Summary: Climate science is one of our times most important areas of research, and as such the natural and inevitable conflicts inherent in the process of science become most visible. In this speech one of the greatest physists of the 20th century explains why science is so difficult: much of it is contrary to our natural behavior. The mechanisms of science have evolved to provide checks to distortions inevitable in any human community. They work well, but slowly.
This post gives an excerpt from “Cargo Cult Science“, Richard Feynman. The speech, one of the most insightful from his long and varied career, deserves to be read in full.
Background: See his impressive Wikipedia entry. This excerpt is from the book Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman!”. This was in turn adapted from his 1974 Caltech commencement address, which was published in Engineering and Science, Volume 37:7, June 1974 (PDF here).
Wikipedia entry for Cargo Cults:
A cargo cult may appear in tribal societies in the wake of interaction with technologically advanced, non-native cultures. The cult is focused on obtaining the material wealth of the advanced culture through magical thinking, religious rituals and practices, believing that the wealth was intended for them by their deities and ancestors.
Excerpt (headings are added)
What is cargo cult science?
I call these things cargo cult science, because they follow all the apparent precepts and forms of scientific investigation, but they’re missing something essential, because the planes don’t land.
Now it behooves me, of course, to tell you what they’re missing. But it would be just about as difficult to explain to the South Sea islanders how they have to arrange things so that they get some wealth in their system. It is not something simple like telling them how to improve the shapes of the earphones. But there is one feature I notice that is generally missing in cargo cult science. That is the idea that we all hope you have learned in studying science in school – we never say explicitly what this is, but just hope that you catch on by all the examples of scientific investigation.
The special kind of integrity science needs (but does not always get)
It is interesting, therefore, to bring it out now and speak of it explicitly. It’s a kind of scientific integrity, a principle of scientific thought that corresponds to a kind of utter honesty – a kind of leaning over backwards. For example, if you’re doing an experiment, you should report everything that you think might make it invalid – not only what you think is right about it: other causes that could possibly explain your results; and things you thought of that you’ve eliminated by some other experiment, and how they worked – to make sure the other fellow can tell they have been eliminated.
Details that could throw doubt on your interpretation must be given, if you know them. You must do the best you can – if you know anything at all wrong, or possibly wrong – to explain it. If you make a theory, for example, and advertise it, or put it out, then you must also put down all the facts that disagree with it, as well as those that agree with it. There is also a more subtle problem.
When you have put a lot of ideas together to make an elaborate theory, you want to make sure, when explaining what it fits, that those things it fits are not just the things that gave you the idea for the theory; but that the finished theory makes something else come out right, in addition.
In summary, the idea is to give all of the information to help others to judge the value of your contribution; not just the information that leads to judgement in one particular direction or another.
The importance of replication
… We’ve learned from experience that the truth will come out. Other experimenters will repeat your experiment and find out whether you were wrong or right. Nature’s phenomena will agree or they’ll disagree with your theory. And, although you may gain some temporary fame and excitement, you will not gain a good reputation as a scientist if you haven’t tried to be very careful in this kind of work. And it’s this type of integrity, this kind of care not to fool yourself, that is missing to a large extent in much of the research in cargo cult science.
… But this long history of learning how to not fool ourselves – of having utter scientific integrity – is, I’m sorry to say, something that we haven’t specifically included in any particular course that I know of. We just hope you’ve caught on by osmosis. The first principle is that you must not fool yourself – and you are the easiest person to fool. So you have to be very careful about that. After you’ve not fooled yourself, it’s easy not to fool other scientists. You just have to be honest in a conventional way after that.
Telling the truth — or saying what’s necessary to get funded?
I would like to add something that’s not essential to the science, but something I kind of believe, which is that you should not fool the layman when you’re talking as a scientist. I am not trying to tell you what to do about cheating on your wife, or fooling your girlfriend, or something like that, when you’re not trying to be a scientist, but just trying to be an ordinary human being. We’ll leave those problems up to you and your rabbi. I’m talking about a specific, extra type of integrity that is not lying, but bending over backwards to show how you’re maybe wrong, that you ought to have when acting as a scientist. And this is our responsibility as scientists, certainly to other scientists, and I think to laymen.
