The ANU climate change-death threat scandal

[Steve]

This might be the wrong forum for it, and if it is go ahead and move it, but since the basic issue is in science as well as politics I figured I'd post here.

I've recently become aware of a scandal with Australia National University reporting the receipt of "death threats" against its personnel by man-made climate change skeptics. ANU tried to block release of the threats and was ruled against; the released e-mails have the climate skeptics crowing as they, well, most of the ones I read cannot in any way be construed as death threats. The closest is the case of a conference participant showing their gun license and supposedly remarking on their accuracy skill, but my same source has found information that this might be taken out of context in relation to a kangeroo culling program or something (Australia has to cull the 'roo population?).

My big issue is that... I can't find any independent sources on it. There are only the skeptics, who are crowing, or the climate change advocates, and at least one is insisting that there were death threats and that they're being swept under the rug. The closest to a newspaper I've found is The Australian, which is a "center-right" newspaper, which reported on the university losing the ruling and being forced to disclose the alleged threats.

The whole episode... this is why science needs to be kept out of politics. Once it gets pulled in, on scientific initiative or not, it is going to turn the search for facts into a search for confirmation. Money is to be had on both sides of the argument, temptation to creatively or even selectively interpret data will be omnipresent, and scientists will have to deal with laypeople constantly (and they're not always good at it). The entire climate change issue is muddled because support for and opposition against it has more to do with perceptions than facts. Opponents see the people backing the theory and believe it's just another leftist scheme to scaremonger people into greater government control and limitation of the economy, supporters see it as confirmation of personal biases and dismiss opposition as corrupt (in the pockets of Big Oil and Coal OMG!) or stupid, even when their own side does something boneheaded.

So, anyone have any other sources or takes on this issue?

[Comrade Tortoise]

The whole episode... this is why science needs to be kept out of politics.

Unfortunately, that is not possible. The reason being that policy must absolutely be grounded in this little thing called reality. Science is the only way we have to find out what reality actually is.

Money is to be had on both sides of the argument, temptation to creatively or even selectively interpret data will be omnipresent

Money is involved in ALL science, because we have to get funding from somewhere. Most of the money for climate research that comes out in favor of anthropogenic climate change however, comes from agencies that do not have a vested interest in the outcome. Governments--particularly the non-partisan agencies like the NSF or even regulatory agencies, dont give a shit what the outcome is. If anything, many regulatory agencies are more or less completely captured by industry (Particularly the EPA at the level of things like chemical approval), so if their funds are used to support the hypothesis, this cannot be attributed to trying to cater to the desires of the funding agency.

"skeptics" on the other hand, are almost universally funded by libertarian think tanks and the oil industry. When meta-analyses are performed, their results (To the extent they do research at all, most of them dont, as a matter of fact. They might publish a book, but they almost never publish in peer reviewed journals where they actually have to pass scrutiny by their colleagues) are tied to the interests of their backers. This is true for almost any contentious issue. If you run a Fishers's Exact Test for Independence on anything from the safety of a medication or pesticide to climate change, those who have non-interested parties as their backers come out one way, and those who have backers with financial interests in the outcome come out another. The difference in their results does not come from selectively interpreting data, but from issues in study design (in studies performed by those funded by Interested Parties) that are plainly obvious to anyone with sufficient background to look.

The entire climate change issue is muddled because support for and opposition against it has more to do with perceptions than facts.

For lay people, yes. Not for the scientists. The data is overwhelming, and comes from multiple independent lines of evidence. The models are now so complete that when they are run using prior conditions (sun spot activity, CO2, Volcanism etc), they can accurately post-dict past climate, and detect feedback loops.

, supporters see it as confirmation of personal biases and dismiss opposition as corrupt (in the pockets of Big Oil and Coal OMG!) or stupid, even when their own side does something boneheaded.

Scientists do boneheaded things when dealing with lay people. Hell, I know I do. But corruption is corruption is corruption. It is not some hair-brained idea to think that some scientists are corrupt and in the pocket if industry, because we see it all the damn time in numerous fields.

Take pesticide regulation. Sygenta and Monsanto have created Conflict of Interest Orgies in the EPA and the labs that do their bio-safety testing. Things like revolving doors between their contract labs, their board of directors, and the EPA panels that regulate pesticides. It is a chinese firedrill whereby the scientists contracting to do things like test for the effects of a pesticide on reproductive function make it into the EPA, and from there they get lucrative positions on a board of directors, and when their term is up go back to contracting for the same company. They feather their own nests. The paper trails exist, and so do the independent analyses of the results of experiments performed by them, comparing them to those with independent funding.

That some scientists involved in studies of regulatory importance have been captured/compromised/corrupted by industry is not some hair-brained fantasy that we crazy liberal scientists have cooked up. We actually publish papers proving it in the literature. We have math to back it up, because we are scientists, and it is kind of our bag.

This is a far cry from invoking some evil New World Order/Leftist/Illuminati cabal seeking to destroy free enterprise, for which there is no evidence.

[Josh]

Basically what Ben said, but to take things a bit further:

Science equals money these days. Research on matters like global warming can result in the shift of the entire global economy. So every player involved that has a hand in that money pipeline is apt to start finding ways to buy into the process. From there, you descend from science and into legalism and legalism is its own special kind of hell. I remember getting my training in accident investigation, which included a section on expert witnessing. One of the things that was repeatedly stressed was that it wasn't the whole body of the facts that necessarily interested attorneys, simply the facts that supported their case. Same thing in contentious scientific/political issues- they're going to engage in the full legal strategy here. If you can't assemble the framework for the slamdunk argument, then you cherrypick the facts to support your case. If you can't cherrypick facts, then by god smear and obfuscate and do anything you can to shift the burden to the other side.

Combine this with the deplorable state of American education and it's very easy to manufacture controversy. One of the easiest tricks is to abuse correlation/causation. We know that from a scientific standpoint that correlation doesn't necessarily equal causation, but most of our lives are spent operating through that model. Hell, our species has always worked with that- if Bob ate the berries last week and then died in screaming agony later that day, you're probably going to be less inclined to eat the berries yourself. The legal/marketing approach aims specifically at those sort of logical fault lines in order to maintain standing and profitability.

In short, our skill at advertising is basically fucking us all over the place.