Anything said to be unprecedented, probably isn’t.
At the beginning of this year I came across a tweet from a self-described PhD candidate in nuclear fusion engineering. Hmmm. Nuclear fusion engineering. Heady stuff. The tweet was a woke nerd version of the Crash Davis “I believe in the soul…” monologue from Bull Durham, just not as thoughtful or elegant. It contained such gems as “climate change is real,” and “vaccines and masks are good.”
To quote a famously exasperated John McEnroe: “you cannot be serious!” How can a person smart enough to be a PhD candidate in (let’s say it again) nuclear fusion engineering be so unrefined in their thinking? When responders to the tweet counseled that the author’s declarations would benefit from some nuance, the author simply argued from authority, his own and that of others, saying, “who are you to challenge the experts?” The tweet ends with a command. “Follow scientists on social media.” This may be good advice, but not in the context of our tweeter, who seems to believe that science, unleavened by economics, faith, tradition, or common sense, has all the answers. And what about different scientific explanations of the same phenomena? Did someone produce a unified field theory and I haven’t heard about it yet?
A week or so post-tweet I embarked on a 1200 mile road trip with my eldest son. We were delivering him and his vehicle to a fancy, northeast university where he would begin a graduate program in chemical engineering. Somewhere in central Ohio, with frozen corn and soybean fields stretching into the distance and thin skeins of snow drifting across cold asphalt, I took a quick scroll through Twitter, and I remembered the PhD candidate. “Listen to this,” I said, and I read him the tweet. Then I asked the question in the paragraph above. “How is it possible that someone smart enough to study that curriculum is so unrefined in their thinking?” The boy glanced at me, then focused on the road again. He’s not big on discussing controversial subjects with his parents. So I continued. “I don’t know exactly where you stand on issues like that. But please, in the name of all that is holy, do NOT make it your policy to simply trust the experts. You have a brain. You can read. You are not fulfilling your obligation as a citizen if you tell yourself there’s no need to think critically about tough subjects because someone else is thinking for you.”
There is a difference between philosophical skepticism and the practical skepticism we engage in every day. Philisophical skepticism is the theory that in the realm of truth and knowledge, absolute certainty is impossible. Useful, practical skepticism is simply the act of good faith questioning of claims that seem outlandish or incorrect. It is the basis for common phrases like “buyer beware,” and it is the subject of this essay.
An anecdote. Stephen McIntyre is a retired mining executive from Ontario, Canada. Back around this most recent turn of the century he became interested in the infamous hockey stick graph developed by Penn State’s Michael Mann. The graph is intended to show that global air temperatures of the late 20th century and early 21st century are rising in an alarming and unprecedented fashion. McIntyre, a veteran at sniffing out outlandish claims in mining and investment prospectuses, was skeptical. The steep rise in temperature at the end of the graph reminded him of unrealistic scenarios used to dupe investors to pour money into dubious mining ventures. This is a suitable time to list one of Trevor’s general rules of skepticism. Anything said to be unprecedented, probably isn’t.
Most people in Stephen McIntyre’s position do not have the ability to pursue the subject much further. They can find other sources to help them confirm or refute the accuracy of their bullshit detectors, but most are not capable of doing their own, independent work. Not so Mr. McIntyre. You see, Stephen McIntyre won the national high school mathematics competition of 1965. Then he studied math at the University of Toronto, graduating in 1969. After that, he was awarded a Commonwealth Scholarship to study politics, philosophy, and economics (PPE) at Oxford, graduating in 1971. And finally, he was offered a graduate scholarship to study mathematical economics at M.I.T. He turned it down. As Liam Neeson’s character, Bryan Mills says in the movie, Taken: “… what I do have are a very particular set of skills … skills that make me a nightmare for people like you.”
One of the statistical methods underpinning Mann’s graph is principal component analysis (PCA). Principal component analysis seeks to simplify data sets by reducing the number of variables being considered, while preserving most of the total variability in the data set. Careful selection of principal components can make analysis and visualization of data easier and more intuitive. By obtaining the raw data and the statistical algorithms used in Mann’s analysis, McIntyre, along with his co-author Ross McKittrick, an economics professor at the University of Guelph, determined that Mann’s analysis contained multiple errors and defects. The following quotation is from the abstract of the McIntyre and McKitrick paper in 2003. McIntyre and McKitrick 2003 (paywalled)
The data set of proxies of past climate used in Mann, Bradley and Hughes (1998, “MBH98” hereafter) for the estimation of temperatures from 1400 to 1980 contains collation errors, unjustifiable truncation or extrapolation of source data, obsolete data, geographical location errors, incorrect calculation of principal components and other quality control defects.
The major finding is that the values in the early 15th century exceed any values in the 20th century. The particular “hockey stick” shape derived in the MBH98 proxy construction – a temperature index that decreases slightly between the early 15th century and early 20th century and then increases dramatically up to 1980 — is primarily an artefact of poor data handling, obsolete data and incorrect calculation of principal components.
The climate science community circled the wagons in response to this critique. Additional requests by McIntyre for data and methodology were categorized as harassment, and climate researchers speculated about his sources of funding. Anyone who questions us must be a shill for big oil, right? One referred to him as a bozo.
By exposing errors McIntyre and McKitrick made climate science better. A narrowing of the eyes, a slight turn of the head, and the words, “are you sure?” are the ways that all knowledge is advanced, to the benefit of everyone.
And so we return to our PhD student. When one of the responders to the tweet questioned the absolute declaration that “masks are good” the young engineer posted an image of Covid statistics that compared the United States and Japan. Values representing the total number of cases per capita for each country were circled. The value for the U.S. was about 50% higher. “See,” said the poster. “Masking is normal in Japan. They have done much better.”
The next set of statistics compared active cases in Japan and the U.S., also on a per capita basis, as of January 2023. This number was ten times higher in Japan. All the student had to do was look down to find some nuance, a hint of doubt, some humility. And there could be any number of confounding factors—cultural, economic, social, genetic, governance—affecting the progression of Covid in Japan versus the United States. But no, masks were the difference, full stop. Masks good.
I don’t know why people are persuaded to make declarations like, “I believe in science.” Or display bumper stickers or yard signs to that effect. It’s a statement without meaning. Science is not a book of knowledge in which everything is known and must not be questioned. That is scientism, not science. A meaningful statement is, “I believe in the scientific method.”
The Oxford dictionary definition of the scientific method is as follows:
a method of procedure that has characterized natural science since the 17th century, consisting in systematic observation, measurement, and experiment, and the formulation, testing, and modification of hypotheses.
At every stage of the process, it is proper and incumbent on the researcher to question, to criticize, and to speculate. In other words, to think skeptically. It is incumbent on us as citizens to do the same. Do not believe in science. Instead, be a scientist. Observe, formulate, test, modify. Consider trade-offs from the fields of economics, education, health, and human nature. Good faith skepticism should be met with good faith efforts to persuade, not with arguments from authority, invectives like “science denier,” and ridiculous statements like “the science is settled.” And if that’s what you face, soldier on. Be not afraid. Do not be a nuclear foolish engineer.
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