Re: [Phys-l] Scientists speaking outside their fields. Was... The Cause of Global Warming...

[Jack Uretsky <jlu@hep.anl.gov>]

Hi Michael-
	Your arguments summarize a variety of popular views that lie 
outside of the mainstream of scienc (to the extant such a classification 
is meaningful).  First, the views of your long-gone professor appear to be 
those of a group of social scientists known as "relativists" who insisted 
that there is no such thing as objective reality.  They were soundly taken 
to task by - among others - physicists who assert that our "objective 
reality" is composed of the results of eexperiments.  There are ways to 
argue around this answer because as us lawyers learn in the first year of 
law school, it is always possible to make an argument on any side of any 
topic.  Such arguments are the stuff of philosophy, which I treat as 
though it is infected with the H5N1 (or whatever it's called) virus.
	The question at issue is, to what extent do we rely upon authority
for our opinions about matters in which we lack expertise.  One argument, 
popular amoung those who are conditioned to be obedient to authority goes 
like: If I have no knowledge on a subject then I must rely on those who 
have expertise in the relevant subject matter.  The argument is a swindle;
it relies on the pretense that there is only a choice between two 
(probably undesirable) alternatives.  I can state with high confidence 
that such is never the case in real life.
	The swindle is that you do, in fact have expertise in recognizing 
logical thinking and in recognizing when the supposed expert has stepped 
outside the bounds of his/her expertise (I'll give an example in a 
moment}.  Also, it is usually possible to determine the concensus view in 
the supposed expert's field and apply the principle that unusual 
conclusions require unusually strong evidence.
	Here's an example.  I recently reviewed a book for another 
(non-science) list, "The Female Brain" by Louann Brizenden, M.D.  The 
author is a professor of neuropsychiatry at U C S F and has been on the 
Harvard faculty as well as other impressive positions.  Her main thesis, 
that men and women deal with different realities, appears to be accepte in 
her field.  She also goes into some detail about the objective results of 
brain studies.  Ndow I have no expertise whatsoever in her field.  But 
when she states:
> A woman uses about 20,000 words per day while a man uses about 7,000.
>
> Thoughts about sex enter a woman??Ts brain once every couple of days but
> enter a man??Ts brain about once every minut

I can cerrtainly fall back on my knowledge of experimental technique and 
statistics to convince myself that there is no possible way to falsify 
such assertions, and they therefore lie outside of the domain of science.

	Conclusion:  Even when dealing with matters outside of my own 
field, I can keep my attention focussed on th message and evaluate which 
parts of the message are likely to be generally acceptable within the 
field and which parts need serious discounting.  I emphasize.  The focus 
is on the message, not on the messenger.

	By the way, the book is a good read.  I recommend it.
					Regards,
						Jack


On Mon, 21 May 2007, Michael Edmiston wrote:

> John Denker has responded to my questions by saying I am asking about a form
> of "appeal to authority."  He goes on to restate a paragraph we've seen
> before about an expert's statement being wrong if it's wrong and a
> 10-year-old non-expert being right if he's right.
>
> Yes, of course I'm asking about how much we trust authority; that's the
> point of my questions.  And of course an expert can make wrong statements,
> either accidentally or intentionally, and of course a 10-year old can make a
> lucky guess and be correct.  How does that help the discussion?
>
> If you don't have the ability or time or money to figure something out
> yourself, who are you going to trust?  That an expert could be wrong and a
> 10-year old could be correct are not going to make me start asking
> ten-year-olds advice about global warming, or to diagnose what is wrong with
> my car, or why I have indigestion, or how to manage my retirement portfolio.
>
> As people with less authority, or fewer credentials, or less experience
> interact with those who have the authority, credentials, experience I would
> hope the authority figures would be honest, talk about uncertainty, explain
> the ways that less experienced scientists misunderstand the data or the
> theories, etc.  I would hope the less experienced would have sufficient
> experience to follow the argument, understand why the authority says what
> she says, and be able to make a judgment about the likelihood that the
> expert is correct.
>
> As John implies, journalists typically don't have the background to do this,
> and typically don't have any interest in doing this.  I believe John is
> correct that this is "a very, very, very serious matter."
>
> There is another group of people who don't even feel there is a right and
> wrong.  It's a matter of who is more persuasive.  I once suffered under a
> dean who was a philosophy major in college, got a PhD in philosophy, then
> went to law school, but quit law school to become dean.  He was proud of his
> logic and reasoning skills, and especially proud of his debating skills.  He
> liked to exclaim that anyone would give him any side of a debate on any
> topic and he could win the debate hands-down.  Originally I thought he was
> only boasting about his intelligence and debating skills.  But later I came
> to realize he genuinely did not believe in absolute truth or reality.  He
> especially disliked scientists for thinking they had a corner on truth.  He,
> like many others of this ilk, had an agenda and would use his debating
> skills to discredit and walk all over anyone who stood in his way.  Needless
> to say, he and I did not get along.  I am still here, and he is long gone,
> but it was a difficult struggle.
>
> I guess where I am going with this is that I think appeal to authority is
> necessary because there are many, many situations where we have to vote or
> make a decision about something for which we do not have the ability, or
> time, or money to do the research ourselves.  That's why we specialize and
> have experts.  Unfortunately, even if we decide we need specialization and
> experts, we still have a bundle of problems.  What do we do about persuasive
> people like the former dean who have an agenda that does not involve the
> truth?  The fact that some of these people are scientists, coupled with some
> truly incompetent scientists, have led the public to give scientists about
> the same level of trust as they give used-car salesmen (so I've heard).  It
> seems the typical citizen can't trust the politicians, can't trust
> businessmen, and feel they can't trust the scientists.  Perhaps on top of
> all that... they don't care.
>
> On the issue of global warming, it appears to me there are quite a few
> people (politicians, businessmen, and some scientists) with agendas that
> have nothing to do with the search for truth.  Then there is another group
> who are searching for the truth but don't think we have it yet.  Naomi
> Oreskes says the scientific community clearly has reached consensus that we
> know the truth (global warming is occurring and humans are casuing it).  But
> the discussion on this list would seem to indicate this group is not there
> yet.  Oreskes clearly says she is talking about the "climate experts" being
> in consensus that people are causing global warning.  That brings me back to
> the original questions about authority.  If Oreskes is correct that the
> climate experts are in agreement that human-caused global warming is
> occuring, what happens next?  Do we believe them and act accordingly, or do
> we drag our feet on taking action until the experts have fully convinced the
> rest of the scientific community they are correct?  Assuming they are
> correct, what will it take, and how long will it take for them to convince
> the rest of us?  Do we have that much time?
>
>
> Michael D. Edmiston, Ph.D.
> Professor of Chemistry and Physics
> Bluffton University
> 1 University Drive
> Bluffton, OH 45817
> 419.358.3270
> edmiston@bluffton.edu
>
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