One problem with the recent discussion of epistemic closure (or, in my preferred terminology) agnotology ( (that is, the manufacture and maintenance of ignorance) on the US[1] political right is that a lot of it has been discussed in fairly abstract terms. However, there is a fair bit of agreement that climate change is both a key example, and that the rightwing construction of a counternarrative to mainstream science on this issue marks both an important example, and a major step in the journey towards a completely closed parallel universe of discourse.
Climate change as a whole is too big and complicated to be useful in understanding what is going on, so it is useful to focus on one particular example, which does not require any special knowledge of climate science or statistics. The Oregon Petition, commonly quoted as showing that “31000 scientists reject global warming” not only fits the bill perfectly but was raised by Jim Manzi in his critique of Mark Levin.
So, it provides a useful test case for understanding the agnotology of the right.
The Oregon Petition has been around since the 1990s, so it’s had plenty of time to to be checked out. A 1998 version attracted 17000 signatures, and a subsequent effort in 2008 brought the total to 31000.
Here’s the Wikipedia article, a further debunking from DeSmogBlog and here’s my own investigation from 2002. Some basic points
* “Scientist’ In this petition means anyone who claims to have gone to university (initially, they had to claim some study of science subjects). The number of actual (PhD with published research) scientists who reject any part of the mainstream consensus on climate change is far smaller (Wikipedia provides a list of such scientists who have at least one published article)
* The petition and its reporting are dishonest in obvious ways (fake PNAS style, misreporting of the content) etc
* The promoters, Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine are obvious fruitcakes
These points are easy for anyone to check, and have been so widely reproduced that a majority of the top hits on Google are debunkings. Yet, until Manzi’s takedown of Levin, I’m not aware of anyone on the conservative side of politics who has criticised the petition. On the contrary, it has been uncritically reproduced time after time (here, here, here, and a long list (with a further thorough debunking here)
To put it simply, you would have to be either a fool or a liar to suggest that this exercise had any credibility. Yet as far as I can tell, Jim Manzi is the first person on the right to offer overt criticism of this exercise, and the reaction he received suggests he will probably be the last. But the reactions Manzi received certainly give us some insight into the agnotological processes at work on the right. Essentially no-one (feel free, as always to point out exceptions) cared at all about the facts of the matter: are there really 31 000 scientists who dispute mainstream global warming theory? Rather, most of the responses amounted to circling the wagons in one form or another.
The best way to understand the rightwing approach is in legalistic terms – the aim is present advocacy for the general proposition “We are good, people who are Not Like Us are bad”. Since this is advocacy rather than analysis, it’s OK to present only evidence that supports your case, and to obfuscate or ignore disconfirming evidence. And, as in standard legal argument, it’s OK to argue simultaneously for multiple, mutually inconsistent hypotheses, as long as they all support the same final conclusion.
To switch analogies, it’s like a game of basketball scored in talking points. Fouls (in this context, talking points which get discredited) are just part of the game, with the object being to get away with as many as possible on your side, and to draw as many from the other side as possible (of course, this objective is subordinate to the overall goal of scoring as many points as possible).
So, with something like the Oregon petition, the archetypal rightwinger would simultaneously advocate all of the following:
* The petition shows that 31 000 scientists reject AGW (lots of examples above)
* There is no scientific consensus supporting AGW, so even if lots of the petition signatories aren’t really scientists, the main claim behind it is correct (see, for example, here)
* The scientific consensus supporting AGW is wrong, and its proponents are dishonest, so its OK to present non-scientists as scientists if that will promote the truth Here, particularly in comments
* AGW is being used to promote statist policies, so, even if the hypothesis is true, it should be criticised in order to undermine support for such policieshere
* Even if policies like emissions trading schemes aren’t really statist, and are a response to a real problem, they have been put forward by environmentalists and liberals (people who are Not Like Us) and must therefore be opposed by any means necessary. (implicit in just about everything written on this topic – can anyone locate an explicit version of this?).
