[Introduction/Music]
[Bill Hopkins] All right. Good afternoon!
[Commotion]
Good afternoon.
I'd like to welcome everyone to our second annual Distinguished Public Lecture sponsored by
the Global Change Center here at Virginia Tech.
My name is Bill Hopkins, I'm a professor of Fish and Wildlife Conservation
in the College of Natural Resources and Environment.
And I also serve as the director of the Global Change Center here at the university.
It's wonderful to see such a wonderful turnout.
Once again, this is an event that we put on every year for the community.
We're really glad that it's obviously of broad interest and folks are coming out to engage in discussion
about these important societal as well as environmental issues.
Before we get started I want to thank a number of folks so just bear with me.
For an event like this, you've got to have a lot of people involved and it was actually pretty easy in this case
because we selected such an exciting speaker that everybody wanted to support the event.
So, first of all, I want to thank the Fralin Life Science Institute. Fralin is our home.
The Global Change Center is now in there and they're major supporters of everything we do,
so I want to thank them.
The Office of Undergraduate Research were also generous supporters of this event,
specifically Jill Sible, the assistant provost for undergraduate education.
Virginia Tech History Department, the Women in Leadership & Philanthropy Endowed Lecture Fund,
and the Virginia Tech graduate school.
So, many of you are aware that the Virginia Tech graduate school has these interdisciplinary
graduate education programs, the IGEPs, that have been very successful.
And three of the IGEPs contributed to this event: the sustainable nanotechnology IGEP,
the water interface IGEP, and the interfaces of global change IGEP, which is a part of our center.
[Pause]
I also want to thank the the Fralin Life Science Institute staff. I think most of these folks are here today.
They did a lot of work to put on this event and specifically, and most importantly,
I want to thank Gloria Schoenholtz.
She is our designated center coordinator and did a lot of work leading up to this event.
And last, and certainly not least, I want to thank the Lyric. The Lyric has been a wonderful venue for us already.
[Applause]
I fully agree. They have been wonderful and we intend to continue to engage them as an important venue
for the things that we're trying to accomplish.
Before I introduce our distinguished lecturer, just a couple quick housekeeping items.
There will be a brief, probably 15 minute, Q&A session at the end and you'll be able to ask questions.
This microphone, we'll have it down here. We need you to come up and actually speak into the microphone.
We ask that you be respectful of people's time.
Only ask one question and then let the next person ask a question.
After that, there will be a brief book signing in the lobby.
We do have books for sale and Dr. Oreskes will be out there signing books.
Okay. So, with that, it's my pleasure to introduce today's speaker,
the 2015 Global Change Center distinguished lecturer, Dr. Naomi Oreskes.
Dr. Oreskes is an internationally renowned geologist, science historian, and award-winning author.
She received her Bachelors of Science in Mining Geology from the Royal School of Mines
and Imperial College in London.
She then went on to Stanford University, where she received an interdisciplinary PhD,
the very thing we're trying to do here at Virginia Tech, in geological research as well as the history of science.
After finishing that, she started her first faculty position, which was at Dartmouth College
where she was a professor of history and philosophy.
She spent 15 years at the University of California San Diego, where she also spent several years
as provost at one of their six colleges.
And then, in 2013, she joined her current home institution, Harvard University,
where she is a professor of the History of Science and an affiliated professor of Earth and Planetary Sciences.
[Pause]
Dr. Oreskes has authored numerous scholarly and popular works, many of which reflect
her strong interest in understanding scientific consensus and dissent.
This includes multiple books on the history of major foundational concepts in geology, geological sciences,
including books on continental drift and plate tectonics.
Some of her more recent work, however, is trying to understand the process by which scientific consensus
is built around critical environmental issues, things like: DDT, acid rain, tobacco smoke and climate change.
It's not just environmental issues, but also very important health issues.
Her 2010 book, which many of you are very familiar with,
co-authored with Erik Conway, entitled "Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth."
[Coughing] I was just trying to figure out, I was like I didn't cough.
[Laughter]
Her 2010 book, that many of you are very aware of, received broad acclaim.
Many of you have read that book, we're reading in our classes right now.
It was shortlisted with the LA Times book prize, it won the Watson Davis prize from
the History of Science in Society, and in 2015 the book was adapted by SONY Classic Pictures, released in a film
version by the same name, many of you probably saw it, it was here for a week at Lyric Theatre this summer.
Her opinion pieces have appeared broadly, nationally and internationally, in many venues including
The Washington Post, The New York Times, The LA Times,
as well as scientific journals like Nature and Science.
She recently, actually, stepped into the world of fiction.
So if you've read Merchants, I highly recommend you also read her short fiction book that recently
came out in 2014, "The Collapse of Western Civilization."
[Pause]
In recognition of, I know it's a very inspiring and uplifting topic and the book is equally uplifting.
The recognition of her impressive body of work, she's won numerous awards including:
the 2009 Francis Bacon medal for Outstanding Scholarship in the History of Science and Technology,
the 2011 Climate Change Communicator of the Year Award,
and the 2014 American Geophysical Union Presidential Citation for Science and Society.
It is my honor to introduce Dr. Naomi Oreskes. Please join me in welcoming her to Blacksburg.
