Science’s big problem(s)

Anyone who follows this blog (you know who you are) will have noticed the concentration of late on non-science topics. So I thought it was worth returning to my former stomping ground. This was, in part, because I came across something specific in the press that caught my attention. But it also relates to a much bigger, and therefore more troubling, theme. Science matters because it is clear that it is the best, perhaps the only way, to effectively answer certain types of important questions. It has an impressive (though not unblemished) track record. Some of the problems we face today pose questions of exactly the type science in the past has helped to answer. So if science is in trouble, we’re all in trouble. It is therefore wise to reflect on the position “it” finds itself in.

Let’s start with some specifics. Patrick Brown is a climate scientist. He obtained his PhD (Title: “Magnitude and Mechanisms of Unforced Variability in Global Surface Temperature”) from Duke University in 2016 and has since been fairly productive. As far as I can see, has had three papers published in Nature as “first author” to date; not bad for someone relatively early in his career. It is the third and most recent of these (“Climate warming increases extreme daily wildfire growth risk in California”; Nature 621:760-766, published 30/06/2023) that has excited most comment. However, the comment has not primarily been around the science in his paper. Judging from his citation statistics (a far from perfect metric), Patrick is competent but he hasn’t exactly set the heather alight. It was what he did after his latest Nature paper was published that led to things getting tasty. On September 5^th he published an article in “The Free Press” entitled “I left out the full truth to get my climate change paper published”; this article was later also published in the The Times under the title “Groupthink in science is no good for the planet” (The Times, September 9^th, p28) generating much more attention (at least on this side of the Atlantic).

Basically he claimed in his articles that he (and his co-authors) had narrowed the focus of their approach in the Nature paper to that of the effect of climate change on wildfires, all the time knowing that much more complex issues were in play. But they knew that if they “overcomplicated” the picture, so that it did not so clearly support the story that important journals like Nature “want to tell”, their paper would have likely been bounced. If they had broadened the focus (in the process presenting a more accurate and useful picture) they would have been seen not to support “certain preapproved narratives” that some journals, including Nature, are pushing. He fairly makes the point that getting published in prestigious journals has a big influence on someone’s academic career, and that these days it is hard to stick out from the crowd of other PhD’s. So this non-scientific factor, as much as the importance of the science they had done, determined important things like what metrics they had used to assess what was going on with Californian wildfires, and how the data that had resulted from their analysis was interpreted and presented. He was just innocently playing the game of building an academic career. But, having moved out of academia, he now felt moved to act the whistleblower and tell all. Not that he is in favour of retracting the paper as he still thinks “it advances our understanding of climate change’s role in day-to-day wildfire behavior”. It’s just that “the process of customizing the research for an eminent journal caused it to be less useful than it could have been”. The fact that there is a competing narrative in this space (i.e. that man-made climate change is a hoax), and that his “exposé” was jumped on as evidence of scientific skulduggery, didn't seem to bother him (at least initially).

I don’t have the expertise to comment on his Nature article. But of course, before it was published, those with appropriate expertise did. Nature published the peer review reports along with the final paper, and interestingly while the paper itself is behind Nature’s paywall, the reports aren’t (you can access them using the Nature link above). What these make clear is that some of the reviewers made the point that some of the wider issues should have been covered in the paper and hadn’t been. Given the tale that Brown subsequently told, this is a bit surprising. But what is even more surprising is that Brown and his fellow authors then robustly defended their approach. This shows that there was no particular “preapproved narrative”, or at least not one of the kind alleged. The reviewers (and the Editor) dealt with the paper on its merits as we all might expect. So his charge that some agenda that is not supported by the science is being prosecuted, looks a lot weaker than at first it appears.