Although this example is particularly clear-cut, it’s not atypical. Look at rightwing discussion of almost any topic (any environmental issue, health care in the US, Obama’s personal history, WMDs, effects of tax cuts and many more) and you’ll find factoids doing the rounds even though five minutes with Google would show that they are absurdly wrong.
This kind of thinking is by no means unique to the contemporary right. But it is ubiquitous, and the staying power of the Oregon petition indicates way. Even the silliest claim, once made part of the canon must be defended to the last. In extreme cases, there is the option of dropping an utterly discredited talking point and then saying “we never said that”. This is one thing the Internet has made much harder, with the perverse result that obstinacy in error has become more entrenched.
Since it’s usual to claim some kind of symmetry in these things, I’d invite examples of similar things on the left. To lay down some ground rules, I’m looking for simple, and obviously false, factual claims, not leftwing beliefs about complex issues that you might think are held in the face of strong contrary evidence (that is, to take the analogy above, things like the Oregon petition, rather than AGW ‘scepticism’ as a whole). Also, I’m not interested in beliefs held by some fringe groups on the left, but only in claims that are generally accepted by mainstream liberals/progressives/social democrats, or at least widely stated and never repudiated.
fn1. All of this applies to the large section of the Australian right, particularly in the commentariat, that takes its cue from the US. However, for the right as a whole, the process is rather less advanced here.
John Quiggin 
Nothing cowardly about it, TerjeP. He said it right out loud to your face.
Probably doesn’t have to prove it to your satisfaction, either. It is his blog after all. Not the House of Representatives…
Myth 6: Higher social expenditure creates a more caring society.
Not a very strong statement really – would be much more contentious if it said something like “higher social spending is the only / best / most effective way to create a more caring society”
Is a ‘myth’ of the Left that everyone born into supportive environments will turn out Left / socially responsible / well adjusted. ie that social surroundings are paramount in development. I don’t think the Right tend to think along those lines, they tend to think people are born the way they are and that’s that.
Your doing well GregH
Has anyone mentioned trickle down
or
The government cannot be trusted to manage valuable essential resources such as water.
@gregh
Greg,
It certainly was a myth in some humanities departments that human beings are essentially a blank slate. As Pinker notes in the talk below, challenging this dogma could create serious problems for intellectuals in some circles.
Terje,
1. You linked several times on this blog to people making claims that the hacked/leaked CRU emails showed fraud by climate scientists, thereby helping to propagate these claims
2. These claims have been proven by numerous independent inquiries to be lies
3. You have never, AFAIK, admitted that the claims were false or criticised those who made them
Feel free to correct me on any of these points
Pinker is not at all a reliable source for claims of this kind. He sets up straw men on the other side, while shifting between strong and weak versions of his own position, depending on the rhetorical needs of the moment.
http://www.uq.edu.au/economics/johnquiggin/Reviews/Pinker0211.html
@jquiggin
to be fair though JQ – Pinker is not a behavioural geneticist – I don’t think he has any significant publications in that field. I still believe many on the left resist the idea that genetics is significant in behaviour. Yet a study like this one “The Genetic and Environmental Etiology of High Math Performance in 10-Year-Old Twins ” Petrill et al (2009) is completely consistent with the idea of gender equality in high end maths ability. here is alittle quote from the conclusion “Another important conclusion is that genetic and environmental effects do not operate deterministically. Instead, theories examining gene-environment transactions are necessary (e.g. Scarr and McCartney 1983). Genes do not simply turn on and cause a child to have high performance. At the same time, it cannot be assumed that the skills necessary for high math performance are taught and learned in a genetic vacuum.”
Re JQ 5,
So Jones’ proxy temperature reconstructs are not frauds, hiding the decline. Next you will be saying collusion between the 3 proxy temperature reconstructors did not happen.
