When it's climate science people get all offended and say the experts are merely being arrogant. To borrow a phrase from Rumsfeld, science knows what it doesn't know. We have known unknowns. That's how we make progress and guide research. Scientists are the first people to admit what they do and do not know.
I wish both skeptics and warmists would do the same. In that case we'd actually have answers that say 'I'm no expert, but this is what I believe on the basis of what I've read on the internet rather than actual scholarship or research in the area ...'
Zippi's characterisation of scientists is completely wrong. It's a case of him quite happily accepting science when it suits. Like, you know, refrigerators, cars, kettles, laptops, phones, and all the other things those pesky arrogant scientists worked out the principles behind. I suspect it's easier to live in a bubble of ignorance if you just assume anyone trying to pop that bubble is in error.
It’s human nature to be afraid of things we don’t understand and as a result people who don’t understand science are sometimes afraid of it. Rather than embrace it, they shy away from it. They don’t have the intellectual capacity to rationalise science, to understand it or to question its findings.
Science often provides the evidence that opposes an individual’s opinions. They don’t like this, rather than reassess their position in the light of the evidence they take the easy option of summarily dismissing the science. Creationism is a classic example. There is an incontrovertible mountain of evidence that opposes the creation theory, the creationists have never once refuted any of this evidence and rarely make any attempt to do so, instead their attitude is to simply dismiss it as being wrong.
Running away from science and pretending it doesn’t exist is scientific illiteracy. Making up all manner of bizarre claims in an attempt to justify an opinion is scientific illiteracy. Scientific arrogance is the perception the illiterate have of those who know more than they do.
In simple terms, the brains of the scientifically literate and illiterate are wired differently. Some people will have no trouble at all following scientific curricula or working in a scientific environment whereas others will stumble and fail from the outset. This is human nature, there’s noting wrong, just that some people ‘get it’ and others don’t.
Where it becomes disastrous is when the illiterate pretend to know what they’re talking about, to those with a scientific mind their actions are hilarious, they’re so transparent and their incompetence is breath-taking. The problem is, the illiterates don’t possess the requisite knowledge to realise their own folly (look up Dunning Kruger Effect).
Of course, it doesn’t just apply to science, but to all areas of academia and expertise.
It would be helpful if the illiterates could actually identify themselves and thus confine themselves to subjects about which they do know something, this can’t happen and we’ll continue to see the illiterates attempting to engage in subjects about which they know nothing.
Don’t get me wrong, being scientifically illiterate isn’t a failing or a weakness, it’s human nature – some people are good at certain subjects and others aren’t.
Just out of interest – where do you consider yourself to be on the scale of scientific literacy?
In as direct of an answer as I can be to my own question : Science is "extremely arrogant" and has "caused" extreme harm to human existence with their "scientific arrogance".
Humans are instinctively in error to "think" they are "absolutely right" about anything. Yes! 1+1 =2, but it does lead to 3 and beyond (i.e. infinity). There's an inherent error in human intelligence that things are finite. This is where the confusion between "cause and effect" is linked to the word "luck". "Luck" is a made-up word for not knowing how something happened that became a positive (like winning a lottery). It's because we don't "totally" understand the phrase "cause and effect" as it pertains to anything. There is only "conjecture" and that leads to having a certain faith in what is true and good. "Chance" is always misconstrued as being "caused" by "luck".
The original definition of "science" (that I remember) was : "the study of" something. It was always a subject for interpretation no matter what the subject was that the research "pertained" to. The scientific interpretation of any research is always scrutinized!
Joe Joyce - " ... Leading representatives of the IPCC tried for years to have policymakers and citizens believe the pre-industrial temperature history was more or less uneventful and was the ideal climate condition that we should all strive to maintain. The warming of the 20th century, on the other hand, was completely unusual, something dangerous. However, as we now know, the page turned a few years ago and the notorious Hockey Stick chapter ended. The flawed curve was taken off the market and the Medieval Warm Period and Little Ice Age reappeared.
As is often the case in history, it is in retrospect difficult to comprehend how this historical joyride could have happened to begin with. It started at the end of the 1990s with a doctoral thesis by Michael Mann, and did not end until about 10 years later – thanks to the discovery of the scientific scandal by Steve McIntyre and Ross McKitrick (see the book The Hockey Stick Illusion by Andrew Montford). Today it is difficult to fathom how the main players and proponents of the Hockey Sticks are still able to act as experts and public opinion shapers. ... "
Another arrogant statement by yourself
Joe Joyce is an example of scientific illiterate.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut...
The earth has been cooling for over a decade and he still clings to the 'Hockey Stick'. And even in the face of the temperature is going down and yet at the same time the CO2 level is increasing. Now that is beyond illiterate. That is asinine.
Trevor is an example of arrogance. He flaunts his educational background and then lies and expects you to believe his drivel. Here is where I caught him lying three times on one question.
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?...
Trevor caught three times lying on the same question.