But what Dr Brown seems to miss entirely is that he has told us that on at least one particular occasion he deliberately shaped his approach so that the resulting paper became potentially misleading or at least less useful (something the Nature reviewers in effect picked up on and challenged). In fact in his Free Press article he claims he left academia because “the pressures put on academic scientists caused too much of the research to be distorted”. Presumably he means his own research as well as that of others – a serious charge. Yet, despite confessing to distortion, we are supposed to take his commentary (unchallenged by reviewers and perhaps serving an agenda) at face value. And it’s not as though he is some kind of innocent when it comes to the media. He knows well how the media works specifically when it comes to his area of expertise (climate change). He published a paper about precisely this back in 2016 (“Reporting on global warming: A study in headlines”). Now he is in the private sector, free from that insidious pressure to “distort” (his word, not mine). But presumably he is also now being paid for his words by individual and corporate donors. We can hardly be sure that it is data and careful analysis that are the centre of his considerations. After all, he has form. It all begins to look a bit murky.

And that’s a big problem. All over, science is beginning to look murky. Much of Brown’s commentary is recognisable. There is pressure to publish, and particularly to publish in “top” journals like Nature. I’ve submitted to Nature myself (more in hope than expectation). And decisions do have to be made about both data selection and analysis, even in much simpler situations that those being investigated by Brown and his co-authors. Can this lead to bias and misrepresentation? Yes it can. But that is where the challenge of reviewers and editors, the peer review system, becomes so important. The system seems to have worked in the case of Brown’s Nature paper. Although the reviewers expressed concerns, these were answered by the authors, and the paper was deemed to make a sufficient contribution (something Brown continues to agree with) to be published. Does it present only part of the picture? Of course it does. It’s now up to others to criticise, challenge, refine or refute what’s in that one paper. If it is actually misleading, that will become clear. That’s science.

But the bigger theme here is a problem about journals; they are a key part of science and collectively comprise the “literature”. Brown’s point was that they may not be as neutral and dispassionate as one would like to think (whether justified or not in the case of his Nature paper). There are other problems too, particularly the issue of “predatory” journals which has been discussed for a while in scientific publishing circles (see this article and others on the the Scholarly Kitchen site). Predatory journals are those whose primary concern is to make money not publish good science. They tend to have lax acceptance and reviewing standards because the more they publish the more money they make. This has been encouraged by a change in who pays for published science. It used to be almost entirely the case that the user (i.e. the reader) paid. But this began to change, partly because of technology and partly because of claims that his was discriminatory. Lots of scientists in low and middle income countries were excluded because neither they nor their institutional libraries could afford the subscriptions that were charged for access to journals. So there was a change to a “producer pays” model. Some journals charge a fee simply to consider a manuscript for publication, and all of them charge a fee to publish papers once the peer review process has determined that a paper is of sufficient merit. Publication fees range from a few hundred £s/$s, to several thousand. Some charge flat fees, others charge by the published page. However, once published the research is open to all, and aided by the interweb, accessible to all. But it is clear that what was meant to assist openness and accessibility is being abused, and that the “literature” is being undermined as a result.

It was always the case that nonsense could be published in scientific journals, including the prestigious ones. I used to have to tell students that just because something was published didn’t make it true. There is never any substitute for careful reading and equally careful thinking. But as the number of predatory journals has increased (one 2021 estimate put the number at 15,059), so has the level of murkiness, and gradually we risk the whole scientific enterprise losing the trust of public and politicians alike. What is the root cause of these problems? Well, unfortunately it is something that cannot be fixed (although it can be improved). Science is a human activity, and is therefore as flawed as humans are. Most scientists are competent and conscientious, some are lazy, a very small number are fraudulent, but all are human. Even although as an institution science is to some extent self-correcting, it remains at its core the activity of flawed women and men. Science’s big problem is scientists. And just when we need them too.

Life in the pandemic XXIX Keswick in the transition…

Once again, for the second time in the pandemic, we have made our way to England’s beautiful Lake District, to the market town of Keswick. The scenery is undoubtedly spectacular, the weather tropical (this year at least), and the town itself charming. These would all be good reasons to spend a week’s holiday here. But that is not primarily why we’ve come. As regular readers (and you know who you are) of this blog will know, we are here for the Keswick Convention. For the last few years this has become part of our summer routine. I noted before that it might strike some as an odd way to spend a summer week in the 21^st Century. It is “old fashioned” in the sense that it has been running for over one hundred years, and some of the first attendees would be able to recognise what is going on. It would also strike some as old fashioned in that the subject matter has remained constant over that period. Yes, there have been changes in style, and some in format. But at its core, the key activity is the straightforward explanation of chunks of a very “old fashioned” book – the Bible. And there remains that same conviction – that the reason this is worth doing is that we are listening to God, whose Word this is (again, a very “old fashioned” notion).

