5) be falsifiable.
Anything that fails even one of these prongs cannot rightly be called
science. That’s a high standard. Some might call it too high, though
that would depend on whose theory is being put to the test. Nonetheless,
the McLean test has value. Ideas that don’t live up it cannot
legitimately be called scientific. Whether they’re true or not is
another question entirely.
The McLean test is so valuable in fact that I see no reason why it
shouldn’t be applied at all levels of government and to all ideas deemed
scientific. After all, if a particular idea is considered junk science
in the classroom, what good is it for policy-making?
Requiring the EPA and the rest of the federal government to adhere to
the McLean test would yield some interesting results. For example,
would the theory of global warming be able to pass the McLean test? Not
by a long shot.
Global warming fails at least the third, fourth, and
fifth prongs. It fails the third because its data sets are closely
guarded secrets and it appears to have absolutely
no predicative capability.
It fails the fourth because “the science is settled”—that is, it is
beyond discussion. It fails the fifth because it cannot be proven wrong—
everything proves global warming, including
cold snaps and
blizzards.
And
when you get down to it, global warming is what this whole EPA
controversy is really about. Though the EPA deals in other realms as
well—water pollutants, etc—global warming is really the environmental
movement’s touchstone. Within that movement there seems to be a certain
uneasiness that their theory might crumble like a house of cards if it
weren’t constantly shielded from scrutiny. Though fanatically dedicated
to the idea that man-made carbon emissions are causing the earth to
warm, these true believers evince a telltale insecurity that it might
not be true after all.
One such true believer is Dr. Phil Jones, formerly of the Climate
Research Unit (CRU) in England. He’s an all-around hack who does his
work under cover of darkness then just expects everyone to accept his
findings as unvarnished truth. For a period of years Jones was engaged
in an ongoing feud with two Canadians named Steve McIntyre and Ross
McKitrick who offered to check the calculations behind the
now disgraced “hockey stick” graph that purported to show a rapid spike in global temperatures during the 20
th
Century. Jones did everything in his power to resist McIntyre’s and
McKitrick’s requests for data. “[McIntyre and McKitrick] have been
after the CRU station data for years,” wrote Jones in a 2005
email
to a friend. “If they ever hear there is a Freedom of Information Act
now in the UK, I think I’ll delete the file rather than send to anyone.”
That would be a crime of course, but
that’s how far Jones was willing
to go to keep his data secret. And when I say “his data” I don’t mean
to imply that they’re his personal property. Actually, British and
American taxpayers paid for them but we aren’t allowed to see them
because Jones worries what those evil science-haters might do with
them—such as proving him wrong, for example.
This seems to be a pattern with Jones and some of his colleagues.
When Jones was asked by science researcher Warwick Hughes to provide his
data, Jones refused, claiming that some of the data were deemed
confidential by their source, the World Meteorological Organization
(WMO).
Why temperature data should be locked up like the recipe for
Coca-Cola is truly baffling but apparently that’s just how pervasive
secret science has become. Hughes then inquired directly with the WMO
and was given the cold shoulder, after which he returned to Jones. Jones
curtly replied to Hughes’s request: “Even if WMO agrees, I will still
not pass on the data. We have 25 or so years invested in the work. Why
should I make the data available to you,
when your aim is to try and find something wrong with it[?]” (Emphasis added.)
Hearing those words from the mouth a scientist makes me wonder if
science is dead. If all Hughes was trying to do was to “find something
wrong” with Jones’s pet theory, he was in fact doing Jones a favor. And
it
is Jones’s pet theory. His comment about having “25 or so
years invested” gives us a clue as to his prejudices. His life’s work is
at stake here. Though science demands that he try to disprove his own
theory, and invite others to try their hand as well, he just can’t bring
himself to do it. He’s “invested” too much to allow that to happen.
Now I’m sure that Jones would say that he doesn’t want to allow
people of bad faith to take a whack at his theory. For example, Steve
McIntyre is—gasp!—a mining consultant. Surely he has an agenda.
Sure, he probably does. But even if his “agenda” is to debunk the
theory, that’s actually an essential part of the scientific process. Dr.
Jones doesn’t see it that way of course because his own
agenda—protecting the theory at all costs—clouds his judgement.
Jones
sees McIntyre, McKitrick et al as people who are doing the
devil’s work when they try poke holes in his theory. He doesn’t want to
allow them the opportunity to do so. In such cases he considers it
permissible to operate in secret and treat skeptical review—an essential
ingredient of science—like heresy. Isn’t that the way science is
supposed to work?
Actually, no.
The demands that science makes upon a theory are not
waived just because a scientist suspects that those who disagree with
him have ill motives. That’s a horrible precedent. It can only lead to a
situation in which only people who already subscribe to the theory are
allowed to test it. This necessarily corrupts the peer-review process,
transforming it into buddy-review—a very poor substitute indeed.
I should stress here there was once a time when I too believed in the
theory of global warming, though only because I was not aware of the
controversy. Even at this late stage in the game I could still be sold
on it, but it will require
evidence—plus a satisfactory
explanation for why the scientific process was betrayed in the first
place. I’m not taking this theory on faith, and that is exactly what
defenders of secret science demand.
No comments:
Post a Comment