[HN Gopher] The Unstoppable Momentum of Outdated Science
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The Unstoppable Momentum of Outdated Science
Author : zmaten
Score : 51 points
Date : 2021-03-08 20:10 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (rogerpielkejr.substack.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (rogerpielkejr.substack.com)
| carrolldunham wrote:
| before you spend 5 minutes searching for the real emissions line
| on the graph, it looks like a slight bolding of one of the
| labelled lines that ends in about 2018
| ncmncm wrote:
| The blue one with the dip around 2009?
| leephillips wrote:
| It happens in theoretical physics, too. Papers using the debunked
| "minimum energy production principle" still occasionally appear.
|
| https://www.annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10.1146/annurev.pc.31....
| kjrose wrote:
| From my time working within an academic environment, I can attest
| this is absolutely true. Especially since the gatekeepers (older
| professors, etc) have a general interest to see these older
| articles cited more and referenced. It's not malicious, it's just
| a fact of how these things work. It's also why the general
| public's knowledge of how science works needs to be adjusted.
| Science is not a "100% correct" or "100% not correct" thing, and
| unfortunately I've seen too many institutions and individuals use
| that myth to try and push an agenda.
|
| It's a combination of institutional momentum, combined with the
| fact that a specific narrative is politically expedient. The
| unfortunate thing is bad decisions, made off of bad science,
| regardless of the reasons external to the science, generally lead
| to bad outcomes.
| soperj wrote:
| >It's not malicious, it's just a fact of how these things work
|
| While I agree it's not malicious, I'd say the reason it works
| this way is that there is a financial incentive to have it work
| this way.
| philipkglass wrote:
| _The graph shows emissions trajectories projected by the most
| commonly used climate scenarios (called SSP5-8.5 and RCP8.5, with
| labels on the right vertical axis), along with other scenario
| trajectories. Actual emissions to date (dark purple curve) and
| those of near-term energy outlooks (labeled as EIA, BP and
| ExxonMobil) all can be found at the very low end of the scenario
| range, and far below the most commonly used scenarios._
|
| RCP 8.5 was _intended_ as the highest-emissions scenario, not the
| most likely scenario.
|
| "RCP 8.5--A scenario of comparatively high greenhouse gas
| emissions (2011)"
|
| https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10584-011-0149-y
|
| _This paper summarizes the main characteristics of the RCP8.5
| scenario. The RCP8.5 combines assumptions about high population
| and relatively slow income growth with modest rates of
| technological change and energy intensity improvements, leading
| in the long term to high energy demand and GHG emissions in
| absence of climate change policies. Compared to the total set of
| Representative Concentration Pathways (RCPs), RCP8.5 thus
| corresponds to the pathway with the highest greenhouse gas
| emissions._
|
| Even 10 years ago, when this paper was published, it was apparent
| that technology and energy intensity were improving more than the
| RCP 8.5 scenario posited. I don't know if RCP 8.5 has since been
| misused as a most common scenario, but the original post quoted
| above doesn't quantify that either.
| incompatible wrote:
| Looking a CO2 measurements, I don't see much sign that the rate
| of increase is slowing down: https://climate.nasa.gov/vital-
| signs/carbon-dioxide/. Do the current models assume it will
| accelerate even faster?
| sien wrote:
| From the article :
|
| "For instance, O'Neill and colleagues find that "many studies"
| use scenarios that are "unlikely." In fact, in their literature
| review such "unlikely" scenarios comprise more than 20% of all
| scenario applications from 2014 to 2019. They also call for
| "re-examining the assumptions underlying" the high-end
| emissions scenarios that are favored in physical climate
| research, impact studies and economic and policy analyses. As a
| result of such high prevalence of such studies in the
| literature, they are also the most commonly cited within
| scientific assessments of the Intergovernmental Panel on
| Climate Change. O'Neill and colleagues find that the highest
| emission scenarios comprise about 30% of all applications in
| studies over the past five years, from a family of 35 different
| scenarios that they surveyed."
| zqfm wrote:
| Maybe off the wall, but my first thought is certificate
| revocation. Could there be (or is there already) a semi-
| centralized database of research that should no longer be cited?
| With maybe a dependency graph of research that maybe needs to be
| revisited?
| ahelwer wrote:
| Science's decentralized nature is a strength, not a weakness.
| Do you really think such a database would be immune to coercion
| from, say, Monsanto or Chevron?
| probably_wrong wrote:
| I've thinking how to make this idea work, but the more I think
| about it the less I think it's viable.
|
| First, you would be centralizing the ability to "cancel"
| papers. One bad member of the board could wreak havok.
