Source: EikeKlimaEnergie
URL: http://www.youtube.com/user/EikeKlimaEnergie#p/u/18/CyOB1KDzfYk
Date: 03/12/2010
Event: Dr Terence Kealey speaking at the Third International Energy and Climate Conference Berlin 2010
People:
Dr Terence Kealey: I do want to say one thing about peer-review and one brief thing about science. I met Wolfgang at a couple of conferences earlier this year and he asked me to come and speak about the philosophy of science, so I would just like to tell if I may one brief story. In the nineteenth century in England there was a real debate over the age of the Earth. One group of geologists has studied the rate of sedimentation of the rocks and had concluded that the Earth had to be hundreds of millions of years old. Another group of
geologists measured the temperature of the volcanoes and the rate of cooling of the globe and concluded that the Earth could not be more than five million years old, because it would have cooled otherwise.
So here two groups of first class scientists both of whom are apparently right. Of course sedimentary rocks show that the Earth is hundreds of millions of years old - and they were right. And of course the temperature of the Earth and the rate of cooling meant that the Earth could not be more than five million years old - and they were right.
So how did these two groups of scientists deal with the dilemma? Did they say to themselves Professor Popper says if you are falsified you are wrong and you must change your course or did they say Professor Popper is not yet born and therefore we are sticking to our story and we’re ignoring falsification?
The dilemma of science is that all great scientists ignore falsification. It is almost a definition of greatness that you ignore what others say. You stick to your suspicions and beliefs and you seek to prove what you secretly know, in advance, to be true. That is actually the nature of science and it has to be the nature of science, because there are too many observations out there. You have to select your observations. You have to select your theory and then you spend your life trying to prove it. Which is why they say science advances funeral by funeral, because no one ever changes their mind.
In the end, as we know the dilemma about the age of the universe and the globe was sorted out by radio activity. The centre of the world is radio active and it releases radio activity, and radio activity releases heat and so the world, as we know is four billion years old.
But the point I wanted to make was climate change scientists are all post-normal, because all scientists have always been post-normal. All
scientists always grab a hypothesis and seek to prove it. And peer-review is merely a group of people within the same club all of whom share certain pre-assumptions and therefore peer-review can often be very deceptive.
We didn’t smash Climategate through peer-review we smashed Climategate by people using freedom of information and through breaking in to people's websites. [Applause]
And so to finish scientists are advocates, they are not judges. Scientists do not seek to say this is right and this is wrong, based on the evidence before me. That’s what judges do. What scientists do is they are advocates. They say I believe this to be true this is the case and I will do every thing I can prove it. And anyone who reads a scientific paper and doesn’t understand that scientists are only advocates and it can take twenty years or thirty years before we really know what they truth is after everyone has died does not understand the process of science.