Practical Ethics

Climate scientists behaving badly? Part 4: what is owed to other enquirers.

Now we move on to what is owed to other enquirers

keep records of original data  and methods and make such records freely available.

The global temperature record produced by the CRU is one of the four sets of data on which the IPCC has relied, and in the opinion of many commentators it has been the most influential record and for that reason the most important one.  It is therefore a matter of very grave concern that raw data on which it is based no longer exists. It means that no one can check whether the CRU global temperature record is well founded. The fact that it is in line with other records is not the help it appears when we remember that the tuning of the data manipulation underlying those records, and hence the claims for their veracity, has depended significantly on taking the CRU global temperature record as correct. Consequently our acceptance of it depends entirely on the epistemic integrity of the CRU, an integrity which has now been significantly impugned, and is further impugned by the loss of this raw data.

 

What, then, is their attitude to the obligation to share data? This quotation is illuminating ‘The two MMs [critics of Mann’s statistical techniques] have been after the CRU station data for years. If they ever hear there is a Freedom of Information Act now in the UK, I think I’ll delete the file rather than send to anyone…..We also have a data protection act, which I will hide behind.’.[1]

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[1] http://www.eastangliaemails.com/emails.php?eid=490&filename=1107454306.txt

 

Shame on Bioedge

It may be naïve to hope for better, but the world cannot afford sly pandering to lying propaganda. Failures of epistemic integrity have real practical consequences, and nowhere is this more obvious than in the middle east. Consider this:

‘In August Sweden’s leading daily newspaper, Aftonbladet, alleged that Palestinians were being killed for their organs. …While Aftonbladet never produced any proof for its lurid claims, it now appears that the rumour had some basis in fact – although Israelis as well as Palestinians were victimised.’ Bioedge

The ‘basis in fact’ is that some doctors in a forensic laboratory harvested some ‘skin, corneas, heart valves and bones from the bodies of Israeli soldiers, Israeli citizens, Palestinians and foreign workers’. But the accusation is that Israel was deliberately killing Palestinians for their organs. Clearly, the harvesting mentioned is not evidence of the deliberate killing of Palestinians, and so is not a factual basis for the allegation. To lead the reader around this obvious refutation the author uses a weaselling qualification— ‘appears that the rumour had some’—and by this misdirection both effects and veils a disgusting insinuation.

I had believed that people involved in bioethics held themselves to higher standards of epistemic integrity than journalists, at least to the extent of abjuring low rhetorical trickery. I was wrong.

 

Climate scientists behaving badly? Part 3: the conduct of enquiry.

Part 1

Part 2  

 

Now we move on to virtue in the conduct of enquiry.

honest dealing in the conduct of enquiry

There is some evidence giving cause for concern

·        There is evidence of dogmatism: ‘The fact is that we can't account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can't. The CERES data published in the August BAMS 09 supplement on 2008 shows there should be even more warming: but the data are surely wrong. Our observing system is inadequate.’[1] Now it is indeed possible that the data is wrong, but the lack of a continued warming trend (since 1998?) is contrary to the predictions of the models on which IPCC predictions are based, and a common variety of dogmatism is to deny evidence that doesn’t fit your preconceived beliefs.

·        There is evidence of arbitrary data manipulation: ‘Another serious issue to be considered relates to the fact that the PC1 time series in the Mann et al. analysis was adjusted to reduce the positive slope in the last 150 years ... At this point, it is fair to say that this adjustment was arbitrary.’[2]

·        In the computer code there is evidence of data manipulation conducted in order to get a pre-conceived result.

·        Remarks from a programmer writing code indicate serious problems with collection and recording of original data ‘another problem that's based on the hopeless state of our databases’[3]

·        For some time there has been controversy over the selective use of data. For a recent example from a Russian institute commenting on the CRU use of Russian data (report here ): the continuous data records from Russia which taken in their entirety show warming of 1.4 C since 1860 versus CRU use of only 25% of that data to show 2.06C rise since 1860; the use by CRU of stations with incomplete and interrupted data where such data shows warming versus the omission of stations with complete and continuous data which doesn't.  

·        More broadly, local scientists in Australia and New Zealand have found broadly constant original temperature data on which a rising official temperature record has been based through the use of methods of data manipulation originating in or influenced by CRU practices. See this discussion of the problems in raw data and controversy over claims of inhomogeneity in that data  and adjustments made to produce estimates of historical temperatures from weather stations in Northern Australia: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/12/08/the-smoking-gun-at-darwin-zero/

None of these examples demonstrate straightforward dishonesty. For example, all sorts of junk gets left in computer code. People put bits in that they call ‘fudge factors’ because they think they know the broad shape of some other correction process which is not yet coded, so in early drafts a ‘fudge factor’ procedure stands as a proxy for some real adjusting factor. They are, however, evidence that more subtle vices may yet be in play.

Climate scientists behaving badly? Part 2: Objectivity

As promised at the end of part 1 (here ), I shall now run over the evidence for the failings of epistemic character among climate scientists. I shall be breaking this up into loosely related groups: objectivity, the conduct of enquiry, what is owed to other enquirers and virtue in testimony.  

impartiality

The emails show that these particular climate scientists are neither objective nor impartial. One even harbours violent urges towards a critic: ‘Next time I see Pat Michaels at a scientific meeting, I'll be tempted to beat the crap out of him. Very tempted.’[1]

 

Climate scientists behaving badly? (Part 1)

Global warming hawks claim the moral high-ground, claim to speak for what is right against grubby self-interest. It behooves those who take the high ground to behave well themselves. Do they?

