The Harvard trained physicist and famous philosopher and historian of science, Thomas Kuhn, often refers to a psychological experiment in his book ‘The Structure of Scientific Revolutions’ whereby individuals fail to notice individual anomalous cards within a deck.
The experiment illustrates the extent to which people can struggle when they are confronted with information that does not accord with what they have been taught.
Kuhn suggests the experiment demonstrates the nature of the mind and also the process of scientific discovery.
He has written:
‘In science, as in the playing card experiment, novelty emerges only with difficulty, manifested by resistance, against a background provided by expectation.’
In the experiment Jerome Bruner and Leo Postman asked people to identify individual cards from a deck of 52. Many of the cards are normal, but some are what Kuhn describes as anomalous. That is, for example, a six of spades may be coloured red while a four of hearts black.
Continuing to quote from Kuhn:
‘Each experimental run was constituted by the display of a single card to a single subject in a series of gradually increased exposures. After each exposure the subject was asked what he had seen, and the run was terminated by two successive correct identifications. Even on the shortest exposures many subjects identified most of the cards, and after a small increase all the subjects identified them all. For the normal cards these identifications were usually correct, but the anomalous cards were almost always identified, without apparent hesitation or puzzlement, as normal.
‘The black four of hearts might, for example, be identified as the four of either spades or hearts. Without any awareness of trouble, it was immediately fitted to one of the conceptual categories prepared by prior experience.
‘One would not even like to say that the subjects had seen something different from what they identified. With a further increase of exposure to the anomalous cards, subjects did begin to hesitate and to display awareness of anomaly. Exposed, for example, to the red six of spades, some would say: That’s the six of spades, but there’s something wrong with it—the black has a red border. Further increase of exposure resulted in still more hesitation and confusion until finally, and sometimes quite suddenly, most subjects would produce the correct identification without hesitation. Moreover, after doing this with two or three of the anomalous cards, they would have little further difficulty with the others. A few subjects, however, were never able to make the requisite adjustment of their categories. Even at forty times the average exposure required to recognize normal cards for what they were, more than 10 per cent of the anomalous cards were not correctly identified. And the subjects who then failed often experienced acute personal distress. One of them exclaimed: “I can’t make the suit out, whatever it is. It didn’t even look like a card that time. I don’t know what color it is now or whether it’s a spade or a heart. I’m not even sure now what a spade looks like. My God!”’
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Everyone should read Kuhn’s book ‘The Structure of Scientific Revolutions’ published in 1962 and available from Amazons and on Kindle. The book provides a framework from which to ponder current attitudes to AGW and the lack of a unifying theory of climate. I think Kuhn would consider AGW pre-science and faddish.
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD is a critical thinker with expertise in the scientific method.
Interesting little article about anomaly spotting from one experiment. Pity analogies are no substitute for evidence tho. And then the wild card, the last sentence shot it all in the foot with the highly speculative “I think Kuhn would consider AGW pre-science and faddish.”
I think your thoughts about what Kuhn would think about things he had not thought about, should stay as thoughts.
A part of the process of scientific discovery is recognizing when you’ve seen something interesting and unexpected, and then having the chutzpah to follow up on that lead.
Perhaps Kuhn may have also thought that sceptics being as they are may have also not seen the pattern in the AGW science and climate data pack.
Might Kuhn’s ideas work both ways?
And interesting that Jen interpreted Kuhn’s findings as anti-AGW. Does this in fact prove Kuhn’s point about the difference between observation and insight? That’s what she got from his writings.
Perhaps if by a quirk of history, AGW had been adopted by the right and it was now decided that mitigation looked like a chain of nuclear power plants, then perhaps in this other universe the leftists would now be demonstrating against the right suggesting AGW was a crock. Tim Flannery in the alternative universe would be a contrarian. There would be ranting greenie blogs suggesting that nuclear power was a UN conspiracy and the Atomic Energy Commission would lead to world government.
The interesting quote in the above is ‘Without any awareness of trouble, it was immediately fitted to one of the conceptual categories prepared by prior experience.’
