From Climate Scepticism

By JOHN RIDGWAY

How some accusations just never go away

The climate change debate has been going on for so long now that I am quite sure that fatigue and boredom must be setting in on both sides. Sceptics have gained a reputation for raising the same points repeatedly, only to be told that their concerns have been answered so many times already, and the only thing that is preventing their moment of revelation is an inability to think critically, their insistence on cherry-picking favoured experts, and sheer bloody-mindedness. But sceptics have heard this all before, since these allegations are just one side of the endless game. And, sadly, it seems the fact that there can’t be anything new left to be said by either side isn’t going to lead to any form of truce in the foreseeable future. Must it therefore be the fate for both that they should plunge into the depths of the Reichenbach Falls locked in a deadly embrace? Perhaps some people were just made for each other.

Today I invite you to join me in taking one more spin on the merry-go-round of doom. And to achieve the right degree of vertigo, we will be returning to a very old topic indeed. In fact, it is a topic I covered in the very first article I wrote for Cliscep some 135 efforts ago. That article was called ‘The Scientist and the Bluebottle’ and it was written to challenge one of the oldest memes in the meme pool — the meme that we sceptics are anti-science and just don’t understand the scientific process. Back then I wasn’t challenging anyone in particular; however, today I will not be waltzing on my own. Today my dancing partner is Dr David Robert Grimes, who threw down the gauntlet by writing an article in the Guardian stating, ‘One scientist can be wrong. But deny the scientific consensus at your peril’.

So let the dance begin.

Dr Grimes started his career by researching into ultraviolet radiation physics, but it wasn’t very long before he somewhat astutely recognised that this wasn’t going to get himself known to a wider audience. So he quickly worked to establish a reputation as a public defender of The Science^TM, bravely slaying a myriad of assailants who would variously take on the form of cranks, charlatans, conspiracy theorists, and ‘pseudo-sceptics’. It was in that role of defender of the faith that he wrote himself a book and became a fellow with the Committee for Sceptical Inquiry.

Of course, people who believe in ghosts, homeopathy and intelligent design are ready-made foils for the scientifically trained sceptic, and on that basis I wouldn’t normally pay a lot of interest to Dr Grimes’ work; I prefer instead to read things that can expand my understanding rather than simply confirm it. However, in his latest Guardian article he is taking on someone who you wouldn’t normally categorise as your average regular nut job – he’s having a pop at the former MI6 chief, Sir Richard Dearlove. And the reason why Dearlove has got Grimes all riled up is a comment that he made regarding artificial intelligence and the prophets of doom:

Reacting to grave warnings from some scientists over potential dangers of AI, Dearlove professed scepticism, reasoning that such dire predictions cannot be taken overly seriously given the failures of scientists on Covid.

What is so wrong with that, you might ask? Plenty, according to Grimes:

Such comments betray a common and insidious confusion over what science is and how it should be interpreted, and risk emboldening scientific denialists.

How so, David?

Part of the error stems from a mistaken conflation of “science” and “scientist”. Science is not an arcane collection of dogma but an active and systematic method of inquiry. Science pivots on making testable predictions, which are updated as new findings emerge, to reflect the totality of evidence. Scientific positions are always transient, subject to revision when stronger evidence emerges. All scientific knowledge is provisional, therefore scientific advice is prone to change and can evolve at dizzying speeds during periods of intense discovery.

So it appears that the failures to which Sir Richard referred were not failures at all but gobbets of scientific advice that were prone to change and evolve at dizzying speeds during periods of intense discovery. What we saw during Covid wasn’t scientists failing in their purpose but succeeding at a dizzying pace. How could Sir Richard have missed that? The answer to Dr Grimes is obvious. It must be because he is one of those ‘scientific denialists’ who doesn’t understand the scientific method.

Unlike Dr Grimes, I don’t see any reason to be so presumptuous regarding Sir Richard, because I am inclined to agree that some of the wildly changing advice wasn’t anything to do with evidence-driven success propelled at dizzying speeds, but the outcome of bickering between scientists who were too keen to formulate firm opinions based upon evidence that couldn’t possibly support them. Scientists are human, after all, and even Dr Grimes himself seems keen to make that point:

By stark contrast, scientists are people, susceptible to the same human flaws, biases and dishonest conduct as anyone else.

Which might lead you to suspect that Dr Grimes does understand after all. But alas no, because he follows up with this:

Such failures were brought into sharp focus throughout the pandemic, when a small but vocal cohort of fringe figures with scientific or medical qualifications peddled demonstrably false assertions, encompassing everything from Covid conspiracy theories to anti-vaccine propaganda. These positions were profoundly unscientific and readily debunked.

