Friday, April 13, 2007

The Scientific Consensus: Tastes Like Chicken

...dinosaurs, that is. CTV is reporting the discovering of collagen (a protein chemical substance that is the main support of skin, tendon, bone, cartilage and connective tissue) from a female T-Rex specimen found in Montana. While not DNA, this discovery has allowed scientists to obtain genetic information from the specimen and relate it to living species. Their conclusion:

"We have a protein sequence that we can compare to the protein sequence of other organisms that have had their genome. It looks like chicken may be its closest relative," [John Asara, a Harvard Medical School] told CTV.ca.

Now, what's interesting about this discovery beyond its intrinsic significance to paleontological studies, is how it can illuminate our current debate about global warming. For the bird dinosaur-connection, which this discovery supports, is in fact a matter of scientific consensus, the very concept of which has has come under attack by global warming deniers like Michael Crichton. For example, Crichton has argued that:

There is no such thing as consensus science. If it's consensus, it isn't science. If it's science, it isn't consensus. Period [...]Consensus is the business of politics.

However, that's clearly false in this case. From the wiki article:

There is an almost universal consensus among paleontologists that birds are the descendants of theropod dinosaurs. Using the strict cladistical definition that all descendants of a single common ancestor are related, modern birds are dinosaurs and dinosaurs are, therefore, not extinct.

Now, consensus means that:

A consensus implies that debate has taken place, the solution is generally accepted rather than a grudging compromise, and that agreement is deep-rooted enough that it can stand for some time without need to revisit the issue.

However, a consensus does not imply unanimity. For example, meet Alan Feduccia. We might call him a dinosaur-bird connection denier, believing in:

...of a basal archosaurian origin for Aves, that is a common descent of birds and theropods as opposed to a direct descent from advanced theropods, the currently popular theory.

Now the important points to note are:

1) Feduccia is a real scientist. No matter what his views on bird origins, he has done solid work in many other areas. He is kind of analogous to Richard Lindzen in the global warming debate.

2) He is one of a dwindling band. Most of his fellow travellers, who argued, for example, that Longisquama might have been the avian ancestor, seem to have jumped ship and embraced some version of the consensus. Larry Martin, for example, seems to have recently seen the light in this regard (although his position is nuanced and I may be mistaken).

3) He has become marginalized. If you were to work back through the archives of the Dinosaur Mailing List, and follow the popular press as they covered the "bird-dinosaur connection" controversy over lets say the past fifteen years, you would see that, while newspapers once gave Feduccia et al equal space in the debate, he is now represented, if at all, by a few lines towards the end of the article. In fact, the CTV piece that triggered this post mentions him not at all. This process has been gradual, as the evidence for the connection has accumulated. However, a tipping point probably came in the late 1990s when the first of the unambiguously feathered dinosaurs was pulled from the Yixian Formation in China.

This should all remind you of something: specifically, the course of the Global Warming debate. Because, I would argue that the history of the Global warming debate is pretty typical of the history of scientific debates in general. A new theory is proposed (the bird-dinosaur connection, anthropogenic global warming), and scientists take up sides. Sometimes the issue takes a long time to settle, and sometimes it never does, but often evidence dictates that one of the factions in it "win" and the others "lose". This "losing" does not take the form of being logically refuted (as idealistic, Popperian visions of Science would have it), and the "losers" do not necessarily stop being scientists after the consensus has gone against them. But, typically, when the dissenters finally die off they leave fewer and fewer intellectual descendants. This is what has occured in the bird-dinosaur connection debate, but because, lets face it, the interests of vast oil companies were not involved, it happened mostly beyond the gaze of the public. In the case of Global Warming, Exxon (for example) is essentially propping up the losing side to protect its market share, and so impeding the natural course of Science.












Don't Feed The Dinosaur!

15 comments:

Anonymous said...

All I know is that Dion is courting political extinction with his decision not to run a Liberal candidate in Central-Nova, a riding that was held by the Liberals as recently as 1997. Paul Wells's post on Dion's decision is classic Wells and worth a read.

