The Avoidance Behavior Is Strong In This One

The wuwt site has a post on "Science is in deep trouble...", concerning the sorry consensus-defending state of peer-review and the wider world's mistaken reliance on it as the arbiter of scientific truth. One comment questioned the post, by falsely questioning the author's (Donna Laframboise, I think) qualifications, not her points; I consider that avoidance behavior, and my response is:

The system is broken and truth is where you find it. Those who follow their favorite prejudice, or dogma, rather than seeking the truth, wherever it lies, will not recognize the truth as such even when it is presented to them, already found and perfectly clear.*** Instead, they bolt for the nearest rationalization for not confronting the truth and accepting it through honest reason. Dogma is ascendant over honest reason in the world today, as never before (because the rot is so universal today, not just political or religious, as in the past). The very paradigms (the fundamental assumptions)--by which the people come to, and hold to, their beliefs in this time (in politics, in religion, in science, in society and civilization itself)--are being strained beyond their natural limits, and visibly failing, for those with eyes to see. The underlying problem is unquestioned dogmas, in every field of human endeavor, too long nurtured and by now too strongly believed by too many to be questioned by all (and thrown out) as they should be.

*** The most obvious example right now: Those who will vote for Hillary Clinton believe the system is working tolerably well and want it to continue as it is, while those who will vote for Trump see that it is fundamentally broken and needs immediate fixing. The truth is that, if people want real progress, they will have to change themselves, by letting go of the false dogmas that are now choking the system, in so many ways (as all the insults, dismissals and denials on all sides clearly show).

Science Is A Single Mind, Learning

The Notrickszone has a post on the trouble with peer review, and the following is my (by now habitual) response:

Ordinary people need to understand that there are basically two kinds of scientist when it comes to the peer-review process: 1) Principal Investigators, and 2) Everyone else, including a) Research Associates, who are simply employees, without tenure, who can be "terminated"--fired--without cause, and b)"expert" (a meaningless word these days) consultants from other fields or other institutions (also known as "pals", as in "pal review", get it?).

When the subject of peer review comes up these days, I trot out my 2003 letter on peer review to the OMB, when it requested feedback on peer review (see also all 2003 Public Comments on Peer Review that they received).

My bottom line, from experience: "peer review ... is a system akin to that of independent feudal lords or warring tribal chiefs", i.e., those "Principal Investigators" whose main concerns are keeping their research grant money coming in year after year, and being taken as the unquestioned authorities in their fields (which mainly requires they never allow even the possibility they could be wrong about the "settled science", as the "Emperor" must be peerless, in their own minds). As you can see, the fundamental mindset is that of "survival of the fittest and I must be the fittest"--and (LEARN THIS, people) that mindset (also known as "the struggle for scarce resources") is NOT the way to the TRUTH in science (despite what you may think you have learned "the hard way" in life). True science--uncovering the truth--is NOT a competition (or a social construct, as in "postnormal science" or even a "consensus"), in any way, shape or form. It is, fundamentally, a single mind, learning something true (cause and effect) about the world--period.

Peer Review: Theory and Epicycles

I have submitted the following comment to the bishop hill site, where they are talking about proposed new changes to peer review:

There is an incipient, general revolution in science, a NEW PARADIGM (yet very old; I call it "The Once and Future Paradigm"), that needs to come out, and peer-review -- any review by current deluded and dogmatically defensive "experts" -- is incompetent to handle it. Imagine back in Galileo's day, "peer review" was by ecclesiastic overseers; the situation is similar to that. We are dealing with an incompetent fundamental belief system, maintaining an incompetent consensus, across many fields of science, and climate science is just the tip of the iceberg, with its deluded assumption of a globe poised on the razor edge of "runaway global climate", either too hot OR too cold. No isolated debate, over any one supposed "cause" or "effect" (such as the "greenhouse effect" debate in climate science) can properly address the underlying general incompetence (that makes both alarmists and skeptics fellow-travellers in the "global-warming greenhouse effect" delusion). Adding epicycles to peer review is meaningless in that larger, proper context.

Peer Review: Getting a Token Shakeup

The following is my response to an article on the wattsupwiththat site, about new open-publishing rules being considered for peer-review journals, giving everyone free access to them:

It sounds good, just like Obamacare does to a poor man, BUT...  You are taking your eye off the ball, which is that an incompetent climate consensus is basically the accepted law of the land, worldwide, and that all of our institutions have been suborned by that consensus. Two generations of scientists have been miseducated (and thus made incompetent from the beginning of their higher education) in a non-existent "greenhouse effect", of increasing global mean temperature with increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide, which is in turn upheld by an obviously misleading radiative transfer theory that is taken to be fundamental "settled science" by all. The consensus physics is literally upside-down and causally backward, because radiative transfer is taken to be the cause of temperatures, but is obviously the effect of them (where is there a clear-headed lukewarm believer?--for here and elsewhere none of them can even note that the 390 W/m^2 in longwave IR said to be emitted by the Earth's surface, is really just the intensity of radiation calculated for a blackbody at the temperature of that surface, and understand that this is a physics misunderstanding that should fail a freshman, much less an "expert" like Kevin Trenberth, first and foremost because it provides only for a gross violation of the conservation of energy?)

This open-publishing gambit is really just desperate political maneuvering (and is analogous to Obamacare, supposedly giving everyone access to the "best science", but there is no "best" climate science, there is only fundamentally bad climate science), trying to do the least, and to protect everyone involved in the outrageous rape of science, by "97% of climate scientists" and every "authoritative" institution in the world. This generation is diligently and politically avoiding getting to the heart of the matter, and it will only, as the old saying goes, reap the wild wind for the next generation. No one in a position of authority--and public responsibility--is practicing true science (and that includes WUWT). If you did, there would be no political debate, and no tyrannous governmental climate policies, because there would be a healthy and robust lack of consensus, given the bad science.

How To Save Science

The "Climate Etc." blog of Dr. Judith Curry has a post on the fundamental problems with peer review. Instead of adding a comment there, I offer the following:

Scientific fundamentals like peer review are broken because science has not been self-correcting, but figuratively adding epicycles to planetary circles, for a long time, so that incompetence proliferates instead of the expertise that is advertised and expected. Materialistic scientism (dogmatically opposed to religion and, by false logical extension, to a higher meaningful reality than the merely physical) is leading science on a dead-end street; the "undirected evolution" paradigm is a failure, but that is largely unknown, especially among self-proud, cloistered academics. I am already showing the way to correct science--by identifying and focusing upon the definitive evidence that disproves key scientific errors of understanding. All scientists have to do is be willing to have even their favorite theories and supposed understanding undone, when the definitive facts say so. Science should be organized learning, first , last and always, not memorized, ritualized explanation.