On Finding Versus Making Facts

Over at Realclimate, Rasmus E. Benestad is unhappy with philosophers/sociologists of science:

"One real difference between the ‘tribes’ of natural scientists and STS scholars may be the perception of ‘facts’: Ryghaug and Skjølsvold conclude that “scientific facts are made and not just discovered”. In contrast, I think most natural scientists feel that facts are facts, whether we know about them or not."

Well, if natural scientists really think this, then they are wrong, though I'm not sure they do really think it.

For example, lets take a global average annual temperature for year X. This figure seems to me to be massively "constructed", or "made". Nobody consults s single thermometer that gives you this figure. Instead, a thousand point measurements are adjusted, massaged, and otherwised fiddled with so that the one figure can be produced. Yet I would say it is nevertheless a fact.

That's all that the claim that facts are in some sense "made" need necessarily imply. There are sociologists who write as though there is something more sinister at play--that our broader political ideology drives the way we "make" our facts. Stephen Fuller comes to mind. But it needn't be taken to imply that; the word is meant to suggest the notion of LABOUR as much as INVENTION.

This might be of some importance, given the misunderstandings of a few science journalists like Fred Pearce, who thought that the fact that nobody ever asked Phil Jones for his "raw data" signified a breakdown in peer review. But why would anybody want to re-do the work Jones already put into his data set? Such a course of action would only be useful if Jones had been incompetent or a member of some kind of worldwide Marxist conspiracy. Which of course he wasn't, so why bother?

CRU Cleared Again

...by the UK Gov, in their official Response to the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee 8th Report of Session 2009-10: The disclosure of climate data from the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia. The short version: CRU's science is solid, but there are still some issues re the prompt handling of FOIA requests. The longer version is here. My favourite bit:

13. Openness and transparency should be the presumption. That said, there are a number of good reasons why it is not always possible or appropriate to make data available immediately or even at all. In the instance of the CRU, the scientists were not legally allowed to give out the data (although there is the question of whether they could have gone back to national meteorological societies to get permission to release data).

And another favourite bit:

The evidence that we have seen does not suggest that Professor Jones was trying to subvert the peer review process. Academics should not be criticised for making informal comments on academic papers.

[...]

15. We agree with the Committee’s comments on the rights of scientists to comment informally on academic papers, noting that the scientific method relies on constructive challenge. We also note that the Muir Russell Review team investigated CRU scientists’ involvements in peer review, and concluded that none of the allegations investigated represented subversion of the peer-review process, nor an unreasonable attempt to influence the editorial policy of journals.

...which kind of segues into my next topic, because the Gaurdian's Fred Pearce thinks, wrongly, that CRU was "using underhand tactics to silence their critics". He's also calling for the head of IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) chairman Rajendra Pachauri. You can read his arguments through the link above. I'm more sympathetic to the position of the Friends of the Earth:

However, [the FoE] warned that there was a real danger that if Pachauri is perceived to have been forced to stand down, then climate sceptics will call for the scalp of every subsequent chair and the position will be discredited for good.

So might journalists like Fred Pearce. In fact, since journalism feeds upon conflict (or its appearance), you can bet on it.