Anonymous said...

Global warming is the fear campaign started and promulgated by the nuclear industry to increase their market share.

Its simple, we need to just scream louder and make up even more sensational scary stories to make the mobs vewy vewy, afwaid.

,

Anonymous said...

How many errors did YOU spot in that piece?

bigcitylib said...

Love to hear of any errors you might have found, anon 10:55.

The Rat said...

BCL, that little piece (of steaming turd) demonstrates in a very precise manner that you are a moron. Consensus means that the majority believe something, in this case the majority of scientists. It in no way means they are correct in their belief. I know you have a great deal of difficulty bending your inadequate mind around that fact, but that doesn't make it any less true. Einstein may have said it best:

"No amount of experimentation can ever prove me right; a single experiment can prove me wrong. "

If you can work your way towards understanding that quote you may have a sudden flash of insight into yourself. In some ways I pity you if you ever do.

bigcitylib said...

Einstein is apparently channeling Popper in this quote, who got it wrong. And in fact in Popper's later work (The Myth of the Framework, I believe) he essentially gave a number of circumstances in which negative experiments should not be taken as refuting a particular theory. Lakatos took this line of thinking quite a bit further.

Hint, rat: Google Quine-Duhem thesis.

Ti-Guy said...

Rat, only delusionals like you and Crichton believe that something short of 100% certainty means that doubt should be the operative principle when planning action. If that is the case, you shouldn't leave the house in the morning (and maybe you don't, but a lot of us still do).

If doubt only leads to inaction then it's serving no useful purpose. When doubt leads to better science, then it's great.

That's the problem with the deniers; they're not producting better science..they're not providing any additional information at all. And they're wasting our time.

canuckistanian said...

i may not be able to 'prove' beyond any shadow of a doubt tha the rat is a complete lunatic of a moron, but i can 'disprove' the thesis that he is a sane individual with above average intelligence. indeed, he did it for me.

The Rat said...

Wow, BCL, that was impressive, and still shows you haven't s clue as to what science is. Too bad, cause your Googling skills are impressive, but your interpretation of what you read, not so much. Philosophy might be your favourite crutch, but I've never been impressed by people who study it.

Now, just to simplify this for you: One experiment is all it would take to destroy Einstein's construct, still called a THEORY. The word "theory" in no way takes away from my belief that Einstein is correct, it just represents the basic scientific tenet that, given sufficient data, any opinion must be modified.

You see, Einstein didn't say one experiment would destroy his theory, or that only one would, just that one elegant experiment is all it would take if it did disprove that theory. Again, whether or not a negative result would disprove the theory is dependent on the experiment. Arguing dependencies doesn't help your basic premise, which is that consensus makes right. Frankly, I'll take Einstein over you every time.

(And ti-guy, your assumptions are astounding! But considering you have never, ever, ever posted anything that indicsatess you have a thought of your own, I won't waste my time disabusing you. Feel free to go back to fellating BCL and "Jooooos")

bigcitylib said...

Rat, now you're just contradicting what you wrote earlier. Get straight, kid.

Dan L. Johnson said...

Ignore the comments from the scogging pretenders - right on target, and well said. (But by their nature, the scoffers wouldn't value the opinion of a scientist on science anyway, or give reasons. The best that they can come up with is "well, um, I can certainly see the errors... they're obvious, right?")

To "He (Feduccia) is kind of analogous to Richard Lindzen in the global warming debate", I would have added, "although more productive and respected in his discipline than Lindzen is in his." Other than that, it's a good comparison.

By the way, a better link is
http://www.bio.unc.edu/faculty/feduccia/


BTW, Crichton may feel that consensus spells wrong when it comes to sidestream smoke or global warming, so I guess we should all agree with him spoonbending is just so obvious. Maybe this is why he is the climate change scoffers science source:

http://www.canadafreepress.com/2007/global-warming020507.htm


"I am not alone in this journey against the prevalent myth. Several well-known names have also raised their voices. Michael Crichton, the scientist, writer and filmmaker is one of them. In his latest book, "State of Fear" he takes time to explain, often in surprising detail, the flawed science behind Global Warming and other imagined environmental crises. Another cry in the wildenerness (sic) is Richard Lindzen's."

