Posted on 10/04/2005 7:17:16 AM PDT by ZGuy
Thank you Mr. Chairman, and members of the Committee. I appreciate the opportunity to discuss the important subject of politicization of research. In that regard, what I would like to emphasize to the committee today is the importance of independent verification to science.
In essence, science is nothing more than a method of inquiry. The method says an assertion is valid-and merits universal acceptance-only if it can be independently verified. The impersonal rigor of the method means it is utterly apolitical. A truth in science is verifiable whether you are black or white, male or female, old or young. It's verifiable whether you like the results of a study, or you don't.
Thus, when adhered to, the scientific method can transcend politics. And the converse may also be true: when politics takes precedent over content, it is often because the primacy of independent verification has been overwhelmed by competing interests.
Verification may take several forms. I come from medicine, where the gold standard is the randomized double-blind study, which has been the paradigm of medical research since the 1940s.
In that vein, let me tell you a story. It's 1991, I am flying home from Germany, sitting next to a man who is almost in tears, he is so upset. He's a physician involved in an FDA study of a new drug. It's a double-blind study involving four separate teams---one plans the study, another administers the drug to patients, a third assess the effect on patients, and a fourth analyzes results. The teams do not know each other, and are prohibited from personal contact of any sort, on peril of contaminating the results. This man had been sitting in the Frankfurt airport, innocently chatting with another man, when they discovered to their mutual horror they are on two different teams studying the same drug. They were required to report their encounter to the FDA. And my companion was now waiting to see if the FDA would declare their multi-year, multi-million-dollar study invalid because of this contact.
For a person with a medical background, accustomed to this degree of rigor in research, the protocols of climate science appear considerably more relaxed. A striking feature of climate science is that it's permissible for raw data to be "touched," or modified, by many hands. Gaps in temperature and proxy records are filled in. Suspect values are deleted because a scientist deems them erroneous. A researcher may elect to use parts of existing records, ignoring other parts. But the fact that the data has been modified in so many ways inevitably raises the question of whether the results of a given study are wholly or partially caused by the modifications themselves.
In saying this, I am not casting aspersions on the motives or fair-mindedness of climate scientists. Rather, what is at issue is whether the methodology of climate science is sufficiently rigorous to yield a reliable result. At the very least we should want the reassurance of independent verification by another lab, in which they make their own decisions about how to handle the data, and yet arrive at a similar result.
Because any study where a single team plans the research, carries it out, supervises the analysis, and writes their own final report, carries a very high risk of undetected bias. That risk, for example, would automatically preclude the validity of the results of a similarly structured study that tested the efficacy of a drug.
By the same token, any verification of the study by investigators with whom the researcher had a professional relationship-people with whom, for example, he had published papers in the past, would not be accepted. That's peer review by pals, and it's unavoidably biased. Yet these issues are central to the now-familiar story of the "Hockeystick graph" and the debate surrounding it.
To summarize it briefly: in 1998-99 the American climate researcher Michael Mann and his co-workers published an estimate of global temperatures from the year 1000 to 1980. Mann's results appeared to show a spike in recent temperatures that was unprecedented in the last thousand years. His alarming report formed the centerpiece of the U.N.'s Third Assessment Report, in 2001.
Mann's work was immediately criticized because it didn't show the well-known Medieval Warm Period, when temperatures were warmer than they are today, or the Little Ice Age that began around 1500, when the climate was colder than today. But real fireworks began when two Canadian researchers, McIntyre and McKitrick, attempted to replicate Mann's study. They found grave errors in the work, which they detailed in 2003: calculation errors, data used twice, data filled in, and a computer program that generated a hockeystick out of any data fed to it-even random data. Mann's work has since been dismissed by scientists around the world who subscribe to global warning.
Why did the UN accept Mann's report so uncritically? Why didn't they catch the errors? Because the IPCC doesn't do independent verification. And perhaps because Mann himself was in charge of the section of the report that included his work.
The hockeystick controversy drags on. But I would direct the Committee's attention to three aspects of this story. First, six years passed between Mann's publication and the first detailed accounts of errors in his work. This is simply too long for policymakers to wait for validated results.
Second, the flaws in Mann's work were not caught by climate scientists, but rather by outsiders-in this case, an economist and a mathematician. They had to go to great lengths to obtain data from Mann's team, which obstructed them at every turn. When the Canadians sought help from the NSF, they were told that Mann was under no obligation to provide his data to other researchers for independent verification.
Third, this kind of stonewalling is not unique. The Canadians are now attempting to replicate other climate studies and are getting the same runaround from other researchers. One prominent scientist told them: "Why should I make the data available to you, when your aim is to try and find something wrong with it."
Even further, some scientists complain the task of archiving is so time-consuming as to prevent them from getting any work done. But this is nonsense.
The first research paper I worked on was back in the 1960s, when all data were on stacks of paper. When we received a request for data from another lab, I had to stand at a Xerox machine, copying one page a minute, for several hours. Back then, it was appropriate to ask another lab who they were and why they wanted the data. Because their request meant a lot of work.
But today we can burn data to a CD, or post it at an ftp site for downloading. Archiving data is so easy it should have become standard practice a decade ago. Government grants should require a "replication package" as part of funding. Posting the package online should be a prerequisite to journal publication. And there's really no reason to exclude anyone from reviewing the data.
Of course, replication takes time. Policymakers need sound answers to the questions they ask. A faster way to get them might be to give research grants for important projects to three independent teams simultaneously. A provision of the grant would be that at the end of the study period, all three papers would be published together, with each group commenting on the findings of the other. I believe this would be the fastest way to get verified answers to important questions.
