Uncomfortable knowledge ". . . Much of the discussion of the “war on science” and our “post-truth” condition, of course, regards not a generalized condition but a specific controversy, the failure of policy makers to heed the recommendations of climate scientists, with many climate advocates claiming that the failure to act is the result of a sustained campaign of media disinformation underwritten by fossil fuel interests. But in “Unbalanced: How Liberal Elites Have Cued Climate Polarization,” political scientists Eric Merkley and Dominik Stecula argue that there is little evidence to support this claim. Drawing upon a comprehensive study of three decades of news coverage of the issue, Merkley and Stecula find that mainstream media outlets, including conservative outlets like the Wall Street Journal and Fox News, have never given climate skeptics much of a platform. That, however, is not the end of the story. The media has played a role in the polarization of attitudes about the issue, just not the role that many have imagined. “The problem with the conventional environmental story about climate denial,” Merkely and Stecula write, “is that it ignores the critical and polarizing impact of cues Republican voters received from Democratic and liberal elites.” Over the last two decades, Republicans have become more skeptical about climate change. This is not because they were taking their cues from science denialists in the media but because they were reacting negatively to high-profile liberal and environmental climate advocates who have dominated media coverage. That is indeed uncomfortable knowledge for those who have been overwhelmingly represented on this issue in media coverage and have shaped the broader narrative. And so partisans and environmentalists invented a conspiracy to explain their failure to win over the public rather than countenance the possibility that two decades of framing the issue in ways that served partisan and ideological ends predictably polarized the issue along partisan and ideological lines. . . . "
Journal flags a dozen papers as likely paper mill products a year after sleuths identified them via Pixy A journal has issued a dozen expressions of concern over articles that a group of data sleuths had flagged last year on PubPeer as showing signs of having been cranked out by a paper mill. The 12 articles were published between 2017 and 2019 in the International Journal of Immunopathology and Pharmacology and were written by authors in China. They carry the same notice: Continue reading
Outstanding! This is one of the very best features of journals that people care about. Obviously, it's always going to be that case that some percentage of papers make it through to being published when they should not have. So, having serious journals with serious review standards is incredibly important. And, a result of that is that papers from these journals get continued serious attention and thus mistakes get called out by being removed or at least noted in preprint sites in specific fields and watched by scientists in those fields.
A Thought for the Day Posted on 09 Mar 21 by JOHN RIDGWAY • 7 Comments As someone schooled in quantum physics, I’d always looked down on climatologists such as Michael Mann. The sort of shenanigans that he and his ilk would engage in, I assumed, could not be found in the hallowed halls of a ‘hard science’ such as physics. But how wrong I was. Today, Microsoft scientists have had … Continue reading →
Its a Bit more Complicated Guest Blogger The plant matter stuff reported in PNAS is obviously true. So Greenland did mostly melt about 1 mya; otherwise those plants could not have existed there then, however briefly. But…
Rethinking Climate, Climate Change, and Their Relationship with Water Charles Rotter New open access paper by Prof. Demetris Koutsoyiannis Abstract We revisit the notion of climate, along with its historical evolution, tracing the origin of the modern concerns about climate. The… Abstract We revisit the notion of climate, along with its historical evolution, tracing the origin of the modern concerns about climate. The notion (and the scientific term) of climate was established during the Greek antiquity in a geographical context and it acquired its statistical content (average weather) in modern times after meteorological measurements had become common. Yet the modern definitions of climate are seriously affected by the wrong perception of the previous two centuries that climate should regularly be constant, unless an external agent acts upon it. Therefore, we attempt to give a more rigorous definition of climate, consistent with the modern body of stochastics. We illustrate the definition by real-world data, which also exemplify the large climatic variability. Given this variability, the term “climate change” turns out to be scientifically unjustified. Specifically, it is a pleonasm as climate, like weather, has been ever-changing. Indeed, a historical investigation reveals that the aim in using that term is not scientific but political. Within the political aims, water issues have been greatly promoted by projecting future catastrophes while reversing true roles and causality directions. For this reason, we provide arguments that water is the main element that drives climate, and not the opposite.
The delusion of consensus: How we fool ourselves. Part II: Scientific consensus building Posted on April 10, 2021 by curryja | 248 comments by Judith Curry “Like a magnetic field that pulls iron filings into alignment, a powerful cultural belief is aligning multiple sources of scientific bias in the same direction. – policy scientist Daniel Sarewitz Continue reading →
The only sensible thing for any science denier to do is to stop using science, and that includes the internet. Go live in a cave somewhere, no electricity, no internet, no meds, no car, no phone, and enjoy life....
The only sensible thing for scientists to do , is to stop being arrogant and realize present physics theory has errors . How are we ever going to advance when most scientists can't even think other than reciting memories of education ? In example , the real speed of light is 0 . Light does not have an ''engine'' . Lights momentum is a consequence of gravitational transition ( High energy state transfer to lower energy states ) . Scientists fear their jobs !
Clickbait is a winner: The most cited articles in top science journals turned out to be flops Skeptics have known for years that Nature was more about fashion than science. A parody from 2019. When it comes to scientific truths, even in top journals like Science and Nature, the more wrong it is, the more it gets cited. Even after other researchers have failed to repeat it, and been published saying so, the citations don’t slow down. Almost 9 out of 10 of the new citations keep citing it as if it were still correct. Who said science was self-correcting? It’s so bad that the junkier articles in Nature and Science that couldn’t be replicated were cited 300 times as often as the more boring papers that could be replicated. In other words, the supposedly best two science journals, and the industry that reads them, have become a filter for eye-candy-science-junk. And it was all so predictable — with the fixation on “counting citations” as an inane substitute for analysis: we got what we didn’t think about. The drive to get citations and media headlines means the modern industry of science has become a filter to amplify sensationalism, not science. Science is a form of entertainment, not a search for the truth. A new replication crisis: Research that is less likely to be true is cited more The authors added that journals may feel pressure to publish interesting findings, and so do academics. For example, in promotion decisions, most academic institutions use citations as an important metric in the decision of whether to promote a faculty member. This may be the source of the “replication crisis,” first discovered the early 2010s. So much for the theory that peer reviewed journals are supposed to be the rigorous guardians of modern science. . . .
There's just more and more to deny. “Gibberish papers still lurk in the scientific literature,” a new study reports. Several of the papers were retracted earlier this year. “Publishers grapple with an invisible foe as huge organised fraud hits scientific journals.” A look at paper mills in Chemistry World.
You're assuming the "climate science" hasn't taken any political shortcuts. Which, we know they have.
Interesting but couldn’t the "If P then Q but I don’t like Q therefore P is false” but reversed to “If P then Q. I like Q therefore P must be true” also be valid?
I don't think people deny science. They question scientists. Global warming is happening. Fact. It is a serious problem. Opinion. Covid is surrounded by lies and politics. One can choose any scientist they wish because there are varying opinions or lies or ignorance or whatever you want to call it. Science is what it is. Analysis of scientific observations, unfortunately, is polluted by humans. It is what it is.
