Category Archives: Science And Society

Business, Economics, General Science, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Science And Society, Technology and Society

Scott Pruitt On Climate

37 Comments

I agree with Professor Curry that the media has distorted his statement beyond recognition (and I basically agree with his position, as does she). I also agree that this statement is nonsense:

The right’s refusal to accept the authority of climate science is of a piece with its rejection of mainstream media, academia, and government, the shared institutions and norms that bind us together and contain our political disputes.

The “authority of climate science.” Sorry, but “climate science” has no “authority” (no science does). It and its ignorant defenders have beclowned themselves.

[Update a few minutes later]

Related: A new paper says that only five out of thirty climate models can capture the Asia Pacific Oscillation. But sure, let’s use them as a basis to pauperize much of the world.

[Update a while later]

Oh, look, here’s some insanity from NBC News:

Pruitt’s view is at odds with 99.99 percent of climate scientists, according to peer-reviewed studies.

At least it’s precise, if not accurate.

Business, Economics, Mathematics, Media Criticism, Philosophy, Political Commentary, Science And Society, Technology and Society

Science And Policy

3 Comments

Words of wisdom from Daniel Sarewitz:

Whatever science you’re doing on a post-normal problem, it is always going to be incomplete, and it is always going to be subject to revision, and highly uncertain. It can be viewed from numerous scientific perspectives. So multiple scientific studies can come up with multiple results, so it leads to a profusion of truths that can be mobilized on behalf of different sets of values. Values and facts can pair up with each other in different ways.

One example I love is how everyone talks about how there’s a consensus on GMOs. Well there is consensus around a narrow part of the GMO issue, like there is a consensus around a narrow part of climate change. But the real problems have to do with the ‚what could be done?‘ questions. So for GMOs for example, when people say there is a consensus, what they mean is ‚we know they’re not a health risk‘. So I’ll accept it on health risk, I don’t have a problem with it. But then you say, ‚and we know that they’ll be an essential part of the economic future of Africa‘. Well, maybe that’s true — whose model are you using? What kind of data have you used to generate that? What are your assumptions? I mean anything dealing with projections of the future and claims about how the world is going to look, in a multi-variate, open system, are going to be subject to different people coming up with different claims and conclusions. And that’s exactly what happens.

And when you bring science into the political debate, you have to pick and choose which science you want to use. You have to match that with particular priorities about what policy problems you want to solve. I think science is really important, I think we want to be factual, I think we want to have a grip on reality and I think science can help us do that. But for problems where there are so many paths forward, so many competing values, the systems themselves are so complicated, I don’t think science is a privileged part of the solution.

…The post-normal science idea really does challenge the notion of science as a unitary thing that tells us what to do, PNS really says that we have to think of science in a different way in these contested contexts, and I don’t think most scientists want to go there. The deficit model puts them in charge: “we communicate the facts, you listen and take action.” So if the problem isn’t solved it’s not science’s problem. This is a self-serving superstition that the scientific community generally holds. And superstitions are hard to destabilize.

Over on Twitter, I’ve been having arguments with people about the proposed cut at the EPA, in which the budget for “protecting the climate,” is reduced to “only” $29M.

What in the hell does “protecting the climate” even mean?

Education, General Science, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Popular Culture, Science And Society, Technology and Society

Bill Nye On Tucker Carlson

22 Comments

Bill Nye the Pseudo-Psychology Guy was amazing to behold last night.

Scott Adams has a good take on it:

Tucker then asked Nye a simple question about climate science. He asked how much of the warming is caused by human activity. Nye’s entire ego depended on knowing whether human activity is contributing to climate change in a big way, a medium way, or a small way. Tucker wanted some details. How much difference do humans make? After all, Nye had said this was settled science. Tucker just wanted to know what that settled science said.

