Dec 032010
Bishop Hill has taken a thoughtful look at Professor Brian Cox’s Wheldon Lecture on ‘Science: A Challenge to TV Orthodoxy’ here, and Josh’s accompanying cartoon is a joy.
The Wheldon Lectures take place under the auspices of the Royal Television Society, but this one was broadcast by the BBC rather in the manner of a Reith Lecture. I wonder why Cox chose to devote half his time to the way in which climate change should be represented by TV, at a time when the BBC Trust has ordered a review of the Corporation’s science reporting, and why the BBC chose to broadcast it?
Do you mean Reith Lecture?
[TonyN: Whoops! Thanks! Corrected!]
Please check the link you provide to the lecture. I get the following message:
“The requested URL was not found on this server. The link on the referring page seems to be wrong or outdated. Please inform the author of that page about the error.”
[TonyN: Done]
The link to BH doesn’t work. I can’t get Brian Cox’s lecture from the BBC here in France but via Lubos Motl I found it at
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=koQu3v10yUE&feature=player_embedded#!
The discussion at BishopHill is pretty unfocussed since everyone’s discussing a TV programme, not a written text. Having watched 30 seconds, it seems to me a highly dangerous point of view that Cox is putting forward. According to Motl, Durkin has written a response which Delingpole will be putting up, and given the high profile of Cox and Delingpole, it could be a story that makes waves.
When I get back from the shopping, I intend to have a stab at transcribing Cox, so that discussion can be more focussed. I know Alex Cull has done this in the past. It will take a bit of time, but I think it’s worth doing, and if anyone agrees, I’d happily share the work. If the BBC publishes a transcript, I won’t have to bother.
I think this is the intended link:
http://www.bishop-hill.net/blog/2010/12/3/the-orwellian-solution.html
Geoff, I’ll have some free time later on this weekend & can help transcribe the Cox lecture – just tell me where you leave off, and I can continue..
Here’s the first four minutes of the 2nd part of Cox’s lecture at
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=koQu3v10yUE&feature=player_embedded#!
Now it’s of course recognised that you can’t give air time to every contrarian on the planet, but there are areas which for television are clearly controversial, areas for which there is a high level of public debate, for example genetically modified organisms. In such cases, presenting opposing points of view would seem to be a overriding imperative, and here was a real clash between broadcasting and science, because controversial means different things to a scientist and to a broadcaster.
In science, we have a well-defined process for deciding what is mainstream and what is controversial, and it has nothing whatsoever to do with how many people believe something to be true or not. It’s called peer review. Peer review is a very simple and quite often brutal process, by which any claim that is submitted for publication in a scientific journal is scrutinised by independent experts whose job it is to find the flaws. Only when they are convinced that there are no errors in the experimental procedure or the theoretical reasonng can this paper be published. The paper then becomes part of what is known as the scientific literature. The job of other scientists is then to read the paper, and in general try to either falsify it, or agree with it by repeating rthe same experiment, or proposing new tests to challenge or verify the conclusions. This is how science proceeds, and it works.
It is the method that has delivered the modern world. It’s good. It doesn’t necessarily mean that the current scientific consensus is, of course, correct, but it does, in general, mean that the consensus and the scientific literature is the best that can be done given the available data.
Therefore, I contend that “controversial” in science broadcasting, should be defined in the same way as it is in science, that is, a controversial view is not one that runs counter to public opinion, but one that runs counter to the current peer-reviewed consensus.
This means that the most objective and impartial presentation of a so-called contentious story, such as MMR, climate change, astrology, or even the so-called evolution debate, is to give significantly more weight to the scientifically peer-reviewed position, because this will leave the audience with a more truthful view of the current thinking.
Now it may seem there that I’m redefining what impartiality means, but the peer-reviewed consensus is by definition impartial. To leave the audience with this particular kind of impartial view is desperately important. We’re dealing with issues of the life and death of our children and the future of our climate, and the way to deal with this is not to be fair and balanced, to borrow a phrase from a famous news outlet, but to report and explain the peer reviewed scientific consensus accurately.
So, for me, the challenge for the scientific reporter in television news is easily met: report the peer-reviewed consensus, and avoid the maverick eccentric at all costs.