Does this mean that each of our previous experiences colours our conceptual categories
This to my mind colours Lukes response ‘And interesting that Jen interpreted Kuhn’s findings as anti-AGW. Does this in fact prove Kuhn’s point about the difference between observation and insight? That’s what she got from his writings’
That’s Luke’s perception, not Kuhn’s
What Jen said is The book provides a framework from which to ponder current attitudes to AGW and the lack of a unifying theory of climate. I think Kuhn would consider AGW pre-science and faddish’
Luke’s perception is in my view of the beholder not the actor (or in Jen’s case the actress)
Val your perception of my perception of Jen’s perception as to what Kuhn may or may not have thought vis a vis Bazza’s interjection per se – merely emphasises my point.
don’t think so Luke; that’s your perception
Hmm!
Surely that wasn’t Luke admitting that there’s two sides to every argument.
Must be a ring in!
Tony.
Tony how’s the clean up going?
From a non perception point of view?
that is factually?
and here’s an article you with your energy expertise would appreciate
The melt down of green economics is in full flow as shown in my latest article for you: http://johnosullivan.livejournal.com/30603.html
and Tony can you give any evidence of AGW – that is from a factual point of view?
“Perhaps Kuhn may have also thought that sceptics being as they are may have also not seen the pattern in the AGW science and climate data pack.” Luke Walker
Kuhn was very definite about how the value of a theory be judged by those who did not work within the discipline that is by its usefulness and predictive value. So he might ask, does AGW theory mean we can better forecast the weather and/or climate?
For those within the discipline the value of a new theory would be judged by the extent to which it provides a unifying framework to progress understanding of a phenomenon. So he might ask, has the focus on carbon dioxide provided a platform from which scientists can expand the nature of their work, and the questions they ask, within the discipline. Has the new theory facilitated a dramatically improved understanding of climate science?
“Has the new theory facilitated a dramatically improved understanding of climate science?”
Of course !
Massively.
Observations, satellites, probes, instruments, statistics, mathematics, computing, modelling – more skilful weather predictions, climate mechanisms unravelled ….. the spin-offs are considerable.
Luke, Your examples would not ‘cut the mustard’ with Kuhn. Read his book and look at the examples he gives in terms of when and why there were leaps forward in our understanding of astronomy and chemistry.
WHAT !! Good grief – what a sweeping dismissal. This is an applied discipline not some search for the inner nature of matter itself.
I suggest you read some science instead of philosophy. It’s a pity sceptics don’t publish as we’ll never know what “ground breaking discoveries” they might have come up with.
What would you say are the sceptics contribution to climate science in the last 10 years. Besides hacking email servers.
Val,
thanks for asking about the clean up, and again, I suppose everything from my perspective is that of perception.
Factually, the clean up is progressing well in this area. One thing it has done is make people aware of the whole River system in this area, and realise that while some Riverine floods go away in a couple of days, as in Brisbane, others stay at major levels for weeks on end, and after the media concentration on that flood marker, it all becomes ho hum after a couple of days, so the blow ins blow out, and the locals are left to their own devices.
The floods in this area and the many other regional areas of Queensland were a disaster on so many levels.
Then there was the flood in Brisbane, and as disastrous as this undoubtedly was at many levels, this further compounded the disaster for those many areas of regional Queensland, because all eyes will firmly remain focussed mainly on Brisbane.
The funding for reconstruction post flood in those regional areas will now suffer tremendously, because if the truth is to be told, there are more marginal seats, both at a Federal and State level in Brisbane than in Regional Queensland, so those regions will slide onto the back burner with little if any funding for the major work that was promised, and will now not eventuate in the near future, other than some minor cosmetic quick fixes.
In a way, the same will apply for those in the far North affected by Cyclone Yasi, and about the only noise you will hear from the South East corner will be grumblings about the price of bananas.
As I mentioned, sometimes perception offers more insight than the bare facts about the clean up.
Tony.
Luke, Normal science, according to Thomas Kuhn, is cumulative and owes its success to the ability of scientists to select problems that can be solved with conceptual and instrumental techniques close to those already in existence. An excessive concern with useful problems, according to Kuhn, and their pursuit regardless of their relation to existing knowledge and technique, can easily inhibit scientific development.
Val,
as to your question regarding AGW, no, I have no factual proof, one way or the other to support or not support AGW.
I have a personal opinion that yes there is Climate Change now, and that there has always been Climate Change.
