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Comment by Vivtek | Hacker News Reader

I find it odd to say that the climatologists are the ones uninterested in an "honest debate". Not to mention that "honest debate" would involve acknowledging who has the, you know, expertise in the field.

The reason they use the word "idiots" is that it is a descriptive term. Some random schmoe with an opinion is not engaged in "debate" when he questions scientific fact, and the emotional charge here is entirely due to the fact that public opinion seems to think that such entitlement is perfectly legitimate, when in point of fact it is a waste of everyone's time.

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Some random schmoe with an opinion is not engaged in "debate" when he questions scientific fact

Sigh.

I'll do this one time, and then I have to get back to work.

Here's the deal: science is not dependent on "smarts". I can take a 4-year-old kid and we can test Newton's Laws of Motion just fine without any knowledge of algebra. In fact, the whole point about science being based on reproducible experiments is that we take appeal to authority out of the mix. If we still keep appeal to authority as a legitimate scientific tool of investigation then we might as well be studying phrenology or Lysenksoism (look it up).

Now the appropriate response is: but this isn't about science, this is about prevailing scientific opinion -- the best guess we have at what might happen. If you're prepared to go there, that's awesome, because then we're in a spot where we're talking about how political decisions get made, both inside and outside of science. But in that case, both sides are more on equal ground because the topics are all about how different groups arrive at various forms of consensus, not science.

It's when you get the two mixed up that the discussion gets really out of whack (to my lights, at least)

Well, I certainly appreciate your taking valuable time out of your day to respond. I'm not sure whether you were responding to me, but don't let that stop you.

Here's the deal: I didn't say science is dependent on "smarts", and I rather resent the implication that I did. (I also kind of resent the implication that I would need to look up phrenology or Lysenkoism - really you pretty much come off here as a jerk.)

What I did imply, thinking that a casual reader would not need this to be spelled out explicitly, is that if I were to get to choose someone to ask about climate, I would rather ask a climatologist, who studies climate, and therefore can be expected to know something about climatology and the actual facts thereof. I personally find that a far better way to get to the facts of the matter than, say, a pundit, or a politician, or an oil baron. Perhaps you feel that pundits, politicians, and oil barons should get equal time when I want the established current models of climatology, but that's just not the way I roll.

In fact, you say exactly that, when you say that scientific opinion is a matter of political decision. Even if you're right in any one instance, you're really wrong when it comes to the ideal scientific process - and I'll still take prevailing scientific opinion over prevailing political opinion if I'm looking for something reality-based.

In fact, in the end, I'm wondering why you took your valuable time to write this comment at all.

Sorry this is disingenuous. Sure, science is not about appealing to a specific authority, but you do need some background and training in it to be able to pull off the necessary experiments and understand the theory.

How would you and your 4 year old go about deciding whether you believe in Quantum Electrodynamics? Would you do an experiment, or would you ask an expert?

I would ask an expert who could show me a reproducible experiment.

Not wanting to step into an argument here, but I'd like to tie it back to the climate thing.

I think it's cool that you'd go to an expert to see a reproducible experiment. I'm also going to assume that it goes without saying (could be putting words in your mouth but it seems to flow from your responses) that you'd ask a lot of questions if there was unfamiliar math or concepts and basically receive very narrowly focused training in the fields around the experiment.

It's interesting to consider the likelihood/prevalence of the casual commenters on climate change (ie the ones being referred to as idiots) reproducing the climate scientists experiments or coming up to speed on the maths/concepts behind the experiment to be able to critique the experiment in the way that an expert in the field with an opinion opposed to the prevailing thought could.

I know quite a few very vocal climate change skeptics and none of them have a science background or the willingness to attain one, and they seem very proud of that. Hopefully that's a local quirk of my small sample relative to the population.

As an aside, if you can find a set of experts with the time to spend (plus, you know, equipment and money) I'd bet a decent chunk of change that you could take the prevailing scientific opinion and ask for reproducible experiments - in this case a lot would involve analysis of data already given to explain why they want to test want they want to - then you'd end up if not agreeing with them then at seeing where they were coming from.

If these people are competent climatologists and all their critics are just incompetent lobbyists with a vested interest, then hiding data and sexing up interpretations makes very little sense. In fact it is very counter productive.

Hiding stuff only makes sense when your oponent is competent enough to find your mistakes and you have a vested interest in covering up your mistakes.

Science doesn't recognize authority. Science recognizes the data. And theories backed by the data. The wonderful thing about science is that "some random schmoe" can come along and upset all of the conventional wisdom in a field by proving a new theory with data.

Defensiveness of this sort is unheplful to the legitimate pursuit of science. You can disagree with people, you can tell them bluntly "your ideas are not backed in any way by the data" (indeed, the most crushing insult in science, far more potent than a term like "idiot"), but when you defend a position merely because it's the position of the experts and ignore the data then you have stopped doing science and have engaged in either politics, religion, or both.

And yet on the public stage, they are being treated as equivalent to politics, religion, or both. This is exactly the point I'm trying to make - the random schmoe to which I refer is not the guy trying to verify models. More power to that guy - but I don't think he's the one they're defending against.

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