Climate Change skeptics? [ot]

I can see ,under some scenarios ,where he would be highly invested in seeing that the base science of his textbooks not be undermined.

Why are some of you still treating these deniers as if they were rational?

I've got a question for you research science professionals. Normal human impulses and foibles aside, is it accurate to say that the actual internal political mechanisms of institutional research science - publication, peer review, consensus building, community discourse etc - are by force of process ruthless in culling from the herd that which does not stack up ( incompetency, corruption), as well as egalitarian in the sense that published science is by and large judged by its scientific merit, not social status or political power?

Well, it now seems that that was wrong. It appears that the BICEP2 team may have done their foreground correction using a figure from a conference presentation given by someone on a competing team. They didn’t – it seems – realise that the data in the figure had been smoothed so as to reduce the apparent foreground in the relevant region. It now seems that there is a good chance that their signal is simply polarization from material in our own galaxy, and not a signature of primordial gravitational waves. I don’t think this is yet certain, but it is a little disappointing if true.

There are, however, a number of interesting aspects to this issue. Firstly, noone I know of is – publicly at least – suggesting that the BICEP team did anything nefarious. They were maybe a little sloppy. Took a bit of a risk; maybe they should have waited to be more certain. However, everyone recognises that this was an extremely exciting discovery. Career defining. Furthermore, it’s a great illustration – in my view – of how science works. Despite everyone being extremely excited by this announcement, there were still people delving into the details and checking what was being presented. Within a matter of weeks, there were already hints that there might be a problem. I don’t think that the BICEP team have yet conceded that the measurement is purely foreground, but I’m sure they will if that is what the additional analysis suggests. It’s still possible, of course, that they will still have a small signal of primordial gravitational waves. So, it could still end up being an exciting discovery; just not quite as significant/robust as – at first – thought.

In a sense, this is why I get frustrated by suggestions that scientists (climate scientists in particular) are involved in some kind of conspiracy or suffering from groupthink. It’s very difficult for incorrect results to persist. Anything interesting is going to be checked by clever people who will almost certainly find a problem, if there is something to be found. I appreciate that the BICEP2 issue is only one example and we don’t yet know the final outcome, but I think it is still an illustration of the scientific process in action. There may be negative aspects to this whole issue but – from a scientific perspective – the BICEP2 announcement has done no damage. Even if we don’t actually have evidence for inflation, we’ve learned something and, presumably, understand aspects of this topic more now than we did before.