Jones (aka CRU), NOAA and NASA collude with their proxy temperature reconstructs to maintain their funding, and then they call it ‘peer reviewed’ (should be called ‘piss reviewed’
All the AGW temperature record data is a proxy reconstruct that can be manipulated to say anything, you can ‘believe it’ if you want, but it is not verified by the scientific method. To say otherwise is a fraud.
“Investigation of the genetics of cognitive ability is a bad thing” seems to be predominantly a left-held view (Lewontin, Kamin, Rose…), no doubt because of the horrors of Nazism but also because of the compulsory sterilisation of the “unfit” in many “advanced” countries in the 20th century (e.g. Sweden).
For another day JQ, I think that the slate is not as blank as you suggest. But it is obvious that what ever hardwiring there is, it can be overwritten by adverse conditions. Our brains are structurally arrange to perform generally in the same manner. And that structure, a form of hardwiring, gives rise to behaviour. Problems arise when there are fluctuations in that structure at the start and later arising through development. We are yet to learn how much knowledge is passed forward in the dna (possibly the mitochondrial dna). Did you pick up on the article about the recreation of wooley mammoth blood and the amazing differences?
@Tony G
Whoa there, Tony G, the way you throw around words like ‘scientific method’, ‘peer reviewed’ and ‘proxy temperature reconstructs’ may lead unwary readers into the mistaken belief you have some idea what these terms mean.
I’m reminded of a con artist active in Queensland a few years back, who used to claim that his pyramid scheme was nothing of the sort, and that it was in fact a ‘bilateral matrix’. Sadly for the investors, which ever way you looked at the pyramid, it suffered from the same structural deficiencies as a sustainable wealth generator. Since the subject of this post rests on the sure and certain knowledge that your talking points have been exposed as falsehoods, you’re unlikely to get much traction with recycling the same falsehoods.
TonyG
That has got to be another one then
“‘finding’ any flaw at all in the data will destroy the entire theory”
as if minor fluctuations in data interpretation or presentation can oblitorate decades of scientific observation by thousands of scientists.
Tony G, you obviously don’t know that even the propounders of the claim that “hide the decline” is a fraud admit that the decline referred to is not a decline in global temperatures. And, judging by your past record, you don’t care. Your comments on this blog couldn’t illustrate the theory of agnatology more perfectly if I had made them up myself.
BilB, I’m not taking a position either way on nature/nurture (I’m a wishy-washy bit of both type). I’m just pointing out that Pinker’s Blank Slate presentation of what he calls the Standard Social Science Model is a straw man, riddled with self-contradiction.
Finally, I note that no-one taking a rightwing position on this thread has yet conceded that the Oregon petition is an obvious fraud. Agnatology explains a lot.
I’m trying to think of suitable left-wing factoids, but nothing I come up with fits the bill. The closest thing I can think of at this stage is the proposition that “Cuba has a world-class health system”, in the face of on-the-ground reports that the country has a more-or-less permanent shortage of every type of medicine and medical material. At the very least, this has the characteristic of being an exclusively left-wing claim. However, I still doubt that it fits the bill, because the concept of what it means to have a “world class health system” is pretty complex and open to interpretation, and by some metrics Cuba’s health system arguably does stack up well. So, it doesn’t really work as an example.
John,
There is a big difference between the claim that I have lied about climategate and the claim that in some comments I have linked to articles that contain what you believe to be lies. I am not responsible for what other people say or write and I routinely link to articles I myself disagree with (as do lots of people). On other blogs I sometime link to interesting articles or discussions on your blog but that does not mean I agree with all or even any of what those articles say. To support the assertion that I have lied about climategate (a significant charge) I think you need to do much better than that. Lest you create a pretext for calling everybody liars on trumped up charges based on remote associations.
If you can’t cite a remark made by me which is factually untrue and wilfully deceitful then it is John Quiggin who is the liar. And if you don’t substantiate your remark or withdraw the slur then I will hence forth make a point of describing you in such terms.