There is of course one big difference this year. We are still in the midst of a global pandemic. Not that this is Keswick’s first pandemic, having survived the 1918 Spanish Flu. Last year, while we still came to Keswick (to walk and read), there were no meetings, although there was an online offering. But this year, once again, several thousand gather twice a day, for the morning “Bible Reading” and the evening “Celebration”. There are the now familiar markers of the pandemic – testing and masking. But transition, as well as virus, is in the air. On the first Monday of the first week, the legal restrictions introduced in England (mandatory mask wearing and restrictions on the numbers able to meet either indoors or outdoors) were removed. One of the most onerous restrictions on Christians meeting together was also removed. For fifteen months or more, we haven’t been able to sing together. So last night we sang for all we were worth. But this is transition, so we sang behind our masks. It was still worth it.

We’ve only reached the transition of course, and the pandemic is still with us. But it is perhaps time to reflect on what it might have taught us about ourselves. There have been, and will continue to be, dark days. Lives have been lost, families have been bereaved. Many others have been scarred by the experience of days or weeks (or in some cases months) of hospital treatment, gasping for breath. And not just scarred in their memories. We’ve yet to see the full impact of long Covid, a condition that will afflict hundreds of thousands in the UK alone. But we go on, because we have to. However, for the Christian this is (or should be) about much more than biology, medicine and politics. When the media talks about lessons to be learned, what is usually meant is how governments and health systems have coped with a pandemic; what was done well, what was done badly. An examination of these issues is clearly worthwhile And in the same vein all of us can perhaps reflect on how we responded, following guidelines or otherwise, wearing masks, getting vaccinated and the like. But this is thinking at  a particular level. And if it’s the only thinking that’s going on, we’re likely to draw only partial conclusions and learn partial lessons.

It has always seemed folly to me to draw direct lines between awful events, even big ones, and the judgment of God (discussed previously here). I don’t have the insight of an Amos or Jeremiah. But the pandemic is an event of global scale. It might, and probably will, be explained eventually by things like human skulduggery, incompetence, and individual and collective stupidity. But the ability of a virus that, while not benign is certainly not the most dangerous, to bring complete global dislocation must at a minimum say something about the basic fragility of modern life. Indeed, the pandemic has surely alerted us that to the fact that some of the most welcome aspects of modern life have amplified the dangers posed by the virus itself. International air travel, a boon to education, commerce and leisure in recent years, has facilitated rapid, global spread of the virus and its variants. The internet and social media, which have so improved communication and information transmission, have been used to transmit conspiracy theories and vaccine scepticism, depressing take-up in some quarters, with the attendant increased risk to health and life. Yes, science and technology have provided remarkably effective vaccines in a record short time, and this has saved lives. But the basic point stands – modern life is fragile, more fragile than we realised, and perhaps in some ways more fragile than in the past.

The virus is one evolving global tragedy, but it come at the time of of another - climate change. The UK Met office issued its first “extreme heat warning” this week. This follows record hot temperatures in North America, and freak summer floods in continental Europe. These events have either cost lives or are projected too. This is on the back of other disturbing evidence of the climate change scientists have been warning about for decades. The human cause of climate change is much less disputable than the proximate cause of the pandemic. Over decades rather than years, we face the severe consequences of what we have been doing to the planet. The scale of the action required to mitigate the effects of these action has begun to foment protests. But there is no sign of most of us really getting our heads round what is required to avoid what is coming. Much of this can be understood in (far from simple) naturalistic terms. Models can be built. Projections made. But are there deeper lessons?