| Simultaneously, people in charge of the database would be
| constantly bombarded by pleas (not all of them honest) to
| revoke this and that researcher's paper. So it would be bad for
| both sides.
|
| You could get away with something like Retraction Watch, but
| you'll always be behind - you could keep track of which papers
| were retracted (which is already a lot of work), but not every
| paper that needs to be revised is retracted.
|
| I guess figuring out a perfect system for deciding which ideas
| are right is hard.
| heyitsguay wrote:
| Maybe instead of a centralized repository, individuals could be
| given the ability to create their own partial sets of
| recommendations that could be aggregated by a user. Instead of
| trying to globally solve trust and designation of expertise,
| you explicitly define the group of people whom you designate
| experts and whose assessments you trust.
| quercusa wrote:
| There's something quite like this in US law. If you are citing
| a case in a legal brief, you need to make sure it hasn't been
| overturned along the way, so you 'Shepardize' it. From
| Wikipedia [0]:
|
| _Shepard 's Citations is a citator used in United States legal
| research that provides a list of all the authorities citing a
| particular case, statute, or other legal authority. The verb
| Shepardizing refers to the process of consulting Shepard's to
| see if a case has been overturned, reaffirmed, questioned, or
| cited by later cases._
|
| [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shepard%27s_Citations
| eecc wrote:
| WOT signed endorsements. Back when I had time I drafted a P2P
| application to share papers and execute peer review via GPG
| based digital signatures. Signed metadata - at least that was
| the plan - allowed communities to endorse, retract, flag spam
| in a distributed opt-in manner.
|
| It's rotting on GitHub, never managed to drum up enough
| interest...
| sam_lowry_ wrote:
| Sounds like a great idea. WOT did not work for general
| public, but scientists are very different.
| mjevans wrote:
| Things that work for the general public need to be far less
| technical and way more automatic; from an end user
| experience perspective.
|
| WoT could work exceedingly well for a decentralized
| replacement of Facebook... though at that point there's
| also the issue of competing against a walled garden with
| moats and most of the population already inside.
| ChuckMcM wrote:
| This is a good read, although somewhat depressing.
|
| When you have a topic that has been weaponized politically, as
| climate change has, people who use that weapon actively work
| against information they _perceive_ would make the weapon less
| effective. The author sums it up as follows:
|
| ---- from the article:
|
| According to Rayner, in such a context we should expect to see
| reactions to uncomfortable knowledge that include:
|
| _denial_ -- (that scenarios are off track),
|
| _dismissal_ -- (the scenarios are off track, but it doesn't
| matter),
|
| _diversion_ -- (the scenarios are off track, but saying so
| advances the agenda of those opposed to action) and,
|
| _displacement_ -- (the scenarios are off track but there are
| perhaps compensating errors elsewhere within scenario
| assumptions).
|
| ---- end include.
|
| Not enough people understand that science is _expected_ to be
| wrong, and to converge over time to the correct answer. That is
| is _okay_ to say "We used to think this, but these
| studies/experiments have shown that understanding to be
| incorrect. Now we believe this." That is how science works. And
| sadly when it is politicized, it becomes much harder to have
| conversations about it.
| marshmallow_12 wrote:
| It's been a long time since i've read anything so well written
| that was so devoid of any pertinent points. I'm only reading that
| page, but the only thing i've come away with is that breast
| cancer research is flawed, somehow, by what seems to be the most
| egregious lack of anything that approaches professional standards
| on the part of researchers.
|
| Oh, and a graph with different lines drawn on it with a large
| space between some of them.
| williesleg wrote:
| Global warming?
| ravenstine wrote:
| This reminds me of a talk I watched about research into human
| pheromones.
|
| The speaker talked about how literature and studies on pheromones
| all lead back to 1 or 2 old studies that were basically
| considered bunk, but researchers kept citing it, and other
| researchers would also cite the other studies that linked back to
| the original low-quality studies. His point was that the whole
| field of research into human pheromones needs to blow away all
| the literature up to this point and start over because the whole
| thing is so tainted, and few are willing to actually make sense
| of what's true or false with what currently exists because so
| much of it is self-referential.
|
| It wouldn't surprise me in the least that there are other areas
| of science that border on needing to start from scratch.
|
| EDIT: I believe it may have been this talk, but I don't have time
| to scan the whole thing just yet. It looks like he begins talking
| about the problematic research after ~17 minutes. It's still
| worth watching none the less:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zLENtzBbXdY
| H_Pylori wrote:
| I call it "The founder effect" of bad studies. Essentially the
| first few studies set the tone for the rest of the field, and
| it's very hard to correct the course due to the momentum. I'm
| glad people are starting to notice.
| [deleted]
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(page generated 2021-03-08 23:00 UTC)