But if independent verification is the heart of science, what should policymakers do with research that is unverifiable? For example, the UN Third Assessment Report defines general circulation climate models as unverifiable. If that's true, are their predictions of any use to policymakers?
I would argue they are not. Senator Boxer has said we need more science fact. I agree-but a prediction is never a fact. In any case, if policymakers decide to weight their decisions in favor of verified research, that will provoke an effort by climate scientists to demonstrate their concerns using objectively verifiable research. I think we will all be better for it.
In closing, I want to state emphatically that nothing in my remarks should be taken to imply that we can ignore our environment, or that we should not take climate change seriously. On the contrary, we must dramatically improve our record on environmental management. That's why a focused effort on climate science, aimed at securing sound, independently verified answers to policy questions, is so important now.
I would remind the committee that in the end, it is the proper function of government to set standards for the integrity of information it uses to make policy. Those who argue government should refrain from mandating quality standards for scientific research-including some professional organizations-are merely self-serving. In an information society, public safety depends on the integrity of public information. And only government can perform that task.
Thank you very much.
If every famous person stuck to their specialty, instead of pretending that their expertise in their specialty also made them an expert on political issues, the world would be a better place.
When MC speaks out on the scientific method, he's worthy of a hearing. If he were to pontificate on, say, suburban sprawl....who cares?
He may be demented on political issues, but in his desire to keep politics of any kind out of science, he's spot on.
True, and as we remember - figures don't lie, but liars figure.
Scientific advocacy has become embedded in our political debate - do fetuses feel pain? Is being gay genetic or learned? These issues are addressed, manipulated and spun by those with other agendas then allowing for unbiased research.
As a result, organization with august names, and the appearance of knowledgable authority have moved in the direction of pushing a political agenda - the Journal of the American Medical Association's unsupported and grossly biased attack on gun ownership, and others - the Union of Concerned Scientists, and even the American Pediatric Association have discarded reasoned discourse with the promotion of a clear agenda based on their pet causes.
Moral rules - those difficult personal choices and sacrifices we make - can be rationalized away in a heartbeat by those with mastery of sophistry, and "proven" by their weak minions looking for a moment of recognition and fame. Do not doubt the weakness and powerful vanity of those that consider themselves high priests of the god of knowledge. Like magicians and alchemists of the past, it is a small and easy step from attempting honest guidance to slipping into self-serving charlatanism. The answer is, instead, total honesty. Intellectual, ethical and moral honesty, for anything created with less will be in error.
Then I was the second. Puts me in good company.
A high school student who is familiar with scientific methodology could make the same points that Crichton makes. And be accurate. Policy should not dictate research results. And that's what too often occurs. Check Crichton's webpage for two talks he gave that go into great detail. It's a breath of fresh air.
What the problem is boiling down to these days is that science is expensive. The deeper we dig into the inner workings of the world around us the higher the equipment costs become, and somebody has to pay for that equipment. But nobody is going to sink millions of dollars into some kind of research without a vested interest, and researchers are getting a lot of pressure to respect their funder's vested interest. In theory that's what peer review and publishing raw data are supposed to take care of, eventually somebody is going to look at the raw data who isn't influenced by somebody's vested interest. But increasingly fear of that neutral 3rd party is causing scientists to avoid those things that make science useful.
So we shouldn't be fighting for Intelligent Design to be taught in schools? If we don't flex political muscle, 'science' will eradicate God, because faith does not fit into modern scientific thought.
"Why should I make the data available to you, when your aim is to try and find something wrong with it."
All too common reply, best answered by "That's the basis of science.", "That's part of your job description.", "Must I FOIA you or can we do this like gentlemen"., etc.
If in Florida, "Because the Public Documents Acts says so."
Alas, who pays the Piper calls the tune. Due to limited, and often interlocking funding sources, most scientists are members of the "Great American Scientific Castrati Association."
They have been neutered to sing in the agency/academic institution chorus.
We pay taxes to support a scientific community where Agenda Uber Alles is as accepted as Deutschland Uber Alles was in the Third Reich.
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True. But scientists are human beings first, and subject to their emotions, just as we all are.
All scientists must go through the leftist liberal arts university system, where they will be exposed to such garbage as Howard Zinn, Ward Churchill, and others whose sole purpose in life is to destroy the "traditional" American system.
As such, so many of these so-called scientists have a warped political bent which influences their research and conclusions.
The advantage of both the scientific method and logic is that one can avoid the fate of an earlier member of the Royal Academy of Science.
He attempted to prove that manned flight was impossible until the strength to weight ration of materials was increased by an order of magnitude.
This was, in effect, an attempt to prove a negative - which logic says is an impossibility.
He neglected to send a copy to Dayton, Ohio, the bicycle mechanics never read his paper, and the rest is history.
"Global Warming" is a tough places to start – to much difference of opinion within the scientific community.
Instead lets begin our program of rooting out shoddy work and fuzzy thinking someplace were there is virtually total agreement within the disciplines involved, and investigate the adherents of "Creation Science" instead.
If they could, the programmers would turn their attention to the stock market instead.
The fact that they don't do so is proof in itself that their models are worthless.
I read the speech - it was great, thank you. Obviously, they didn't get it in 1993 and they still don't get it. That's OK, we have talk radio and the internet.
Catherine Coulter is also an author, writes crime mysterys
Can you believe he said all these things over 12 years ago!?? He is so brilliant.
i've never believed the global warming crap but Crichton does a real service in providing a very coherent, consistent demolition of the global warming lie *AND PROVIDES REAL URL's WITH CHARTS AND GRAPHS*
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