Snap Science Thoughts

From Unfocusgroup.org

22 Jun 09:

Accepted pseudoscience

It's amazing how many scientists will drop their usual standards of rigour when it comes to the climate change debate. Climate change remains a theoretical risk, but every flood or unusual weather spell sparks predictions of doom. It's disingenious, because standards of "proof" accepted in the scientists vary with the politics: for medicine, it's double-blind, randomised controlled trials; for psychology, it's an experiment involving a couple of monkeys; whereas for climate change we just need a windy day.

Experimentation is one of the central principles of science. Evidence is gathered via repeated experiments. However, global-scale phenomena cannot be analysed in this manner. Some things only ever happen once. This is where science has difficulty in interpreting things. Such phenomena include:

• Evolution
• The big bang
• Global epidemics
• Climate change

In some of these cases, the phenomenon only ever happens once. For example, the big bang has only ever happened once. In others, the data is so different each time, that we cannot compare like with like. For example, a global epidemic today cannot be compared with a global epidemic 100 years ago, because the underlying parameters are so different. For all intents and purposes, global pandemics are one-off phenomena. Each one is so different from the last that normal standards of scientific rigour cannot apply in the analysis of such phenomena. There is no "control earth", and no way of replicating the exact underlying starting conditions of each outbreak, like we can wash a petri dish. It's just too complicated.

In the popular media, the opinion of leading scientists is often quoted in relation to phenomena such this. In all such cases, the opinion is conjecture, simply because the phenomena concerned are one-off phenomena.

16 Jun 09:

• It's beyond belief that no leading academic has produced a strongly-worded statement condemning the panic about swine flu. It's clear that as far as we know so far, the risk is very low that there will be mass fatalities. There's a lot to say about this, but I feel that it's not just the media that are excited about swine flu. Scientists in particular get excited by new things.

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