“The Pleasure of Finding things out” by Richard Feynman, page 187

We have many studies in teaching, for example, in which people make observations and they make lists and they do statistics, but they do not thereby become established science, established knowledge. They are merely an imitative form of science-like the South Sea Islanders making airfields, radio towers out of wood, expecting a great airplane to arrive. They even build wooden airplanes of the same shape as they see in the foreigners’ airfields around them, but strangely, they don’t fly. The result of this pseudoscientific imitation is to produce experts, which many of you are-experts. You teachers who are really teaching children at the bottom of the heap, maybe you can doubt the experts once in a while. Learn from science that you must doubt the experts. As a matter of fact, I can also define science another way: Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts.

When someone says science teaches such and such, he is using the word incorrectly. Science doesn’t teach it; experience teaches it. If they say to you science has shown such and such, you might ask, “How does science show it-how did the scientists find out-how, what, where?” Not science has shown, but this experiment, this effect, has shown. And you have as much right as anyone else, upon hearing about the experiments (but we must listen to all the evidence), to judge whether a reusable conclusion has been arrived at. . I think we live in an unscientific age in which almost all the buffeting of communications and television words, books, and so on are unscientific. That doesn’t mean they are bad, but they are unscientific. As a result, there is a considerable amount of intellectual tyranny in the name of science.

Genuine science is replicable. And “replicable” does not mean two priests recite the same doctrine, it means they explain what they did in such a fashion that anyone else could do it also.

If they refuse to explain, they are not scientists, but priests of Gaea.

Unsupported and unexplained politically correct pseudo science appears all the time in “Science” and “Nature”
For example:

Despite the fact that these papers appeared in top journals like Nature and Science, none of the journal reviewers or editors ever required Briffa to release his Yamal data. Steve McIntyre’s repeated requests for them to uphold their own data disclosure rules were ignored.

This sort of thing (that PC science is in practice exempted from data disclosure, and proudly proclaims results on the basis of secret evidence) has been an ongoing scientific scandal from the very beginning of the global warming movement, and everyone aware of this unscientific practice should have realized that global warming science is not science, but politics and religion, and that global warming scientists are not scientists, but priests of Gaea.

Environmentalism, and several other isms, are state sponsored religions, which because of state backing have the privilege of publishing their holy texts in scientific journals despite conspicuous and infamous failure to comply with the standards and rules of those journals.

Nine years later, Briffa’s Yamal data for twentieth century temperatures turned out to be that one tree of ten selected trees grew unusually rapidly during the twentieth century as compared to fossil trees of the same type from the same area. These ten trees were selected by Bricca after a great many other trees in the same area were measured, but the rest of the measurements were not included.

The larger population of trees, taken as a whole, shows much the same growth pattern as the fossil trees.

Take out one tree from those ten, Yamal06, and most of the evidence for climate change vanishes. Restore the much larger set of tree measurements from which the ten trees were selected, and all of the evidence for climate change vanishes – the population as a whole is has the same growth rates as the fossil trees.

Take out one tree from half a dozen graphs of global warming in near a dozen papers, and suddenly they do not show global warming any more.

Bricca has, at this time, not yet explained why those ten trees, and not other trees in the same area measured in the same survey. And whatever his explanation, ten trees is not enough.

The government likes data that supports more government power, rewards those that tell it what it wants to hear, and punishes those that tell it what it does not want to hear.

Environmentalism is a state sponsored religion, for it is perfectly visible to anyone that wants to look that it is not subject to the same standards as normal science, the story of Briffa and the Yamal data being one example of a great many.

People have lost their jobs for reporting that glaciers are advancing in a particular area, even though they fully agreed that most glaciers are retreating. This makes it hard to tell whether most glaciers are indeed retreating.

Environmentalism generally, and the Global Warming movement in particular, acts like a holy and sectarian religious movement, a religious movement backed by state power, not like science.

Recent events prove that on certain topics, they do not carry science, but are mere megaphones for the holy ranting of the priesthood.

Science is not that which the state decrees to be science. It is that which follows the rules of science, which unwritten rules correspond, more or less, to the written rules of the older and more prestigious journals.

If these journals are reluctant to apply these written rules on certain sensitive topics, then what appears on those sensitive topics will not be science, and hence what appears or fails to appear in such journals is not an indication of truth, but of religion.

In particular if the replacement hockey stick had been genuinely peer reviewed, then, in accordance with the unwritten rules of science, and the written rules of the older and more prestigious science journals, the data and calculations supporting the graph would have been made available. Had the data and graphs been made available, people would have objected nine years ago that ten trees are not enough.

Since not genuinely peer reviewed, since not in conformity with journal rules, therefore not genuine science, therefore mere theology.

Nasa’s primary goal is to make Muslims feel good about Muslim science.In 1903 December 17, the Wright brothers flew.

In 1905 October 05, they demonstrated powered flight “of practical utility”

In 1908, they started making a profit.

