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Once again we see why Judith Curry is so essential to the scientific enterprise. Here she highlights the concerns of an esteemed colleague.
The perils of ‘near-tabloid science’
Posted on July 22, 2018 by curryja | 32 comments
by Judith Curry
A remarkable essay by esteemed oceanographer Carl Wunsch.
Continue reading →
32 Comments
Posted in Sociology of science, Uncertainty
From one point of view, scientific communities without adequate data have a distinct advantage: one can construct interesting and exciting stories and rationalizations with little or no risk of observational refutation. Colorful, sometimes charismatic, characters come to dominate the field, constructing their interpretations of a few intriguing, but indefinite observations that appeal to their followers, and which eventually emerge as “textbook truths.”. . .
As both human beings and scientists, we always hope for explanations of the world that are conceptually simple yet with important predictive skills (in the wide sense of that term). Thus the strong desire that box models should explain climate change, or that simple orbital kinematics can explain the glacial cycles, or that climate change is periodic, is understandable. But some natural phenomena are intrinsically complex and attempts to represent them in over- simplified fashion are disastrous.
The pitfall, which has not always been avoided, is in claiming–because an essential element has been understood–that it necessarily explains what is seen in nature. . . .
Similarly, if the inference is that the data are best rationalized as an interaction of many factors of comparable amplitude described through the temporal and spatial evolution of a complicated fluid model, the story does not lend itself to a one-sentence, intriguing, explanation (“carbon dioxide was trapped in the abyssal ocean for thousands of years;” “millennial variability is con- trolled by solar variations”; “climate change is a bipolar seesaw”), and the near-impossibility of publishing in the near-tabloid science media (Science, Nature) with their consequent press conferences and celebrity. Amplifying this tendency is the relentlessly increasing use by ignorant or lazy administrators and promotion committees of supposed “objective” measures of scientific quality such as publication rates, citation frequencies, and impact factors. The pressures for “exciting” results, over-simplified stories, and notoriety, are evident throughout the climate and paleoclimate literature.
The price being paid is not a small one. Often important technical details are omitted, and alternative hypotheses arbitrarily suppressed in the interests of telling a simple story. Some of these papers would not pass peer-review in the more conventional professional journals, but lend themselves to headlines and simplistic stories written by non-scientist media people. In the long-term, this tabloid-like publication cannot be good for the science–which developed peer review in specialized journals over many decades beginning in the 17th Century–for very good reasons.
The perils of ‘near-tabloid science’
Posted on July 22, 2018 by curryja | 32 comments
by Judith Curry
A remarkable essay by esteemed oceanographer Carl Wunsch.
Continue reading →
32 Comments
Posted in Sociology of science, Uncertainty
From one point of view, scientific communities without adequate data have a distinct advantage: one can construct interesting and exciting stories and rationalizations with little or no risk of observational refutation. Colorful, sometimes charismatic, characters come to dominate the field, constructing their interpretations of a few intriguing, but indefinite observations that appeal to their followers, and which eventually emerge as “textbook truths.”. . .
As both human beings and scientists, we always hope for explanations of the world that are conceptually simple yet with important predictive skills (in the wide sense of that term). Thus the strong desire that box models should explain climate change, or that simple orbital kinematics can explain the glacial cycles, or that climate change is periodic, is understandable. But some natural phenomena are intrinsically complex and attempts to represent them in over- simplified fashion are disastrous.
The pitfall, which has not always been avoided, is in claiming–because an essential element has been understood–that it necessarily explains what is seen in nature. . . .
Similarly, if the inference is that the data are best rationalized as an interaction of many factors of comparable amplitude described through the temporal and spatial evolution of a complicated fluid model, the story does not lend itself to a one-sentence, intriguing, explanation (“carbon dioxide was trapped in the abyssal ocean for thousands of years;” “millennial variability is con- trolled by solar variations”; “climate change is a bipolar seesaw”), and the near-impossibility of publishing in the near-tabloid science media (Science, Nature) with their consequent press conferences and celebrity. Amplifying this tendency is the relentlessly increasing use by ignorant or lazy administrators and promotion committees of supposed “objective” measures of scientific quality such as publication rates, citation frequencies, and impact factors. The pressures for “exciting” results, over-simplified stories, and notoriety, are evident throughout the climate and paleoclimate literature.
The price being paid is not a small one. Often important technical details are omitted, and alternative hypotheses arbitrarily suppressed in the interests of telling a simple story. Some of these papers would not pass peer-review in the more conventional professional journals, but lend themselves to headlines and simplistic stories written by non-scientist media people. In the long-term, this tabloid-like publication cannot be good for the science–which developed peer review in specialized journals over many decades beginning in the 17th Century–for very good reasons.
