G'day Dan,
Being really sick and actually thinking there was a chance I was not going to return to this site, I wrote you a little comment, requesting not that you changed your views just one tiny bit but rather that you expressed those views civily.
I didn't die. Well not yet anyway. The infection isn't under control, for those that have asked privately, but the antibiotics tried to strangle me so it is now my body against the infection.
So I had a real reason for not immediately giving the full details of the study to which I referred. I'm not very well and the effort was a bit much right now, even though I finally realised that all these studies I have or read are useless without proper reference and am compiling a database. It unfortunately does not include glacier studies as yet. It concentrates on temperature studies since these are the things I'm actually studying.
Actually the word studying is correct in this instance because my research has had preliminary acceptance for the basis of a PhD in Climatology at a rather pleasant and prestigous university and I even have funding to actually do the work. Now Dan, if I wanted to be as sarcastic or caustic as you, I could ask exactly what part of your career or current work has anything to do with climate science and when did you have any of your work accepted for publication or as the basis of a higher degree in climate science?
As I have said before, this site is not meant to be eletist. Anyone is welcome into the discussion. The site rules say that the discussion should be civil and on point. A comment such as that above breaches those rules. But just how much of a breach do you think this comment is:
"Have you considered writing a book? You could title it: Faith Based Science."
Do you realise just how insulting that is to some? You are comparing someone who simply does not agree with you with fundamentalist creationists. In science currently, that is an extremely sore point.
dehammer's comment was reasonable in this argument. He was pointing out the very real problem with any research being that the desired result is very often achieved simply because the scientists wish it so. It is rarely deliberate (although more often so than most scientists would be comfortable with knowing the statistic) but the inherent bias can be extremely powerful. Inconsistent data is ignored when it points to the result contrary to that wished for and incorporated into a study when it assists in the "proof" being looked for.
This is such a well known problem in science that in medical research, without a double blind test, results will not be accepted.
I read a lot of studies and once again am going to refer to one that I have no idea how you would get a reference to. Perhaps a search on google but even then it is probably only available on medical sites where you pay a subscription service. It was a study on the "tainting" of research by sub-conscious actions of the researchers. It showed that the results of tests could be skewed as much as 70% when researchers knew who was taking what, even though they provided no verbal clues to the participants at all. It was a clever study because the researchers actually did not know who was taking what, they only thought they did.
So if I want to prove the average world temperature is dropping in the last 35 years and I do not accept the accuracy of the GHCN data set because of a myriad of problems with that data, if I want the results to prove me right but also want it to be unbiased, what is my subconcious going to do when I have to decide what weight to put on specific problems? The ones that tend to heat the result are going to be given more weight than the opposite.
And that is my greatest problem right now. How do you create a data set without any bias when any researcher brings bias to the process.
Back to civility. Surely Dan, you can participate and remain civil. Try this, for instance. Never reply to the person providing a contrary view, reply to the position with whatever you believe is valid science that supports your view.
Even if you provide a study that is in itself defective, the discussion will not end in people leaving simply because they do not wish to be constantly exposed to personal insults and bickering. Have a look at the many threads that involve global warming without your participation. One degenerated into a nasty little personal attack back and forth. And no science was discussed. All the others remained pleasant, had a number of participants including new members and I learned a lot and have been told by others that they learned things as well. Which seems to be a better way of doing things?
Richard
