Matt Ridley began a recent lecture to the national academy of sciences in Scotland by suggesting it was easy to distinguish science from pseudoscience. He explained that:
Astronomy is science; astrology is pseudoscience.
Molecular biology is science; homeopathy is pseudoscience.
Chemistry is science; alchemy is pseudoscience.
But Ridley also reminded us that Sir Isaac Newton, the famous seventeenth-century mathematician and scientist, was passionate about alchemy.
Indeed I understand from various sources, not the Ridley lecture, that Newton wrote lots and lots on the subject of alchemy and spent much time in his laboratory attempting to turn lead into gold. This is the same Isaac Newton who described universal gravitation and the three laws of motion. The same Isaac Newton who wrote The Principia one of the most important scientific books ever written.
In his lecture to the academy, Ridley suggests pseudoscience, including Isaac Newton’s belief in alchemy, is sustained by confirmation bias and that we are all capable of it: that we all look for evidence that fits our pet theory and ignore evidence that contradicts it.
Read the lecture here: http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=12844
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Scientific Heresy by Matt Ridley, posted at On Line Opinion on Friday November 4, 2011
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD is a critical thinker with expertise in the scientific method.
Who’s to say that Newton wasn’t up to a bit of old forgery at the forge.
No disrespect to Issac .. I’m sure his intentions were noble. (Au).
I read this lecture a couple of days ago.
I liked it.
It got me re thinking.
It’s quite likely that confirmation bias plays a large role in ‘the consensus’ regarding CAGW. Basically, people confirming each others’ bias.
I read that Isaac Newton was the first to install a cat flap in his door.
RE: Newton’s alchemy – actually Newton spend 12-20 years (depending on whom you ask) trying to come up with a comprehensible scheme underlying chemical permutations and reactions – a formula that would describe the whole chaotic business of what we today call chemistry like the concepts of gravity or calculus. It was not his fault that practically all chemistry texts of his time were couched in alchemical terms, describing the “great work”, the “prima materia”, etc, with the Philosopher’s Stone as the goal of all those arcane cookings & destillations – and described in terms of “hunting the green lion” or “scrying the basilisk’s egg” for something like distilling antimony. Those “writings” are about 18,000 pages consisting mostly of excerpts from every text he could lay his hands on, trying to compare them and hoping to eventually make some sense of the whole business. The rest are lab notes to find out if his “decodings” actually worked in the real world. He never published a page on the subject. When it became clear that it would never work out, he gave it up.
The fact that most of science consists of wild goose chases that never lead anywhere is something that has become lost on most of the public.
This lecture should be sent to all politicians and bureaucrats, MSM etc to help them understand what is required to keep our 7 billion on the road to survival.
I sent it to Jonathan Holmes at ABC Mediawatch and got an honest reply from him [marked not for republication].
Yes Schiller, when you are on the gravy train you are well aware of the position of your fellow travellers as when you are carrying your swag with the mob walking the tracks.
The trouble is CAGW alarmism today doesn’t reflect the history of the Holocene. The Holocene has had a number of warm and cold periods for the last 11,000+ years, with a very warm period called the optimum that was much warmer than today’s warming.
We know that the world’s oceans were 100+ metres lower during the last ice age and yet about 5,000 years ago ocean levels were one to two metres higher than today.
Since then there has been a steady decline in levels until recently and since the end of the LIA we’ve had a slight rise for 160+ years.
At the moment the rise is claimed to be around 30cm a century, but again recently there seems to be a deceleration taking place so who knows what will happen by 2100.
What is certain is that there has been little statistically significant warming since 1995 and zero warming for at least 13 years.
Also there is nothing odd or unusual or unprecedented about today’s climate. Certainly we have been very fortunate to live in the world during the last 100+ years due to science and technology making our lives much richer in every way we can estimate.
My only problem with his address was how easily he dismissed the so called pseudo sciences in his intro. Homoeopathy has just had a clarification
woops – didn’t mean to submit – yes , a scientist has just shown that water does have a memory that can be photographed/recorded which is the basis of Homoeopathy. BTW my 3 children were cured of whooping cough in 4 days by an old German doctor who was also an homoeopath. He called it 40 day cough.
The two men he mentioned didn’t prove that all crop circles are man made as they couldn’t have made the extensive circles found around the world and when an advertising company wanted to make a Honda car crop circle it took them 4 days yet highly complex circles have appeared overnight.
But his summation of the lack of evidence in the AGW debate was excellent.
“In his lecture to the academy, Ridley suggests pseudoscience, including Isaac Newton’s belief in alchemy, is sustained by confirmation bias and that we are all capable of it: that we all look for evidence that fits our pet theory and ignore evidence that contradicts it”
YOU TALKIN’ TO ME?!?!?!?!?!?!
