Scientific Method

Professional Associations’ Position Statements

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By Kip Hansen – Re-Blogged From WUWT

featured_imageThe internet information pipe is gushing out information faster than most people can handle.  It is increasingly difficult to sort and strain that information flow to find the bits that are important for one’s work.  One of my many filters is the continuing series of blog posts by Judith Curry, titled “Week in review – science edition”, in which Dr. Curry lists science articles, studies, blog posts and the like that “caught her eye” in the preceding week(s).  She not only lists pieces that have added to our knowledge base and represent “a lot of progress in climate science” but she includes interesting bits that relate often to the philosophy and practice of science in general.  Her suggestions lead to her readers pulling the threads and offering follow-up sources of ideas.  One of those follow-ups, offered to us by Climate Etc. reader “Faustino” led me to an article on Quillette.com (“a platform for free thought”) titled “Motivated Reasoning Is Disfiguring Social Science” written by Chris Ferguson.

Chris Ferguson is a psychologist who serves on the Council of Representatives of the American Psychological Association (APA).  This council, he tells us:

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Science and Nonscience

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By Neil Lock – Re-Blogged From http://www.WattsUpWithThat.com

Today, I’m going to write about science. This won’t be a technical paper. It won’t be full of numbers or equations. Instead, I’m going to look at science from the generalist point of view. I’m going to ask questions like: What is science? How useful is it to the making of decisions, including political ones? And, how can we tell good science from bad?

What is science?

According to Webster’s, science is: “knowledge or a system of knowledge covering general truths or the operation of general laws.”

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The Myth of the Anti-Science Denier

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By John Ridgway – Re-Blogged From http://www.WattsUpWithThat.com

I’ll tell you what you don’t get to see that often nowadays: Death by Chocolate.

There was a time, not so long ago, when no dinner party was complete without a postprandial chuckle over the prospects of slumping dead into one’s pudding bowl. Now, sadly, Death by Chocolate has gone the way of Mississippi Mud Pie and Baked Alaska, never again to menace party-goers with fanciful threats that belie the delicious truth. It all seemed so jocular then.

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Alarums And Excursions

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By Willis Eschenbach – Re-Blogged From http://www.WattsUpWithThat.com

My friend Dr. Willie Soon is both a charming man and a most courageous scientist, who has taken a lot of heat for his principled stands on climate issues. He recently wrote a piece about climate alarmism along with Kesten Green and J. Scott Armstrong which deserves much wider circulation, which WUWT is glad to provide.

the sky is falling

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Scientists vs Charlatans

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[A Congressional Committee met to discuss The Scientific Method. The following is part of an essay reviewing the testimony. – Bob]

By Leo Goldstein – Re-Blogged From http://www.WattsUpWithThat.com

…. There are at least two obstacles that prevent Republican statesmen from understanding that climate alarmism is completely wrong on natural sciences.

The big obstacle: managing bodies of the NAS, formerly respected academic societies, and foreign national academies adopted statements that either outright support or do not contradict climatist pseudo-science. This is an important fact. Of course, there are two causes for that: internal corruption that has been happening over decades and pressure from the Obama administration and its counterparts in other Western countries. Democrat Congresspersons might congratulate themselves for their contribution to shutting up opposition views. But it is hard to convince Republicans that this happened in front of their eyes and under the watch of many of them.

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Compulsory Courses for Any Curriculum; The Science Dilemma

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By Dr Tim Ball – Re-Blogged From http://www.WattsUpWithThat.com

Science is pervasive directly and indirectly in every phase of modern life. While the majority are not directly involved in science, they need to understand science and how it works. It is increasingly the underlying control of social, political, and economic decisions made by them or for them. They need to understand how it works, even if they don’t make it work. This knowledge must be a fundamental part of any school curriculum.

Climate skeptics struggle with getting the majority of people to understand the problems with the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) anthropogenic global warming (AGW) story. It was the theme of my presentation at the first Heartland Climate Conference in New York and many articles and presentations since. The problem is much wider because it relates to the lack of scientific abilities among a majority of the population. Based on teaching a science credit for science students for 25 years, giving hundreds of public presentation and involving myself in education at all levels from K-12, to graduate, and post-graduate, plus the transition to the workplace, I believe a fundamental mandatory change in thinking and curricula are required.

I believe abilities are an example of the ongoing nature/nurture argument. People can learn an ability, but can only achieve a high level of competence with an innate ability. For example, most people can learn the mechanics of teaching, but only a few are ‘gifted’ teachers. These concepts are particularly true of certain abilities, such as music, art, languages and mathematics. From my experience, I learned that most people with these gifts struggled with understanding why other people cannot do as they do. Often, they do not even see their ability as unique, and some deride those without their ability. On a larger scale than just mathematics, which philosophically is an art, is the distinction of abilities between those who are comfortable with science and those who are not.

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