[Applause]
[Naomi Oreskes] I would like to thank...oh, thank you. Oh, excuse me, that was the extra mic. Thank you.
Well, thank you so much for that warm welcome and it is truly a pleasure to be here today for many reasons.
I've spoke in a lot of venues, but this is one of the most beautiful theatres I've ever had the opportunity
to speak in, so it's really a pleasure to be in such a great venue and to see so many people from the community.
And also, I just wanted to say, my PhD, my graduate training was interdisciplinary, so it is really great
to be at a university where people are trying to develop ways for graduate students to do
interdisciplinary training to address important academic, intellectual, and scientific questions
that also have that have really large human applications.
When I was doing my interdisciplinary PhD, I didn't know if it would work. I thought I might end up unemployed.
So, and I always had this fall back that if all else failed I could go back to the mining industry,
but I think I am employed by a reasonably respectable university.
I just want to say to all the graduate students, don't worry. It all works out.
So, with that, I'd like to start my talk today.
[Pause]
Hold on just one second so I can see what I'm doing here.
[Pause]
So, as citizens, whether we're academics or whatever we do for work as people, as human beings, as citizens,
we all face questions every day that implicate us in scientific issues.
So, whether we're trying to decide whether we should vaccinate our children, whether we want to buy and
consume genetically modified products, or thinking about what we can do about climate change,
these are questions that impact us as people living our daily lives that have an important scientific components.
[Pause]
And one of the problems of all of these issues, one of the problems we face when we think about these issues,
is that, in many cases, the science often seems rather uncertain.
Scientists work, by definition, at the boundary between the known and the unknown.
By definition, discovery means moving into areas where things are not known.
And so in science there's always uncertainty, there's always doubt.
But, to some people, this uncertainty can seem like rounds regarding science as a process, as a project.
It can also seem as a reason for inaction.
If we don't know everything about a topic, perhaps you're not ready to act upon that issue.
And if scientists can't tell us for sure what the answers are, then some of us might think,
well, why should we trust science? Why should we trust what scientists have to say?
[Pause]
And, of course the other part of this issue, as Erik Conway and I explored in detail in our book,
Merchants of Doubt, some people deliberately exploit scientitific uncertainty
to try to discredit science and scientists that they don't like.
So we face this interesting conundrum that science is uncertain.
There is real uncertainty in science, but we still have to make decisions.
And the fact that there's uncertainty doesn't mean that we don't also know a lot about about the natural world.
So, what's an honest person to do? How do you sort this out?
To accept the safety of vaccinations or the reality of climate change,
we have to believe in the claims of science.
[Pause]
But scientists don't like to talk about belief.
All of my climate scientist friends all like to say that, you know, they'll be on a train, a plane, at a meeting,
in the grocery store, and someone will say to them, well do you believe in climate change?
And they all say no, I don't believe in climate change, you know, I accept the scientific evidence of climate change.
And that's a very important distinction to scientists because the word believe, to most scientists,
seems to implicate you in some kind of Catholic faith.
And of course, as we all know, faith is associated with religion, and science and religion aren't supposed to mix.
[Pause]
Well the question of faith, the question of science and religion for any historian of science immediately makes
us think of Pascal, the great mathematician who many centuries ago tried to prove the existence of God.
He failed in that project and so, having failed to prove the existence of God, then he faced a dilemma.
And the dilemma was this, or he put it this way,
"If I believe in God but there is no God, not much harm is really done.
But if I don't believe in God and there is a God, then I'm in really big trouble and I will be in deep, I'll be in peril.
So Pascal made what came to be known as Pascal's wager.
He decided that it made more sense to believe in God than not to believe in God, not because he was able to
prove it scientifically, but because the risks of belief were less than the risks of nonbelief.
And so, as one of my professors in college put it, he took the leap of faith.
Or, sorry, the way my professor did it was that he clutched for the handrail of faith.
And so whenever I think of Pascal I think about this idea of handrail of faith.
And I love this one here because here's the handrail, and look.
There's this nice handrail safety message about how to use a handrail safely.
[Laughter]
So, the way I think about it is that Pascal took that leap of faith. And that might be fine in matters of faith,
because, by definition, faith is about faith.
But what about science?
Science isn't supposed to be a leap of faith. Science is supposed to be different from religion.
But the reality is that most of us actually have no idea how to judge whether or not scientific claims are true.
So we make a leap of faith too.
If we accept scientific claims, we essentially make that leap of faith
and trust that scientists are telling us something that's correct.
Or, it might be the case, that we don't necessarily trust the science but that, like Pascal,
we assume that the risks of accepting science are smaller than the risks of rejecting.
So we assume that the risk of the vaccine, because we know there are some risks, but we assume that
those risks are smaller than the risks of not vaccinating.
[Pause]
And it's not just ordinary people for whom this is an issue, it's actually an issue for scientists as well.
And this is something I've really come to understand from the scientists working on climate change.
The fact is that even most scientists accept results outside of their own field essentially on faith as well,
which is to say that if I'm a biologist, I'm not an expert on vaccinations.
If I'm a climate scientist, I'm not an expert on genetically modified crops.
So if I'm a climate scientist, why would I accept what scientists have to say about genetically modified crops?
I make a leap of faith in assuming that my colleagues know as much about their field as I know about my field.
