Roger Harrabin’s grip on the BBC’s science output must have slipped as the below is something he would definitely not approve of…..no coincidence perhaps that it is an ITV journalist who made the programme…
Saving Science from the Scientists
Is science quite as scientific as it’s supposed to be? ITV Science Correspondent Alok Jha takes a look at how science research is really carried out, to find out if it is really as rigorous as scientists would like us to think.
In the second and concluding part of this series, Alok looks at the practices and cultures undermining the integrity of scientific research.
Are scientists being pushed into shortcuts and unethical behaviour by the competitiveness of their field?
That is part two, I didn’t hear part one, but no mention of climate change so perhaps Roger’s still influencing coverage for the worse.
We heard that scientific journals like Nature and Science want exciting, positive science stories that don’t upset the applecarts of the vested interests but ultimately end up distorting the real science because they don’t publish the negative papers that contradict the ‘good news’.
We are told that genetics is a robust field because it publishes its data and such data transparency is not practised in other fields…such as climate change perhaps? Such openness promotes better science as the criticism and exchanges mean the science is constantly improved….science happens by disagreement and challenge……as every good english graduate should know.
Science has to be rescued from the business it has become….[and rescued from the politics]. Scientists have so much invested in their ‘science’ being accepted, careers, reputation and lucrative grants, that temptation to close down debate and protect your own ‘science’ can be overwhelming.
Shame at least one BBC environmental ‘journalist’ has made it his business to use the BBC to campaign about climate change for over 20 years and has been extraordinarilty successful at closing down debate and in creating a powerful, unstoppable narrative that promotes his own views on climate change regardless of the science and did everything he could to support climate scientists to hide their data and excuse their unethical behaviour.
We are told that genetics is a robust field because it publishes its data and such data transparency is not practised in other fields…such as climate change perhaps? Such openness promotes better science as the criticism and exchanges mean the science is constantly improved….science happens by disagreement and challenge……
The ‘leaked’ Climategate e-mails were positive proof that the small clique of powerful alarmist scientists who are driving the IPCC and the AGW ‘consensus’ were unwilling to share their data because they might get found out.
Here’s a sample:
26. Withholding of data from potential critics
Jones: 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.
Osborn to Science: I don’t have any core measurement data and therefore
have none to give out!
Mann to Osborn: I’m providing these [MBH residuals] for your own personal use, since you’re a trusted colleague. So please don’t pass this along to others without checking w/ me first. This is the sort of “dirty laundry” one doesn’t want to fall into the hands of those who might potentially try to distort things.
Click to access mcintyre-scitech.pdf
Science it ain’t.
Harrabin: scientist you ain’t.
BBC: shame on you for covering up Climategate and your endless bias in favour of the eco-socialist cause (28gate refers) .
Science: R.I.P. (murdered by the BBC and the Marxist-Environmentalist movement)
Harrabin’s degree is in English. When it comes to science he is deeply ignorant. An insult to those of us who do have university degrees in science. The fact that he is a wanker is par for the course at the BBC !
Harrabin’s degree is in ‘English’ and Frank Gardener is a ‘Security Correspondent’.
Oxymorons if ever there were .
Taff, LOL ! “Oxymorons” sums it up. It is amazing how the BBC present ignorant bullshitters as if they are experts in a subject. And they speak in those grandiose tones that convince some people that they know what they are talking about. Assholes !
Surely the signal for a list of similarly oxymoronic (happy coincidence or what?) job-titles…..
David Dimbleby: ‘Chairman’
Marcus Brigstocke: ‘Comedian’
Robert Peston: ‘Financial expert’
Alan Yentob: ‘Financial advisor’
Andrew Marr: ‘Interviewer’
Chris Evans: ‘Programme presenter’, ‘Piss-head’ etc etc
Beltane, LOL ! But so true !
…as every good english graduate should know.
Brilliant.
I heard another unimpressive opinion piece by Harrabin on the Radio 4 news at 8 a.m. during ‘Today’.
He was talking about the need to cut the UK’s CO2 emissions, rather as if it were akin to a somewhat overweight person reducing their fat intake a bit and having less sugar in their coffee. There was no mention of the increased cost of energy from the subsidized (and often ineffective) non-hydrocarbon sources, or the effects of this on the competitiveness of industry and on poorer people. It is as if Harrabin inhabits a bubble, in which rising energy costs don’t affect the likes of him, and thus he imagines that they won’t really affect others or Britain in general.
And of course even this assumes that there is Global Warming and that CO2 emissions are driving it, which he refuses to discuss.
Nor does he ever question what we will do for energy when the wind isn’t blowing and the sun isn’t shining.
Unless there is a drastic about-turn in our energy policy the country is heading for the rocks and certain chaos and the BBC deliberately fuels the myth (forgive the pun) that ‘renewables’ are the answer to all our energy needs.
They are the 28gate mouthpiece for an environmental movement which is anti-capitalist, anti-West and hellbent on dragging us down to third world levels of existence whilst keeping the third world firmly in its place by denying them the right to improve their lives through cheap fossil fuels.
Evil bastards.
johnny, absolutely ! It bis probably too late to plug the energy gap which is coming. Decades of ignorant incompetent politicians have seen to that.
All those who go on about reducing CO2 emissions should set a good example, and stop breathing. For those who have not noticed, an increase in CO2 in the atmosphere makes plants grow quicker, thus using up the excess CO2, and increasing the oxygen levels. It is all a balanced system.
OG
Your point is fair but simplistic. The equilibrium position changes due to temperature changes (note I did not say up), injection of CO2 into the system (note not saying man made). There is also the question of change in nett energy input from the sun plus the nett energy loss due to entropy for each change (e.g. photosynthesis)
All this affects the balance you mention and thus the equilibrium position and thus the average level of CO2 in the total system.