So, the challenge for the documentery filmmaker is more complex, because documentaries serve a wider range of purposes. There are documentaries which deal with politically contentious issues, much like news, and there are films like my own “Wonders of the Solar System” that on the face of it are far less controversial because they deal with less politicised subjects. There are in other words, many kinds of documentary film, and it is of course entirely legitimate for them to be polemical. Indeed, one of the reasons that broadcasters often invite professional scientists rather than professional presenters is that they have opinions and present them in a forceful way.
So how does this fit with the demands of impartiality, as I have defined, or redefined, them for news?
Perhaps the most contentious issue for the moment is climate change. This is where the point of friction is made most vivid:
(clip from Great Global Warming Swindle)
Alex #5
Many thanks for the offer. I’ve no idea how much of the lecture is relevant. I’ll indicate here when I’ve had enough!
(continuation of Cox’s talk, from after short clip from intro to “the Great Global Warming Swindle”)
The beginning of Martin Durkin’s highly controversial documentary, “the Great Global Warming Swindle” broadcast on Channel 4.
Now, what is there to say about this film (which is, in my opinion, factually total bollocks, of course)?
Ofcom had plenty to say. There was a ruling upholding a complaint about the misrepresentation of a contributor, and that the final third had broken rules of due impartiality on matters of major political and industrial controversy and major matters relating to current public policy.
But, I’m not entirely sure what “due impartiality” means. As I argued at the start of the lecture, “impartiality” can be misleading. If this film is a polemic, along the lines of Adam Curtis’s “the Power of Nightmares” or the work of Michael Moore, then I would argue that this is not only fine, but valuable. In fact, in these terms, I quite enjoyed it. It raises inrteresting questions about institutional power and the politicisation of science. And even though I don’t agree with the point of view expressed in the film, I would defend the right of the film maker absolutely to express an opinion. This is the lifeblood of democracy. As John Stuart Mill wrote, “we can never be sure that the opinion we are endeavouring to stifle is a false opinion, and if we were sure, stifling it would be an evil still”.
But, is it clear to the audience that the Great Global Warming Swindle is polemic? The continuity announcement on Channel 4 before the film was broadcast did describe it as “a controversial and thought-provoking documentary from the film maker Martin Durkin.” But nowhere in the film is it implied that it’s an authored piece. Nor is there a presenter, which might go some way to flagging its polemical nature to the audience, although some presenters, be it Sir David Attenborough, or David Dimbleby, are so trusted that there may be issues there, too.
When I watched it, I immediately knew that it was making no claims to be a balanced scientific documentary. You know immediately from the off, what you’re going to get. “Don’t be scared” it says, “It’s not true” just twenty seconds in.
But, if you know very little about climate science, how are you to make up your mind? Well, let me knowingly simplify a complex issue, and try to summarise the issue in a simple question: What is the difference between a polemic and a documentary?
To answer this question is to make a very sgnificant value judgement on the content of a programme of course. One person’s balanced and impartial piece of television is another’s polemical cack [or CACC?]. This is, I would contend, the same issue that we met earlier when we were considering news reporting. My solution has to therefore be the same.
The only possible way to tell the difference between a polemic and a documentary is to appeal to scientific peer review. Now, I’m aware that this sounds far more controversial than for the case of news reporting, but to me, it is where the logic of my argument leads, so I’ve drawn a distinction between a scientific documentary and a polemic, based on peer review. A programme that deviates significantly from the scientific consensus should flag this somehow. Perhaps it must say: “a personal view”, or “a film made by…” at the start. But this is of course what ITN did to Ben Goldacre, and I don’t think that was ok then, but, only because he was reflecting the peer-reviewed scientific consensus.
Now, I confess to having reservations about this conclusion, because, although it makes sense, it does sound rather authoritarian. As George Orwell wrote in “1984”, “..day by day, and almost minute by minute, the past was brought up to date. In this way, every prediction made by the party could be shown by documentary evidence to have been correct. Nor was any item of news, or any expression of opinion which conflicted with the needs of the moment ever allowed to remain on record.”
Have I been led to an Orwellian conclusion? I don’t know. But what I can do is offer an example where I thinkt the film maker’s got the balance right by flagging the difference very clearly between the scientific consensus and the opinion of the presenter.
(extract from “Earth: The Climate Wars”:)
Presenter: “It would have been lovely to have made a programme about how science had got it all wrong, that actually we’ve got nothing to worry about, but unfortunately it’s the opposite.