I think I'm right in my field, so I kind of give them the benefit of the doubt
and assume they're right in their fields too.
But we believe that, in fact, in most cases, most scientists lack the expertise
to judge fields outside of their area of expertise.
[Pause]
So the question is should we do this? Should we be trusting our colleagues?
Or, more broadly, should be trust science? Is that a legitimate thing to do or not?
And how do we sort that out? How do we think it through?
[Pause]
So there's a traditional answer to this question and that answer is the scientific method.
That is to say that I was taught in school what many school children, most school children were taught
in school, and are told today, is that the reason why science is trustworthy is by virtue of the method:
that scientists use a particular method that guarantees or, at least,
greatly increases the probability of accurate results.
So what is that method supposed to be?
[Pause]
Well, in most high school textbooks what you'll find is this or something close to it.
A so-called hypothetical deductive method and that method is typically described in a high-school
science textbook in the following way: the scientist develops a hypothesis, then he or she then deduces
the consequences so it's conductive, and then scientists go out into the world when they do make observations
or experiments to test to see whether or not those consequences are true, and if they are, then we say okay,
the hypothesis is right and we move on. And this is us moving on.
[Pause]
Now, scientists definitely sometimes do this. Thank you. I want to be generous.
And you can definitely find some examples in the industry of science where this actually happened.
So, just to give evidence to support this claim, there's one very famous example,
which is the confirmation of the theory of general relativity.
So, according to the theory of relativity, space-time is curved and light travels through curved space-time.
So, if light travels past a massive body, a very massive body like the Sun,
space-time is bent in the presence of that massive body and so that light travels space-time will be bent too.
When Albert Einstein first made this argument, that was a pretty radical claim.
Most people then thought about space as being empty and light traveling through it,
would just travel along a straight line unless it was refracted by a mirror or something like that.
So, this was a very startling prediction, and so, many scientists around the globe said well,
this would be a very powerful testable theory because you wouldn't expect light to be bent by any of our
connectional notions of life, but if Einstein is right about this, then we should be able to detect
the bending of starlight and if we deduce that there's this consequence, this bending of starlight,
we can look for in the natural world and if we find it then we can say that this theory is correct.
So, in 1918, Sir Arthur Eddington during an eclipse, the total eclipse of the Sun,
was able to make direct measurements of starlight coming on a path very close to the Sun
and was able to show that indeed that starlight was bent.
And this result was so dramatic and so brilliant, most people thought,
that it was written up in newspapers around the globe.
So this is from the Times of London, "Revolution of Science"
"New Theory of The Universe: Newtonian Ideas Overthrown," in a hypothetical deductive confirmation
of the theory of relativity.
So this does sometimes happen.
But, oh, let me just add one more thing.
Now, academics being academics, they like to give fancy names for simple things so some academics didn't think
that hypothetical deductive was fancy enough, so they came up with the phrase deductive nomological.
So sometimes philosophers like to call this the deductive nomological model,
because nomological means having to do with laws.
And many of you were probably taught in school that scientists are kind of strict people.
They like laws. They don't just want theories and hypotheses, they want laws of nature.
So, in the ideal case, what you're testing is not just a hypothesis or a theory, but actually a law of nature.
And we actually have some examples of that too.
So, for example, okay I've already said this but the basic idea is the same.
We conceptualize a law of nature, we reduce consequences, we look for those consequences,
and, if true, we say the law is confirmed.
And, of course, a famous example that many people are familiar with again comes from Einstein, E= mc²,
the mathematical law that relates energy and matter to the universe.
So we have examples of that, but there are several problems with
the nomological hypothetical deductive model.
And the simplest problem is, simply, as a logical claim, it's wrong. It's false. It doesn't actually work.
And the reason why it's false is something that philosophers call
the fallacy of affirming the consequent.
So what does that mean?
Well, what it means in simple language is just because a prediction turns out to be true,
it doesn't prove that the theory that made that prediction was true, and to assume that it does is a logical fallacy.
And there's a very simple reason that this is true and the reason is simply that
a false theory can still make a true prediction.
[Pause]
So, we have a very famous example of this in the history of science, one that has been studied in great
detail, and that's the Ptolemaic system of the universe.
So, many of you, of course, know that before Copernicus and Galileo, most scientists, most astronomers,
subscribed to this model of the universe that put the Earth at the center of universe and imagined
that the Sun and the planets all revolved around the Earth.
[Pause]
So, now today, we would take this model of the universe as wrong.
We would say that we all know that the Earth is not the center of the universe.
In fact, it's not even the center of what we call the Solar System. The Sun is the center of the Solar System.
And our solar system is one of many in our galaxy, which is one of the many galaxies in the universe.
So we have a very very different picture of the universe today than people had 500 or 600 years ago.
So why did anyone believe this theory? Well the answer is because it made predictions that came true.
In fact the Ptolemaic system of, what we would today call the Solar System but to them, the universe
made extremely accurate predictions of the motions of the planets and extremely accurate correct predictions
of planetary events like eclipses.
And so when Copernicus first proposed an alternative. Well, first of all, let me say.
So this shows that this is the problem with fallacy of affirming the consequent.
Just because those predictions came true did not mean the theory
on which those predictions were based on was correct.