I’d distinguish between someone who lied and ‘a liar’. For me a liar is someone who habitually lies, whereas someone who told a lie is not necessarily so. I thought JQ said you lied (as against was a liar), in my understanding of the word)
@Tony G
Damn those thermometers! They don’t really measure sensible heat — they are only proxies!
Gotta hate the proxy.
I didn’t say you lied. I said you propagated lies, which you did, by linking to them and making approving comments about them (look up “propagate” in the dictionary if you need to)
But now you have the chance to make it clear where you stand. If you agree that both the Oregon petition and the fraud charges against the East Anglia researchers are lies, say so, and I’ll happily withdraw any imputation against you. If you want to hide behind “neither confirm nor deny” , you can expect to be called out.
I’m inclined to observe, Terje, that you require the highest standard of proof from others but never offer the same yourself. As I observed earlier your technique is to contiuously lob doubt and slogan grenades into discussions but rarely, if ever, contribute substantive content. This is in itself a “right” technique of discussion geurilla terrorism.
JQ – where have I made approving remarks about lies?
Hide the decline entailed deliberate moves to obscure the truth and these were part of a wider exercise in defending a story against scrutiny and inconvient facts. I don’t know if that is technically fraud but fraud seems like the right word. The oregan petition is as far as I know just a sloppy piece of propaganda. I’m happy enough calling it deceptive. As far as I can tell most scientists and the vast majority of climate scientists support the AGW theory.
I agree that Stephen Pinker’s ‘research’ is very sus. That is not to say that all or any of the hypotheses he believes are necessarily wrong. The problem he has is that if something can plausibly be explained by a hypothesis he supports, that is the end of the story. He really doesn’t entertain or examine other possible explanations for the data. Entertaining and rigorously examining the viability of alternative explanations is the mark of a real scientist. It is only when other potential explanations have been carefully elaborated and found to be deficient that you can seriously claim the data in support of your theory. This lack of rigor seems to be prevalent amongst those who wish to broaden evolutionary explanations. A recent example is a book written by a Philosophy Professor with a rather thinly supported evolutionary explanation for aesthetic appreciation. The Art Instinct: Beauty, Pleasure, and Human Evolution by Denis Dutton. The book got an endorsement by Pinker. It has already made a remainder bin appearance in Australia. Interestingly, Denis Dutton is yet another climate change denier, and frequent speaker guest at places like the CIS.
Here is one example of Stephen Pinker giving Denis Dutton and his book a plug:
http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/dutton09/dutton09_index.html
If you are a member of the libertarian mafia you don’t expect a lot of scrutiny by other made men, but you can expect and get a lot of uncritical support.
The examined life is not worth living, apparently.
@TerjeP (say Taya)
The only people obscuring the truth were the climate change deniers. This has been shown again and again.
I think it is about here that you end up sounding a bit of a goose – as my kids and I would joke (perhaps about some appalling Dad joke I’ve just made) – you just had to take it too far
This thread illustrates wonderfully well why I no longer write a blog, and why I gave up reading blogs for several months.
The human need to argue and score debating points seems infinitely stronger than any wish to expand understanding and grope closer to truth.
TerjeP (say Taya), in Australia “half-truths” is more or less bulldust.
Re: hiding the decline; and hiding his spliced and diced data;
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200910/cmselect/cmsctech/387/38705.htm
@52
” Graham Stringer: You are saying that every paper that you have produced, the computer programmes, the weather stations, all the information, the codes, have been available to scientists so that they could test out how good your work was. Is that the case on all the papers you have produced?
Professor Jones: That is not the case.
Graham Stringer: Why is it not?
Professor Jones: Because it has not been standard practice to do that.
Graham Stringer: That takes me back to the original point, that if it is not standard practice how can the science progress?
Professor Jones: Maybe it should be standard practice but it is not standard practice across the subject. ”
AGW temperature reconstructs after all their splicing and dicing hide the ‘real decline.
