Category Archives: Scientific method

Pasteur’s quadrant

Posted on May 15, 2013 | 130 Comments

by Judith Curry

The savage budgetary pressures we will have at least into the 21st Century are part of the reason why we must attempt to develop a fresh contract between science and government. – Donald Stokes

Continue reading →

→ 130 Comments

Posted in Scientific method

Is fat good?

Posted on January 4, 2013 | 325 Comments

by Judith Curry

Epidemiologists struggle to explain a study that challenges a core belief:  Fat will kill you. – William Saletan

Continue reading →

→ 325 Comments

Posted in Climate change impacts, Scientific method

Can we avoid fooling ourselves?

Posted on December 28, 2012 | 692 Comments

by Judith Curry

The first principle is that you must not fool yourself and you are the easiest person to fool. - Richard Feynman

Continue reading →

→ 692 Comments

Posted in Ethics, Scientific method

Climate change: no consensus on consensus

Posted on October 28, 2012 | 1,310 Comments

by Judith Curry

The manufactured consensus of the IPCC has had the unintended consequences of distorting the science, elevating the voices of scientists that dispute the consensus, and motivating actions by the consensus scientists and their supporters that have diminished the public’s trust in the IPCC.

Continue reading →

→ 1,310 Comments

Posted in Consensus, Scientific method, Sociology of science

What exactly is critical thinking?

Posted on October 11, 2012 | 421 Comments

by Judith Curry

Everyone applauds the idea of critical thinking, and liberal arts colleges often make their ability to teach critical thinking a key selling point. But no one seems to define what they mean by that term. – Paul Gary Wyckoff

Continue reading →

→ 421 Comments

Posted in Scientific method

On the rapid disintegration of projections

Posted on August 22, 2012 | 275 Comments

by Judith Curry

How and why did the scientific consensus about sea level rise due to the disintegration of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS), expressed in the third Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) assessment, disintegrate on the road to the fourth? 

Continue reading →

→ 275 Comments

Posted in Scientific method, Sociology of science

Philosophical reflections on climate model projections

Posted on August 12, 2012 | 910 Comments

by Judith Curry

Should probabilistic qualities be assigned to climate model projections?

Are the approaches used by the IPCC for assessing climate model projection quality – confidence building, subjective Bayesian, and likelihood –  appropriate for climate models?

What are some other approaches that could be used?

Continue reading →

→ 910 Comments

Posted in climate models, Scientific method

Special issue on postnormal climate science

Posted on July 24, 2012 | 753 Comments

by Judith Curry

Nature and Culture has a special issue on postnormal climate science.

[T]he concept of post-normal science helps to open up scientific discourse, to identify complex cultural and political situations, and to improve and extend the range of practices of an applied science. – Kraus, Schafer, and von Storch.

Continue reading →

→ 753 Comments

Posted in Policy, Scientific method, Sociology of science

No consensus on consensus: Part II

Posted on July 13, 2012 | 1,044 Comments

by Judith Curry

I’ve been invited to write a paper on the topic of consensus in climate change.

Continue reading →

→ 1,044 Comments

Posted in Consensus, Policy, Scientific method, Sociology of science, Uncertainty

5 logical fallacies that make you more wrong than you think

Posted on July 9, 2012 | 496 Comments

by Judith Curry

The Internet has introduced a golden age of ill-informed arguments.  But with all those different perspectives on important issues flying around, you’d think we’d be getting smarter and more informed. Unfortunately, the very wiring of our brains ensures that all these lively debates only make us dumber and more narrow-minded. – Kathy Benjamin, CRACKED

Continue reading →

→ 496 Comments

Posted in Scientific method, Sociology of science

Epidemic of false claims

Posted on July 1, 2012 | 161 Comments

by Judith Curry

False positives and exaggerated results in peer-reviewed scientific studies have reached epidemic proportions in recent years. – John Ioannidis

Continue reading →

→ 161 Comments

Posted in Scientific method, Sociology of science

What separates science from non-science?

Posted on May 31, 2012 | 284 Comments

by Judith Curry

This past week, legislation was introduced in the U.S. Congress to cut NSF funding of political “science” .  This amendment . . .  brings to light an important debate on the more fundamental nature and scope of science itself.