In fact, when Copernicus first proposed his model of the universe that placed the Sun at the center
and not the Earth, the predictions that came out of the Copernican model were actually wrong.
They were false. They didn't come true. And so lots of people said Copernicus is wrong. Ptolemy was right.
Copernicus' prediction was wrong.
Now today, we would say that we know why Copernicus was wrong because he didn't have elliptical orbits,
but I'll get to that in a minute.
Okay. So this shows that just because a theory makes accurate predictions doesn't mean it's true.
But there's a second problem, and that's the problem that philosophers call auxiliary hypotheses.
philosophers hypotheses and by what philosophers mean is simply back when we
test the hypothesis we're not just testing that hypothesis but also other
presumptions that are built into that tack and they might be assumptions about
the character of the universe they might the assumptions about our instruments
how well our interview to perform um the philosopher uh quiet famously talked
about Tesla theories being tested average or networks of beliefs there are
many things that go into a hypothesis the side of the specific thing that we
think we're testing and so here's a good example of that so one of the things
that Copernicus proposed emotion might be detected but there was one so what
that means is the following as if the earth is in motion
and as the earth moves through the course of the year through the heavens
the positions of distant stars should change relative to the bathtub so that's
what I'm looking at and abstinent across our network imagine
the walnut pattern as I move across the stage I see her from a different angle
and as I see the different eco I see her in a different perspective relative to
the wall behind her I also see her in different perspective relative to the
people in the back so I'm seeing different people now in front of her
then I would see if I were standing on this side of the room and this side of
the room is the same room and instead of the cameraman now in a problem to
distinguish star like flowers serious some star that we know he's that
identified and so people said well if the predicate is variants true then
there's a lot of the toxicological deceptive consequences and that
consequence is that we shouldn't see that so apparently we should see a
common style of the North Star against the different backdrop of stars when we
look at in June persons were litigated in December and we should be able to
actually measure that other to difference and that angle would be the
other power-ups so stronger sentences great ideas is a great testament let's
do it and so many astronomers said this theory is false the prediction do not
improve in each other's period okay so what happened well today if we
were to draw that picture we would jog something more like this and this is
their explanation of stellar parallax so now we would say well the state that
people were making was an alternative hypothesis about the
size of the universe Copernican is the parentheses colleagues were assuming
that the universe was small and that the distance to that star was small relative
to the distance that are moving across the stage because not measurement is
gonna begin our cameraman I was looking at camera women sorry
I was looking at somehow I have x-ray vision I can see all the way the Golden
Gate Bridge the position and so here it is guys
others make that that the stars are actually very far away my tears away
erin has a very tiny organ billeted to the distance to start and so the stellar
power was very very very small there's not so the OSHA hypothesis was that the
Earth's orbit was large relative to the distant star and that also a hypothesis
we need NASA was off so the tests fall now in hindsight we can also say that
there was a second observer hypothesis without the interpretation they me that
the telescope's were sensitive enough to detect that small effect but that turned
out to be wrong too it wasn't until the 19th century
William Herschel and telescopes became sensitive enough to detect this
government paradox but so what we might want to say over being generous if the
hypothetical deductive model is an oversimplified picture of what
scientists do and what the scientific method is but both us historians and
sociologists of science would say that that's too generous and it's not that
it's just over simplified but it's just inactive because the reality is just so
much more complex so downloaded complexified picture a little bit in one
way and a circle way that we know the pictures multiplex is simply to say that
a good deal of science just doesn't follow this one it's just not what
scientists do and one reason we know is because of these active it's indented so
what I mean by that what if the option is the process of generalizing from
observations so we go out to the world we see things and based on our
observations we begin to draw conclusions about how the world works
and we may even formulate a long reach or based on regularities
serve through multiple observations of the natural world now is interesting if
you're a fan of Sherlock Holmes you know that Sherlock Holmes things we said that
what it was production but it actually mutts it it was actually instead I jump
over go to a case he doesn't the place with guilty he collects epidemic you
makes observations he finds a little part of an air he realizes that the dog
didn't bark and out of all these observations he comes up with an
inductive an inductive conclusion and it's tremendous amount of reasoning both
at work a buying any science is in fact conductor that if it's and then if you
week history of Moscow science about the 19th century scientists who rode that
science the 19th century gently described what they did as induction in
factors of the net famous work by the man who invented the word scientist
before the term well in fuel who the 19th century wrote a book called the
history of the inductive sciences certainly even went so far as to say
that what makes science science that the scientific method actually was induction
not deduction so we find that in the history of science scientists can't
actually be greedy about whatever method it's so that's what kind of a giveaway
with so in the 20th century induction of action and much of what we've been
taught our school books in the century is based on community really was not a
lot of you
Ernest Rutherford
so many famous American cents businesses as businesses became very influential
American Life they were dismissive of geology and biology and botany as quote
stamp collecting and in my first book actually wrote about how a geologist in
between eccentric actually consciously sought to make their science more
deductive because they bought into this ideology that inductive sciences
sometimes problematic and that was a very foolish thing for them to have done
because inductive sciences everywhere can a lot of really good signs in fact
some of the most famous science initiative
silence wind up in time and the most famous example of course of this
when Charles Darwin went on this famous voyage of the Beagle it's right he was
not testing a theory he did not have a theory to test in fact he had no idea
what he was doing on that morning exact the unique medicine his family wanted to
be a doctor they tried to he started out as you know in a medical course by the
blood and exciting and definitely new contemporary profession so if he had a