I am not convinced that CO2 at its current concentration of 390PPM, or 0.039% of the total Atmosphere is the ‘major’ cause of Climate Change/Global Warming, when that CO2 is spread so thinly throughout the Atmosphere, and that other Greenhouse Gas, water vapour exists in concentrations 51 times greater than that of CO2, (that CO2 being in effect three times heavier than H2O, the water vapor, those clouds you all see)
Having said that, what I do know is what I write about, the consequences of the belief that CO2 is the cause, and what those calls for massive reductions in CO2 emissions will lead to in the future for that electrical power generating sector, and that could become an even greater disaster than anything AGW ‘might’ cause.
That is something that even fewer people understand than what they think they understand about AGW.
I stick to what I know as fact in that area, and my opinion about AGW is just that, a personal opinion, a perception if you will.
Jennifer, sorry to take so much space here just to explain how very little I do know.
Tony.
thanks Tony for that reply – I’ve linked your timely post about the carbon tax under Jen’s ‘Flannery’ post
Jen – “An excessive concern with useful problems, according to Kuhn, and their pursuit regardless of their relation to existing knowledge and technique, can easily inhibit scientific development.”
So presumably you would suggest that climate science is excessively focussed on CO2/global warming.
Therefore – (1) can you substantiate this from the science portfolio being undertaken by world climate agencies and papers written?
And (2) what “paradigms” would have them explore as an alternative and how?
There are cycles in all the climate and weather data that appear to be related to orbits of the earth and the moon – and perhaps also other planet. I am referring to the daily cycles, lunar cycles and millenium scale cycles. Then there appears to be issues relating to radiation from the sun which also appears to be influenced by the orbits. I would try for something here first. Get the various cycles sorted and then, see if superimposed on this (the natural variability), what the impact of additional carbon dioxide might be.
Luke, “Val your perception of my perception of Jen’s perception as to what Kuhn may or may not have thought vis a vis Bazza’s interjection per se – merely emphasises my point.”
was very funny and both my wife and I had a good laugh.
I like the new Luke, argumentative, assertive yet articulate and mostly civil. Please maintain this image for as long as possible.
Cheers.
Jen – and you don’t think there’s any work on these issues?
And of course the great trap – just because there’s is enough quasi-periodic behaviour that looks like “cycles” doesn’t mean those cycles exist as real mechanisms. A lot of work on cycles which end up being statistical voodoo.
I find it strange that you somehow think climate science just looks at CO2.
For example an establishment paper
LUNI-SOLAR TIDAL INFLUENCES ON CLIMATE VARIABILITY
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/joc.783/pdf
If you took a systems view you might move me.
Jen, I agree with you generally about the progress of technology but occasionally there are breakthroughs. This video is worth watching http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lr42BP3wvOw
The end part of David Archibald’s presentation on Thorium here http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/02/12/david-archibald-on-climate-and-energy-security/ is interesting. The Chinese have announced that they will be going down this route and will have operating plants installed by 2020. I would say that there has been 30 years of misdirected research and political interference in Nuclear Energy technology.
Many say USA will be better off if the republicans succeed in cutting funds to the EPA and only funding NASA space research.
Cementafriend,
Interesting YouTube address given by Freeman Dyson – though the Carnegie scientists he mentioned simply replicated the earlier Russian experiments (www.gasresources.net), which Dyson did not mention.
“The synthesis of hydrocarbons from abiotic reagents at pressures to 5 Gpa.
V. G. Kutcherov, N. A. Bendeliani, V. A. Alekseev, J. F. Kenney, (2002), Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of Russia, 387/6, 789-792. “.
Tommy Gold was also accused of plagiarism, but I would not call it a scientific breakthrough by Gold – however Gold managed to get the theory some traction in the West, but mainstream petroleum science still believes oil is a fossil fuel and until that paradigm is changed, the US and Europeans will continue to meddle in the Middle East to secure their oil supplies.
I should mention that Archibald does not believe in Abiotic oil theory either, hence the focus on thorium etc.
Gold’s contention that oil and coal deposits are spatially related needs to be carefully examined, especially if these deposits are adjacent to, or on, deep seated fracture systems.
The real problem is that scientifically the same mindset behind fossil fuel theory is also behind CAGW theory.
PS And the widespread use of statitics, particularly averages, is probably not useful in trying to understand the cycles, the periodicity.
Climate science is perhaps about where our understanding of electricity was two hundred years ago with scientist believing electricity to be fluid and convinced they could capture it in a leyden/leiden jar.
Statistics is now averages???