Tsk! Tsk! They are so visible to genuinely intelligent people. But they have a great influence on people with a grade school mentality.
Yes climate scientists are extremely arrogant, which is rather strange seeing as nearly every prediction/projection made by them has turned out to be either incorrect or not happening.
I give you some credit for putting "high profile" in quotes. Yet, when real high profile climate scientists talk, denialists call them liars and post videos of graphs taped to see-saws.
The interesting thing is that the same can be said of the deniers though it does appear more as arrogance due to illiteracy.
Since Joe and pegminer have it pretty well covered, I’ll provide a few simple ways of determining someone’s scientific literacy (or absence there of).
Anyone saying the following is scientifically illiterate:
“It (referring to anything in any field of science) is just a theory.”
“It (climate change) is a natural cycle.” This includes every variant of “temperature has always gone up and down” – “the climate has always changed” – etc.
“AGW is based on climate models.”
“The last 17 years of temperature shows / proves ______” (anyone who fills in the blank with anything other than “nothing” is scientifically illiterate).
“AGW is based on the Hockey Stick” (can also include comments about the Hockey Stick being proved wrong).
Anyone using “WUWT, science, research, etc,” in the same sentence is scientifically illiterate.
Anyone referring to “true science” or to themselves (or other Deniers as “true scientists”).
And – anyone calling themselves a skeptic who makes any of these statements is both scientifically illiterate and a liar.
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Zippie62 –
>> It started at the end of the 1990s with a doctoral thesis by Michael Mann<<
This is the reason we know Deniers are stupid liars who have never researched the subject of climate change and have never had an original thought or idea of their own – ever.
Anyone too lazy and stupid to figure out when Mann got his PhD – and too ignorant to know that fresh PhDs never get their dissertation research published in ‘Science’ or ‘Nature’ – and who professes to know more science than scientists – and then calls informed and educated people arrogant is a worthless POS.
You asked: "Is this "scientific arrogance", "scientific bias", or "scientific illiteracy"? "
The answer is 'none of the above'. It's called being a Jackass.
both are republican
It seems that alarmism has so much confidence in their "interpretations" of climate research that they often try and "dumb down" anyone who would "question" the scientific interpretation of scientific research. They often do this to "high profile" climate scientists who reject the idea of the "catastrophic" nature of CO2 warming. Is this "scientific arrogance", "scientific bias", or "scientific illiteracy"?
You say I'm arrogant because I tell you that the things you say are complete scientific nonsense, which they are. Just look at the first sentence of your answer to this question:
https://answers.yahoo.com/question/index...
You're just babbling incoherent nonsense. Maybe there's a nicer way to phrase it, but I don't see calling out scientific gibberish for what it is as arrogance. It's just an attempt to keep other people from paying attention to your ravings.
Hey, Zip, let's get real here. When study after study by rival groups who would love to show each other up confirms the basic hockey stick shape even though each one has the details different, we can be pretty confident that the hockey stick shape is real, and it is telling us something important.
Scientific arrogance is participating in study after study which purports to show the decades-long consensus is wrong, but all of which prove wrong themselves, thus exposing a strong bias on the part of the handful of errant participants of the bad studies, but seeing said scientists claiming yet again and again that *this* time, they have definitively overthrown all of climate science with *this* paper... (cough, cough, Lindzen, cough, Spencer, cough...)
Scientifically illiterate refers to some statisticians, say, trying to claim that this eventually demonstrated to be insignificant statistical error in this particular seminal paper invalidates all the other studies as well as the one in which it's found, or that the results are forced by the process used, when they didn't realize that investigating scientists would find their faked results (cough, cough, the "Mack" Twins, I & K, cough...)
The lowest level of scientific illiteracy is shown by those who parrot arguments long ago and/or repeatedly shown to be incorrect, like "it's the Sun" or "CO2 is going up but the temperature is going down". You will find a number of them here. As a group, they are called deniers. Interestingly, among these most scientifically illiterate are the most scientifically arrogant, confidently spouting demonstrated distortions, lies, and outright insanities seemingly without realizing they are logical fallacies, confusions of categories, hypotheses long disproven, and other, more basic, mental confusions including fantasies of conspiracy, persecution, and what can only be described as visions of worlds/universes not our own.
************EDIT
Science does have a fair handle on climate sensitivity. No, science cannot tell you that the temperature will go up exactly 3.2357C for each doubling of CO2. But it does give a likely range around ~3C. For a system as complex as earth's climate, the climate sensitivity number might be a bit different for each doubling of CO2 + CO2 equivalent gases. But it's been studied intensively, and most of the answers come out to 3ish degrees. Work that claims 1 degree has been shown to be in error. The data is available, as are GCMs and other data analysis tools. Our society is built on the same science that goes into GCMs. Do you believe in society?
Arrogance is to know too much and try to impose it on others.
Illeterate means to know nothing and try to impose on others.
both are republican
