Scientific 'show of hands' ?

Dave!

Hey folks,

I'm just wondering is there any kind of way to determine the prevailing scientific sentiment on a particular issue?

For example is there any kind of regular polling done among doctors or academic types?

It would be helpful, I would think, to be able to have some numbers to point to when arguing with someone on a particular topic.

For example I was having a discussion recently on the swine flu vaccine, as well as about anthropogenic global warming, and while I'm quite certain (from reading blogs, etc) that the prevailing sentiment is that any skepticism on these topics is unfounded, there's no real way to gauge sentiment among people who are actually qualified in the field.

It would be handy to be able to say "95% of medical doctors think the vaccine is safe", or "85% of climatologists believe humans are causing GW".

Any ideas?

IrishKnight

"Lies, damned lies, and statistics"

You can find a statistic for anything if you look hard enough...or just lie.

Marvinthefish

Dave! wrote: »

I'm just wondering is there any kind of way to determine the prevailing scientific sentiment on a particular issue?

For example is there any kind of regular polling done among doctors or academic types?

My first thought would be to search scientific journals in the area of the topic I want information on. They would seem to me as the only regular publications where scientists could get across their views on current topics. Editorials in these journals too.

Of course, there's many more surveys of scientists' views on science (in general) and how scientists view the public's knowledge of science. Eg this one completed in July 2009 by the American Association for the Advancment of Science.

Hmmm... Here's a webpage on the Royal Society of Chemistry's website containing discussions of topical topics. No stat's from surveyed scientists though.

Gurgle

Dave! wrote: »

For example I was having a discussion recently on the swine flu vaccine, as well as about anthropogenic global warming, and while I'm quite certain (from reading blogs, etc) that the prevailing sentiment is that any skepticism on these topics is unfounded

If you don't have skepticism then you're not looking at the topic as a scientist.

Dave! wrote: »

there's no real way to gauge sentiment among people who are actually qualified in the field.
It would be handy to be able to say "95% of medical doctors think the vaccine is safe", or "85% of climatologists believe humans are causing GW".

Maybe 85% of climatologists believe that humans are causing GW:
- How many of these have simply read other people's papers and accepted the conclusions as fact?
- How do you become a climatologist? I guess you study climatology in college. Climatology 101: Anthropogenic global warming :rolleyes:

100 years ago we lived in an infinite steady-state universe.
Pretty much 100% of physicists agreed. Not because they had studied the universe, taken loads of measurements and calculated that it had been like this forever, but because this was something you learned when studying to be a physicist.
There was no more need to confirm it than there was to drop a big rock and a little rock off the leaning tower of Piza and confirm that both hit the ground at once.

Turtwig

Gurgle wrote: »

If you don't have skepticism then you're not looking at the topic as a scientist.

I'll echo Gurgle's sentiments to a point.
Science thrives on skepticism. However, there is skepticism and then there's amateurs who like to profess their beliefs on a subject. Distinguishing between genuine skeptics and "wannabes" is the trouble when in the comes to a politically heated topic such as AGW. In science, what a person believes, is all well and good, to them the person, but meaningless to science. Even if you are 100% correct in your asserted hypothesis, if you have no evidence to support it, then you're going to be drowned alive. Slowly but surely, as data is obtained and analysed, the good science will come to the fro and the bad science will be filtered out.

This is where the difficulty lies, currently the sum of the evidence obtained supports AGW better than other alternative. In fact, every other hypothesis that has been proposed has hit murky water time and time again. They might be right, it could just be the sun, or cosmic rays but there isn't sufficient evidence at the current time to support either of these hypothesis. Climatalogists have looked through more than one hypothesis in the course of their history. At first they weren't sure what the effect of C02 in the atmosphere actually was.(Interesting "history" on the physics of the Green House effect article here.). Slowly but surely though more and more hyopothesis were eliminated, others formed, and were subsequently eliminated. As this is pop science, I'm not going to elaborate. Needless to say though AGW wasn't just the default position. It is now, but if the climatalogists are taught like the rest of us, then they are skeptical of their own theory. Let them sort it out though, not others who think they're wrong because they believe the problem to be too complicated.

Gurgle

Malty_T wrote: »

currently the sum of the evidence obtained supports AGW better than other alternative.

True, but its becoming increasingly clear that this sum is a very very small amount of actual evidence and a whole heap of extrapolation and conjecture.

