Correlation, causation and precaution. Dismal logic underlying the Wars on Science.

Lisa Pryor, a medical doctor, gives cogent and articulate insight into “the online world of alternative-health practitioners, wellness bloggers, whole-food chefs and Gwyneth Paltrow.” While the roots of such impudence are healthy - individualism and traditions of Suspicion of Authority - these reflexes are exploited by charlatans and/or the gullible (my words, not hers.) 

We'' get back to medical fads and all that, toward the end. But let's get general, first. We can have impudent individualism without waging war on all of the "elite" fact-professions, filled with folks whose only major crime is knowing a lot, being real smart and caring.

Let's zoom in upon a weapon that’s often deployed in this war – a phrase that in itself offers wisdom, but that's been turned into a magical spell, cast against the very professions who taught it.

“Correlation is not the same as causation.”

This is a core catechism that's drilled into most of us scientists, along with “I might be wrong,” and “build your competitive science rep by demolishing the half-baked work of those bums at MIT.”

Alas, “Correlation is not the same as causation” has become an incantation parroted by Fox News and others campaigning to undermine science by -- in effect -- claiming that nothing can ever be proved. (See also, below two other incantations that will be very familiar to you.)

 In fact, sifting for correlations is how experimental science begins. A strong correlation demands: “hey, check this out!” 

But it’s more than that. A strong correlation shifts the Burden of Proof. When we see a strong correlation, and especially when the matter at-hand might have health or safety or security implications, then we are behooved to at least begin taking preliminary precautions, in case the correlation proves to be causative. 

Sometimes the correlation is later demonstrated not to be causal and a little money has been wasted on unneeded precautions. But this often proves worthwhile, given long lead times in technology.  Example, we were fortunate that work had already begun on alternative refrigerants to CFCs, when their role in ozone damage was finally proved.

Another example: terrorism experts sift for correlations and apply intelligence resources to follow up, while giving potential targets cautious warnings. Many correlations don't pan out. But a burden falls on those saying "ignore that."

Getting specific in regards the Climate Denialist Cult: if they were sincere, they would say: "We have doubts that (pick your shifting goal post) there's any warming, or that humans cause it, or that a warmer Earth wouldn't be better! But, let's fund vigorous R&D in sustainable energy and climate science, just in case 99% of the folks who have studied the atmosphere turn out to be right, after all." Those who say this may be the real article, genuine skeptics. Like Berkeley's Richard Muller.

This approach becomes even more obvious when you realize that many climate related R&D endeavors are TWODA -- or Things We Ought to be Doing Anyway. Like ensuring that citizens can buy more efficient cars, heaters, homes and lights, saving gobs of money now going to legacy-carbon companies. (Gee, I wonder who would hate to see that?) 

Alas, the vast majority of denialists do not take this approach -- agreeing on general precautions, just in case the experts prove right. Instead, they are led to declare that nothing should be done, until the danger is proved, beyond any shadow of a doubt. Who... pray tell... what sane person does that?

== Another incantation: Scientific Consensus ==

Parse this carefully as I repeat it. The statement: “Correlation is not the same as causation” is a central wisdom of science.

Those who spout this incantation aren't all fools, but you can separate them out with a simple test. Do they follow “Correlation is not the same as causation" with... curiosity? With acceptance of both precaution and burden of proof? Those who do that are "Skeptics" and welcome to the grand, competitive tussle known as science. 

Those who use the Correlation Gambit as a magic incantation to forestall any precautions are generally the same folks -- across some of today's far-left and most of today's entire-right -- who now dismiss all fact-using professions.  They would hold a lit match in one hand and an open gas can in the other, shouting "one has nothing to do with the other!"

Here's another such magical spell: "There's no such thing as Scientific Consensus."  

Again, at root, it is based upon a truth that's common wisdom. Objective reality -- physical nature -- does now bow down to majority rule or commonly accepted prejudice. There have been many times when the high priesthood proved wrong and a few dissenters proved more accurate than what "everyone believes." Science helped us find ways to be right a whole lot more often; yet, still, there are occasions -- e.g. atomic theory, relativity and quantum mechanics -- when the impudent newcomers toppled the paradigm.

But again, a truth gets turned into a truism... and then a lie. Because most scientists aren't sniveling, conformist, grant-hugging lemmings, crowding slavishly around orthodoxy. That's what we rebelled against! And that theme of rebellious questioning was taught to this rambunctious society by science. Indeed, scientists tend to be among the most competitive humans our species ever produced.

We do not worship "truths." We create models of the world. And those models change, being battered and tested and chopped at again and again, by eager young post-docs seeking to make a reputation. Rarely, a model gets replaced. Usually, it gets improved, as the false 5% gets replaced. Then 1% ... then 0.01%.

And yes, that can look like "consensus," because Bernoulli's Equation and the Navier Stokes laws don't change. And our climate models have transformed the old joke of a 4-hour "weather report" into a ten day miracle. And yes, the geniuses who did that - and who have modeled climate on six planets - know more about climate than Fox bozos serving as shills for coal lords, ptro boyars and oil sheiks.

See my earlier long list of examples where this and other incantations delayed the proper application of science to public policy, leading to hundreds of thousands… maybe millions… of deaths.