In 1969 July 20, Commander Neil Armstrong landed on the moon, but the flight was not of practical utility.

So from the Wright brothers to the moon landing was 66 years, and from the moon landing to now has been forty three years – and in those forty three years, have been slowly giving up on manned presence in space, rather than developing rockets “of practical utility”.

The “dispersal of power” that Mencius Moldbug talks about is that any profitable activity requires more and more permissions.
For each permission, I need to make a payoff – I personally have paid a great deal of money for permissions, and what is worse, had to be nice to the people shaking me down.

Obviously, each person from which a permission is needed is likely to try to capture the lion’s share of the benefit of the permitted activity.  If you need ten permissions to do something, and each of the people granting permissions  attempts to capture one third of the benefit, the activity will not happen, and everyone will be worse off.

To the extent that this happens, the more powerful concentrate power in their own hands, so that you need fewer permissions, and have to make fewer, but possibly larger, payoffs.  Then the activity proceeds, and the payoffs get made.  I would expect, but do not know by direct personal experience, that those who find themselves cut out, those who suffer their power to stop economic activities taken away from them, complain that the administration is interfering with “science”.

In a theocracy, priests are bureaucrats, so science is regulation and politics.

Old fashioned science involves replication and stuff like that, which is likely to cast doubt on the holy faith, therefore old fashioned science is anti scientific.

Thus a regime that favored old fashioned science would be deemed extremely anti scientific.  If they called Bush and Reagan chimps, you can imagine what the reaction would be to a regime that funded old fashioned science and defunded postmodern science.

Zhao is turning his attention to a topic Western researchers have shied away from because of ethical worries: Zhao plans to study the genes of 1,000 of his best-performing classmates at a top high school in Beijing and compare them, he said, “with 1,000 normal kids.”

Politically incorrect science is “unethical”

Today western science is stagnant for the same reasons as it was stagnant from 1293 to 1648 – because it has been subordinated to religion.

Predictably the boot came down on them hard.

Academia is indeed like a communist country.  They don’t shoot dissidents in Academia, but communist thought control seldom found it necessary to shoot  people.  It mostly  worked by quietly blighting the lives of troublesome people.  The greengrocer that failed to put up the sign “Workers of the World Unite”  was not sent to Siberia.  Rather, his job was redefined to be of lower status, and he was denied permission to holiday in Bulgaria.  For most purposes, this sufficed in the Soviet Union, and its equivalent suffices in Academia.  Climate “Science” is the norm.  It is the way Academia has worked since the seventies.

Does that sounds paranoid?   Here is some evidence for paranoia:

Every authority before 1970 that mentions Lamarck’s position on common descent says Lamarck proposed common descent, often quoting from Lamarck at length.  Every authority after 1970 that mentions his position on common descent says that Lamarck rejected common descent, without, however quoting anything substantial from Lamarck, or mentioning that past authorities disagreed.

To check this google for Lamarck and common descent before 1970, and after 1970.  You will find a couple of seeming counterexamples from after 1970, but if you look them up, you will see Google got the dates wrong.

After 1970, as part of the rewrite of Darwinism, they deprecated survival of the fittest as excessively racist, making it necessary to credit Darwin with something else – that something else being common descent.  Since Darwin was now credited with common descent, it was necessary to deny that Lamarck proposed common descent.

Similarly, when the Soviet Encyclopedia removed Beria from history, it was necessary to adjust the history accordingly Bergholz accordingly, and when Winston Smith removed an unperson from Big Brother’s speech, it was necessary to replace him with something else.  Since Darwin was now credited with common descent, it was necessary to deny that Lamarck proposed common descent. That the history of science is abruptly revised, and all academics everywhere docilely uniformly, and abruptly fall into line without a word of dissent, or the slightest interest in what the original documents said, is apparent in the abrupt Winston Smith style 1970 rewrite of the history of thought on evolution.

The Institute is concerned that, unless the disclosed e-mails are proved to be forgeries or adaptations, worrying implications arise for the integrity of scientific research in this field and for the credibility of the scientific method as practised in this context.

In plainer words, climate science lacks credibility.  That climate scientists tell us we are doomed unless we repent of our sins against Gaea is not good reason to think we are doomed.

The CRU e-mails as published on the internet provide prima facie evidence of determined and co-ordinated refusals to comply with honourable scientific traditions … This extends well beyond the CRU itself – most of the e-mails were exchanged with researchers in a number of other international institutions who are also involved in the formulation of the IPCC’s conclusions on climate change.

Yes, they are condemning the entire field, not just Phil Jones, not just Hadley CRU

… proxy reconstructions are the basis for the conclusion that 20th century warming is unprecedented. Published reconstructions may represent only a part of the raw data available and may be sensitive to the choices made and the statistical techniques used. Different choices, omissions or statistical processes may lead to different conclusions. This possibility was evidently the reason behind some of the (rejected) requests for further information.

