Dave, you've finally worn me out! You seem to have an inexhaustible supply of variations from what I said. But I'll do one more reply since you are sincere and I think this issue is very important to the broader issues of controversy regarding science and Christian faith. After this, you may have the last word and I won't reply but will move on to other topics.
"...tyranny." We aren't talking about government leaders. We are simply asking who is the best qualified to determine the most accurate description of nature, whether it be past, present, or future. Did you find some group who would be more qualified than the scientific community in that specific expertise?
"...abrogate our duty...." I think you know I never recommended that or the other comments in your paragraph. I don't think people are stupid but when in a very complex field, they believe their limited knowledge trumps that of the experts, maybe they could deserve such a description. "Reason, wisdom..." etc. is precisely what we need and seldom if ever would such a process overrule data-tested consensus of an expert community.
"....string theory..." Perhaps I need to continually repeat "verified by data" "independently reproduced and corroborated" etc. etc. Even Lisa Randall and Brian Greene are quick to say that as elegant as their theories are, there is no data verification or refutation and there won't be for a long long time.
"...censoring criticism is equally unacceptable..." There is a world of difference between censoring criticism and testing criticism for validity. On what basis will we evaluate criticism? Yes, we welcome all criticism and encourage critiques but not all criticism is valid. Who would you suggest is qualified to evaluate criticism? How is slanderous, erroneous, misleading criticism which is allowed to persist unfettered to be considered valuable?
"...no competing model is a canard..." There are enough quacks that there must be lots of canards around. Please recall what I'm saying, though it isn't getting through. There are zillions of models floating around in science being revised and examined. The ones worth noting are the ones that have withstood the withering scrutiny of being validated by data, independently reproduced by multiple sources, successfully predicted new results, and won the competition of competing models. Once that level of confidence is reached, criticism is certainly welcome but it has a very high bar to pass. It must also explain all data plus show superiority over the current model where there is any unexplained data. Of course it is possible to critique an existing model without a competing one but it must show some major unexplained data.
Several posts in this thread advocated in essence "let's avoid the extremes and be moderate". I'm very much a moderate but let's be careful what this means. Being moderate in social action or policy is most wise. But let's be careful about just taking the moderate stand in affirming what is scientific data. In one of my previous posts I joked about the absurdity of being moderate and avoiding the extremes of the age of the earth so we should all accept 5 million years. Ludicrous, of course, but there is a point. To take a position between the extremes of scientific data, you must first determine that the set of data you are "averaging" is valid data. For global warming, you can't just say "some people say zero, others say the earth will melt, so let's take something in the middle." or something of that genre. What is acceptable is to look at the entire range of scientific data that has been reviewed and to average that. My feeling, after scouring the literature to some extent, is that the tendency is for scientists to all cluster at the low end of the data to avoid being viewed as alarmists. But somehow they didn't avoid it anyway. Specifically, the range of data for temperature projections for 2100AD seem to be from 3C to 9C but the implications are more focused on 3C.
and from your other post, "I am skeptical as a more general matter of anyone who says "just trust the scientists." Surely you know that I never said or implied that. Stated without qualifiers such a claim is quite false. One should never trust a scientist outside his area of expertise any more than you would trust any one else. And even in an area of expertise you don't trust the scientist. John Bardeen won two Nobel prizes in physics but he was wrong on high-Tc supercondutors, his field of expertise. To repeat ad nauseum, you trust a set of ideas/explanations/theories that have been verified by data, independently corroborated and reproduced, and agreed upon by the ones working in that field. The rest of us are free to throw stones as we wish but that's mainly part of the education process for us.
"communication" Yes, the scientists have a responsibility to communicate their work and most don't do it very well. But doesn't the audience have a responsibility to listen respectfully as well? And to have some degree of scientific literacy to be able to understand it?
"policy" Scientists should not set policy. They aren't good at it. They are good at describing nature. Let's have some intellectual honesty by recognizing what are the facts of nature. As a society, we can decide what we intend to do about it. At this point, we may well decide to do nothing. If that's the majority preference in our democracy, then so be it. But let's have the honesty to say that we've heard the facts and decided not to do anything (or relatively little) about it rather than try to cover our tracks but claiming that the scientists have it wrong, can't be trusted, our wisdom is superior to theirs, they are distorted by conspiratorial money-grubbers, or whatever.
Enough said. I want to move on to other topics.
Randy
----- Original Message -----
From: David Opderbeck
To: Randy Isaac
Cc: asa@calvin.edu
Sent: Thursday, January 25, 2007 10:39 PM
Subject: Re: [asa] Creation Care
You say "it's irresponsible to ingore contrarian views". I would ask, on what basis do you decide which contrarian views to reject and which ones to value? Who is the arbiter?
Why must there be a single person or single community that serves as arbiter? That approach always leads to tyranny.
Reason, wisdom, experience, common sense, faith, and revelation, in varying proportions as the circumstances dicate, is the basis on which we need to evaluate truth claims and make decisions. A recapture of the classicle virtue of phronesis and the Biblical virtue of wisdom is what we need. The last thing we need is to abrogate our duty to think for ourselves to some supposedly authoritative community. Most people are not as stupid as other people think they are.
It seems to me that you're coming dangerously close to the zeitgeist that takes "the literature" as a sort of secular scripture and the scientific community as a sort of secular priesthood. Of course practical wisdom relies on the recommendations of trained experts and recognizes the motives of the experts' political critics -- but it never, never sloughs off the duty to think carefully and weigh everything in the balances simply because of expert authority. Even beyond the simple and obvious truth that all human knowledge is historically and socially situated, we as Christians know in particular the every temporal social structure, every community, scientific, ecclesiastical, political, familial whatever, is deeply corrupted by sin and therefore cannot be authoritative in an ultimate sense. To put it in somewhat Kuyperian terms, each of these communities have a certain type of authority and certain roles within their given spheres, as well as certain relationships to each other; none of them is a meta-authority.