For what its worth, here is my tentative thinking so far. The Bible closes with the book of Revelation, in which, among other things, a series of disasters is described. I had always thought of these as occurring over short periods of time, with a purpose that was quite obvious to those experiencing them. As a reader of Revelation I know that they serve to demonstrate to the whole of humanity that ignoring God, rebelling against Him, and living without reference to Him is self-defeating and ultimately only leads to unescapable judgment. Unfortunately, this isn’t the lesson that is learned from those suffering them. However, Revelation is highly symbolic and there is nothing in the text that demands that what is outlined occurs over short periods. So could infolding disasters like the pandemic and climate change, be two such calls to reassess where we stand in relation to the God who created the world that we are despoiling?

We appear to be in a transition out of the pandemic at least. The practical, political and medical lessons should all be learned. We’ll see if they are. But the clamour and rush for a return to “normality” should not drown out deeper lessons that could be, and perhaps need to be learned.

Life in the Pandemic X: Exacerbating uncertainty

 Many things in life are uncertain (apart from death and taxes obviously). And many things are uncertain in science. Indeed identifying, controlling and quantifying uncertainty is a key aspect of the practice of science. We’re so keenly aware of uncertainty that we try to dissuade students of talking about science “proving” things, as though in any given situation absolutely all uncertainty can be removed. We don’t think that it can be, and we can therefore never be “certain”. What we seek to do is accumulate evidence supporting a particular explanation for a given phenomenon so that it moves from being highly provisional (a hypothesis), to being fairly probably the correct explanation (a supported hypothesis), to being the best and most highly supported explanation we have (at which point it’s  usually elevated to the status of a theory). This takes time and effort. Even so, we also accept that the most accepted theory, with apparently lots of supporting evidence, can always be superseded by a new theory. This might be an extension of the original theory, or indeed a contradiction of it. But this whole approach raises  problems. It is tricky to explain (as you may have noticed), and it’s not the way most people think or speak most of the time. These problems (and why they matter) have been amply exposed by the pandemic.

Let’s start with the language problem. There are situations where certainty is conflated with clarity. In a startling reversal of form for the particular bunch of politicians currently running the UK, the pandemic mantra has been “We’re following the science, therefore….”. This is a reversal because it suited them in a previous situation (ie the Brexit debate), to downplay the view of “experts”. But as I’ve noted before, in the pandemic, this has changed. Experts are in; but uncertainty is not out.

Politicians and the media, are very keen on what they call clarity. But COVID19 is a virus new to  humans, and therefore new to science. Nothing was known, indeed could be known, about it (although things could be inferred). Early in the pandemic, at the time when many key decisions were being taken, the science was more than usually uncertain, and therefore the scientific advice to politicians had to be highly caveated (this is an assumption on my part, I wasn’t privy to it). But this doesn’t make for snappy press conferences. And it almost certainly guaranteed that the advice would change, and therefore the instructions issued by politicians would have to change (example: face masks). The media don’t particularly help in such situations. Their stock in trade is the language of u-turn and climb-down. It might have been wise to clearly communicate from the start that the course of action being embarked upon was based on a consensus of what, given the evidence at the time, was reasonable. Not certain, but reasonable. Problem is, would any of us reacted as we need to if the politicians had spoken this way?

To be fair to them, there have been some sceptics and deniers who have been happy to jump up and down and accuse them of exaggerating the danger of the situation for nefarious political ends. They have pointed out that for all the talk of half a million UK dead and the NHS overwhelmed, this was not the disaster that developed. But this is to miss the point. The one experiment that could not be done was the one that involved doing nothing and essentially letting COVID19 run its course. So on the basis of (suitably caveated) advice, we had our lockdown. And while we can’t be certain (that is, after all, the point I’m making), the difference in case and death curves (eg see here) between most EU countries (including the UK) and others like the US and Brazil, suggests that this was indeed a sensible course of action. As an aside, we have to now hope that we don’t blow it, and revert to the earlier trajectory that could lead to disaster. However, at least some of the critics seem to suggest that with all the uncertainty involved, essentially nothing should have been done. Action should only have been taken once all doubt had been removed. But then that would have meant nothing would have been done. And many thousands more would have died, deaths that we have almost certainly avoided. It will perhaps be possible to demonstrate this statistically, once more  evidence has accumulated. But at the point the big political and economic decisions had to be taken, actual evidence was scarce.

