Junk Science

The other day my office mate, who teaches chemistry and biology, decided she was going to show her copy of An Inconvenient Truth to her class. I was surprised and fell into a somewhat offensive position. I told her I thought the film was based on "junk science."

"How can you say that?" she exclaimed with fervor. "I know the science, and this is what it says." (Or something like that.)

Thinking about it later, I realized that I was way out of line calling it "junk science." I'd just heard someone apply that phrase to the theory that global warming has been caused by man, and the phrase pretty much expressed my attitude.

There are several things going on with this little problem I have with the film. For now, let me deal with the "junk" science aspect.

A meteorologist once used a computer to create a limited environment for weather, programming into it only eight variables. Then he let it run. He figured that eventually, with only eight variables, there would be replicable patterns. In other words, if our weather had only eight variables, then eventually, with enough data, we'd be able to predict the weather.

At some point (and I don't remember why) the meteorologist stopped the program and restarted it midway back, putting in all the numbers for the variables at that point in time. When it ran this time, within days, the "weather" was varying wildly from the first time. Completely different.

"What happened?" the meteorologist wondered. It should have run exactly the way it did the first time. He went back and checked and realized that rather than input the exact numbers (to the ten-thousandths place), he put in only the "significant" numbers. Basically, he left off .00021. This tiniest of fractions created -- within days -- extremely wild variations.

Thus was born the theory of chaos.

Before computers, there was no way scientists could deal with dividing the tiniest of fractions that their calculations spit out or the exact numbers when counting the number of atoms in a compound, for example. So they developed a system to decide how much rounding off can be done and went with rounded off numbers.

It was a satisfactory system. After all, when you are in the ballpark as far as results go, you CAN replicate the results. It also became a tradition.

It's only when you crunch the numbers to the nth degree, that provable theories get blown away. The idea that little changes make little differences in the results doesn't apply any more. If you were to use the entire number in your data, you get entirely different results from what someone else got. In other words, nothing has ever been PROVED, because nothing can be replicated exactly. In spite of that fact, scientists still insist on using significant figures in their research.

Perhaps it sounds like I'm picking on the scientists. Like I'm being a jerk for complaining about paying a whole cent when my loan payment is really a percentage of a cent. (Or like when tax is .057%, and on an item that costs $2.00, I end up paying 12 cents instead of 11.4 cents. Whatever happened to the remaining .6 cent?)

Look, I don't care how people round off when it doesn't matter. But I do care when political policy is developed based on science which is based on rounded off numbers.

Chaos theory (and yes, it's a theory, not proof of anything) does present a good argument to support the idea that you just cannot predict the weather, and that the cause of climate change cannot be determined. And there are many high level scientists who disagree with the views presented in An Inconvenient Truth. I even heard about one meteorologist who served as a resource for the Weather Channel, but he was "black-listed" by the Weather Channel because he disagreed with the party line (ie. the accepted view). The Weather Channel is showing a very unscientific attitude. Isn't that a little like the Galileo being shunned because he thought something different from all the other researchers?

Okay so, Susan, I apologize for calling it junk science. It is, after all, science as we know it. And that was inflammatory language. Especially since I hadn't even seen the film! I'm sorry. I'm sure you have found some very good points the film makes, or you wouldn't like it. I'll just watch my mouth in the future. I really would like to sit down and discuss the topic with you some time (when I'm not being reactive.)