AGW is a fraud.
@ 47
“we are all working independently so we may be using a lot of common data but the way of going from the raw data to a derived product of gridded temperatures and then the average for the hemisphere and the globe is totally independent between the different groups.”
Bullshi#!
Are you still saying collusion between the 3 proxy temperature reconstructors did not happen?
My ass Jones is vindicated.
@ 54
“There should be enough information published to allow verification.”
The temperature reconstruction are not peer reviewed verified science.
The warming is an elaborate (constructed) fraud.
Tony G, the Oregon Petition does not reflect the US National Academy of Sciences views and lacks credibility. Try again.
Mike OSH;
no it is
*The promoters, of AGW who are obvious fruitcakes
Tony G, have a good night, I’m going to bed.
The Oregon Petition case.
A note on the signature of ‘scientists’. This trick was possible because the academic categories Humanities and Science (unqualified category names) were renamed by two qualified category names, namely social science and natural science. Removing the qualifiers allows aggregation across the original 2 categories. Hence a complete obfuscation of crucial methodologies differences is possible, including the substitution of ‘argument’, legalistic or otherwise, for ‘analysis’, the confusion of any type of quantification involving numbers with measurement, and selecting a group of social ‘scientists’ who ‘honestly’ state their ‘beliefs’ in a manner that could be misunderstood as scientific opinion.
John H says:
“I have never understood the premise that we should allow aborigines to maintain their own cultural beliefs”
Perhaps you shoulds set out what these cultural beliefs are and why they are so detrimental?
John H says:
“I have never understood the premise that we should allow aborigines to maintain their own cultural beliefs”
Perhaps you should set out what these cultural beliefs are and why they are so detrimental?
“we should allow”? Very strange. We shouldn’t allow? Why should aborigines be singled out as the only people in our society that we shouldn’t allow to have or maintain their own beliefs? We allow anyone to have or maintain their own beliefs. And how would you go about not allowing? We also allow anyone to criticize others beliefs. And why should we?
Sorry, why shouldn’t we?
From the EGU 2010 meeting video here:
http://www.cntv.at/EGU2010/?modid=18&a=show&pid=64
(hat tip to
http://julesandjames.blogspot.com/2010/05/egu2010-live.html )
Some wise words:
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (1742-1799)
‘the most dangerous truths are truths slightly distorted’
‘blind unbelief in one thing springs from blind belief in another’
Terje, you seem pretty cavalier about accusations of fraud against a prominent scientist who has, as I repeat, been cleared of such accusations by numerous inquires, with specific reference to the phrases (selectively taken from stolen emails) on which you rely. Do you even know what the phrase “hide the decline” refers to, and if you do, can you justify your accusation?
I’m taking the time to push you on htis, because I think you’re basically honest, unlike, say Tony G, who doesn’t care whether his talking points are true or false, indeed has long since lost touch with these categories. But you need to recognise that the vast majority of people on your side are like Tony G, at least when it comes to climate and similar issues.
I find it hard to think of any leftist examples of the kind asked for, at least outside the marxist fringe.
Interesting to think about why AGW attracts such a position. Tobacco and anti-evolution both have obvious drivers, and anyway never gained much traction beyond tobacco firms and their paid lobbyists and particular sorts of religious believers. AGW denial has a much larger base. What is this telling us?
@Peter T
Doubtless, there are many reasons why people become wrapped up in this. Some people are fearful. The idea that the world as they imagined it always being might change in some threatening way is frightening.
Most of us respond to this by asking how we can rationally do about it, but some deny reality in just the way people deny that their marriages are failing or that they need glasses or that they have a drinking problem. I know compulsive smokers who for years smoked citing the one person they claimed to know who’d died in perfect health at 90 despite smoking. Denial is comforting.
Others don’t like the idea that their lifestyle might have to change. Some are fearful of remote authority or indeed others in general “interfering” in their lives. I’ve coined the term “socio-spatial angst” to cover this, and in the US there are a lot of candidates for this concept, especially on the loopy right. Look at the battle over health reform.