hypothesis it was only that there was an alternative my opinion other than being
doctor so he what does he do well
actually for some people he started observing started collecting and
historians now know that many of you learned that his game is finished right
and any people have heard the story about things like these wonderful
pictures from these different islands and block those the Magana to understand
how these different engines were adapted to different environments and how this
was the cornerstone of the theory of natural selection was complete one book
they actually know is that Darwin collect all these inches he threw them
in a bag he had no idea what they were he could identify them he wasn't an
ornithologist when he got back to London he shared the
shared with an apologist trainer who identify an important and pointing out
that there were these interesting differences between this and she said
that Darwin had to go back and fill those books and spam to figure out which
bench and come from which Island which is also new for magnitudes No
and that was part of the science part
okay so induction and deduction they both occur scientists have used both
there's good inductive funds there's good deductive sciences it's not
argument for one over the other it's just an area network scientists
have actually done but we have to talk some other things as well the designers
don't just do an inventor you gotta make a lot of other things too and what could
we do that is become very important in the 20th century that has a long history
is oddly so I love this picture this is heavily developed with a 19th century
feel job just you think what about America's most famous contribution was
nothing the field where many people have been concerned about observations they
have made that they couldn't explain and the particular observation had to do
with the structure important rocks and what people have observed was that in
the Scottish islands as well as in splatoon people have observed large areas in which there were rocks that had been folded into being sort of, overturned folds so that the boxer who came up like this and they pull in the
back and back again so that some of these layers that started out horizontally and they can so folded that they were horizontal again except they were repeated.
So it's like this image comes up those around and then repeats again on top so even though there's a horizontal they're not where they started.
And moreover there we're very major falls in some cases quite low angle, quite flat horizontal falls that would cut through these rocks.
And so, how did this happen? How do solid rocks, hard rocks get folded as if they were once putty and how did big break in these rocks develop and get sustained?
about talking minute work back home
But in some cases these folds sustain over thousands of miles.
So the way these rocks as you can see have been folded in this place for many hundreds or thousands of kilometers.. kilometers if they were in Switzerland.. miles if they were in Scotland.. it's about so so that's what people
scientists wanted to happen they wanted to understand deposits but of course
these were Mexican have been three 100 hundred years before one of the central
challenges of geology and the silences that leach allergists are trying to
explain events and have already happened there over there past so we can't
witness them in the present and it's hard to do fragments on the skin you
need to mimic the earth so people began to make models and then the lane I think
the rooms on the ascent you're not many physical models so this is a physical
model which is trying to recreate what he has observed in nature in order to
try to understand what kinds of forces could not produce these amazing effects
and what he argued was that you could get these kinds of patterns if the rocks
were being the form by a horizontal force that was compressing them from the
side so he's got a piston here in dishes clanking he's pushing Houston aboard and
he's pushing this board against a set of layered clays and by pushing that whoops
by pushing these from the side you get these structures and so he argued if
this was evidence that somehow in nature there was this gigantic forest
courses that were pushing solid rock folding the rocks into these
unbelievable structures that people have observed and this became one of the
early art introduction into theft and that we had this empirical evidence of
horizontal cash there's the box so market isn't also very important
activity scientists are not only trying to understand the causes of the
different we see in the world now in catalá state models were typically
physical models nowadays models are more typically America science experiments
clay they make what we call numerical simulations and of course the American
simulation models are extremely important in climate science because we
can't build a physical model of the climate system which is not possible the
climate system is too big and too complex or too complicated but we do and
this is one thousands of scientists around the food and so some of the key
evidence that we obtained from our cotton balls has to do with the clauses
are change when I left our climate change I get asked about this all the
time I don't mean every confidence done but what if the answers is that we can
make new medical models appear low in which we can put in travelers that tell
us how much heat has come from the Sun or the less reviews and we know that
because it's been measured through master satellites and also other forms
of data how much cooler and we know that because we have
millions of all temperature options in stratosphere how much cooling come from
okay aerosol we have as well and how much heating comes from greenhouse gases
so this is the question we want to know how much have greenhouse gases
contributing to gives our warning well you build a numerical simulation model
so here's the actual observations of the earth's temperature since the year 1900
this is temperature on this axis and this is the model forcing response that
is to say how much does any particular combo factor of affect the temperature
in model so here's the actual observations this is what has really
happened is all measurements of the temperature and then this is a modeled
result of the best available computer model and so that the question becomes
so how do you get the best fit to the existing data and well the answer is all
of the above all of these factors play no role in the system being a passive
solar radiation ozone volcanics sulfate aerosol solution they all have an effect
but look at this only one of them drives the temperature up solar radiation has
not really changed much in the last fifteen seventy years ozone has not
really changed in a bunch of the last a few hundred years
volcanoes mostly cool deposit they mostly don't eat it and solve their
cells from pollution almost entirely for plants so these are cooling effects
these are essentially flat it's only being house gasses that drive this
popular change that we have seen and including American simulation
now so what we take from this the reality excited is do a lot of different
things has that is gloss first historians and sociologists do conclude
that the idea of eighty signs are connected in the singular just can't be
sustained by the facts of history philosophy and sociology famously
provocative philosopher of science came to the conclusion is often famously
Buddhist thing that the reality of the sign is that any good scientist but what