I can't wait to find out more about the wildenerness, by reading Canada Free Press. I'm just not sure if they meant "wilderness" or "wild deniers".

(The beginning for the article is deleted here. It begins: Global Warming, as we think we know it, doesn't exist. And I am not the only one trying to make people open up their eyes and see the truth. But few listen, despite the fact that" I... I... I... "Few listen, even though I have..., I was..., I, I, me, me, me, ..."Doctor of Science", etc. etc. For some reason (actually for many), the World is not listening...."

Dan L. Johnson said...

Correction.

My apologies to Can Free Press. The "wildenerness" was in the original 2006 version of the article that they recently published as a new argument:


Global Warming: The Cold, Hard Facts? By Special Correspondent Timothy Ball, 05/28/06

http://www.orato.com/node/398?PHPSESSID=5945a68b292577aeb525c1010c26e893

http://www.orato.com/node/398/&page=3

"Another cry in the wildenerness is Richard Lindzen's."

Anonymous said...

Test to see if the connection breaks down again and eliminates my lengthy comment in the process.

Anonymous said...

Then I suppose I'll try again.

You say the position that ends up in the minority is not falsified. That's wrong. It is falsified, and this is why it ends up not being the consensus.

In the case of climate, solar activity does not correlate with temperature since about 1940, the troposphere is warming while the stratosphere is cooling, CO2 does sometimes come out of volcanoes and raise the temperature and is sometimes used up in the erosion of newly exposed rock, lowering the temperature, CO2 does absorb IR at wavelengths where water vapor does not absorb, and so on and so forth. In the case of bird origins, the temporal paradox (which was always a very weak argument from negative evidence) does not exist (there are dromaeosaurids and troodontids that are a bit older than Archaeopteryx), anyone who would know an oviraptorosaur if it bit him in the proverbial place can look at Caudipteryx and tell that it is an oviraptorosaur rather than a bird, the outer layer of "filaments" on Sinosauropteryx, let alone Sinocalliopteryx, Shuvuuia, Beipiaosaurus (a segnosaur)and Dilong (a tyrannosauroid), cannot be explained away as collagen, the drepanosaurids and Longisquama are neither archosaurs nor closely related to birds, and so on and so forth.

So why doesn't everything except the consensus quickly die out? In both examples, I have noted lots of arguments from ignorance. Feduccia is a very good example. He is a specialist of Neornithes. He acts as if he knew anything about other dinosaurs, but neither does he, nor is he even interested in any of them any more than I am interested in agnostid trilobites. So he ends up taking positions that were falsified decades ago. In his 1996 book, he argued that the predator-prey ratios of the Late Cretaceous were skewed because the hadrosaurs were aquatic and therefore had a higher preservation potential than the terrestrial theropods. Aquatic hadrosaurs! In 1996! The people who work on hadrosaurs had abandoned this untenable position 20 years earlier, a fact to which Feduccia was completely oblivious, judging from his book.

Anonymous said...

Global warming is the fear campaign started and promulgated by the nuclear industry to increase their market share.

Its simple, we need to just scream louder and make up even more sensational scary stories to make the mobs vewy vewy, afwaid.


I summarize:

1. If it were true, Global Warming would make me afraid.
2. I don't want to be afraid.
3. Therefore I don't want Global Warming to be true.

4. Whatever I don't want to be true isn't true.
5. I don't want Global Warming to be true.
6. Therefore Global Warming isn't true.

This is a textbook case of an argument from consequences.

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And the nuclear industry can stick its humongous subsidies elsewhere. At the current rate of consumption, which is supposed to increase drastically, the world's uranium would last only for the next 60 years. Never mind the waste which has to be stored safely for tens of thousands of years...