We have heard this sort of call to wait for certainty before, both in another contemporary context and historically. And it’s here that the language problem, and the complexity problem intersect. Climate change, its cause, effects and what we should do about it (if we can do anything about it), is undoubtedly complex. The idea that it is caused by human activity (primarily the burning of fossil fuels from the industrial revolution on, increasing atmospheric CO₂) has been a matter of overwhelming scientific consensus for decades ie we’ve gone beyond hypothesis, supported hypothesis, and theory to consensus. Even still, scientists in this area will probably be unwilling to say they have no doubts, that the relevant theory/theories have been “proved” in some absolute sense. That’s just not the appropriate language of science. But that allows others to come along and say that the science is uncertain, there are alternative explanations or the whole thing is just a hoax. Here, a legal analogy might help.

I served on a murder jury some years ago. We were faced with the weighty decision of whether the prosecution had proved its case beyond reasonable doubt. Notice that you can still convict and have doubt. The question is whether the case is proved beyond reasonable doubt. One can always come up with lots of “could be’s” and “might have beens”. But if they fly in the face of the evidence, or are not supported by evidence, then they are not reasonable. And if they are not reasonable, they is no reason to pronounce the defendant “not guilty”. If the scientific consensus around climate change were a defendant in the dock, although there are doubts and uncertainties, they would be ruled out by the evidence as unreasonable, a guilty verdict handed down, and the jury would go away and sleep soundly, their duty done. And yet the uncertainty, complexity, and the language of science conspire to provide a space for those who say we should do nothing because we are not 100% certain, precisely at the time when action has to be taken.

At least some who operate in this space are following in a fairly inglorious tradition that has been exposed several times. They seek to foment doubt and increase complexity, obfuscate evidence and exacerbate uncertainty. They explicitly seek to sow doubt, of the unreasonable sort. The approach was famously summarised by a cigarette company executive in the 1960’s in a now infamous memo which stated “Doubt is our product since it is the best means of competing with the ‘body of fact’ that exists in the mind of the general public.”(1). What followed was essentially a well funded disinformation campaign of epic proportions. Meanwhile, cigarettes continued to be manufactured, sold and consumed and contributed to the early deaths of millions. The story of this and similar campaigns is expertly revealed in its gory detail by David Michaels in his books (2,3). And there’s evidence that there are commercial and other interests playing the same game with climate change. Stir up doubt, exacerbate the uncertainty, and the public will conclude that either the issues are so complicated and unclear that it would be premature to take action (like ban smoking or increase tax on gas guzzlers), or that the inconvenience of action is not worth uncertain benefits.

This kind of thing is happening in the pandemic. Reasonable people are not taking reasonable actions because, particularly in the US, misinformation is being spread and uncertainty is being exacerbated. The scary bit is that when the much hoped-for vaccine becomes available, we all know it’s likely to start over vaccination against COVID19. But, to resort to some unscientific language, you can be sure that wearing a mask and washing your hands frequently at the moment, and getting vaccinated once one or more vaccines have passed through the requisite trials, is a really good idea. I don’t doubt it.

 1. Michaels D (2005) Doubt is their product. Scientific American 292(6):96-101 (available on Research Gate: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/7806937_Doubt_Is_Their_Product)

 2. Michaels D (2008) Doubt is Their Product. Oxford Univ. Press

 3. Michaels D (2020 )The Triumph of Doubt: Dark Money and the Science of Deception Oxford Univ. Press

Of peacock tears, cows and global warming

First of all, a potential fake news alert. A story concerning retiring judge Mahesh Chandra Sharma of the Rajasthan State High Court went viral this week. Some of the reported quotations attributed to said judge follow:

“The peacock is a lifelong celibate. It never has sex with the peahen. The peahen gets pregnant after swallowing the tears of the peacock.”