 

Data and email exchanges between climate scientists have been stolen from the servers at University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit and published online. Whether the data or content of these emails tell us anything about global warming is not an issue I am concerned with. Nor, for that matter, am I concerned with bad behaviour in the sense of global warming hawks being rude about global warming skeptics. The bad behaviour of interest is epistemic bad behaviour, and on this matter I think the emails tell us quite a lot. Furthermore, the Climatic Research Unit is one of the world’s leading players and so the behaviour of its members tells us something about the epistemic state of climate science.

The Independent Safeguarding Authority

Anyone who wishes to work with children, including even a parent who wishes to help out in the school their child attends, is required to undergo vetting by the Independent Safeguarding Authority. The politicians responsible say that this will protect children from paedophiles.

 

Philip Pullman (children’s book author) has refused to be vetted because “It is insulting and I think unnecessary, and I refuse to be complicit in any scheme that assumes my guilt.” (here) As a result he will be banned from reading his books to children in schools. The Children’s Laureate thinks that ‘the scheme [is] "governmental idiocy" which [will] drive a wedge between children and adults’. Arguably, then, believing it right to vet the enormous number of people that will be vetted (11.3 million by November 2010) is corrupting of the relations between adults and children, and is in part a manifestation of something poisonous in our attitude to adults. So there is a broad question over whether the ISA, simply through existing, has bad consequences and  is unjustly disrespectful. That is not what I want to discuss. I want to consider only the issue of the epistemic duty of the politicians who have created it and of the authority itself.

Economic uncertainty and epistemic humility

In the last six months I have heard that the current economic crisis proves that free market capitalism is a failure. I have also heard that it proves that government intervention is responsible for market booms and busts. I have read that the causes of the current crisis are greed, irrationality, easy money, low interest rates, preverse incentives, complex financial instruments, subprime mortgages, people believing that house prices would always rise, people insisting that houses must be made affordable,  the US congress laws that force banks to provide a certain percentage of subprime mortgages, the capital ratio requirements on banks being less for subprime mortgage backed securities than for prime mortgages, the distortion of mortgage lending by government sponsored entities (Freddie Mac and Fannie May), the lack of an exchange for credit default swaps creating un-noticed systemic counterparty risk, mark to market valuation of bank assets, too little government regulation, too much government  regulation, the government scaring us, the government not scaring us enough,  the lack of a bail out (stock market falls) , the delay of a bail out (stock market continues to fall), and the bail out (stock market carries on down).

 

Why am I talking about this? Because these circumstances are precisely the kind in which we in general and experts in particular indulge in a certain kind of epistemic irresponsibility: over-confidence in belief. When the stakes are high and circumstances highly uncertain it appears that we can hardly bear to conform our belief to the uncertainty. Paradoxically, uncertainty turns us to dogmatism.

Forensic Failure

Testimonial power is the power we have to determine the opinion of others by testifying. To testify is to make sincere assertions in such circumstances under which we are understood to be offering those assertions as to be worth relying upon. When things go well, we tell people what we know and they come to know it through our telling them. We all have varying degrees of testimonial power relative to subject matter, to circumstance, to our knowledge and to what we are known by others to know.

 

Forensic experts are granted immense testimonial power. Their testimony is taken to be sufficient for conviction in the absence of any other evidence. Judges are reluctant to delve into the grounds of their expertise or into underlying disagreements among experts on the meaning of forensic evidence or the basis of interpretation. Their claims are taken to be backed by the epistemic authority of scientific method.

 

I do not think that forensic experts presently warrant the testimonial power they have been granted.

Epistemic duty and conspiracies against the laity 2

Conspiracies against the laity frequently operate with an inverted morality. For example, honour among thieves includes the obligation not to snitch, that is to say, not to tell the truth about the wrongdoing of each other. By contrast, the professions have an epistemic duty to speak the truth about the success and failure of the deployment of their particular profession’s expertise, and about the success and failure of the professional activities in which they are engaged and for which they are responsible.

Margaret Haywood, a nurse, had sought to fulfil this duty, but the Nursing and Midwifery Council has treated her as a snitch.

Conspiracies against the laity and wishful thinking

Most duties are concerned with or grounded in the significance of actions. By contrast, an epistemic duty is a duty whose grounding object is belief or knowledge rather than action. My concern here is with a certain epistemic duty had by professionals and their professional organizations. Professionals present themselves in public as being in possession of special expertise and as taking on correlate special responsibilities. They require us to grant them special discretion on the promise of holding each other accountable through professional organizations, which organizations in turn present themselves in public as speaking for their profession.
    The epistemic duty that concerns me here is the duty to speak the truth about the success and failure of the deployment of their particular profession’s expertise, and about the success and failure of the professional activities in which they are engaged and for which they are responsible. This a duty which professional organizations are reluctant to fulfil. Bluntly, their message to us is often “ we know a lot so shut up, do what we tell you, trust anybody we approve of  and don’t hassle us about them: we’ll let you know if there’s a problem”. Too cynical for you?