Saturday, August 29, 2015

Contrarian Papers Debunked

What if the contrarian scientists are right? What if that 3 percent of scientists claiming manmade climate change is real are correct and the 97% are wrong? A team of scientists decided to put this to the test via the scientific method. They took contrarian papers, assumed they were correct, and tried to replicate the results. I'm sure you can guess the results. You can find their paper here.

What I found most interesting is the reason they said most of the research failed - cherry picking. That's right, the most common false argument among deniers is used by denier scientists to falsify their research. Another cause? They simply ignored any laws of physics that didn't fit their hypothesis. Really. Is anyone surprised by that finding?

The researchers do throw a bone to the contrarian scientists, they say the errors may not be malicious. They concede it is possible the errors were honest mistakes by new scientists.

I love the conclusion:
“Science is never settled, and both the scientific consensus and alternative hypotheses should be subject to ongoing questioning, especially in the presence of new evidence and insights,” the study concluded.
This is the exact wording deniers use in an attempt to discredit real science. Karma is a bitch. 

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