he said is if you look at what scientists do you see it's very diverse
and you see that many diverse approaches to science have been productive a
reliable knowledge so if you test me to say I would have to say that the only
principle that there's not anemic progress is any people in other words
scientists find a lot of things and they see what works but this very needs us
with the politic question do these diverse methods
if Sciences are doing a lot of different things in many different ways in a
different place that they can kind of why should we believe that there's
anything special included backside so this is the part that I have in the last
ten years or some time to understand what is a principal argument about why
we should the answer back country is really an answer about evidence that
what ignites all of these dimensions that scientists use is that all of them
are means of collecting creating and generating evidence now a quarter so so
what I would argue is that evidence is the key element in scientific knowledge
not method and we've actually considered mistaken to be so focused on this idea
method and that would actually be how robust is it how they dress is it how
well tested how much do people from different countries and different walks
defiantly about this evidence so their changes on a focus of attention in an
important significant way now I don't have time trying to give what when they
will be a second factor evidence but I just want to say a few
more things about if we accept the idea that what makes science science between
the evidence dancing I'm a new question and that is who judges the evidence and
how well the obvious answer the first part of that question is that science is
checked the others
and this of course is it seem important for the topics that I rather by the
merchants of data because when you're actually the closing climate change
deniers or vaccine skeptics what you find is that almost none of our society
almost none of them have real serious scientific credentials in these areas
and so the debate is created that made is fabricated by presenting these people
as legitimate spokespeople but they're not actually scientists so exciting as
we judge scientific evidence do we want to know which time to tend to say
another claim we have to listen to the science but this therapy gives us in
another question and this is the question and I think is the most
interesting important for us for citizens to decide
we're not what should our own society show at home
okay and so this is where the issue of consensus then comes before and this was
one on Ola and has focused on consensus is an important significant issue in
understanding science because effectively what scientists do it's not
just like Sherlock Holmes declared if you solve the problem
nor is it by the jury who you know have to deliver a invoke opinion eventually
come to a decision involving their families scientists to a process of
deliberation of presentations at conferences publications in
peer-reviewed journals may or may not eventually come to consensus on a
question so it's a social process and it's a cognitive emergent property
instance the scientists don't try to achieve consensus consensus emerges when
scientists conclude collectively that they have enough evidence so what I
would say that is that scientific knowledge is scientific knowledge
basically consists of claims that have been agreed upon by experts the experts
have concluded are supported by sufficient evidence to say that these
intruders battle now this of course is troubling to many people because it may
seem to be an appeal to it may seem to me that I'm just saying
that's where that's where these are the people who know the background to the
authority well not quite so what I want to say here is a little bit
controversial but I think it's you I do think that what we talked about
scientific evidence when we are thinking about these issues I want to make the
somewhat controversial claim the x actually is a story but it's a very
particular kind of authority it's the authority of experts working together as
a group so I chose this picture because I because I wanted to kind of convey the
idea that I mean this is a great picture because look what is actually happening
in this photograph this is a woman I know she's a scientist
as she's showing her colleagues evidence she's showing them data or images and
illustrations of master charts and they are but this is the point it's not the
authority of the individual no matter how brilliant Virginia's it's the
authority of a process the authority of a process by which people together and
collectively collect evaluate and judgments a minute so relaxed sense we
can say that scientific knowledge is the intellectual and social consensus of the
leading experts based on the weight of available evidence then evaluated
according to done first but also time tested methodology we can say that the
way of kids like a jury than justice Furies weigh evidence scientists witness
but the difference is that it's not a jury of their peers it's not a jury of
ordinary people insecurity of specialized experts
so you could say insecurity of scientific peers that if I write a
scientific claim the geologists the next thing gets
judged by the community of scientific jurors and we could also point out that
unlike eteri were twelve people selecting a notable people decide
there's no crying limit to how many scientists gets beat involve those
prospects any scientist with scientific training can be involved in this journey
there are other analogies we can think of one of them is crowdsourcing so we
didn't think about scientific knowledge is a form of outsourcing but it's a very
specific kind of crap right a clerical PhD and patina I think this is what
reason why the Internet has become such a problem for science because the way
science is proud of course but it's class first lending specialized experts
so there would people on the internet put up these planes and no climate
change is caused by the Sun or vaccine for autism or whatever it is it's hard
for us and ordinary people to sort out the difference between these plates nor
the internet sometimes dressed up in assigning sometimes in websites that are
quite beautifully elaborately made to look as if they're actually scientific
and it can be hard to distinguish these pseudo scientific claims from the
planets of scientists who were actually doing scientific research in the
universe okay so I have one more analogy I want
to make
it's the modern market company liable so why use that well the bottom part is
what it is not because of the genius of bends or danger or Henry Ford but
because of the collective efforts of all of the engineers and scientists and
biologists laborers and designers who have work to produce this modern
incredibly reliable device so this thing is my argument about science why should
we believe in science because our scientific knowledge is not based on
individual genius contrary to what many people think and it's not based on a
very particular narrowly defined method but because it's based on their
accumulated expertise and experience not on one genius but have many many people
hundreds people working together it works like
our cars because of accumulated experience and expertise so this is a
claim they're not too much about science but so are loud about x field that's
something that's not about science it's something extra back but it's science