“Most of the climate scientists I talked to are actually genuinely scared by the future. They’re worried that it’s in the nature of the climate to change far faster than we once thought possible. And my feeling is, if they’re scared, so should we be. Because, whatever the uncertainties surrounding climate prediction, the fundametal science is pretty clear. We may not know exactly what global warming will bring, but we sure as hell know it’s happening. There’s just no hiding place from that simple fact. Of course, what it means for us and our families, well, that’s a different matter. But if I’ve learned one thing in this series, it’s that the stakes are so high, doing nothing simply isn’t an option.”
See, in that clip, Ian Stewart delivered a message, and I think he walked a fine line with great skill. You see in my view the so-called controversy about climate change isn’t really about the scientific data, no matter what the climate sceptics think – as Ian Stewart says: the consensus is clear – the real controversy is political, and centres on the question “what is to be done?” Should we increase the tax on oil? Should we not build a third runway at Heathrow? Should we build more nuclear power stations or wind turbines? Should we risk damaging our economy in the short term by reducing CO2 emissions quickly, or should we continue to pursue economic growth at all costs, and seek a more market-oriented solution to the threat of climate change?
These are complex questions, the answers to which often divide down political lines. But I think Ian Stewart navigates these treacherous waters well, because he remains true to the science and true to television, and he does this by drawing a clear distinction in the viewer’s mind between the peer reviewed science and his opinion. This for me, is best practise, and is probably the best we can hope for, if we are to avoid the Orwellian nightmare of winning the victory over ourselves, and loving Big Brother.
first thoughts:
Cox’s argument falls at the first hurdle, since he conflates “peer review” and “consensus”. Durkin’s film was full of interviews by peer -reviewed scientists. Its thesis was quite simply: “there is an opposing opinion, also supported by peer-reviewed science”. So what did Cox mean by saying that the film was “factually total bollocks”? That the peer reviewed work by Lindzen etc didn’t exist? was worthless? wasn’t as numerous as the consensus view?
His skirting round the question of “flagging” controversy, finishing with the Orwell quote, (which had nothig to with controversy, but everything to do with manipulating the past – the serious accusation made against Jones &Co at CRU) seemed to me to indicate a seriously confused person.
Cox makes claims about “peer review” that don’t stand up.
How long has peer review been around ? And how long has it been around in science ? It started off in the humanities to try and keep absolute junk out of the publications.
Has Cox heard about the Sokal Hoax ?
“Sokal submitted an article to Social Text, an academic journal of postmodern cultural studies. The submission was an experiment to test the magazine’s intellectual rigor and, specifically, to learn if such a journal would “publish an article liberally salted with nonsense if it (a) sounded good and (b) flattered the editors’ ideological preconceptions.”
Alex and Geoff:
I wrote to the Royal Television Society on Friday morning asking for a transcript, but no reply so far. With a public lecture it is unusual now not to find a transcript on the organiser’s website.
It would seem well worthwhile having a transcript of this speech if you are prepared to commit the time.
Geoff, yes Cox does seem mixed up – his phrase “the peer-reviewed consensus is by definition impartial” is at the very least clumsy, bordering on the meaningless. Great transcript, by the way.
Jack, the Schön scandal (also here on Wiki) is a great example too, as it was deliberately fraud which made it through peer review.
Tony, I’ll see if I can transcribe some of the before and after bits of the talk; Geoff has covered the part directly about climate change, but there’s more about televised science that is relevant and interesting.
Alex #12
Many thanks for the offer. I‘ve stopped there, where the references to climate science finish. Later he sums up his point about peer reviewed / consensus (he seems to think the two are synonymous) science as the only basis for science news and documentaries, and finishes with a clip from Carl Sagan, which I found absurdly pretentious, but apparently everyone else in the cosmos thinks is the bee’s knees. I’d never heard of Cox before, and I’m shattered if this is really the level of discussion on serious television now.
My disappointment with Cox is not contained in the quoted sections above, his insistence that only peer reviewed = science fit for mainstream & scientifically illiterate audiences. It’s the bait & switch trick he employed prior to these remarks, in order to establish his scientific credibility and upon which presumably his audience were supposed to buy into his later peer review arguments.