Even the most dogmatic climatologists admit that the trend of the last 5 years or so is going in exactly the opposite direction of their predictions. Global temperatures have been falling.

This is where the true scientists are separated from the Priests of the first church of Global Warming.

The scientists look for more evidence and recommend that we reduce CO2 emissions to be on the safe side. The latest evidence is interesting and requires further study. We'll keep you updated as we figure stuff out.

The Priests scream rabidly from their alters that we're killing the world and we'll all burn in hell for it. The latest evidence is obviously a glitch and should be ignored. Kill the heretics.

Turtwig

Gurgle wrote: »

Even the most dogmatic climatologists admit that the trend of the last 5 years or so is going in exactly the opposite direction of their predictions. Global temperatures have been falling.

To be fair, I don't think a 5 year trend is anything that can be commented on either way be it warming or cooling. We'll just have to wait and see, but I'm betting it will be passed off as an unusually inactive sun. (Yep yep:p)
Also, unless I'm mistaken last year (2008) was the 9th warmest on record since instruments began. And, I think the warmest 10 (or 15?) all fell into the last twenty years.

(Sorry, I'm on dial up, so I can't really research the stats. )

Gurgle

Malty_T wrote: »

To be fair, I don't think a 5 year trend is anything that can be commented on either way be it warming or cooling.

I completely agree, but the whole AGW model is based on only a couple of decades worth of data in the first place so the last 5 years is a significant chunk of the available information.

I'm not dissin' the whole theory, but it should be presented as theory not as fact.

Capt'n Midnight

Inevitably, Einstein’s fame and the great success of his theories created a backlash. The rising Nazi movement found a convenient target in relativity, branding it “Jewish physics” and sponsoring conferences and book burnings to denounce Einstein and his theories. The Nazis enlisted other physicists, including Nobel laureates Philipp Lenard and Johannes Stark, to denounce Einstein. One Hundred Authors Against Einstein was published in 1931. When asked to comment on this denunciation of relativity by so many scientists, Einstein replied that to defeat relativity one did not need the word of 100 scientists, just one fact.

Gary L

I love the way you guys are thinking. Popular consciousness has no bearing on reality. I was trying to get this point across in another thread.

Gary L wrote: »

I believe perception of reality is beyond us, yet it is the desire to perceive it that makes us unique. We must therefore strive to comprehend it as best we can.
In doing so we have to accept that there are no certainties and that all we can posit are theories and best guesses. This is the scientific ideal but such thinking needs to be applied to all our notions of truth and reality. Truth is a corruption, it doesn't exist. If we want to understand reality we have to embrace the fact that we will never understand it, we only have questions. Our hope is in searching for perspective, never boldly declaring that we have found answers.

Its an easy concept to apply to physics but we have to bring this mode of thought into the human perspective. It is the sole responsibility of the human individual to question every notion of truth that is suggested to it. It must never accept any system as an absolute and realize that all notions of reality are subject to change. It is precisely our curiosity and our ability to think in the abstract that makes us a special intelligence. To pose answers to great questions is to suggest that the work is done and that there can be no more improvement.
This is dangerous thinking when applied to our ideas about government, energy, language or even matter. I believe this is the reason why perception trails behind reality in human affairs. It is foolish to ever think 'this is the way its done'. When we can truly come to terms with our ignorance, we can start to strive for objectivity and then we can take off the blinkers and approach our problems with an open mind.

The idea that a measurement of public opinion influences the reality of the subject is dangerous. Herd thinking and unquestioned belief in authority are very damaging to our species

rubensni

Gary L wrote: »

Herd thinking and unquestioned belief in authority are very damaging to our species

Noone is denying that, but by polling experts in a field who understand the issue and approach it scientifically then what harm can a vox pop do?

Gary L

None at all its just a useful caveat to bear in mind.

Flamed Diving

Popularity contests mean nothing. The majority once thought the earth was at the centre of the universe.

Gary L

I wish they meant nothing but your so wrong. The common man believes whatever the people around him think. A sustained informative campaign will change him no bother but no critical thinking goes on independently. Its our nature, we learn about the world through experience, that is, by listening to the opinions of others. Logical free thought and the scientific method don't come in to most peoples view of the world. What a world it would be if they did.

JuliusCaesar

You'll generally find consensus articles in journals called "Advances in.." or "Current Opinion in..."