There’s more balance here than in the bBBC coverage, that’s for sure.
“In climate research and modelling, we should recognise that we are dealing with a coupled non-linear chaotic system, and therefore that the long-term prediction of future climate states is not possible.”
(IPCC 2001 Working Group 1 Report)
Don’t think Harrabin read that bit
Don’t think he’d have understood it if he had.
Cheers @Alan well spotted : They hid it from some of us, cos there’s no podcast version. Yes Harra, you ain’t no Truth-Seeker bruv
– Anyone got any notes or transcript ?
“making up research” Dutch researcher social science Diederik Stapel cheated, speaking 13mins in.
Stapel altered the data to get the results he wanted; “Nobody noticed, it was easy”
Ep1 interviews Loannidis, @deevybee, @sophiescott, @BrianNosek & Diederik Stapel
Alok Jha sounds amazed (how long have you been doing science reporting ? You should already know)
Ep2 : featuring @OttolineLeyser, RetractionWatch, Mark Edwards, Prof Curry (not Judith)
Begins with The Swedish data in the Lancet that was faked
– A good summary of the issues with the current funding system
competition is causing more negatives than postives
“Vital point made: ‘science is a career not just the pursuit of truth’. Re: egos & challenge”
– “#Doping in #Science? ” – academic rat race & its effects on research quality
– Faking example Flint, Michigan ‘scientists’ saying tap water was safe when it wasn’t
(em that is a bad example cos it’s not science as those scientist were acting as technicians, not actual research)
– discussion on journal impact factors and pub/non pub neg finds (Thinking NatureMag is good)
“Publish or Perish”, so “corners cut”
– The Green loony head of ScienceMag defending their policy of seeking ‘general interest’ papers for popularity rather than those that are really worthy.
– 19:30 “Why isn’t peer review picking up problems ?” ..”In testing errors are not picked up by reviewers”
– Genetic has a different system : transparency and sharing
– Science community seem disinterested in using knowledge resource frm ‘outside’
“SOME like to keep most out of their domains – make it complex & opaque. Restricts access”
‘Whether its tackling “climate change” etc. .. it’s too important to become an exercise in chasing targets not truths’
(That tiny mention of Climate Science issues; they are too close to the N London dinner party circuit to risk any introspection.)
The new head of the Royal Society has spoken about opening up science to public interaction… Hope he follows thru, the last administration was a disgrace.
Stapel altered the data to get the results he wanted; “Nobody noticed, it was easy”
They don’t get away with it in ‘climate science’.
Unfortunately the gatekeepers are to be found on websites which the BBC and most of the mainstream media studiously ignores.
I have heard all this stuff before about the crisis in science and peer review system, when I listened to older podcasts, probably US ones like Freakonomics Radio and Science in the City
..and BBC More or Less exposed how a student found errors in a trumpeted paper
“The issues Thomas Herndon and his professors found with Growth in a Time of Debt, the paper by Carmen Reinhart and Ken Rogoff, have become a cause celebre. But there are those who are warning that this paper is by no means the only one out there which has mistakes in it – millions of others may have too.”
– One woman spoke about 2% of UK PHDs being faulty
half percent of UK research is fraud
Oh here’s An excellent graphic summaryof the stats of problem science
Ed Yong16 May 2012 : Replication studies: Bad copy In the wake of high-profile controversies, psychologists are facing up to problems with replication.
(more links in my rough notes )
“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”.
I don’t usually comment on global warming as I don’t like to bullshit on subjects I know nothing about, but correct me if I am wrong, in’t the above the polar opposite of science?
I last heard that Phil Jones seemed to look very depressed at a meeting in Lincolnshire. It was thought that someone showed him that statement, printed as an Epigraph in a book, criticising the state of Climate science.
It should have been called “Saving Science from the Environmentalists”
I suppose the simple answer is that the Arrhenius method of calculating the Greenhouse effect, used in Computer Models, is bullshit. The proof:
The CO2 induced Greenhouse Effect on Mars using the Arrhenius method raises the average surface temperature by 3 Kelvin (Greenhouse effect in semi-transparent planetary atmospheres, Ferenc M. Miskolczi, 2007).
The Black Body Temperature of Mars is 81.5 percent that of the Earth, the surface has a 7 millibar CO2 atmosphere (0.4 millibar CO2 atmosphere on Earth). So the equivalent 7 millibar CO2 Atmosphere on Earth would produce a temperature of 3.68 Kelvin. For the Earth they have a 0.76 Kelvin increase for 100ppm, from 300ppm to 400ppm. That gives a minimum increase from zero to 400ppm of 3.04 Kelvin. So we are to believe that we only have an increase of 0.64 Kelvin from 400ppm to 7000ppm.
“Once upon a time” The solution to this problem was called positive feedback. That is that if the Co2 warming of 0.76 Kelvin was only 0.1 Kelvin, but 0.66 Kelvin was positive feedback, then that would fit in with Mars. But then someone proved that Negative feedback proved that Positive feedback was bullshit, and therefore as Piers Corbyn would confirm, the Arrhenius method must also be bullshit, as also Mr Miskolczi must have concluded after telling us he was trying to fit all this bullshit in with Venus.
But then as you must have noticed with the disappearance in the mainstream Media of “Positive Feedback”. All this is censored by the BBC.
Also, scientific journals like Nature and Science have sacked the editors who upset the applecarts of the vested political and environmentalist interests, and no longer publish papers about the basics of Climate science that prove that the IPPC junket is a waist of time and taxpayers money.