 “(Mother cow) is the only animal that inhales as well as exhales oxygen.”

 “Cow urine has the miraculous property of destroying any kind of germs. It provides strength to mind and heart. It stops ageing,” he said, adding that its horns “acquire cosmic energy“.

 “Houses plastered with cow dung are safe from radio waves.”

The reporting of these comments provoked a bit of an international media storm, well divorced from the initial context. The judge was hearing a case involving the care of cows in government shelters. Not a big issue you might think. But you would only think that if you were not an Indian Hindu, to whom cows, their status and treatment, matter a whole lot more than to your average Westerner. While as far as I can see the judge exists and said these things, a bit of care still has to be taken in interpreting the comments. After all, the original judgement was handed down in Hindi. That said, and taking them at face value, it’s a reminder that there are people and places that have been bypassed by a couple of centuries of scientific progress.

Ignorance is neither innocent nor harmless. It also has a close cousin – denialism. Particularly within healthcare and medicine, there are a number of denial movements which have either cost, are costing or will cost lives. HIV denialism took root in South Africa for a while, and with political support from former president Thabo Mbeki, delayed the introduction of antiretroviral treatment. According to a study by Chigwedere et al (2008)¹, that delay may have cost 300,000 lives. Currently, lives are being lost because of the activity of the anti-vaccines movement. Parents are being persuaded not to have their children vaccinated, whether against measles in the US and Europe, or polio in Africa and parts of the sub-continent, in the face of scientific evidence and consensus. This all takes on a further worrying complexion when the deniers team up with purveyors of snake oil and sugar water, and seek to provide “alternative” remedies, usually at a profit. Like alternative facts, alternative remedies rarely have any positive effects.

In the West what is interesting is that this decline in the public traction that scientific evidence seems to have, at least in some quarters, parallels the decline in the influence of Biblical Christianity, or more particularly the values that flow from it. Arguments have raged for a while about the influence of these values on the rise of science. For all that the conflict metaphor has come to dominate at least the popular conception of the relationship between science and Christianity, it was in “Christian” Europe that the modern scientific enterprise emerged, having faltered in the Muslim world after a good start. Among others Hooykaas² claimed that this was no accident. Perhaps we’re now in a position to begin observing what happens as nature becomes remythologised (seemingly a problem in Rajasthan) and a personal commitment to truth is devalued.

In addition, this week saw international ructions as result of President Trump announcing that the US would pull out of the Paris climate change agreement. This is further evidence of the success of a denial movement, partly motivated by commercial and industrial interests. Again there’s a weight of scientific evidence to be processed, not all of which is unequivocal. Few of us have either the expertise, the time or the inclination to examine the evidence for ourselves and therefore remain relatively ignorant of it. And there’s a small, but apparently influential group of dissidents, who reject both the scientific and the current political consensus. They cite alternative evidence, or provide alternative interpretations of the evidence. And of course, given our relative ignorance, we can fall prey to their efforts. Sometimes, we’re happy to cooperate in this if it supports our prejudices, or looks like it’s in our local, personal, narrow economic self-interest.

Of course, even if the science were 100% clear on one side of the argument (it’s probably more like 95%), in areas where political action is required, there are other considerations that have to come into play. History, economics, fairness and more besides go into making political decisions. That said, the evidence that humanity is warming the planet in a damaging way, while complicated, is fairly compelling.  If the consensus is wrong, then lots of money will be spent to achieve ends that while probably useful we could equally well live without. But if the consensus is right, but proper action is undermined by the deniers, then the consequences will be catastrophic in some places, grim in many others and expensive everywhere. But of course, because the consequences will unfold over a long period of time, the deniers will be long gone.

Maybe the truth of the matter is that ignorance is never bliss. But the only alternative is hard work educating the next generation and for that matter hard work informing ourselves.

1.       Chigwedere P et al (2008) Estimating the lost benefits of antiretroviral drug use in South Africa. J. Acquir Immune Defic Syndr 49(4):410-5. [Link]

2.       Hooykaas R (1972) Religion and the rise of modern science. Scottish Academic Press.