Edward and tfourier: You both outline the reasons why I try to always link to the actual paper when I post a science story. First, it provides my readers the source of the story to check for themselves. Second, it allows me to check the veracity of the press release before I post the story.

Trust me, a large percentage of stories get trashed and never appear at this website after I have reviewed the paper, even as numerous mainstream news outlets go gaga over them.

See also this earlier BtB essay: Junk science now dominates the reporting of the propaganda press

That wrong math is often used to prove the conclusion is correct. Hypothesis testing is one such abuse of math. The test is on a hypothesis not presented and ponders data not seen, then conclusions are made about the actual hypothesis and the real data that was seen. Thus, garbage papers are accepted as factual, because the hypothesis test passed, and the papers are never retracted, because they proved themselves with the hypothesis test.

“These ‘junk science’ papers only become a real problem when people appropriate them for political reasons.”

Or when someone references them for scientific reasons. Conclusions based upon false conclusions are at best suspect, they could be wrong. Then more papers reference the additional wrong conclusions, formulating a waterfall of error that is treated confidently as true. We become overconfident in what we think we know, but much of it is bogus, even if unintentionally so.

A classic example of using bogus research for political reasons is the Cook, et al., paper that was used to show the world a consensus of 97% of scientists agreeing that the global warming hypothesis was a real problem. The abstract alone said that two thirds of the scientists had no opinion at all, which means that at best it was only 97% of the remaining third. But that was not what the politically biased told everyone. Worse, the method used to determine the thinking of these scientists was not to ask them but to divine their thoughts through the abstracts of papers that they had written. Thus, the method has a high danger of confirmation bias, since Cook, and his others, had a point to make.

No math was required to make this a junk science paper that was still used to make a point that the desired condition was real. Decisions are still made by using this and other bogus science.

An aphorism I read is: the love of theory is the root of all evil. What scientists won’t do to prove their favored hypotheses correct. And when a hypothesis conforms to the political needs of the day, then it is treated as theory, is treated as scientific law (or consensus), is treated as fact, used by government, or others, for their own ends.

Thus, in one decade there is a coming Ice Age, requiring government tyranny to prevent, and in the next decade there is runaway anthropogenic global warming, requiring government tyranny to prevent, and in the next decade there is catastrophic climate change, requiring government tyranny to prevent, and it goes on and on, using The Science (politically expedient junk science) to prove each point.

So, what is the danger of having government be the financier of all the nation’s science? That paradigm began just after WWII. It took less that three decades for The Science to appear, and it only got worse from there.

Add to this the climatology models that were reifgied into reality (the map was confused for the territory) and we can understand why NOAA and NASA modified their global average temperature datasets. This modification was done without explanation, without telling anyone, and with all changes going in the direction supporting the favored hypothesis (the very definition of fudging the data) and the models derived to support them, which were being shown to be wrong; the “pause” that the scientists were lamenting was eliminated and Mann’s “Hockey Stick” hypothesis supported. Satellite instruments that measure global temperatures were also recalibrated to support the global warming hypothesis that the models support.

Not just my opinion.

Cherry picking data is explicitly labeled as “scientific fraud”.

[SLAP!]

Ow!

How’d Mr. Z hit me through the keyboard?

I think it is this Mann who directed THE KEEP….

Since 2012 I have done a great deal of research about “Man Made Climate Change”, Global Warming and Greenhouse Gases. It didn’t take me long to realise MMCC was not a real existential threat to any nation now, soon or ever. Tony Heller’s counsel on this front has been invaluable to my education about the subject. He is a real terrier for the truth. Michael Mann on the other hand is a preening, arrogant, shyster who pushes a false theory and narrative for attention, money, fame and status. He is the complete opposite of a good scientist.

כבודו של מלך הוא לחפש את האמת על עניין.

😎

Adam Neira
Founder of World Peace 2050
Founded in April 2000
Paris – Jerusalem – Melbourne

BTW He has never paid the costs of his fraudulent and losing B.C. lawsuit against the late Dr. Tim Bell.

more fake data that was quickly revealed in discovery
Quickly? By what standard? Mann drug this thing out over more than a decade (IIRC). It mangled Steyn’s life.

But, the truth did out. Mann should be a pariah, selling pencils on the street corner, instead of still living and working as a “scientist.”

Mann’s “Northern hemisphere temperatures during the past millennium (1999) ” paper is pretty typical. Collects a bunch of low grade, low density, very localized data sets. Combines them with a very different low density, localized heterogeneous data sets. Then do some pointless math which will not negate all the fundamental flaws in the data set when applied to drawing any defensible conclusions about the physical characteristics of the lower atmosphere over a hemisphere and – voila – 1998 might be the warmest year in a millennium.

That’s the “science”

This sort of verbiage is standard from grad slaves trying build up enough of a published track record to get a stab at tenure track. Or a better chance of getting another few years of research grants. But defendable science? Not in any way.

Depending of research area the amount of “garbage papers” runs from reasonably low (but still way too high compared to 50 years ago) in areas like geophysics, pure math, astrophysics etc to very high / most of them in some areas of bio-science, the social sciences and of course, climate science. Usually conclusions not marching data. Plus bad math. Always the bad math.

These “junk science” papers only become a real problem when people appropriate them for political reasons. If there is a paper about the geological history of a region that might have badly presented conclusions that are not really supported by sloppy data that’s not a big deal. Sooner or later the question will be settled. But when people use the same kind of low quality “junk science” papers to support attempts to forcibly defacto deindustrialize Western economies that is another matter.

Too many people dont know the disastrously history of Lysenkoism.

Science + Politics = Politics.

Every time.

Many years ago he was asked to turn over his “science” papers to be reviewed, to which he could not comply because somehow in the moving process when he was given a bigger office after his Nobel prize… He lost all his data! (An inconvenient truth for everyone)
Although variations of the hockey stick came out later, none were based upon the same information or reproduced the same results.
As everyone knows, the end of the world warming trend predicted never happened, it was all “a hoax” which has bankrupt many nations. never has a fraud been perpetrated on this massive scale.

It already is. The past two years, the whole ‘global/warming/climate change’ edifice is falling, and falling hard. Entire Governments ‘committed’ to ‘greenhouse gas reduction’ are changing their tune, rapido. People have noticed that, like the Doomsayers of the late 19th-Century, and the multitude of self-haters before, nothing prophesied, is here. The Prophets of Gaia are profiting immensely from Gaia. And, not inconsequentially, many have bought ocean-front property. Oh, the irony!

Private jets, private compounds, private ocean-front property? We must purge the Planet of these Evil-doers! Oh, wait.

There is a special circle of Hell reserved for Mann where the thermostat gets cranked up at the rate of the blade of his hockey stick, forever.

His Board Of Experts would include Paul Ehrlich,* AlGore, and AOC.

*Ehrlich – Yes, Ehrlich is still alive. Professor Emeritus at Stanford University. He is venerated as a sage of wisdom.