ISAW

Gurgle wrote: »

100 years ago we lived in an infinite steady-state universe.
Pretty much 100% of physicists agreed. Not because they had studied the universe, taken loads of measurements and calculated that it had been like this forever, but because this was something you learned when studying to be a physicist.

I disagree . Olber's paradox posed how it isn't infinite and can be dated to Thomas Digges in the sixteenth century!

Also astronomers were aware that constellations in the heavens changed over time but the amount of matter was thought to be constant. Mind you they didn't have Atomic Theory then explaining fusion in stars. And the finite sped of light in a vacuum is only an assumption of Einsteinean relativity which was only taking its first steps in 1910. In fact what do you mean by "steady state" in 1900? In fact they were only just becoming aware of the size of the universe.

So there were other arguments and the idea that scientists didnt ask these questions and just accepted what some authority said is not supported.

There was no more need to confirm it than there was to drop a big rock and a little rock off the leaning tower of Piza and confirm that both hit the ground at once.

An experiment which probably didn't happen! Galileo did however propose the tought experiment of tying the small mass to the big mass thus creating a mass bigger than the big mass. Consider the logical consequences of such a system if the law of "bigger falls faster" applies!

ISAW

Gurgle wrote: »

I completely agree, but the whole AGW model is based on only a couple of decades worth of data in the first place so the last 5 years is a significant chunk of the available information.

I'm not dissin' the whole theory, but it should be presented as theory not as fact.

I disagree:

Data from 1880 to present

http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/tabledata/GLB.Ts.txt

http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temperature_record_of_the_past_1000_years

Gurgle

ISAW wrote: »

I disagree:

Data from 1880 to present
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temperature_record_of_the_past_1000_years

The first 2 links just provide buckets of un-explained text.
As for the graphs on wikipedia:
Only one of those studies shows temperatures going beyond the average of 1000 years ago. And that one >Stops< in 2004.

Add 2004 - 2009 into the graph and you'll see a peak in 2004, with temperatures levelling off / falling since then.

Gurgle

ISAW wrote: »

Olber's paradox posed how it isn't infinite

Olber's paradox is flawed, as it doesn't take quantum physics or relativity into account at all. Light travels in packets and at finite speed.

The Hubble deep-space images demonstrate that. (They pointed the telescope at a completely 'black' piece of sky and left it there for 10 days. Voila, 1000 more galaxies.)

ISAW wrote: »

In fact what do you mean by "steady state" in 1900? In fact they were only just becoming aware of the size of the universe.

Not in 1900. The accepted model of the universe was an infinite collection of stars and galaxies, which changed slowly in position but was overall homogenous and unchanging.

ISAW wrote: »

So there were other arguments and the idea that scientists didnt ask these questions and just accepted what some authority said is not supported.

I never said they did - scientists are always questioning the models and offering new ideas. Most physicists in the last few hundred years have been specialists in their field with general knowledge in other areas. At any given time there is a generally accepted model, and any new ideas have to be proved to change this.

Turtwig

Gurgle wrote: »

Add 2004 - 2009 into the graph and you'll see a peak in 2004, with temperatures levelling off / falling since then.

Gurgle

Malty_T wrote: »

Confused?
Why?

Turtwig

Gurgle wrote: »

Confused?
Why?

From a 5 year period you can discern a temperature trend?.

Gurgle

Malty_T wrote: »

From a 5 year period you can discern a temperature trend?.

Mate, thats a graph of annual rainfall.

& I'm not saying I can discern a trend, I'm saying that the last 5-10 years doesn't support the AGW theory.

The long-term (five hundred years) trend indicates that we're coming out of a mini ice-age.

The short-term (decade) trend indicates that temperatures are fairly stable.

Only the medium-term, 1950-2000 trend supports AGW, and only if the data set is taken in isolation.

Turtwig

Gurgle wrote: »

Mate, thats a graph of annual rainfall.

Flamed Diving

I can't help but think of this when I read your debate.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_PWDFzWt-Ag

Capt'n Midnight

Gurgle wrote: »

Mate, thats a graph of annual rainfall.

you get more evaporation when it's warmer
(no it's not that simple you also get more clouds that reflect solar energy too)

The long-term (five hundred years) trend indicates that we're coming out of a mini ice-age.

The short-term (decade) trend indicates that temperatures are fairly stable.

500 years is long term ?

