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An article recently published in a journal from Britain's Royal Society, titled "The Natural Selection of Bad Science," explains that rewards for scientists have polluted the scientific process.
So most of this research is crap. It's not true. It's hard to tell which work is real and which is fraudulent. In order to do so one must get down in the weeds and learn the science, and one must be confident enough to be guided by what one finds, but most people are unwilling or unable to do so. Simply trusting the scientists, however, isn't a good idea.
Strip away all the nonsense in climate science, and what does one find? In my opinion, one finds that 1) there is too much uncertainty to make predictions about future climate that can guide public policy. and 2) there are no public policies that have been proposed or are feasible that would actually affect the climate in predictable or significant ways.
Science is becoming increasingly unscientific | Washington Examiner
Commenting on the article, Patrick Michaels writes: "The things that scientists crave – like tenure and research funding – incentivize frequent publishing of massive numbers of academic papers," Michaels wrote. "To publish that much, you need a tremendous amount of financial support. And when it comes to scientific work that could have regulatory implications, almost all of the money comes from Washington."
Michaels uses the example of climate science throughout his article, which is being heavily funded and incentivized to find dire predictions.
So, instead of being rewarded for research that supports a prior hypothesis, no matter how sloppy it is, those involved in climate studies get published a lot not by testing (which can't be done in the prospective sense) but by producing dire, horrific results," Michaels wrote. "Because these often appear in prominent journals — which love to feature articles that generate big news stories — the greater the horror, the more likely is promotion, citation and more money."
He also cites Stanford University researcher Daniele Fanelli, who found that positive results in research have been increasing for decades, which can't possibly be true. It's just not possible that we are able to propose a hypothesis and prove it true at such a high rate. But people who give money to scientists are funding the hypothesis, not the results. Negative findings are a waste of their money, so scientists are increasingly ensuring they prove their hypotheses true.
So most of this research is crap. It's not true. It's hard to tell which work is real and which is fraudulent. In order to do so one must get down in the weeds and learn the science, and one must be confident enough to be guided by what one finds, but most people are unwilling or unable to do so. Simply trusting the scientists, however, isn't a good idea.
Strip away all the nonsense in climate science, and what does one find? In my opinion, one finds that 1) there is too much uncertainty to make predictions about future climate that can guide public policy. and 2) there are no public policies that have been proposed or are feasible that would actually affect the climate in predictable or significant ways.
Science is becoming increasingly unscientific | Washington Examiner