WHEN I was studying criminal law (in the late 80’s) I recall there was a paper which questioned the reliability of eye witness evidence (this evidence always having been regarded as one of the most credible of evidences
Unfortunately I have been able to find the paper (which I think was written by a UNSW post graduate student)
but the purport of the paper was that a number of experiments had bend done for the paper and those participants who were expecting a particular eventuallity saw it (in their eyes)
and the question was what was more reliable what they thought they saw with their eyes or what was actually presented in the experiment
unfortunately I can’t find the original paper but … how is this different to the subject of this post
Just another point I asked Dr Tim Ball once ifI could use an article of his as a reference and his response was that he would be honoured and ‘thank you for keeping an open mind’
and that I think that is something that each of us should try to use in each of our dealings whether it be in respect to AGW or identification evidence or any other matter in our lives where we have to make decisions – ‘keep an open mind’
Comment from: Louis Hissink February 13th, 2011 at 2:30 pm
“Gold’s contention that oil and coal deposits are spatially related needs to be carefully examined, especially if these deposits are adjacent to, or on, deep seated fracture systems.”
Louis, I’m glad that you brought that up. Until you provided some links to articles that challenged conventional thinking about the fossil in “fossil fuels”, I did not question the prevailing paradigm. Here’s my question for you:
A number of years ago, there was a drilling experiment involving two very deep bore holes in the Siljan Ring in Central Sweden, where there had been a big impact of some kind, eons ago. The net result was not enough oil to pay for the lunch money of the drilling crew. Some conventional thinkers cite that experiment as evidence against the theory of abiotic oil.
Did the drillers follow the guidelines suggested by Gold and other abiotic oil buffs? Did they drill deep enough? Or was the entire enterprise engineered for failure? What is your take on the Siljan Experiment?
Larry
Judging by the various reports on the drilling operation at Siljan, including what Tommy Gold wrote and subsequently Jack Kenney’s analysis of the operation and published in the literature in 1999, it’s pretty clear that Gold discovered deep seated oil. (http://www.gasresources.net/SwedenProjectResults.htm). Another discussion is http://www.gasresources.net/MantleMarkers(Hannover).htm.
Drilling stopped on Gravberg 1 because of the seepage of black gunk out of the rock which Gold discovered later on was actually microscopic crystals of magnetite that could only have come from bacteria and which gave him the first clue of the existence of a deep hot biosphere.
Kenney’s paper above also detailed the geochemistry of the mantle derived marker elements, iridium being an important one, as well as nickel and chrome. This clinches the origin of the black gunk and oil traces.
Apparently the first hole Gravberg 1 was competently done, but the second, according to Kenney, developed into an “Opera Buffa” and associated financial chicanery. But the drilling was done competently.
They only found trace amounts of oil but the black gunk in Gravberg 1 was initially dismissed as drilling fluid, which is a little unusual. Drilling fluids don’t contain petroleum products, but I don’t know what drilling method they used for that project. If it was oil well technology then the drilling mud would have been water with bentonite or some other non petroleum mud product. Kenney reckons they used pure water only for the second hole.
Overall it was a technical success but a commercial failure.
Opposition to abiotic oil theory comes, surprisingly, from the existing oil producers who really do not need the US or the Europeans to discover plentiful petroleum underfoot their own countries. If that happened oil prices would plummet and the Middle East oil economies would suddenly have a problem. Our problem would be coping with abundant oil and abundant greeny enviro screeching.
Thanks Louis.
Cementafriend, Thanks for the link.
Val, The issue you raised about the reliability of the eye witness is central to the plot of ‘Atonement’ a story by one of my favourite fiction writers, Ian Mcewan.
Reliability of eyewitness testimony is an active research area. There is a lot of evidence that eyewitnesses are not a reliable source of evidence.
I can look up some references if anyone is interested; or, more simply, you can do a google scholar search for “eyewitness testimony”.
thanks Jen for that comment; I did look at that book but the blurb put me off for some reason; will re look
Part of the problem with eyewitness testimony is that the witnesses are sometimes actively coached by the police, at least in the US. Hypothetical example.
“Oh, that’s not good enough. We are certain that we have the culprit. And if you don’t express more certainty, he’ll be acquitted by the jury, and will kill again. You wouldn’t want that to weigh on your conscience, would you? Now let’s rehearse your testimony one more time before we go home for the day. And please leave out those pesky weasel-words.”
That filtering process can alter one’s memories of the incident in question.