Not if you take into account the wobbles in the earth's orbit



Graph is 1.6 million years wide

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milankovitch_cycles

ISAW

Gurgle wrote: »

The first 2 links just provide buckets of un-explained text.

What do YOU call a "warm year" or a "cold year"?

You seem not to have read the TITLE
GLOBAL Temperature Anomalies in 0.01 degrees Celsius base period: 1951-1980
or the bit at the end explaining divide by 100 to get the Celsius temperature?


If you want to find the warmest or coolest year you have to have a MEAN year( base period) and look at the biggest anomaly either positive or negative from it!
I posted you the actual raw data from directly measured sources.

Or the fact that J-D is Jan - Dec or D-N is Dec to Nov and three month seasonal periods are on the right? Each month in that year is also listed.

Duh! - It is the record of global temperatures since 1880 which was posited didn't exist????
remember
[quote = gurgle http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showpost.php?p=63696716&postcount=8]
...but the whole AGW model is based on only a couple of decades worth of data in the first place
[/quote]

If you look you might note how the global temperatures in the first half of the last 130 years are largely NEGATIVE but since 1986 are almost all positive.

The world IS WARMING . Whether it is anthropogenic is a different matter but it is warming and not based on the last two or three decades!

As for the graphs on wikipedia:
Only one of those studies shows temperatures going beyond the average of 1000 years ago. And that one >Stops< in 2004.

Add 2004 - 2009 into the graph and you'll see a peak in 2004, with temperatures levelling off / falling since then.

did you read the first paragraph which says : ", attribution of recent climate change relies on a broad range of methodologies of which the proxy reconstructions are only a small part"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temperature_record_since_1880

Pittens

It seems that Jan 2010 was 0.92 degrees above the average globally.

We were wrong to feel cold.

EDIT: 2nd warmest Jan on record. Just real warm snow I am guessing.

ISAW

Gurgle wrote: »

Olber's paradox is flawed, as it doesn't take quantum physics or relativity into account at all. Light travels in packets and at finite speed.

i was not arguing that it was flawed or not . I was just point out that saying an infinite universe "was something you learned when studying to be a physicist" was not the only view held for all the history of physics from Roger Bacon through Newton to the late nineteenth century.


In addition a hundred years ago quantum physics was only in its infancy and purely theoretical. elativity and quantum physics really didn't become tested till the 1920s and
the Eclipse measurements from Recife weren't really accurate enough to confirm Einstein's idea about the perihelion of mercury. In fact it wasn't till the "steady state" radio telescopes of the 1950's that such confirmation of gravational lensing was commonplace.

The Hubble deep-space images demonstrate that. (They pointed the telescope at a completely 'black' piece of sky and left it there for 10 days. Voila, 1000 more galaxies.)

That is an anachronism! They didn't have the HST 100 years ago either.

In fact the writer Edgar Allan Poe seems to have solved the paradox in 1848 without the use of the HST

Poe wrote:

supposing the distance of the invisible background so immense that no ray from it has yet been able to reach us at all.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_cosmology#Pre-1900

Not in 1900. The accepted model of the universe was an infinite collection of stars and galaxies, which changed slowly in position but was overall homogenous and unchanging.

Homogenity STILL IS a supposition of cosmology (along with isotropism).
State state cosmology was dominant til about the 1950s Even einstein accepted it and went with the cosmological constant.

I never said they did - scientists are always questioning the models and offering new ideas. Most physicists in the last few hundred years have been specialists in their field with general knowledge in other areas. At any given time there is a generally accepted model, and any new ideas have to be proved to change this.

Well I would also disagree with that. Einstein was accepted with minimal measurement and Pinzias and Wilson's evidence for the coismological background consisted of a Bell curve ( no pun intended) with a SINGLE DATA POINT at the peak! the physicists present laughed but just knew it was right

Burbridge ( a noble lauriet who worked with Hoyle) still is a steady statist and I have met him and he is well aware of the politics existing in science and how one is castigated and ridiculed if one does not conform to "accepted truth" .

ISAW

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milankovitch_cycles

Interesting. Might I also suggest galactic years i.e. the time it take us to go around the centre of the galaxy.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galactic_year

There are about ten of the above cycles per year. it couls also be that the solar system passes through voids or massive areas or throught the galactic plane during these times. In fact the latter has been suggested as a mechanism behind the periodicity of mass extinctions I believe.