The conclusion is clear here. Human frailties can result in individuals drawing incorrect conclusions but the scientific method ensures that an authorised position based upon consensus cannot be wrong. Or, at the very least, it can be relied upon to the extent that current evidence and understanding supports it. It is only those who challenge the consensus that need to be treated with disdain, because, by implication, they are ignoring the evidence.

To see how Dr Grimes’ thesis works in practice let’s go back to the start of the pandemic, when Jenny Harries, then Deputy Chief Medical Officer for England (but not yet a Dame), came to the podium every night to answer questions from the press. On the subject of mask wearing, her message was clear: the science tells us that wearing a mask would not help and would probably increase the risk. And then one day, completely out of the blue, she came to the podium and declared that we must all wear masks as a matter of the highest importance – the science says so. Prior to that announcement, anyone proclaiming the importance of face coverings was being anti-scientific. After the announcement it was those who continued to oppose masks who carried that stigma. Dr Grimes would have you believe that this is completely okay. It was all evidence-driven and to not join Harries in her U-turn would be to fail to understand how science works. As he puts it:

While a cynical reading of seeming volte-faces like this might be that science “got it wrong”, such interpretations fail to comprehend that science does not profess to offer inerrant truths, but rather continuously adapts with best evidence.

Of course, evidence is often not that binary. The science behind the wearing of a face covering was, and remains, highly speculative with a great deal of controversy and a plethora of disputed studies. The same goes for so much more regarding the Covid pandemic and the various interventions. The truly scientific approach in many instances would be to simply admit our levels of ignorance and not lean too much upon a consensus that is, at best, influenced by evidence though hardly driven by it. Yes, I agree that all scientific conclusions are subject to uncertainty, but there comes a point when the uncertainty should preclude the drawing of conclusions; yet too often it doesn’t. In this instance, Harries wasn’t saying there isn’t enough evidence to support mask wearing; she was saying that the evidence is against it. The next day the situation was reversed.

When I wrote my first Cliscep article I reflected upon my decision to forgo a glittering but largely fantasised scientific career. I describe my prospects this way:

In reality, I was destined to become nothing more than a fact-sniffing bluebottle, seeking out the truth by joining the swarm of scientists buzzing above whichever epistemic turd had the most compelling aroma.

That, I suspect, is the fate for most of those who ply their scientific trade; the swarming instinct is very strong. This human tendency to collect around popular ideas that receive official backing is something to be wary of, and I’m not at all sure that Dr Grimes is. I find his trust in the ability of the scientific method to create a reliable consensus to be naive. And yet he is only saying exactly what I used to say when I was his age. In his case I suspect it is because he has spent too much time focussing upon the human frailty of contrarians and how that has led them astray, rather than reflecting upon how human frailty can also operate socially, to the point of creating consensus that is anything but evidence-led.

But it isn’t as though history hasn’t provided him with plenty of examples. Was the erstwhile dominance of the frequentist paradigm over Bayesianism within statistics evidence-led? Is the fact that Bayesianism now holds sway the result of new information coming to light? Is the now almost total dominance of string theory within the institutes of foundational physics due to it being evidence-led? After all, there isn’t a single scientific experimental result available to support the theory. Was the emergence of a dominant Deutsche Physik in the early 1930’s evidence-led? Was there any reliable rationale behind the supposed inferiority of ‘Jewish physics’? Did data cause Lysenkoism to thrive? There couldn’t possibly be a better example of an anti-scientific dogma than Lysenkoism, and yet it came to be the consensus view as far as the scientific authorities in the USSR were concerned.

I first came across the notion that ‘there is science and then there are scientists’ many years ago when I read Bart Kosko’s book on the development of fuzzy logic (‘Fuzzy Thinking — The New Science of Fuzzy Logic’). He even dedicated a chapter to the distinction. Fuzzy logic, in its early days, met with much opposition from traditional statisticians brought up on binary logic. And yes, there was much human frailty on show within the scientific community. But it wasn’t those few cranks and contrarians who proposed fuzzy logic that were at fault. It was the scientific majority that Kosko was complaining about. Science said that fuzzy logic was a valid idea, but the scientists were saying no. This is the way it can be sometimes. Scientists are indeed just people, susceptible to the same human flaws, biases and dishonest conduct as anyone else. But the idea that this can lead to some individuals going off the rails, whilst the railroad can always be trusted to be headed in the right direction, simply underestimates the capacity of human frailty. Maybe Dr Grimes will come around to my way of thinking when he too grows older and more cynical. Maybe he too will join the ranks of his ‘scientific denialists’. However, I somehow doubt that. It would be like the Pope becoming an atheist.