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
I agree with most of what was said.
Still, I would also point out that before enough data has been gathered to create a decent hypothesis and knowledge gathered to make the theory, much has been accomplished by simple repetitive observation and trial and error. This is really the basis of science as we do not start out with enough information to form even a hypothesis. Just a desire to accomplish or learn something.
“The fact that most of science consists of wild goose chases that never lead anywhere is something that has become lost on most of the public.”
Good point Ulrich!
Why is it that bleeding hearts can’t see that and proceed with a bit caution instead of wrecking economies and ecologies just to make a good impression.
Probably just as well most of these countries are heading for bankruptcy.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/11/04/study-green-biofuels-could-be-costing-the-earth/
But it’s too late for our own tax dollars.
Excellent expose of confirmation bias among sceptics – you lot will swallow anything – Archibald, McLean et al ….. and on it goes …. any old iron will do …… hahahahahahaha
Heaven help us if sceptics were running medicine – you’d have 10 contradictory quack theories for every ailment.
maybe a bit off topic ……
does anybody know who luke is?
it seems to me has has nothing better to do than present nasty little put-downs to anything presented on this blog.
is he from getup or similar? a professional agitator?
i am not sure he believes in anything. it seems he exists only to present a contrary view.
it seems he is obsessed with this blog – despite disagreeing with just about everything it contains.
i wonder if he has a favourite blog where he presents a positive view on things.
hey luke – can you direct me to another blog where you “contribute” – i would like see another side of you.
jennifer – did you do something nasty to luke in a past life that compels him to haunt you?
Luke,
You never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity to not shoot yourself in the ass.
You actually just well demonstrated the feeble excuse for thinking that AGW obsession degenerates the cerebral function into.
If you AGW hacks were running medicine, we would have one diagnosis for all symptoms, and the AGW ‘cure’ would be not only ineffective, but would be shown to be made of impossibilium at a price to bankrupt the entire medical budget, with massive harmful side effects.
The CSIRO doubles down this week, accelerated sea level rise and temperature rise, just as Dr Ridley says, pseudoscience. http://pindanpost.com/2011/11/04/csiro-pseudoscience-or-voodooscience/
Or for sceptics it would be
– “you’re not sick at all”, “well you might be but it’s not important”, “your sickness is a global conspiracy”, “you’ve doctored the data to hide the sickness decline”, “well you might be sick but your sickness is limited”, “it’s sun-stroke” – when you’ve been asphyxiated by CO2 poisoning, “thermometers in country hospitals measure differently to city hospitals”, “settle down – the fact that your head is melting isn’t that impressive”, “10,000 idiot scientists with degrees in witchcraft reckon sickness is a hoax”.
HAHAHAHAHAHA
Yeah, Luke, HaHaHa. The fact remains that we have had this monstrosity of a tax shoved down our collective throats with no regard at all for the science and as Matt Ridley says, debunking this science is like water off a ducks back to the mad believers.
Will Australia ever be able to afford to remove this tax?
What are you doing to ease the burden for the battlers?
sp,
Luke has been with the blog some time now… he first took the pen name Fletcher Christain presumably to lead the mutiny. His current pen name is Luke (Skywalker) another hero. He definitely sees himself as a force for good. Like many people, Luke sees me as a subversive and against what is intrinsically worth fighting for … a reduction in carbon emissions, better regulation of farming, respect for science and scientists.
Consider him a constant barometer of what the all powerful chattering class in Australia think and believe.
“Consider him a constant barometer of what the all powerful chattering class in Australia think and believe.”
You are too generous Jennifer. The chattering classes do trumpet their faith but do they think?…… Oh I see you are using think as a synonym for believe.
Lukebaby and Company Ltd , distillers and perveyors of fine effective global remedies.
Roll up for guaranteed cure, most rapid and effecacious in every case.
1 dose of AGW tax cures temperatures
2 doses cures sealevels
3 doses cures CO2.
(side-effects may include pain in taxpayers pockets)
Just swallow and believe.
( No I’m a lawyer)
Don’t take this lying down luke, throw some papers at us; or are you still hiding behind the fantasy series known as BEST?
Hey Luke,
maybe you can explain why UK and Australian mercury clinical thermometers read 98.4°F for normal and USA read 98.6°F. ? And that was long before GISS 😉
So many questions for Luke. Be kind. I consider him a thinking friend.
I love him, he’s the antagonist.
Matt Ridley hasn’t completely got things right when it comes to pseudoscience and ‘real’ science.