Nye didn’t know. And by not knowing that simple answer about the percentage of human contribution to warming – the only issue that really mattered to the topic – he proved in public that his opinions on science are not based on facts or knowledge. Nye tried and tried to dodge the question, but Tucker was relentless. That was the trigger. Nye could plainly see, thanks to Tucker’s simple question, that his belief in science was just a belief, because he didn’t actually know the science. When your self-image and ego get annihilated on live television, you can’t simply admit you have been ridiculous all along. Your brain can’t let you do that to yourself. So instead, it concocts weird hallucinations to force-glue your observations into some sort of semi-coherent movie in which you are not totally and thoroughly wrong. That semi-coherent movie will look like a form of insanity to observers.

Look for Nye to go totally mental in the last minute of the clip, changing the topic to political leaks for no apparent reason. That’s your tell. His brain just sort of broke right in front of you.

If I’d been debating him, when he started ranting about being able to grow grapes in England, I’d have asked, “Bill, have you ever heard of Hadrian’s wall? Because the Romans were growing grapes that far north 2000 years ago. Do you know why Greenland was called that, and why North America was called “Vinland” by the Vikings? Are you blaming their SUVs?”

[Wednesday-afternoon update]

Nine reasons you shouldn’t listen to Bill Nye about science. Or anything else. And only nine?

Business, Health, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Science And Society, Technology and Society

When Evidence Says “No”

6 Comments

…but doctors say “yes”:

WHAT THE PATIENTS IN BOTH STORIES had in common was that neither needed a stent. By dint of an inquiring mind and a smartphone, one escaped with his life intact. The greater concern is: How can a procedure so contraindicated by research be so common?

When you visit a doctor, you probably assume the treatment you receive is backed by evidence from medical research. Surely, the drug you’re prescribed or the surgery you’ll undergo wouldn’t be so common if it didn’t work, right?

For all the truly wondrous developments of modern medicine — imaging technologies that enable precision surgery, routine organ transplants, care that transforms premature infants into perfectly healthy kids, and remarkable chemotherapy treatments, to name a few — it is distressingly ordinary for patients to get treatments that research has shown are ineffective or even dangerous. Sometimes doctors simply haven’t kept up with the science. Other times doctors know the state of play perfectly well but continue to deliver these treatments because it’s profitable — or even because they’re popular and patients demand them. Some procedures are implemented based on studies that did not prove whether they really worked in the first place. Others were initially supported by evidence but then were contradicted by better evidence, and yet these procedures have remained the standards of care for years, or decades.

Even if a drug you take was studied in thousands of people and shown truly to save lives, chances are it won’t do that for you. The good news is, it probably won’t harm you, either. Some of the most widely prescribed medications do little of anything meaningful, good or bad, for most people who take them.

My faith in the medical profession has never been high, and stories like this do nothing to raise it. If you want to be healthy (and in some cases just stay alive), you have to be pro-active.

[Update a while later]

I hadn’t read the whole thing when I posted this (I still haven’t; it’s long), but I found this interesting:

In the late 1980s, with evidence already mounting that forcing open blood vessels was less effective and more dangerous than noninvasive treatments, cardiologist Eric Topol coined the term, “oculostenotic reflex.” Oculo, from the Latin for “eye,” and stenotic, from the Greek for “narrow,” as in a narrowed artery. The meaning: If you see a blockage, you’ll reflexively fix a blockage. Topol described “what appears to be an irresistible temptation among some invasive cardiologists” to place a stent any time they see a narrowed artery, evidence from thousands of patients in randomized trials be damned. Stenting is what scientists call “bio-plausible” — intuition suggests it should work. It’s just that the human body is a little more Book of Job and a little less household plumbing: Humans didn’t invent it, it’s really complicated, and people often have remarkably little insight into cause and effect.

“Bioplausible” also applies to terrible dietary advice: If you don’t understand biochemistry (and unfortunately, most nutritionists and even many MDs don’t) it makes sense that eating cholesterol gives you high cholesterol and eating fat makes you fat. You are, after all, what you eat, right?

Note also the story about the blood-pressure meds that have no measurable effect on reducing rates of heart attacks. I suspect that, like cholesterol lowering, such drugs are treating a symptom. It’s why despite my life-long high BP (really, my only health risk other than bad choice of parents), I resist using drugs to lower it, because I really have never had any evidence of other issues, and keep a close eye on things like peripheral arteries, carotid blockage, liver function, eye health, etc.