It's unbelievable! I go away for a few days (hence why this one follows on a bit later than the actual interview I am posting about) and I get confronted with a feast of fertile blogging fodder that I had no idea was going on as I haven't been on the web at all during the duration, (not always an entirely bad thing to do now and then.) or looked at a newspaper the whole time. Melanie Philips has pissed off almost everyone on Twitter with a bizarre and ill thought out column about the "gay agenda" pushing homosexuality to schoolkids via special awareness topics in their lessons, designed to "destroy the concept of traditional sexuality". Jesus! Two sports pundits given the boot for slagging off a lady ref. A hard line Christian GP who has been appointed to the Advisory Council for the Misuse of Drugs. This is a pretty impressive list of potential topics, but old news is no news, so I have decided to retrospectively comment on the story that has the most personal interest to me of which I have only just found out about this past day as a result of my self imposed news blackout. A story involving a well known climate change skeptic who ended up looking like a complete berk on a BBC documentary. This was one of the most embarrasing interviews ever to grace the box that didn't involve Bill Grundy and any member of the Sex Pistols.
The Horizon documentary titled "Science Under Attack" was presented by the President of the Royal Society; Sir Paul Nurse. In it Nurse was concerned about the discrepancies between what Scientific consensus has to say about - in particular -climate change; GM crops and the nature of the HIV virus, and the general views about these issues in the eyes of the lay public. The programme was good and I genuinely encourage you watch it on I-player (link provided) if you haven't seen it. It focused primarily on climate change, and I was a bit disappointed the other topics took perhaps as much of a backburner as they did as they are all interesting topics in themselves. But as I said climate change is probably the most obvious contemporary scientific topic that creates a controversial divergence between the scientific consensus of climate scientists (around 97 percent agree man made climate change is occurring) and the layperson (half of Americans and a third of Britons think ACC is being deliberately exaggerated) It is unsurprising then that Professor Nurse interviews a climate change denier to find out why this is so, and into this steps James Delingpole, the Daily Telegraphs resident "ACC is bollocks" blogger. The interviews with him in the documentary are stunning, not because Delingpole puts in a good performance, but because; in American parlance - he got his ass handed to him on a plate, a big silver platter even. It is pure car crash stuff. Delingpole is edgy and clearly out of his depth even before the fun starts. Delingpole dismisses "scientific consensus" as unscientific (I presume he makes the mistake of thinking it is just the same as conventional wisdom. Delingpole makes broad sweeping statements throughout the interview but never elaborates, so you can see why we may have to speculate on what he means). Nurse disagrees and says that this amount of consensus over such a long period of time is a healthy sign that the evidence is very strong, and that as scientific superstardom results from demolishing established theories, it must have been pretty robust or it would have been disproved. The killer blow is landed when Nurse proposes a hypothetical scenario to Delingpole and his "consensus is not science" stance. Say he was suffering from cancer and the doctors had come to a unanimous consensually conclusion about his treatment plan, (which happens often) would he reject this treatment for one that hadn't, as happens every once in a blue moon, if that? Delingpole is floored by this. He visibly looks like he wants to stop the interview and hastily tries to change the subject onto the East Anglian e-mails thing. I know some editing goes on with this kind of thing, but my god Delingpole comes off badly on this one. Nurse has stumbled upon what i think is the best way to combat pseudoscience, or conspiracy theories. Point out the bleeding obvious flaws in their logic. People like Delingpole cherry pick data (and ACC involves lots of figures to selectively shove into an article), and quote figures out of context to bolster and inflate the validity of their "stance". They never go for the biggy, disprove the warming effects of carbon dioxide, demolish the whole ACC theory to a chorcoally pile of dust at it's root. They can't. Nurse however is in the position of being able to quietly and calmly attack the major flaws of their arguments without turning it into a slanging match involving the "evil establishment" against the lone Galileo figure in the eyes of a layperson, or looking like a dusty old don being one upped by a polemicist pulling out all the logical fallacies to make his point look one hundred times better than it actually is. It's like calmly explaining to a moon hoaxer who says they had to remove all the stars from the photos, thus why they are not visible; that thinking that not one astronomer or scientist looking at those photos would notice that the stars suddenly being missing was a bit dodgy - is so monumentally fucking stupid that anyone who thinks this shouldn't comment on opening a loaf of bread, let alone expect anyone to take them remotely seriously. The interview also shows (and I am aware of post production editing) to some extent that Delingpole can dish it out on his blog (sometimes in quite a dubious manner) with the largely receptive audience, but is a little squeamish at taking it himself. Hell if as a non-scientist; you want to dismiss 97 percent of respected climate scientists as liars, expect to have to face the harsh questions from a critical point of view. Let us hope we are reclaiming some of the "war against science." Point out the major flaws of the key arguments the pseudoscientists are peddling, and not let them cherry pick on their own terms, and perhaps; perhaps popular perceptions of science will improve. Here's hoping anyway.
Turn in to part II tomorrow where we look at James Delingpoles take on the whole interview.
*POSTSCRIPT. Although the hypothetical question posed by Paul Nurse and Delingpoles response are the point the interview jumped the shark, this doesn't even take into account the lofty claim on his behalf that the entire peer review process has been trashed by the "climategate" affair. How? Again he makes lofty announcements and never backs them up with evidence, or indeed anecdotes. He even admits that it is really a political and not a dispute about scientific research. The admission that he hasn't the time or the scientific know how (Mr. Delingpole has a degree in English) to read peer reviewed research papers on climate change is astounding for a man who spends about 95 percent of his blog "proving" how ACC is made up by communists or whoever. How can he know that the peer review process is irrevocabally damaged by the East anglia broohaha if oh... he hasn't read a fucking peer reviewed paper on the damn subject. Christ in heaven, what was he thinking in this interview? Then he pulls the coup de gracé by saying his job isn't to interpret the data, it is to interpret the interpreted data. Or as it is known in every day terms, "Just having an opinion on stuff". Watch it, it truly has to be seen to be believed.
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