It needs to be remembered that many things considered cutting edge in their time were later superseded. That does not automatically render those earlier things into ‘pseudoscience’. Many accepted theories, now outdated, were originally espoused by the best and brightest investigators of their age, with experiments and data to back them up. Think: Newton’s law of universal gravitation, and Einstein’s law of curvature of space around mass. Newton’s dabbling in alchemy merely indicates he was working with the theories available at the time.
It would be far better to label as ‘pseudoscience’ those scientific claims which have been demolished by later evidence and superior theory, but are still embraced by a clique of recalcitrant recidivists.
Sort of like how CAGWers still embrace their creed, despite recent comprehensive proof (BEST) of no ‘global warming’ for over a dozen years. One has to wonder how long it will be, before we spend more money on a new pseudoscience than we have thus far lavished on CAGW.
Unfortunately, living in ‘interesting times’ is perennial.
What annoys me about Luke is his reticence about pointing out the clueless , hopelessness of mitigating AGW even if you are a believer.
I understand now that he doesn’t really support a co2 tax or an ETS, but that really is the end game for most pollie’s/sheeple’s expectations.
These pollies/sheeple really believe we can save the planet from parliament house Canberra.
Simple maths proves we cannot and we would put off the dreaded CAGW by about 80 hours or 0.004C even if we some how actually reduced our emissions by 5% by 2020.
By all means argue about the science but please point out the absurdity of wasting billions $ stupidly trying to mitigate AGW because it won’t happen soon.
If we could flick a switch ( if the AGW science is sound) and the entire world stopped emitting today it would certainly take hundreds or perhaps a thousand years before we could see a result.
Of course the weather/climate wouldn’t care and we might be warmer or colder anyhow in 30/70/100/300/1000 years time. Anyone’s guess.
Neville – I have said repeatedly that a unilateral Aussie carbon tax isn’t a good idea. However, that being said doesn’t mean the climate science “must” be wrong as a logical consequence.
And there is enough evidence to suggest unrestrained global CO2 growth is a risk; that changing that is a grand challenge (economically, technologically, socially, equitably); and that the science isn’t totally settled – that there is more complexity than many think.
sd asks “What are you doing to ease the burden for the battlers?” – being able to represent both sides of the argument
So when do you start?
Only one side so far. If the boat is gonna float Fletch, you gotta plank both sides….
Luke I think we’re not that far apart. I agree we shouldn’t be acting alone to reduce co2 emissions and I’m not saying climate science for or against AGW must be right/wrong.
I agree too that there should be equal funding for both sides of the debate as I’m sure the science isn’t settled yet.
I agree that doubling of atmospheric co2 should add up to 1c to the global temp but beyond that I’m just not sure anyone really understands the forcings involved.
I’m sure there is complexity involved including clouds, oceans, solar, cosmic rays, volcanoes, increases in GHGs etc, plus locked in thousand(s) year cycles that produce real extremes like ice ages.
Here’s one of those silly pollies sprouting more nonsense, thank heavens he’s not opposition leader.
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/turnbull_shows_he_doesnt_understand/
Interesting info from WUWT showing a definite cooling trend in the USA over the last 10 to 15 years.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/11/05/ncdc-data-shows-that-the-contiguous-usa-has-not-warmed-in-the-past-decade-summers-are-cooler-winters-are-getting-colder/#more-50527
Bad policies grow out of bad ideas and poor thinking.
AGW has provided a remarkable list of failed policies whenever AGW community demands are used to design the policy.
Crap leads to crap.
Crappy AGW policies grow out of AGW like mushrooms grow from dung.
Luke is just a particularly fine pile of dung on most days.
This delusional madness is ensuring that the crap is hitting the fan at a faster and more voluminous rate. Just unbelievable.
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/a_useless_tax_that_will_increase_emissions_but_cut_jobs/
The problem is definitely largely a political one.
IMO: Where the AGW crowd have gone hopelessly wrong is their insistence on relying on and defending projective modelling….to the point of denying current data (calling it wiggles, wobbles, blips, noise, isolated weather etc etc)
I like this piece because it nails down the difference between what is good about science and what what is not.
I actually think the work of data collection and historical climate information from several different branches of science (including the geologists) is actually a good thing. All that information helps us to better understand the world around us, it helps us to recognise certain patterns and it helps us to understand that climate is not a static animal. It is constantly in flux and is influenced by many factors, some of which we do not understand yet.
Ridley’s argument about ‘confirmation bias’ and the tendency of highly educated people to want to ‘predict’ the future got me re thinking.
Once politics and the media enter the mix it appears that the actual ‘good science’ goes missing somewhere. Especially when rather large buckets of tax payer money are involved.