isn't perfect I think we should believe in the science of the process because
buyer market is flourish or put another way we should not trust scientist and
individuals but we do have good reason to have confidence in the process
okay so I think
I asked that or
absolutely of course so it's not to say that anytime to be competent eternally
no for the history side there has been crazy moving Angus and ability example I
gave of the Ptolemaic universe giving away to confer tomorrow is the most
apparent shift and it was the example the time spoon himself study so you know
that there can be large changes allowed for that and so that makes I think two
things first of all means really it means I just need to the
pastor usually about their own work and not be dogmatic about it but the
explanatory about what the evidence is to suggest that these people that's
correct and then we but we also have to
recognize that in a given moment we have to make decisions right that's why I
began my conversation about vaccines so it may well be that itself future when
it is big people have a different vision of disease you know that doctors have
different visions of disease we passed you know the other
but today we have you do that make decisions and those decisions actually
work so the interesting if you drop out a little bit more the interesting thing
is this it may well we have a different understanding of
disease and in the future we may even have a different understanding of water
vaccines work but the vaccines will cause the work just like those
contradictions of our kid and that's the interesting trick to think about it
these can't work apparently even though our understanding of climate change
so in those things paradigm shifts that people have made such a fuss about the
reality is that many of the specific claims within those learning paradigms
still held up it still carry forward into the new paradigm give them the
explanation for those common and change it back
they speak quite a lot efficient in the popular press but also within scientific
journals about some of the problems with security person and especially within
minutes that you've had some very prominent
angel the influence of corporations will be the pharmaceutical industry on the
research so much research that is published in medical journals actually
basically trusted so how do you reconcile that with absolute that's
really important it's a really profound questions and is actually kind of a part
to do of this lecture which is that by developing right now and of course
emergence of that we trust that as well so what are the implications of this
model taken together with the kinds of things you've been talking about is that
it obviously have to ask questions about them for certain factors that mess up
the closest to interfere we're giving you two very attractive you want and we
know they exist and they know they really know they're important and so one
of the key questions that I think is sufficient we need ask is just people
searching you're right and that's where funding sources become really important
so I have a really chaotic and I've written about this about why disclosure
of funding sources is so important science is not an axiom
so we know that funding is a big issue we know that there's the potential for
the whole process to be do you read all of the stories everywhere you'd like so
it's extremely important to the scientific community
- I think addressed these questions of funding effects they don't think that
that's and it's happening much more than has in other areas so I do think that's
really important so I think scientists need to address that they can just like
clean up their house internally and I get citizens and journalists even asked
about these questions so if some of a society to the claim well for whatever
it is whether you think it's dubious or not we should all these gases not okay
so now I'd like to know who's funding this research you know what would
restrictions on a publication you know these are all questions that need to be
you know there needs to be sent by sunshine of these things and yet one
thing that's very interesting that we know many companies will find academic
research with restrictions that say that depend on what the results of
India may not be published and it's very shocking to me how many universities
have not taken this as an ethical issue either than the university because if a
pharmaceutical company funded project and said well if the results are
available for drugs and be welcome to publish it but if the results show that
our club is killing people there were going to quash this and the
confidentiality that you can't see anything if that's the confounded
pathetic situation psychic University's needs to do a whole lot more to figure
out how to handle corporate and private support research those issues
you know on the idea that science has nice nuclear events
does science have a goal is it to help me or is it true what
yeah that's a good question and you know putting a citrus bowl and this is a
tricky thing to talk about because the word interfering is a little bit
problematic because it might think it sounds like I'm suggesting it you know
science has this kind of hermetically sealed existence and then thinking
outside interfere and of course one of the big insights from sociology of
science and studies and history is that you know that other than you work
because of course the outside world is part of science - but you lead to
funding when they call their way in as well so I think I don't like to think of
it as interference I like to think of it as there's a set of issues that are
raised by questions of funding pressures of publication questions of how the peer
review process works the autonomy contention into peer review process and
those are questions that we have to talk about as well so it's going to stay back
so having said that I never just got the second part silly it's harder to tell me
well the girls on its back well I think that I think that the goal
of you know again I mean I use the word science because I'm talking about an
activity that I deeply understand what we mean when we say science but of
course the guys have to unpack that a little bit because science as an
abstract entity doesn't mean exist but when exist our science is doing research
and projects funded by various different funding sources some public some private
etcetera so I think that interacts what is old scientists I would say that my
experience in scientist under the work done is what is leading this new science
there probably the vast majority of scientists have been motivated
fundamentally by others I understand how the world works so by an intellectual
you know kind of intellectual academic epistemic project however coupled to
that or many scientists as well list the idea that it could be useful to make the
world a better place depending upon the field some fields of science the idea
that the information is of value has been very important other fields not so
much so theoretically this not so much but plant agriculture bought
me a lot right so that depends a bit on the field but then you can ask a
question well what is quite a society support science right why is the
government fund the science why this taxpayer money and I think it's much
more interest in them not usefulness I think that the social contract that you
know we have in that state stats take the last 50 years for the most public
science the social contract has been the key support scientist to research