Continue reading →

→ 284 Comments

Posted in Scientific method, Sociology of science

Science is not about certainty

Posted on May 30, 2012 | 700 Comments

by Judith Curry

I seem to be saying two things that contradict each other. On the one hand, we trust scientific knowledge, on the other hand, we are always ready to modify in-depth part of our conceptual structure about the world. But there is no contradiction, because the idea of a contradiction comes from what I see as the deepest misunderstanding about science: the idea that science is about certainty.     — Carlo Rovelli

Continue reading →

→ 700 Comments

Posted in Scientific method, Uncertainty

The Bias of Science

Posted on May 11, 2012 | 252 Comments

by Judith Curry

Alarming cracks are starting to penetrate deep into the scientific edifice. They threaten the status of science and its value to society. And they cannot be blamed on the usual suspects — inadequate funding, misconduct, political interference, an illiterate public. Their cause is bias, and the threat they pose goes to the heart of research.

Continue reading →

→ 252 Comments

Posted in Scientific method, Sociology of science

Ignorance: the true engine of science

Posted on April 23, 2012 | 344 Comments

by Judith Curry

Ignorance is the true engine of science, according to a new book by Stuart Firestein, Chair of the Department of Biology at Columbia University.

Continue reading →

→ 344 Comments

Posted in Scientific method

Pseudoscience (?)

Posted on March 20, 2012 | 603 Comments

by Judith Curry

Climate science is sometimes characterized by skeptics as pseudoscience.   Here are the arguments for why climate science is not pseudoscience.

Continue reading →

→ 603 Comments

Posted in Scientific method

What if they are wrong?

Posted on February 17, 2012 | 667 Comments

by Judith Curry

Suppose it turns out that CO2 has essentially nothing to do with the earth’s climate. How will the history of this colossal mistake be written?

Continue reading →

→ 667 Comments

Posted in Scientific method

Radical essays on science & technology

Posted on January 15, 2012 | 324 Comments

by Judith Curry

The Dublin based Livewire Publications has produced a new collection of essays titled Science & Capital – Radical Essays on Science & Technology, with the intention to;

“bring together some of the more radical essays on science and technology written over the years – so as to highlight some of the dangers inherent in the blind trust we are often encouraged to place in science and scientific experts”.

Continue reading →

→ 324 Comments

Posted in Scientific method, Sociology of science

False(?) Positives

Posted on January 12, 2012 | 247 Comments

by Judith Curry

In many cases, a researcher is more likely to falsely find evidence that an effect exists than to correctly find evidence that it does not. 

Continue reading →

→ 247 Comments

Posted in Scientific method

Too big to know

Posted on January 9, 2012 | 249 Comments

by Judith Curry

Update: see new cartoon by Josh at the bottom of the post

the massive amounts of data necessary to deal with complex phenomena exceed any single brain’s ability to grasp, yet networked science rolls on.

Continue reading →

→ 249 Comments

Posted in Scientific method

Pause (?)

Posted on November 4, 2011 | 801 Comments

by Judith Curry

Question of the week:

Has the rate of warming continued unabated, or has there been a  pause in the warming?

Continue reading →

→ 801 Comments

Posted in Data and observations, Scientific method

Climate null(?) hypothesis

Posted on November 3, 2011 | 438 Comments

by Judith Curry

The dueling climate null hypothesis papers by myself and Kevin Trenberth are now online.

Continue reading →

→ 438 Comments

Posted in Scientific method

On torturing data

Posted on September 15, 2011 | 205 Comments

by Judith Curry

although very few researchers will go as far as to make up their own data, many will “torture the data until they confess”, and forget to mention that the results were obtained by torture….

Continue reading →

→ 205 Comments

Posted in Data and observations, Ethics, Scientific method, Sociology of science

Theories vs theories

Posted on July 23, 2011 | 475 Comments

by Judith Curry

There is an interesting new article at boingboing entitled “Lowercase theories, uppercase Theories, and the myth of global cooling.” (h/t Keith Kloor).

Continue reading →

→ 475 Comments

Posted in Scientific method

Manufacturing(?) consensus

Posted on July 16, 2011 | 634 Comments

by Judith Curry

The consensus on anthropogenic climate change provided by the IPCC is the source of much controversy.  Central to the controversy is the meaning and implications of “consensus,” in both scientific and sociological contexts.

Continue reading →

→ 634 Comments

Posted in Scientific method