What did he do? Well, he started so well with reference to his own professed hero Feynman, showed Feynam’s definition of science from the Character of Physical Law lectures, re-iterated this simple outline of the established scientific method (ie the stuff that did actually bring us to where we are today), then went on to throw this out of the window when it came to his review of TV climatology.
Viz: If your physical theory doesn’t produce results that fit observation of nature, the theory is wrong. Even a single observation outside the theoretical predictions is enough to throw it away and start again. Just a single contradiction, even if your theory has previously been widely successful. (Example: classical Newtonian relativity and gravitation.)
Climatology can make no such claims to wild success in experimental verification, just outright contradiction with observation. Ie it’s in the throw it away and start again category of science.
Compare and contrast to one of Feynam’s own contributions to human knowledge, quantum electrodynamics: the most widely tested, most accurate physical theory of all time. And one whose usefulness is employed and observed in every electronic and optical gadget in use today. Ie it is some of the stuff that actually brought us to where we are today.
Sadly Cox did not remain with Feynman for very long into his lecture by failing to apply this simple method to decide on what was good or bad science, and therefore presumably fit for gullible public consumption. His choice of peer review as the arbiter is just incredibly weak by comparison.
Having stood on the shoulders of a true scientific giant, then failing so singularly to follow his lead, I was left feeling rather short changed by Cox. It would have made delightful viewing if Feynman was still around to rebut and debunk this sadly “ignorant expert”.
Geoffchambers,
I was reading your posting #8 and it all seemed very good and very sensible. I was rather puzzled until I realised you were transcribing Brian Cox’s comments.
Maybe you write them in italics or as a block quote. Otherwise other readers may well make the same mistake, and think you actually know what you are talking about!
geoffchambers
Looks like Brian Cox fell into the trap of using his stature as a well-known particle physicist to pontificate openly on a topic he new very little about (8) – namely climatology.
It is quite possible that he was led into this embarrassing situation by the broadcaster, but nevertheless, he fell for it and made himself look silly.
Tp round things out, let’s have another broadcast where Roy Spencer or James E. Hansen give us their views on particle physics.
Max
geoffchambers
Back to your post on the Brian Cox interview (8).
Cox appears to recognize the paramount importance of the “scientific method” in his own field of expertise, but apparently does not consider it to be important in climatology, where he brings up the importance of “consensus” instead.
He discredits “TGGWS” a priori, without going into the specifics, almost (as it appears) in a dogmatic rather than a scientifically based manner.
His statement:
is pure balderdash (or BS, if you prefer the more modern equivalent).
He must be aware of the total corruption of the “peer review” process in climate science today. If not, he may be too engrossed in his particle physics work to know what is really going on.
Even more strangely, he fails to recognize that the IPCC hypothesis of “dangerous AGW” has not yet passed the simple validation test based on empirical data according to the “scientific method” (which he claims to espouse).
Hey, Dr. Cox, it’s not “peer review” that validates a hypothesis, its “empirical data”.
The IPCC version of DAGW remains an uncorroborated hypothesis until this occurs (regardless of how many “peers” have “rubber-stamped” it) as Cox must know.
Max
Here’s the rest of the presentation from where Geoff left off – I’ve followed Peter’s helpful suggestion of putting it in block quotes:
Max,
Can I just check if I’ve got this right?
Scientists who are actually directly engaged in Climatology should have their views discounted because they’ve been compromised by financial considerations. They are so determined to hang on to their jobs, some of which, in the UK pay as much as UKP35,000 p.a. (US$55,000) that they are deliberately exaggerating the scale of the AGW problem.
Other scientists who have different specialisations, can be dismissed by using similar comments to the one you used about Brian Cox “…..the trap of using his stature as a well-known particle physicist to pontificate openly on a topic he knew very little about”
Are you the same Max who claimed to be impartial a few posts ago?
And the same Max who gets all uppity whenever I accuse him of being anti-science?
Manacker’s analysis #17 is right as usual, except I’m not sure that Cox “must be aware of the total corruption of the ‘peer review’ process in climate science today”. Only if he reads the blogs.
This speech is simply dreadful. When he says
He slides effortlessly from a logical fallacy to a moral imperative to an emotional appeal based on the threat to our children in three short sentences. This is the rhetoric of a demagogue.
Whether he knows about Climategate and is dissembling, or is simply ignorant, we can’t tell. But he must know about the BBC Review. Yet he feels happy calling a programme containing the opinions of half a dozen peer-reviewed scientists “total bollocks”. This is the worrying thing.
