argument, clear evidence of efforts to keep 'dissenting' opinions out of the main peer reviewed journals is a big problem for the credibility of climate science. For example:
And this comment is also rather damning:
What, specifically, is "damning" about those quotes?
Suppose creationists took over a formerly respected biology journal. Wouldn't you expect to find quotes like the above (with climate sceptics replaced by creationists) from the private correspondence of biologists?
AGW skeptics have often been challenged on the lack of peer reviewed papers in credible climate science journals supporting their arguments. Now it is quite possible that this is the case because skeptical papers have been rejected purely due to being bad science (as is the case with the lack of papers supporting the effectiveness of homeopathy in medical journals). However, the absence of papers from the key journals cannot be treated as independent evidence of the badness of the science if there is a concerted effort by AGW believers to keep such papers out of the journals.
It is legitimate to attack the science the AGW skeptics are doing. It is not legitimate to dismiss the science purely on the basis that they have not been published in peer reviewed journals if there is a concerted effort to keep them out of peer reviewed journals based on their conclusions rather than on their methods. Now I'm sure the AGW believers feel that they are rejecting bad science rather than rejecting conclusions they don't like but emails like the above certainly make it appear that it is the conclusions as much as the methods that they are actually objecting to.
In my opinion the CRU emails mean that it no longer appears justified to ignore claims by AGW skeptics purely because they have not appeared in a peer reviewed journal. They may still be wrong but there is sufficient evidence of biased selection by the journals to not trust that journal publication is an unbiased signal of scientific quality.
Agreed. "No peer-reviewed publications" is not an argument that I've ever used or would use, even in advance of the CRU emails, because of course that is how academia works in general.
For the most part, I don't think you're quite answering my question.
You present two explanations for the lack of peer-reviewed articles that are sceptical of the scientific consensus on global warming. The first is that there is unjust suppression of such views. The second is that such scepticism is based on bad science. You say that you think the leaked emails support the first explanation, and that there is sufficient evidence of biased (I'm guessing "biased" means "unmerited by the quality of the science" here) selection by journals. What is that sufficient evidence? More specifically, how does the information conveyed by the leaked emails distinguish between the first and second scenarios?
This addresses my questions, but I was asking for more specifics. Let A = "AGW sceptics are being suppressed from journals without proper evaluation of their science" and B = "AGW sceptics are being suppressed from journals because their science is unsound". Let E be the information provided by the email leaks. How do you get to the conclusion that the likelihood ratio P(E|A)/P(E|B) is significantly above 1?
Personally I can't see how the likelihood ratio would be anything but about 1, and it seems to me that those who act if the ratio is significantly greater than 1 are simply ignoring the estimation of P(E|B) because their prior for P(B) is small.
(EDIT: I originally wrote P(A|E) and P(B|E) instead P(E|A) and P(E|B). My text was still, apparently, clear enough that this wrong notation didn't cause confusion. I've now fixed the notation.)
I do think the likelihood ratio is significantly above 1. This is based off reading some of the emails, documents and code comments in the leaks. Here's a reasonable summary of the emails. It looks like dubious science to me. I find it hard to understand how anyone can claim otherwise unless they are ideologically motivated. If you genuinely can't see it then I'm not really interested in arguing over minutiae so we'll just have to leave it at that.
It seems to me that AGW skeptics made a variety of claims that AGW believers dismissed as paranoid: there was a conspiracy to keep skeptical papers out of the journals; there were efforts to damage the careers of climate scientists who didn't 'toe the party line'; there were dubious and possibly illegal efforts to keep the original data behind key papers out of the hands of skeptics despite FOI regulations. I did not see many AGW believers prior to the climategate emails saying "Yes, of course all of that happens, that's just the way science operates in the real world".
When the CRU leaks became public and substantiated all the 'paranoid' claims above, including proof of illegal destruction of emails and data to avoid FOI requests, I find it suspicious when people claim that it doesn't change their opinions at all. The standard response seems to be "Oh yes, that's just how science works in the real world. I already knew scientists routinely engage in this sort of behaviour and the degree of such behaviour revealed in the emails is exactly in line with my prior expectations so my probability estimates are unchanged". That seems highly suspect to me and looks an awful lot like confirmation bias.
You're still talking about how the e-mails fit into the scenario of fraudulent climate scientists, that is, P(E|A) by my notation. I specifically said that I feel P(E|B) is being ignored by those who claim the e-mails are evidence of misconduct. Your link, for example, mostly lists things like climatologists talking about discrediting journals that publish AGW-sceptical stuff, which is exactly what they would do if they, in good faith, thought that AGW-scepticism is based on quack science. Reading the e-mails and concluding that sceptical papers are being suppressed without merit seems like merely assuming the conclusion.
(Regarding the FOI requests, that might indeed be something that might reasonably set off alarms and significantly reduce P(E|B) - if you believe the sceptics' commentaries accompanying the relevant quotes. But googling for "mcintyre foi harassment" and doing some reading gives a different story.)
(EDIT: Fixed notation, as in the parent.)
My impression from reading the emails is that different standards are being applied to the AGW skeptics because of their conclusions rather than because of their methods. At the same time there is evidence of data massaging and dubious practices around their own methods in order to match their pre-conceived conclusions. The whole process does not look like the disinterested search for truth that is the scientific ideal.
My P(B|E) would be higher if I read emails that seemed to focus on methodological errors first rather than proceeding from the fact that a journal has published unwelcome conclusions to the proposal that the journal must be boycotted.
Would you expect to see evolutionary biologists discuss the methodological errors of creationist arguments in private correspondence?
(I don't think this is the place for this, since I don't think we're getting anywhere.)
I think there's too much attention paid to the emails, and not enough to all of the publicly available information about the exact same events. Maybe it's because private communications seem like secret information that contain the hidden truth, or maybe it's just a cascade effect where everyone focuses on the emails because everyone is focusing on the emails.
The second email that you quoted is in response to the publication of a skeptical article by Soon & Baliunas (2003) in the journal Climate Research which generated a big public controversy among climate scientists. Reactions to that publication include several editors of the journal resigning in protest (and releasing statements about why they resigned), the publisher of the journal writing a letter admitting that the article contained claims that weren't supported by the evidence (pdf), and a scientific rebuttal to the article being published later that same year. I think that you get a better sense of what happened (and whether climate scientists were reacting to the methods or just the conclusions) by reading accounts written at the time than from the snippets of emails. And of course there's Wikipedia.
FOI requests? Which ones? Those for proprietary data sets that they weren't allowed at that time to release, or the FOI requests for information availalble from a public FTP site?
Voted you up not for your particular assessment of P(A|E)/P(B|E) but for using this pattern of assessing evidence to guide the conversation.