In plainer words, evidently the reason that Climate scientists refused to make their data available because if other people looked at the data, they would have concluded the climate scientists were full of $#@%. This is a reference to the alternate climate reconstructions in Steve McIntyre’s report on the CRU emails.

The e-mails reveal doubts as to the reliability of some of the reconstructions and raise questions as to the way in which they have been represented; for example, the apparent suppression, in graphics widely used by the IPCC, of proxy results for recent decades that do not agree with contemporary instrumental temperature measurements.

This is a reference to “Mike’s Nature trick … to hide the decline”

There is also reason for concern at the intolerance to challenge displayed in the e-mails. This impedes the process of scientific ’self correction’, which is vital to the integrity of the scientific process as a whole, and not just to the research itself. In that context, those CRU e-mails relating to the peer-review process suggest a need for a review of its adequacy and objectivity as practised in this field and its potential vulnerability to bias or manipulation.

Peer review was in practice priestly review for theological correctness.

Fundamentally, we consider it should be inappropriate for the verification of the integrity of the scientific process to depend on appeals to Freedom of Information legislation. Nevertheless, the right to such appeals has been shown to be necessary. The e-mails illustrate the possibility of networks of like-minded researchers effectively excluding newcomers. Requiring data to be electronically accessible to all, at the time of publication, would remove this possibility.

Climate researchers should make their data available as a matter of course.

The scope of the UEA review is, not inappropriately, restricted to the allegations of scientific malpractice and evasion of the Freedom of Information Act at the CRU. However, most of the e-mails were exchanged with researchers in a number of other leading institutions involved in the formulation of the IPCC’s conclusions on climate change. In so far as those scientists were complicit in the alleged scientific malpractices, there is need for a wider inquiry into the integrity of the scientific process in this field.

As they said before, it is not just CRU, it is the entire field of climate research

How independent are the other two international data sets?

13. Published data sets are compiled from a range of sources and are subject to processing and adjustments of various kinds. Differences in judgements and methodologies used in such processing may result in different final data sets even if they are based on the same raw data. Apart from any communality of sources, account must be taken of differences in processing between the published data sets and any data sets on which they draw.

All one big conspiracy.

Peer review keeps out cranks, but it also keeps out the impious. It makes it safe for a science to become a religion, and for scientists to become priests of a state sponsored theocracy. Cranks have never been a threat to science, state sponsored theocracy has always been a threat to science, thus peer review has always been a failure. It is caused by science becoming theology, and causes science to become theology.

Back in the days when physics made dramatic progress, there was little peer review, perhaps none. For example, “Electrodynamics of Moving bodies” was not peer reviewed, and my guess is that today it would never have passed peer review – because it was written by a patent clerk, and was in large part a novel way of looking at results that were a hundred years old. Outsiders, and novel ways of looking at things are pretty much guaranteed to fail peer review.

Mountain Glaciers and snow cover have declined on average in both hemispheres and may disappear altogether in certain regions of the planet, such as the Himalayas, by 2030

Which web page has silently changed

So was it a lie, or an error?

I knew data hadn’t been verified … we thought if we can highlight it, it will impact policy makers and politicians and encourage them to take concrete action.

In other words, a lie. And if one lie, all lies.

As Patrick Archibald told us of an earlier scandal with the same lesson, the science is scuttled

The IPCC makes a hyperbolic claim about retreating glaciers, which claim originates from a for profit company owned by the chairman of the IPCC.  Millions of dollars are then granted to this company to investigate this purported disaster, to the personal profit of the chairman of the IPCC.

Now Arnold Kling gives the same analysis, calling it market failure, rather than theocracy

Suppose that we have a group that wants enormous political power. The group rewards people who justify its power by calling them “experts.” It punishes those who question its power by dismissing them as “hacks.” If you want money and status, you want to be labeled as an expert. In order to be labeled as an expert, you produce analysis that justifies concentrated political power for the elite group.

This process is self-reinforcing. It is like the Harvard-Goldman filter. That filter says that only “reliable” people are allowed to be bank CEO’s or policymakers. A requirement for being “reliable” is sharing the views of other “reliable” people as to what constitutes reliability.

It is like the tenure system in academia. Who gets tenure? Above all, it is people who support the existing tenure system

Mencius’s proposed cure for this problem is a “strong” sensible state, where “strong” means something very like fascist, or despotic. However, strong states have a poor record for sanity.  Power tends to isolate the possessor from reality.

Another solution for this problem, something that Kling would probably find more congenial, is Mencius’s “antiuniversity”

After all, the previous theocracy bit the dust thanks to protestantism and the reformation, which held one could do religion without a hierarchy. If religion can be done without a hierarchy, so can science.  The priesthood is the most vulnerable part of a theocracy.

The Air vent attempts an honest reconstruction:

Of course, this reconstruction can only be as good as the data it rests on, which we now know from the Climategate documents directory to be poor.  I argue we should throw out all dubious data – which likely means we should rely on proxy indications of temperature for the early part of the century.