I’ve only just spotted that sentence
What is he talking about? A paper is peer-reviewed as part of the publishing process.
I’ve never heard of a consensus being peer-reviewed.
How would this work ?
In fact I would love to know what he means when he says consensus. How is a consensus created in his world?
I read last week about a sea-level rise conference. Beforehand some delegates were talking about 1 metre and some talking about 5 metres. Afterwards there was a “consensus” of “about 3”.
What happened during the conference ? Did they average the different numbers ? Did they take a vote ? Did they do some fresh analysis ? Who chose the delegates ? Who decided that the year 2100 was the right year to guess about ?
Consensus has no role to play in science. None.
Consensus is the opposite of science.
He should have read Feynman’s Cargo Cult science address from 1974. Yes 36 years ago.
Feynman describes the dangers of fooling yourself – of doing experiments that support your theory and not risking the experiments that could damage or destroy it.
The best way to create those experiments is the cut-and-thrust of antagonistic teams doing their best to wreck other other peoples’ theories.
This creates rapid science. And good science.
Just like wartime conditions accelerate tank and aeroplane development. And NASA achieved more in the space-race decade 1960-1970 than they have achieved in the 40 years since.
Cox has got the whole thing the wrong way round. A new theory emerges. It looks promising because it can predict things outside the observations that prompted the theory in the first place (Feynman again). It survives attacks from bitter opponents with bad motives and good. Nobody can shoot it down. It correctly predicts more and more and novel outcomes.
The opposition teams one by one throw in the towel and accept that new theory is useful and has resisted their best attacks. Then it becomes the new consensus.
But only until a better contender comes along (eg relativity).
And I’ve not mentioned peer-review – which as a workflow procedure in the publishing industry – just like mixing the ink.
PeterM
Good thinking, Peter (although I would have used slightly different wording) – you reveal, over and over on this thread, your acute logic.
(Except, of course, it has nothing to do specifically with “science” – it’s much broader than that).
The French call it “déformation professionelle”.
In the USA this is often referred to as the “herd instinct”. I believe Dr. Curry has used the expressions “group think” and “dogma” to refer to this phenomenon.
Thomas Kuhn referred to it as being stuck in a “paradigm” (and therefore unable to recognize data points, which lie “outside the box” of the paradigm).
There was even an Andersen fairytale based on this phenomenon: “The Emperor’s Clothes”.
The other parallel force at work, which you also pegged exactly, is often referred to as “follow the money trail”.
For a good description of how this factor all fits together like a jigsaw puzzle re-read TonyN’s incisive blog on the “convenient network”, or the chapter covering “collusion of interests” in Peter Taylor’s book, “Chill”.
Max
JackHughes
The crazy thing is, Cox actually quotes Feynman (in the first part, I think, which neither Alex not I have transcribed). Just as he quotes Orwell, before saying “Have I been led to an Orwellian conclusion? I don’t know”. Just as he says Durkin’s film “raises interesting questions about institutional power and the politicisation of science” before saying it should be categorised as “polemic”.
The whole talk sounds as if it was based on a briefing by someone who once looked at Realclimate. Any CiF warmist troll could do better, simply because they know our ways, and the objections we might raise. Cox clearly doesn’t. And he doesn’t know he doesn’t. His approach is identical to that of the typical BBC mandarin, or politician, or stand-up comic in “let’s-be-serious-for-a-moment” mode – no better and no worse.
I like that. It’s not often I hear a new argument, but that’s a good one.
Jack Hughes and geoffchambers
Feynman and Kuhn were both addressing the same phenomenon (one a bit more humorously than the other).
It is inconceivable to me that a renowned scientist would say something as totally non-scientific as
“Scientific peer review” is, by definition tainted by the human opinion of the “peers”, so can never be a substitute for following the scientific method to validate or falsify a hypothesis.
In the case of “climate science”, which has become (as Dr. Curry has stated) a “dogma” for an “insiders’ group” of peers, it is a worthless “rubber-stamping” process, equivalent to asking the council of Cardinals to judge a fine point in theology in order to arrive at “truth”.
Not a very “scientific” opinion by Dr. Cox, I’m afraid.
But you have both expressed this quite concisely.
Max