Comments on: Evidence Based Practise http://landshape.org/enm/evidence-based-practise/ The Power of Numeracy Tue, 07 Feb 2012 17:57:00 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 By: Niche Modeling » IPCC Fraud Solutions http://landshape.org/enm/evidence-based-practise/#comment-4187 Niche Modeling » IPCC Fraud Solutions Sun, 29 Jun 2008 05:43:46 +0000 http://landshape.org/enm/evidence-based-practise/#comment-4187 [...] Formal processes are intrinsically expensive, and they also reduce the attractiveness of the work, implying greater compensation. Such a change will in fact attract different people as well as different methods. Something will be lost in the process, and an eye to preserving as much of the collegial culture as possible is also worth considering. Am I saying, “we are in trouble, send money”? Not really. I don’t think climate science is first order important as of now, as the big picture is pretty clear. It’s those of you who don’t trust us who should be willing to invest in the matter. I suggest recruiting people from other sciences who don’t have a dog in the hunt. But I’m afraid you’ll get the same answer you always do. The sensitivity to CO2 doubling on a century time scale is about 3 C. Sloppy methods or not we have this thing nailed. Now you can let us keep thinking about our angles and pins, or you can hire somebody to replicate our work. But if you insist on your sport of sniping at our informality, if you insist that we become more formal, you need to invest a lot of money to train us and/or replace us, because we weren’t trained as MDs or pharmacologists or (a few exceptions like myself notwithstanding) as engineers. The state of academic science is what it is for a number of reasons. Climatology is unexceptional except in having to deliver some very disconcerting news. You may argue that the nature of the news is such that climatology becomes higher stakes and needs to be reorganized and formalized. I have a great deal of sympathy with that position, and in that regard among others I’m an outlier within the field. Note, though, that such endeavors are expensive and prone to failure. The ‘opus’ that exists, the response to a need for an organized presentation, is the IPCC WGI reports. For all its flaws, the IPCC consensus process and its reports are an interesting and useful achievement. The network of trust on which human progress is based is badly frayed these days. I don’t think Climate Audit has made matters any better, but I understand that trust can;t be manufactured on demand. All I can do is state that I have complete confidence in the intellectual competence and moral integrity of those leading figures in the field I have been privileged to work with… It’s a problem. People are demanding forms of “proof” that aren’t well suited to the problem area. Atmospheres are complicated and interesting beasts; atmosphere-ocean-ice systems (of which we have only one non-simulated instance) the more so. They aren’t unknowable, but predictions about large experiments on a specific system will always be contingent. I am not influential enough within the field to effectively push any fixes you might suggest, but it would be interesting to hear about them anyway, to take matters in a less confrontational way. I Suppose rather than sneering at what is wrong you make some suggestions as to how to set it right, what scale that would require, and who should pay for it. That said, I believe that the concept of an outside audit is sound and I advocate one for the field of economics, so I can’t consistently argue against one for climatology. I’d be interested in constructive ideas as to how we could improve our credibility if our understanding is sound, or test our understanding if it isn’t. In my view the UN IPCC report is simply a review of the literature, useful but unsystematic and unremarkable apart for the hype surrounding it. Medical science conducts reviews all the time, and they have found that some guiding principles of Evidence Based Practice are essential: [...] [...] Formal processes are intrinsically expensive, and they also reduce the attractiveness of the work, implying greater compensation. Such a change will in fact attract different people as well as different methods. Something will be lost in the process, and an eye to preserving as much of the collegial culture as possible is also worth considering. Am I saying, “we are in trouble, send money”? Not really. I don’t think climate science is first order important as of now, as the big picture is pretty clear. It’s those of you who don’t trust us who should be willing to invest in the matter. I suggest recruiting people from other sciences who don’t have a dog in the hunt. But I’m afraid you’ll get the same answer you always do. The sensitivity to CO2 doubling on a century time scale is about 3 C. Sloppy methods or not we have this thing nailed. Now you can let us keep thinking about our angles and pins, or you can hire somebody to replicate our work. But if you insist on your sport of sniping at our informality, if you insist that we become more formal, you need to invest a lot of money to train us and/or replace us, because we weren’t trained as MDs or pharmacologists or (a few exceptions like myself notwithstanding) as engineers. The state of academic science is what it is for a number of reasons. Climatology is unexceptional except in having to deliver some very disconcerting news. You may argue that the nature of the news is such that climatology becomes higher stakes and needs to be reorganized and formalized. I have a great deal of sympathy with that position, and in that regard among others I’m an outlier within the field. Note, though, that such endeavors are expensive and prone to failure. The ‘opus’ that exists, the response to a need for an organized presentation, is the IPCC WGI reports. For all its flaws, the IPCC consensus process and its reports are an interesting and useful achievement. The network of trust on which human progress is based is badly frayed these days. I don’t think Climate Audit has made matters any better, but I understand that trust can;t be manufactured on demand. All I can do is state that I have complete confidence in the intellectual competence and moral integrity of those leading figures in the field I have been privileged to work with… It’s a problem. People are demanding forms of “proof” that aren’t well suited to the problem area. Atmospheres are complicated and interesting beasts; atmosphere-ocean-ice systems (of which we have only one non-simulated instance) the more so. They aren’t unknowable, but predictions about large experiments on a specific system will always be contingent. I am not influential enough within the field to effectively push any fixes you might suggest, but it would be interesting to hear about them anyway, to take matters in a less confrontational way. I Suppose rather than sneering at what is wrong you make some suggestions as to how to set it right, what scale that would require, and who should pay for it. That said, I believe that the concept of an outside audit is sound and I advocate one for the field of economics, so I can’t consistently argue against one for climatology. I’d be interested in constructive ideas as to how we could improve our credibility if our understanding is sound, or test our understanding if it isn’t. In my view the UN IPCC report is simply a review of the literature, useful but unsystematic and unremarkable apart for the hype surrounding it. Medical science conducts reviews all the time, and they have found that some guiding principles of Evidence Based Practice are essential: [...]