String theory is not consensus in the sense of being tested experimentally and found to be consistent.
And string theorists would say that their models are sound and elegant, and that if you don't have the many years of training required to really understand them, you shouldn't question them. See, the authority game gets pecked away bit by bit, and the response always is, "well that community of science doesn't really have it's act together, but this one does." But then that community of science says, "who are you to say we don't have our act together?" Who, then, is the arbiter of which community of science gets to be the arbiter?
Allowing the shrill voices of critics who have no competing models, who have no in-depth understanding of the field, to prevent action is also unacceptable.
Perhaps, but censoring criticism is equally unacceptable. If the critics really have no in-depth understanding of the field, let the mainstream
voices demonstrate that through facts and argument. If that can't be demonstrated through facts and argument, maybe the critics know more than the mainstream thinks.
As to "no competing models" -- that line, IMHO, though, is a canard when it comes to policy making. If a model is advanced the demands very costly social action, criticism of the model can be very valuable even if the critic has no competing model. Simply avoiding the costs of the faulty mainstream model would be a good thing.
Having said all this, let me reiterate: I personally think global warming is a real problem that is substantially caused by human actions, and that some political action is necessary. I am not convinced that anyone can say the problem will be catastrophic in any given time frame, however. But I am most sure that censoring debate and arguing from authority is a bad precedent to set, particularly if we want to approach the science-policy nexus from a thoroughly Christian perspective.
On 1/25/07, Randy Isaac <randyisaac@comcast.net> wrote:
>
>
> I'm actually a fan of Smolin and don't like string theory either. I do think, however, that you may be applying Smolin's comments in slightly the wrong way. String theory is not consensus in the sense of being tested experimentally and found to be consistent. He's talking about the relative distribution of funds in fields where there is no consensus of proven models. He's talking about the tendency to fund research in new areas according to the fad of string theory. The issue of what work to fund long before there's consensus is actually the more interesting part of scientific research and I've spent much of my career doing that.
>
> Once a field has an appreciable degree of success in explaining data the research in that field moves to digging deeper and refining the big picture as well as understanding the next layer of the onion. You say "it's irresponsible to ingore contrarian views". I would ask, on what basis do you decide which contrarian views to reject and which ones to value? Who is the arbiter? Are you the arbiter and we must convince you? Is the general public? Is it the freerepublic bloggers? Is it the amateur scientists sitting on the sidelines throwing potshots? Is it those of us on this list with just enough knowledge to be dangerous? You say "if the contrarian view is clearly wrong, that should be demonstrable..." but who will demonstrate that? Who is responsible for deciding whether Glassman's paper on CO2 in the ocean is correct or not? Who will decide if John Baumgartner is right in his C-14 assertions? Who will decide if Russell Humphreys is right in his cosmological cooling? Do we vote to see if we have a majority? Do we give equal weighting to every commentator?
>
> The solution has actually evolved over a few hundred years in the scientific methodology. Imperfect as it is, it has been shown over and over to work. That certainly does NOT mean that all peer-reviewed publications are correct. Far from it. In the past I've opined that as many as 80% of published papers might have errors. The beauty of the system is that over time, the fraudulent work gets exposed and the right ideas are independently corroborated and confirmed. Cynics like Janice who think the system is so thoroughly corrupt that nothing can be trusted have no evidence to back up their conspiracy theories and have a tremendous amount of counterexamples to explain away. As far as I know, virtually all known frauds in science have been ferreted out and corrected from within the scientific community, not from the outside.
>
> I really don't buy this "precautionary" stuff. Once a technical community has reached the level of consensus like that which the climatologists have shown, then it becomes irresponsible for us not to act accordingly. Granted, there could be the unusual occurrence of two consecutive volcanos greater than Mt. Pinatuba only 2 years apart and all bets are off. But we don't hold off action because such a rare event might occur. We are responsible before God to act on the basis of the understanding he has given us. Allowing the shrill voices of critics who have no competing models, who have no in-depth understanding of the field, to prevent action is also unacceptable.
>
> Jonah was reluctant to go to Ninevah because he feared his dire predictions wouldn't come true and he would be shown a fool. God straightened him out, he went, preached God's word and, sure enough, the people repented, God didn't judge Ninevah, and Jonah's fears came true. The city was spared. We can and should pray that we will be spared as well but that shouldn't stop our actions.
>
> Randy
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: David Opderbeck
> To: Randy Isaac
> Cc: asa@calvin.edu
> Sent: Wednesday, January 24, 2007 10:30 PM
> Subject: Re: [asa] Creation Care
>
>
> ... who are the final arbiters of controversies in scientific debates? I think we need to educate the public about scientific methodology and the need to rely on the scientific publication process as part of authoritative opinion. Without that, there's no resolution.
>
> Randy, let me push back and play the contrarian a bit here. I hope everyone will forgive a long response, but I find this fascinating, and important.
>
> [snip]
>
> So I would say this: yes, we must take seriously the consensus of working scientists in any given field as reflected in the peer reviewed literature. However, we must also retain the rational and political freedom to evaluate consensus claims on the merits, being always mindful that the authority of all human communities, including communities of science, is necessarily limited by social dynamics and sin. Because of this, it's irresponsible to ignore contrarian views, even if they are not a significant part of the peer reviewed literature. This is particularly true where the science in question is critical to public policy and democratic debate. If the contrarian view is clearly wrong, that should be demonstrable based on the rational strength of the consensus view, without resort to arguments from authority.
>
--
David W. Opderbeck
Web: http://www.davidopderbeck.com
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Received on Sun Jan 28 21:01:45 2007
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