because people did that invented us economically the children the particular
prosperity of Technology stuff like that and so that's also kind of one of the
tensions in science there is a societal supporter science is not necessarily
saying that the reason the scientists want to do it and there are definite
intentions there and I think we see the attention to plan an interesting
different ways
yeah so that's a really really interesting question and I tried my
first book I want to answer that question and in the end I had trouble
answering that I was able to show that this had happened and described it it's
hard to say exactly I think at least the United States it probably did have to do
with the influence of businesses in your business who came to America the 1930s
clean fascism in Europe in physics as a field deductive modes of reasoning have
played a bigger role historically for the simple fact that so much of
physicists theoretical mathematical and of course deduction is really important
mathematical object do you have many physicists who their training in their
work and their mathematical training especially lead them to begin highly a
theoretical bottom of the river deductive ways that was not used in the
19th century of what we could call the natural sciences so what are geologists
botanist biologists anybody you know maybe we can continue like a naturalist
well so in the 20th century one of things that happens the United States is
that not just visitors who come from Europe
they're very influential their various
and so you see geologists and other people feeling oh we have to make
persons more like physics and that becomes equated with rigor so you see
people saying we have our scientists more bigger more rigorous and by
rigorous what they need is more deductive and they also be more
expensive that's a little more - there's this big push you know to the United get
in here like you got towards experimental laboratory and also
computer modeling I think that shifting back of the doubt if it's been pushed
back a lot of people are saying well that's all very lovely but believe me
conservation and oceanography which I posted they deceive that ship so the
people so I think you also see ships associated with you know people do one
thing for a while then you know they exhausted with it even can get out of it
or any percentage of I think you know and the accident
nobody's ever thought that before the people who nineties if you didn't into
the ocean - of course they kept you said that there was for the problem with our
bill recess means what the beep remodeling
know about me not definite at the same time and you wonder the big big issues
more thing is that if you could argue that about as one gigantic hypothesis
right because people especially like that general circulation along with the
others nervous system you're talking about computer code that we have
millions of lines of code and there is so much built into that so many
different you know there's basic physical theory there's basic
thermodynamics for example conservation of energy conservation of mass
principles that you know no scientists allow that we ever say anything else any
doubts about and then there's all kinds of observational data around realization
so models are these incredibly complex amount of lots of different things
and I already bought about this I think one of the difficulties about modeling
is that models are very hard to test because they have so many different
parts if you do a lot of tests and something's wrong let's say you have
reached encounter time knowing what part of the model needs to be fixed and you
can adjust the model by treating factors it's quite easy to make your mother fit
the observational data it may be simply by just an average so what are some of
the particular slide in our simulations is that in that particular case
okay so one thing that's interesting about this particular family IPCC report
in the government or the planetary this model is specifically talking about the
problem of managing attribution so this is what we've observed these are actual
temperature measurements around the globe and the question is what are the
travel courses they can explain the observations so and we have good
measurements of the amount of greenhouse gas in the atmosphere we have good
measurements of the impact carbon dioxide have made even sentiment as I
said the measurement service or the radiation was measurements of those
measurements in solution so all these things are measured and so now you say
what makes of these things can reproduce this effect so it doesn't mean that
everything in this farm was correct or black so remember this is the
conservation this is the bottom there's a difference between the model the
observation you don't match exactly but they're very close but the key thing is
that your story between different things all of you tend to measure and the
answers you can't reproduce what we see without a reason to be a contribution
house gases so they tells you that the greenhouse gases are the principal
driver particularly at this big uptick in this you know last 50 years and
that's a pretty robust result because there is any other way of get that
yourself anything that you know so the only way that this could be the biggest
food would be if someone took were to discover something
completely
and we suddenly discover you know tomorrow that correlation remedies of
the gas is something really really like just practically on the corner so that's
why this is a good example and it's a good example to explain what small
situations are trying to achieve like this is a very specific thing about
climate change attribution but if you would ask me should we believe it or not
if I change just because the black box I would say no and actually think about
this if you're sensitive to fill it or something I think the robust argument
for the reality final change and the likely correctness of what scientists
have to say is the diversity of evidence of a blanket that there is so much
different data and much of it is totally independent the ice core get in its you
can turn to Estonia dependent of any of this forget it and you see as
temperature increases in co2 noise ignorance measurements of carbon dioxide
have extreme two years ago those measurements go back
to 1950 a dating app those measurements put independently of a lot of their
stuff so he's very lines of evidence and they all point in the same direction and
so and one of the things I wrote was this piece about all the different
evidence for climate change the reality is that scientists predicted cartoons
before anybody ever you do not eat a climate model to know that there's kind
of change what you need a fire call for is two things what is the sort out those
details an attribute okay you know that the temperature is changing but if you
want to know for sure the greenhouse gas performance with driver your heart so a
tradition isn't the only thing but the other models to predict between 1/2 in
the future and so that's what's the most you know simulation modeling and the
climate community now is not actually this is silent it's due tomorrow dick
what what happened feature in order to give us a sense of how much time we have
to fix this before it's too late and that's the scary part
yeah because increasingly scientists or said at the Model T test that we don't
have pretty much a tournament and so that's the race a part of it that led me
to write a very public people realization