Most ‘thinking’ people can easily recognise that the whole process went from science to ‘pseudo science’ the moment we had people claiming they held some type of crystal ball, that mankind is sooooo influential that mankind is now causing catstrophic damage to future climate and that mankind is SOOOOOO influential that mankind, through the all seeing, altruistic leaders and bureaucrats, can MITIGATE and MANAGE the climate and the environment by charging extra taxes and forcing a carbon (pollution) trade onto the market place.
We are being told they can save us from ourselves.
I feel the sorriest for the genuine scientists who know that their work has been shamelessly hijacked. They are often unfairly included in the growing anger against the ‘pseudo science’ contigent who are claiming they have super human predictive powers and that CO2 is the master driving factor of climate and that the human created portion (less than 3% ?) is the one that will cause this future catastrophe.
It does look rather similar to that ‘crop circle’ story and numerous others that Ridley uses.
There is more commentary on this lecture here:
http://joannenova.com.au/2011/11/matt-ridley-on-scientific-heresy-and-the-temptations-of-confirmation-bias/#more-18652
Did anyone read this at BH a few days back by Phillip Bradley re Jonathan Lowe’s findings:
http://bishophill.squarespace.com/blog/2011/11/4/australian-temperatures.html
Really makes you sceptical of average world temps.
Little Lukey bloviates,
“Heaven help us if sceptics were running medicine – you’d have 10 contradictory quack theories for every ailment.”
Yes, Little Lukey, you are absolutely correct. If we sceptics were running things we WOULD probably have 10 contradictory quack theories competing for the money and acceptance. Since we aren’t there is just ONE quack theory that has no competition we are REQUIRED to accept and pay our money to continue with little chance of any progress to a BETTER theory!!
SD, Lowe’s work has been shamefully neglected as has Ken Stewart’s efforts:
http://kenskingdom.wordpress.com/
In relation to Luke, I have thought for some time that he was on Jennifers payroll to be “Devils Advocate” to everything.
If it wasn’t for Lukes prodigious and often sarcastic but sometimes witty efforts, this blog would be a very one sided affair.
That is with the exception of Gavin throwing the odd smelly thong into the blarney.
Pikey.
Funny about all those melting glaciers we’ve been hearing about for decades and metres and metres of SLR soon to come.
Steve Goddard has a good blinking graph of the Euro satellite data and SL hasn’t risen for 9 years.
If SL isn’t doing much for nearly a decade there surely can’t be much temp increase either ?
http://www.real-science.com/hiding-inconvenient-satellite
What you mean us Pastafarians belief in the Great One FSM is a confirmation bias? How could you!
SP Luke has been on this blog ever since I can remember. He with a few of similar ilk played at being trolls. He is a mostly worthless PIB so I ignore him when I read this blog I suggest you do the same. He uses debating techniques always and would argued black was white if most here thought otherwise. Is he in fact Jennifer? Possible but I hope not.
Luke is Jennifer?!! Give it a break guys.
Luke has made some memorable excursions into enemy territory at Deltoid and Open Mind where he bambozzled the local turnips. So, he is prepared to take on the alarmists; his ratbaggery is egalitarian.
RE: Our pal “Luke”
At one point, Luke was a hive mind of Australian bureaucrats recruited by Jennifer to post what was supposed to be a thoughtful well presented consensus point of view.
Occasionally you could detect different styles of writing and thought in the posts.
The ‘Luke’, of course, could not do the reasonable theoughtful guy well or for long, and so devolved to his/its present state a long time ago.
I am not certin if there is still a hive mind in there- unless we are seeing a demonstration of the idea that committees tend to lower IQ.
My bet is that we are basically getting one of the group who is just posting for trollish fun, and that the rest have wandered off.
The crazy thing is that Luke (the Lukes) would probably be great guys to have an adult beverage or three with, and much of the acrimony that flares across this blog would be absent in an in-person situation.
” SD, Lowe’s work has been shamefully neglected as has Ken Stewart’s efforts:
http://kenskingdom.wordpress.com/”
It would seem that the BOM are adminstratively inept and have something they are trying to hide, or just plain arrogant and incompetent…or all three.
Not a pretty image they are portraying, when Ken Stewart has identified clear short comings in their work.
Hunter I would agree with you about it being the Lukes in that it appeared that there were many pretending to be one. The propensity for name calling, insults and never logically answering a question has earned my absolute contempt. If I did learn it was a devils advocate thing by Jennifer then the same would apply. I used to very active on this blog and moved on because of that useless vile comment. Your idea that over a beer they would be okay does not work for me. If I found that I had a personal relationship with Luke then the behaviour here would end it. I try to give respectful civilised logical comment and answers. I expect the same in return.
Luke is a tour guide at a kiddies’ ‘science park’.
He’s irrelevant.