This would not amount to much if the footsoldiers of delusion didn’ty have a major stakeholder to knit them together — and as we have seen, extractive industry is the key here. Without the money that is needed to glue these people together into a coalition, they really would be as isolated as the 9/11 truthers.
@Peter T
Just a clarifying question, Peter T. When you say, AGW denial has a much larger base, do you mean a much larger base of fully qualified natural scientists or do you mean a much larger base of the general public?
JQ said;
“basically honest, unlike, say Tony G, who doesn’t care whether his talking points are true or false, indeed has long since lost touch with these categories ”
Using the flawed debating tactic of attacking the messenger not the message won’t make the splicing and dicing of the global temperature reconstructions that Jones and his cohorts made up, verifiable science; only a proper peer review will do that;
and this is what Jones himself says about the fraudulent peer review process that IS climate science:
” Graham Stringer: You are saying that every paper that you have produced, the computer programmes, the weather stations, all the information, the codes, have been available to scientists so that they could test out how good your work was. Is that the case on all the papers you have produced?
Professor Jones: That is not the case.
Graham Stringer: Why is it not?
Professor Jones: Because it has not been standard practice to do that.
Graham Stringer: That takes me back to the original point, that if it is not standard practice how can the science progress?
Professor Jones: Maybe it should be standard practice but it is not standard practice across the subject. ”
@52 here
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200910/cmselect/cmsctech/387/38705.htm
JQ you can go on about the semantics of hiding the decline in the hidden tree ring data splicing, but the fact remains that the temperature reconstucters themselves admit they hide their own data from other scientists, so YOU are not being honest when you call their ficticous data, peer reviewed science.
Be honest John if it is not peer reviewed science it is pure GIGO;
Be honest John you can not actually for prove it is warming, .
That corporations reliant on fossil fuels, either as an input or as a product, fund and propagate climate denialism in their own, and shareholders short-term self interests?
@Tony G
Not flawed debating tactics because there is nothing to debate. You talk nonsense. You tell porkies. You don’t have any message. Lies do not contain any information except about the liar.
A small, quiet, devastating explanation from Ernestine Gross, #33, that some may have missed.
SOP with thinktanks who, like the tabloids, are doing disinformation rather than good faith participation, altho disinformation asumes the guise of honest inquiry, concerning a debate about something that effects everybody, including themselves and their sponsors, if they only had the mentality to see it.
Tony G, you are a naif being led by the nose by big corporations and media who feign concern for civilisation, but are just out to protect their own hordes regardless of the facts or likelihood of harm done to others.
Tony, have a think about the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.
What does it say about the corporate mentality?
Do you think if they are dishonest about that off shore location being safe to drill, they might not be dishonest about other things effecting their narrow self interest?
Haven’t you heard BP? “Wasn’t our fault” they say. Nevertheless they have bravely said that they will do what is legally required. Lucky for them at least some of the damages they have to pay for are capped. The costs to their victims aren’t capped though.
Freelander;
Jones himself says that in climate science it is common practice not release information to other scientists so that they “could test out how good your the work is”. (i.e peer review it)
So where is the independant peer review? At best the all the warming data is an educated guess.
If I am a liar Freelander, where is the proof that your bodgy climate scientists don’t hide their information? (especially when they admit to hiding it)
So, forgive me for not agreeing with you to kill people in the third world with decreased living standards due to energy restriction, based on your pseudo science.
paul walter any oil spill is a tradgedy, but people like you and freelander are hypocrites, I bet you both rely on oil to maintain your high living standards. (yet you want to deny higher living standards to people in the third world)
And here, in Tony G, we have the Agnotasaur in its natural habitat…
@bill
Actually, in this biome it is an invasive exotic species. Luckily, like cane toads in melbourne, the environmental conditions do not favour propagation.