== Another version... same insanity ==

This is the worst incantation of all. Reprising an earlier posting on this: We all know that:

"Just because someone is smart and knows a lot, that doesn't automatically make them wise."

It's true. So true we all take it as a given. 

But in the same way that Suspicion of Authority is wholesome, till it metastasizes, this true statement has been twisted into something cancerous:

"Any and all people who are smart and know a lot, are therefore automatically unwise."

Again, the first statement is true and we all know it.  The second is so insanely wrong that anyone believing it is hence, clearly, a jibbering loony! And yet, left implicit and never said aloud, the latter is now a core catechism of the revived Confederacy.

Of course, on average, persons who have studied earnestly and tried to understand will tend to be wiser than those who deliberately chose to remain incurious and ignorant. When cornered, all but the most vehement alt-righter will admit that. But cornering them takes effort and - above all - careful parsing of the meme. It is a logical corner they’ve painted themselves into -- but memes are slippery.

Hatred of people with knowledge and skill now extends from the war on science to journalism, teaching, medicine, economics, civil servants… and lately the “deep state” villains of the FBI, the intelligence agencies and the U.S. military officer corps.  Indeed, there are rising calls for a cleansing, or even abolishment, of universities, under the smugly-contemptuous argument that your average young person is too easily brainwashed by leftist propaganda to be trusted with knowledge. 

Next, one presumes, could be the book-burning "simpleton" mobs of Walter Miller's "A Canticle for Liebowitz."

This is bedlam, and it serves one purpose: to discredit any “elites” who might stand in the way of a return to feudalism, the pattern of 6000 years that America rebelled against.

== Suspicion of Science  ==

This is an ecumenical madness. In the War on Science, only the biggest and most numerous guns are firing from the right. We've also -- elsewhere -- looked at relentless attacks upon fact-users by lefty postmodernists. Then there are transcendentalists pushing everything from End Times Dominionism to UFOs to psychic phenomena. Here's a site hauling more sludge from that "psi-telepathy" well, pouring resentment at the rigid, conformity-enforcing, unimaginative and incurious scientific 'establishment.'

To which I respond: Hey, I have psi stuff in some of my novels! Maybe the dreams will come true, when we get amplifiers. (As depicted in my story "Stones of Significance" or my novel Kiln People.) But right now, I got better things to do than participate in the howling mob descending from all directions (though especially the mad right) upon the one tool we ever had for parsing truth from eager delusion. The thing that enabled our brief enlightenment experiment to outperform all other societies, combined.

For starters, there is a word for 'alternative medicine' that has been verified by science. That word is "medicine." Vast numbers of pharmaceuticals had their roots in herbal lore. Acupuncture is not yet understood, but its effectiveness at relieving a range of subjective symptoms is undeniable and few still try. No stodgy priesthood blocks that remedy.

Likewise, a few "psychic" powers are undeniable... e.g. savant capabilities displayed by some autistics and others. (I depict some of these skills vastly tech-amplified, in Existence.) Hence the accusation that scientists are pigheaded and obstinate - while often true in specific individuals - is an assertion that doesn't hold up, especially under the passage of time. 

And time is what the psi/paranormal folks have had tons of! Thousands of years in ashrams and monasteries and hovels. And 150 years of eager funding by rich patrons like Arthur Conan-Doyle and the Remingtons.

Just like UFOs and cold fusion and M Drives, it's not just that "proofs" shrivel when closely examined. Far bigger is the problem that their phenomena never scale-up! When a phenomenon is vaguely at the edge of detection, then hard work and money should result not in bringing it barely into range, but bringing it hugely and blatantly into focus.

Gravitational lensing was weird and iffy. But applying a little work and money and curiosity transformed a barely detectable phenomenon into one that is practical. Astronomers now routinely use whole galaxies as lenses to scrutinize far quasars beyond them, deep in the past. Within one year(!) gravitational waves shifted from barely discovered to being scientific instruments. Two decades after the Wright Brothers, a man flew New York to Paris.

Every year the number of cameras on Earth doubles! So how do those UFOs always stay just perfectly fuzzy? See my story "Those Eyes" about a possible explanation.

If a century of 'study' leaves you still unable to offer anything but glimmers that can't be verified, stop blaming the skeptics and get to work on your amplifiers.

Our conclusion: You -- and yes, you -- are needed in this fight against darkness. Ingrates who were fed and clothed and cured and entertained by sci-tech and the skilled professions now use an internet tool that they were given virtually for free, along with almost every other gift of the enlightenment, to rage against all the smartypants. Those who rose up from the bullied nerds in Junior High to wealth and honors that used to be reserved for warriors, knights, lords... and sports or movie stars.

Those who are subsidizing this campaign -- the re-ignition of phase 8 of the American Civil War -- clearly think they will be the last elite left standing. But they are waging all-out war upon all the folks who know how robots work, and artificial intelligence and genetic engineering and nuclear science. Seriously? How do you expect that to go for you?

We cannot wait around for the oligarchs to slap their foreheads in realization: "what have we done?"  The only real solution is to wake up our neighbors, one at a time.  I hope you can use some of the tools presented in today's lesson.