For example, I was a little surprised when I was talking to a friend who was going to go on the radio. He does work on cosmology and astronomy, and he wondered how he would explain what the applications of his work were. “Well”, I said, “there aren’t any”. He said, “Yes, but then we won’t get support for more research of this kind”. I think that’s kind of dishonest. If you’re representing yourself as a scientist, then you should explain to the layman what you’re doing – and if they don’t support you under those circumstances, then that’s their decision.
The importance of replicating resutls — and why scientists sometimes don’t do so
… Other kinds of errors are more characteristic of poor science. When I was at Cornell, I often talked to the people in the psychology department. One of the students told me she wanted to do an experiment that went something like this – it had been found by others that under certain circumstances, X, rats did something, A. She was curious as to whether, if she changed the circumstances to Y, they would still do A. So her proposal was to do the experiment under circumstances Y and see if they still did A.
I explained to her that it was necessary first to repeat in her laboratory the experiment of the other person – to do it under condition X to see if she could also get result A, and then change to Y and see if A changed. Then she would know the real difference was the thing she thought she had under control.
She was very delighted with this new idea, and went to her professor. And his reply was, no, you cannot do that, because the experiment has already been done and you would be wasting time. This was in about 1947 or so, and it seems to have been the general policy then to not try to repeat psychological experiments, but only to change the conditions and see what happened.
The history of rat testing
{Not included, but one of the most powerful parts of the essay.}
Conclusion
… So I have just one wish for you – the good luck to be somewhere where you are free to maintain the kind of integrity I have described, and where you do not feel forced by a need to maintain your position in the organization, or financial support, or so on, to lose your integrity. May you have that freedom.
Applying these insights to modern climate science
Just one of many easily seen examples of the natural but unfortunate trails describe by Feynman, seen too-often in climate science:
In response to a request for supporting data, Philip Jones, a prominent researcher {University of East Anglia} said “We have 25 or so years invested in the work. Why should I make the data available to you, when your aim is to try and find something wrong with it?”
– From the testimony of Stephen McIntyre before the House Committee on Energy and Commerce (the July 2006 hearings which produced the Wegman Report).
As Feynman says, the steady march of science will sort these things out and the truth will be revealed. I believe it is too soon to say either way. As Steve McIntyre said (source; one of his countless statements like this):
“Serious people believe that it {AGW} is an issue. There’s a lot of promotion and hype, but that doesn’t mean that, underneath it all, there isn’t a problem. No one’s shown that it’s not an issue. The hardest part for someone trying to understand the issue from first principles is locating a clear A-to-B exposition of how doubled CO2 produces a problem and I’m afraid that no one’s been able to give such a reference to me – the excuse is that such an exposition is too “routine” for climate scientists. That’s the first attitude than has to change.”
Afterword
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For more information from the FM site
To read other articles about these things, see the FM reference page on the right side menu bar. Of esp relevance to this topic:
Some posts on the FM site about climate science:
- An article giving strong evidence of global warming, 30 June 2008
- More forecasts of a global cooling cycle, 15 July 2008
- Two valuable perspectives on global warming, 4 August 2008
- Good news about global warming!, 21 October 2008 – More evidence of cooling.
- Watching the world change before our eyes, 29 November 2008
- This week’s report on the news in climate science, 7 December 2008
- Weekend reading recommenations about climate change, 13 December 2008
- An important new article about climate change, 29 December 2008
- My “wish list” for the climate sciences in 2009, 2 January 2009
- Important new climate science articles, 11 January 2009
- Climate science articles which you might enjoy reading!, 18 January 2009
- How warm is the Earth? How do we measure it?, 28 January 2009
- Science in action, a confused and often nasty debate among scientists, 5 February 2009