]]> By: Niche Modeling » Introduction to Carbon Credits http://landshape.org/enm/evidence-based-practise/#comment-4186 Niche Modeling » Introduction to Carbon Credits Fri, 27 Jun 2008 10:03:23 +0000 http://landshape.org/enm/evidence-based-practise/#comment-4186 [...] Science What happens if the science of the IPCC is flawed, as we often find here on this site? The idea that modern “science” is somehow pure and immune from bias is simply not realistic. There is a tendency to believe what suits one politically regardless of the science and I for one am no different. So bias is unsurprising since the member countries Australia, Canada, China, Russia, and Saudi Arabia, all of which have had a hand in editing the science and the political statement, are whittling away anything contrary. If only the climate science community was as as conscious of human bias as the medical community and adopted the standards of Evidence Based Practice in reviews of the evidence supporting their claims. If the science turns out to be flawed I expect carbon credits will continue to be a commodity, only you can’t eat them like hog’s bellies. [...] [...] Science What happens if the science of the IPCC is flawed, as we often find here on this site? The idea that modern “science” is somehow pure and immune from bias is simply not realistic. There is a tendency to believe what suits one politically regardless of the science and I for one am no different. So bias is unsurprising since the member countries Australia, Canada, China, Russia, and Saudi Arabia, all of which have had a hand in editing the science and the political statement, are whittling away anything contrary. If only the climate science community was as as conscious of human bias as the medical community and adopted the standards of Evidence Based Practice in reviews of the evidence supporting their claims. If the science turns out to be flawed I expect carbon credits will continue to be a commodity, only you can’t eat them like hog’s bellies. [...]

]]> By: Niche Modeling » Bias in Research http://landshape.org/enm/evidence-based-practise/#comment-4185 Niche Modeling » Bias in Research Fri, 13 Jun 2008 02:58:54 +0000 http://landshape.org/enm/evidence-based-practise/#comment-4185 [...] davids @ Evidence Based Practise [...] [...] davids @ Evidence Based Practise [...]

]]> By: davids http://landshape.org/enm/evidence-based-practise/#comment-4184 davids Thu, 12 Jun 2008 09:13:08 +0000 http://landshape.org/enm/evidence-based-practise/#comment-4184 It never hurts to remember that it was real people who brought about such improvements, even when the size of the opposition, such as in climate science, is large. It is a positive direction for climate skeptics, and doable to implement something like this. People can understand these levels and can even classify the quality of papers even when they don't grasp the statistical details. But I don't think it would happen unless the perception of the IPCC changed from acquiescence to scandal (like oil-for-food). I think there are a few more posts in this topic. Cheers It never hurts to remember that it was real people who brought about such improvements, even when the size of the opposition, such as in climate science, is large. It is a positive direction for climate skeptics, and doable to implement something like this. People can understand these levels and can even classify the quality of papers even when they don’t grasp the statistical details. But I don’t think it would happen unless the perception of the IPCC changed from acquiescence to scandal (like oil-for-food).

I think there are a few more posts in this topic. Cheers

]]> By: Anonymous http://landshape.org/enm/evidence-based-practise/#comment-7217 Anonymous Thu, 12 Jun 2008 09:13:00 +0000 http://landshape.org/enm/evidence-based-practise/#comment-7217 It never hurts to remember that it was real people who brought about such improvements, even when the size of the opposition, such as in climate science, is large. It is a positive direction for climate skeptics, and doable to implement something like this. People can understand these levels and can even classify the quality of papers even when they don't grasp the statistical details. But I don't think it would happen unless the perception of the IPCC changed from acquiescence to scandal (like oil-for-food). I think there are a few more posts in this topic. Cheers It never hurts to remember that it was real people who brought about such improvements, even when the size of the opposition, such as in climate science, is large. It is a positive direction for climate skeptics, and doable to implement something like this. People can understand these levels and can even classify the quality of papers even when they don’t grasp the statistical details. But I don’t think it would happen unless the perception of the IPCC changed from acquiescence to scandal (like oil-for-food).

