Beam me to Planet Gore !
Posted on 04/08/2010 8:35:06 AM PDT by mattstat
Our friend Steve McIntyre hears this fallacy a lot. McIntyre has published on his blog many true statements about the climate that are disliked or are unwanted by mainstream climate scientists. Instead of trying to answer, or to refute, McIntyre’s results, these global warming advocates dismiss them because they have not been peer reviewed and published.
Unfortunately, this fallacy—as shockingly obvious as it is—is usually accepted as proof of refutation. That is, it is thought that a refutation has been demonstrated merely because a credentialed scientist cast an aspersion.
Journalists—God love ‘em—are particularly eager to swallow this faulty line of reasoning. I have yet to see a case where a reporter rebuts, “Yes, McIntyre’s work hasn’t been published. But how is it wrong?” That is, of course, the only question worth asking.
(Excerpt) Read more at wmbriggs.com ...
The author doesn’t seem to understand the concept of peer review.
Maybe you can explain it to him.
Since he’s on the faculty of a physical sciences department at an Ivy League school there is the off chance that he is, in fact, familar with the concept.
The peer-reviews carried out by the ‘scientists’ at CRU and the IPCC were used as a way of pushing through agenda-driven science and driving actual science to the curb.
No matter how it ought to work, the peer-review process became corrupted when people like Jones, Briffa and Mann were reviewing each others papers and preventing others from getting published. The author seems to understand this.
Peer review is supposed to uncover errors prior to publication, improve clarity and readability and filter out wild speculation, surmise and ranting. CRU and the gang apparently perverted it to prevent criticism or presentation of alternate hypothesis.
You’re right. Briggs does wish the “statistical significance” would die.
Probability can tell us the difference between astronomers and astrologers. That is, there is a way to use statistics to give us definite answers to definite questions.
Statistical significance cannot do this: it answers questions about unobservable, unverifiable mathematical entities. But let’s not get sidetracked.
RE: Peer review. Interesting that it has only been with us for about 100 years. Newton’s work, for example, was not peer reviewed in the way it’s done today.
Newton put his results out there (like Perelman did on Arxiv) and let them stand (or fall) for themselves.
Peer review works best as a reliable mechanism for keeping journals thinner. It can also weed out the obviously false or ridiculous. But it can’t do much beyond that.
Or he is pointing out the fact that peer review in the climate feild has been corupted.
It's interesting that Robert Hook published "Newton's Laws" nine years before Newton. The difference was that Newton invented calculus and derived elliptical orbits, predicted the flattening of the poles and the explanation of tides from them, with Hook they were sterile assertions useless for making predictions without Newton. Still... Newton never acknowleged Hook, which seems ungracious by today's standards.
The purpose is only for others to verify the truth. It does not change the truth and that is want he is pointing out. The truth is the truth, wether it is peer reviewed or not. The review does not make it true, so that the lack of a review is not a valid way to nullifiy the research.
No because it was not true. Peer review does not make something true. The articles that promoted global warming were peer reviewed and false so peer review does not prove that something is true. Im aorry that you can not see that he was pointing out the peer review can be useful but it does not mean that it is true.
No one claims that peer review makes something true, and given that science is not static, it is quite conceivable that concepts taken as fact today, will in the future be recognized as false.
“No one claims that peer review makes something true, and given that science is not static, it is quite conceivable that concepts taken as fact today, will in the future be recognized as false.”
That is correct but you critizied the original article for not supporting peer review. Peer review can and has been corrupted in global warmin.
Max Ernst, who famously observed that Newton's second law is a trivial definition of time, might have questioned his genius.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.