The scientific method

The scientific method applies to climate science, too.

The main problem with Robert Manne's article Cheerleading for zealotry not in the public interest in The Weekend Australian of 25-26 April 2009, is that its misrepresents science as being inaccessible to the lay public and seems to dismiss scientific debate as a brand of politics.

Professor of politics Robert Mann may be but statistician he is not, parading the "tens of thousands of climate scientists" against "a few dozen scientists" he describes as "global warming pseudo sceptics" without a hint of irony. Notwithstanding unanswered questions about the integrity of the numbers, whether tens of thousands or merely hundreds of dissenters to the orthodox theory of global warming, is irrelevant.

Science is not a popularity contest. The assertions we make, our assumptions and methodology, must stand up to critical scrutiny in order to carry any weight. Anyone with an elementary education should be able to understand and bear witness to such an exposition if it is carried out clearly and free of unnecessary jargon. We can all understand and judge for ourselves the difference between good science and bad science.

According to the renowned physicist Richard Feynman, "a specific, extra type of integrity that is not lying, but bending over backwards to show how you are maybe wrong, that you ought to have when acting as a scientist. And this is our responsibility as scientists, certainly to other scientists, and I think to laymen.

Climate science is more than just atmospheric science and other fields have much to contribute to our understanding of the complex phenomena that drive the Earth's climate. Our understanding cannot be deferred to an elite cliche of trusted authorities. Feynman exhorts his students to distrust authorities and to think for themselves. With climate science and science in general we have a responsibility to ignore dogma.

Throughout his career, Feynman was concerned about the inability to teach science properly in schools and critically reviewed many inadequate text books purporting to teach the subject. I wonder what he would have had to say about the quality of the science and public debate about global warming and climate change.

There is a formal relationship between personal and professional ethics, intellectual integrity and the way in which responsible members of society address public debate. The wonderful, historic speech by William Clifford to the London Metaphysical Society in 1876 deals with this very issue.

The great divide between Popper and Kuhn on the philosophical basis of contemporary science applies with a twist. The debate about the nature of the development of scientific truth is usually understood to evolve from the scientific community engaging in Popper's critical rationalism in execution of their research.

Kuhn believes that scientists work in a series of paradigms rather than actually following, as espoused by Popper, a falsificationist methodology. It appears that the greenhouse debate falls squarely into this camp as being an accepted theory, a paradigm of scientists that matches the zeitgeist - the spirit of the times.

While nobody seriously denies that environmental action is needed in order to make the most of our limited natural resources and to preserve these resources, and indeed the livability of our planet for future generations, it is a stretch to assume that such a belief applies to all aspects of our human interaction with the planet.

A while back cold fusion was a similarly controversial issue, if less enduring in the media. In summary, most of the early studies into cold fusion are widely believed to be cases of scientific fraud or just poor science; there isn't any reliable evidence for cold fusion as a viable energy source; current physics cannot explain cold fusion but funded research continues nevertheless.

In these cases reputations have been tarnished or destroyed but the record has largely been set straight and it is equally certain that the climate debate will eventually return to normality. Some people will continue to believe there is some kind of global conspiracy to suppress their own favourite, nonscientific idea but in truth it is highly unlikely to be the case.

Conspiracy theories aside, we should examine our moral and ethical position stand on this kind of issue. Is it proper for someone to promote a theory they believe to be for the greater good when they know that theory to be flawed? How about if they hold a reasonable belief in the theory without proper justification?

In the former case, there is scientific fraud and a kind of personal conceit that beggars belief. In the latter case, we again have the same sort of intellectual laziness that William Clifford railed against. Public trust in the scientific establishment has always been one that ebbs and flows, increasing trust and respect as people become more educated and declining when seeming advances lead, in war for example, to widespread unhappiness and distress.

For example, the hockey stick graph - smoothing the Medieval Warm Period - that has so badly humiliated many right-minded members of the IPCC and damaged its standing features prominently in An Inconvenient Truth and even more so in the public consciousness. Such distortions and convenient mistruths to push one line of thinking are quite damaging to trust and serve to close down alternate lines of enquiry.

Manne states a basic truth that "those of us who are not trained scientists are in no position to make independent judgements on the fundamental scientific issues for ourselves" because we lack the training to assess the relevance of a specific theory in a narrow, scientific speciality. On the other hand, it is manifestly untrue to assert that we cannot be part of the scientific process. It in incumbent on scientists to communicate their work and on science writers, among others, to report on their findings.

Science is not concerned with rhetoric and philosophical debate but with the development of theories that are consistent with the observed facts, making predictions and conducting repeatable experiments based on the application of those theories. A theory that explains the observations may be consistent but it is insufficient unless it is falsifiable insofar as is can be used to make testable predictions.

There is no us-and-them in science, the stakes are not about winners and losers in public debate. Instead, scientific theory becomes generally accepted because it has been communicated widely and scientists grow in confidence in its application. When facts are discovered that are contrary to the predictions of the theory then either the theory is modified or it is discarded altogether and replaced with an alternative theory that does fit the facts.

Accepted theory is incontrovertible because one cannot deny observed facts and the consistency of the theory with these facts. At least, this is usually the case with science unless it becomes a circus or merely a parade of unsubstantiated ideas. The body of knowledge is not being added to nor our understanding abetted by the pronouncement of speculative new theories in an attempt to explain anomalies with the current theory.

The Ptolemaic system of perfect spheres, with the arbitrary addition of epicycles in order to explain the apparent retrograde motion of the planets, held sway for 1000 years because Ptolemy was held in such high regard as an authority. It was not until the Copernican heliocentric cosmology, with the later support of Galileo's observations of the phases of Venus, that the Earth was finally displaced from the centre of the universe.

This week I read in the media of the ozone hole over Antarctica negating the effect of ocean warming and leading to a counter-intuitive increase in ice volumes; other articles highlight anecdotal evidence for increases in ice mass and pack ice over a period of several decades. While the effect of the ozone layer on Antarctic ice mass is a plausible hypothesis it will only become a theory once it has been validated by modelling and when it is supported by empirical data.

Surely we can do better than this to stimulate and encourage public debate on this important subject and a range of other issues. The truth based on a rational, scientific approach is the minimum the public deserves on the issue of climate change.