I think there are a few more posts in this topic. Cheers

]]> By: Steve McIntyre http://landshape.org/enm/evidence-based-practise/#comment-4183 Steve McIntyre Thu, 12 Jun 2008 02:07:19 +0000 http://landshape.org/enm/evidence-based-practise/#comment-4183 David, the "evidence-based medicine" slogan and many articles originated in southern Ontario, with one of the key authors, Gordon Guyatt, even coming from a squash-playing family. Something in the water, I guess. I've read some of the articles and there are some surprising parallels to issues in the multiproxy climate articles. Guyatt is mentioned in a couple of early CA comments http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=110#comment-577 ff. Cheers, Steve David, the “evidence-based medicine” slogan and many articles originated in southern Ontario, with one of the key authors, Gordon Guyatt, even coming from a squash-playing family. Something in the water, I guess. I’ve read some of the articles and there are some surprising parallels to issues in the multiproxy climate articles. Guyatt is mentioned in a couple of early CA comments http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=110#comment-577 ff. Cheers, Steve

]]> By: Steve McIntyre http://landshape.org/enm/evidence-based-practise/#comment-7216 Steve McIntyre Thu, 12 Jun 2008 02:07:00 +0000 http://landshape.org/enm/evidence-based-practise/#comment-7216 David, the "evidence-based medicine" slogan and many articles originated in southern Ontario, with one of the key authors, Gordon Guyatt, even coming from a squash-playing family. Something in the water, I guess. I've read some of the articles and there are some surprising parallels to issues in the multiproxy climate articles. Guyatt is mentioned in a couple of early CA comments http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=110#comment-577 ff. Cheers, Steve David, the “evidence-based medicine” slogan and many articles originated in southern Ontario, with one of the key authors, Gordon Guyatt, even coming from a squash-playing family. Something in the water, I guess. I’ve read some of the articles and there are some surprising parallels to issues in the multiproxy climate articles. Guyatt is mentioned in a couple of early CA comments http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=110#comment-577 ff. Cheers, Steve

]]> By: admin http://landshape.org/enm/evidence-based-practise/#comment-4182 admin Wed, 11 Jun 2008 02:17:34 +0000 http://landshape.org/enm/evidence-based-practise/#comment-4182 That is the nature of observational sciences, so never rising above level III is a worthwhile reminder just how much evidence is needed to provide certainty comparable with experimental sciences. I should put a paragraph in the post about that, as I hadn't overlooked the issue. Another issue is that there are fewer issues in climate science, while clinical medicine is very 'fine grained'. We are really looking at one supposed problem with a few symptoms, and few possible treatments. That is the nature of observational sciences, so never rising above level III is a worthwhile reminder just how much evidence is needed to provide certainty comparable with experimental sciences. I should put a paragraph in the post about that, as I hadn’t overlooked the issue.

Another issue is that there are fewer issues in climate science, while clinical medicine is very ‘fine grained’. We are really looking at one supposed problem with a few symptoms, and few possible treatments.

]]> By: admin http://landshape.org/enm/evidence-based-practise/#comment-7215 admin Wed, 11 Jun 2008 02:17:00 +0000 http://landshape.org/enm/evidence-based-practise/#comment-7215 That is the nature of observational sciences, so never rising above level III is a worthwhile reminder just how much evidence is needed to provide certainty comparable with experimental sciences. I should put a paragraph in the post about that, as I hadn't overlooked the issue. Another issue is that there are fewer issues in climate science, while clinical medicine is very 'fine grained'. We are really looking at one supposed problem with a few symptoms, and few possible treatments. That is the nature of observational sciences, so never rising above level III is a worthwhile reminder just how much evidence is needed to provide certainty comparable with experimental sciences. I should put a paragraph in the post about that, as I hadn’t overlooked the issue.

Another issue is that there are fewer issues in climate science, while clinical medicine is very ‘fine grained’. We are really looking at one supposed problem with a few symptoms, and few possible treatments.

]]> By: mikep http://landshape.org/enm/evidence-based-practise/#comment-4181 mikep Tue, 10 Jun 2008 22:07:39 +0000 http://landshape.org/enm/evidence-based-practise/#comment-4181 systematising types of evidence is very useful. Teh difficulty with climate seems to be that, like economics, you rarely get to do trials, let alone randomised trials. This suggest that the quality of the evidence will never rise above level III except in the case of "natural" experiments. We may of course now be conducting such a natural experiment, but we have to wait a long time before teh answer is in. Hence the problem. systematising types of evidence is very useful. Teh difficulty with climate seems to be that, like economics, you rarely get to do trials, let alone randomised trials. This suggest that the quality of the evidence will never rise above level III except in the case of “natural” experiments. We may of course now be conducting such a natural experiment, but we have to wait a long time before teh answer is in. Hence the problem.

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