I didn't either, but Michael Mann says
“Proof is for mathematical theorems and alcoholic beverages. It’s not
for science,” Mann says. “Science works in evidence through best
explanations, most credible theories, and so in a sense we’re at a
disadvantage because we have to play by the rules, the other side
doesn’t…
A: That has to be one of the most idiotic things I've ever heard from someone professing to be a scientist.
B: we have to play by the rules, the other side
doesn’t coming from Mann of the Hockey Stick and the CRU e-mails... well, that's kind of amazing, isn't it?
I read the post that WAWT links to; such a conglomeration of 'real scientists' and so forth AGW lines in one place...
They're very happy that the motion to dismiss Mann's suit against Mark Steyn and Rand Simberg was tossed; once discovery starts, I think they're going to be come very unhappy people.
5 comments:
He is promting aristoltalian science vs empirical science, that is, a theory must be true if it makes sense. Aristotle believed that women had fewer teeth than men because they were smaller. This made sense to him, so he never bothered with the empirical approach of actually counting the teeth in a woman's mouth(32, same as men).
I loved Peter Guest's article. Heavy on the ad hominem and sneering condescension, very light on factual and reasoned support of Mann and "climate change". Typical of true-believer attempts to vilify the opposition when no supporting facts are available.
Anon 7:00am
your empirical versus apriori deductive is a false dichotomy, both have their uses, often in conjunction.
The problem arises when a false premise is either not recognized for what it is, or even worse is deliberately allowed to stand.
In your example, the unstated false premise is "number of teeth is proportional to body size"
another attributed to Aristotle was the false premise that "spiders are insects" and therefore, as insects have six legs, so do spiders.
The accidental or deliberate use of such false premises does not discredit logic.
On the contrary, when we find that our deduction is false, then the search is on for the error in deduction, or the false premise. To fail to search would be "scientism" rather than science.
In the case of cAGW, one of the likely false premises is the idea of "positive feedbacks"
He's right, really, at a philosophy-of-science level.
But he's ignoring disproof, which is vitally important in science (ala Karl Popper).
It's pretty much impossible to prove something in the sciences, but being susceptible to disproof and not being disproven is pretty powerful stuff.
The problem with Mann's stuff is that it keeps either being too fuzzy to be disproven - or when a given hypothesis disproves itself by having the predictions fail, they just do the same thing again.
And he's being a hilariously disingenuous bastard when he complains that "he plays by the rules" but the other side doesn't.
What Mann said would come as a great surprise to Albert Einstein, whose theory of relativity metastisized into other areas of human behavior like anaplastic cancer, and who once said about Germany's response to his "Jewish Science" by saying something about how so many responses weren't necessary, all it would take would be one very junior scientist with a replicable experiment refuting his theory.
Scientism is the right word, or perhaps "cargo cultist science".
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