Letter To The FT - Climategate

26 Nov 2011

In today's FT Christopher Caldwell has written an article called Why climategate is a catastrophe for science.

Caldwell says "Voters in a democracy do not argue about science. They argue about the authority of scientists. And scientists’ claim to authority comes from the perception that they do not let their vanities and rivalries influence their work, that scientists pursue only the truth. The emails of 2009, however, showed that some prominent members of the climate-change establishment were not operating in a spirit of openness"

Therefore Caldwell argues that Professor Man, the scientist most closely associated with the climategate scandal, has created a catastrophe for science. Caldwell points out that despite increasing conviction and fear in the scientific community, surveys show that the American public's interest in climate change has been in sharp decline for several years. In a recent survey by Pew Research Americans were asked to list their top 22 policy priorities. Climate change was at the bottom not the top of list, in fact the only issue voters considered less worthy of Washington’s attention was obesity.

As luck would have it this is a marvellous illustration of the concept of journalism as an appeal to universal justice / injustice which I talked about in an article I wrote yesterday about Plato's Gorgias. If this short article makes sense to you, and excites you, please try to read that longer essay about Plato's Gorgias.

So thank you Mr Caldwell, and here is my comment:

Dear Mr Caldwell,

You say that voters in a democracy measure a scientist not by science itself, but rather by the authority the scientist appears to have, and this authority in turn partly derives from the perception that he does not let vanity and rivalry corrupt his work.

Imagine a scientist walking down to the market square and trying to convince us to do something. How would the people decide? Like that BBC radio show Hard Talk, we could ask him some questions which seem difficult to us and try to analyse the confidence and speed of response etc. We can't really follow what he is saying, but by seeing whether or not he seems to know what he is doing we can get a good idea about his ability. Looking at someone's personality, doctors are usually good listeners and calm, skateboarder are just crazy, nuclear physicists are cautious etc. Figuring out whether people are telling the truth about a specialist profession without actually knowing anything about the profession is a fun game to play at bars and parties. A person who is bad at this skill is venerable to confidence tricksters. Looking in someone's eyes and defocusing their words is a good way to sense this human side. Some real experts find this kind of human side quite difficult to cope with, because it's got nothing to do with their expertise, it's just a distraction. On the other hand there are people whose expertise is quite mysterious when you really think about it, yet they often appear a lot more convincing than experts about all sorts of topics, at least to non experts in those topics.

In other words ordinary people judge scientists not by expert scientific skills, but rather by some kind of universal sense of human psychology, and what kinds of thought processes we associate with effective and ineffective analysis and personality etc.

Isn't the tragic but depressing reality of living in a populist liberal democracy, that a scientist actually needs to have two jobs, one about science, and one about looking smart / authoritative / upstanding to non-experts who don't understand his science. We can call his first job science, and his second job politics. If a scientist neglects his political job he will never get published, he will never get funding, he will never be able to do his science, he will never make a positive contribution to the world. Every good scientists dream is to find an organization of like minded people so he can talk to them about what he does properly, instead of having to interact with them through the smoke of politics.

Mr Caldwell, you describe vanities and rivalries as purely reputational negatives, yet if we think of the two greatest modern scientists, namely Isaac Newton and Albert Einstein, didn't they appear to have some of these human failings as well at least at some level? The political skill a scientist needs to lean is to look smart / authoritative / upstanding to non-experts, is a sort of acting skill. For example, remember the horror film called "The Fly", you probably need to act a bit a crazy if you want to look like a scientist. To do a really good job the scientist needs to see into the minds of his audience, and see how they imagine scientists to be, and then act that part.

If we look at this political part of the scientist, is it not the very definition of vanity, rivalry, deception etc? I mean the whole point of his mask is to act the way the world wants him to act, it's pure illusion, pure evil. Yet if he refuses to play that games he fails. Surly Mr Caldwell, as a journalist you of all people must know this? You are one of the chosen people we call journalists, one of the chosen people who sit at the pinnacle of society testing the authority of experts based not on expert knowledge, but by their appearance, and then reporting back to the world. You judge the scientists' acting ability, your marvellous skills guide mankind.

I am sorry if that makes journalism sound like a dubious profession, yet perhaps all is not lost. Perhaps Mr Caldwell there is a way to judge an expert even as a non-expert. The expert lives to practice his expertise, if we look behind all the many shapes and forms he tries to take to reach the people, we will see they all lead back to one thing- to the world and not himself.

So to judge Professor Man we non experts who have no knowledge of climate science need to ask, does he appear to have been fighting for truth and justice, or for himself? I personally am willing to give Professor Man the benefit of the doubt. I think it's not unusual for real experts to put their foot in their mouth, because real experts hate politics, they just want to practice their expertise. I think scientists are lucky people because unlike most other professions they are brought up unloved, no one cares about their funny thing called science, no one lets them practice it, they are spurned by humanity. So they live on crumbs, practicing their science, hating politics and living an honest pure life without deception. The rest of the world calls them useless, and when they need to say something and try to act the part they are hopelessly uncouth compared to those who have been living in the limelight all their life.

So I think Professor Man does everything he does because he cares about science, not because he wants to be famous for himself. I bet the poor guy says if I don't this the world will end, so he goes out and fights the political fight even though he is hopeless at it, I bet he would cut off his arms and legs just to reach people, I bet his doesn't give a stuff about fame or fortune or his own life. Mr Caldwell you should not judge him too harshly, he doesn't move in your circles, he doesn't have all those political skills, they would never make a man like him President of the IMF.

Mr Caldwell is a brave to criticise such a man so easily, for the truth is this thing called politics is not a real profession that can lift the soul, it is a knack that that can make a man into a kool-aid drinking monster. You are a brave man Mr Caldwell, to do what you do. For I can think of only one profession more famous for corruption than journalism, and that's politics itself.