What is Wrong with Embellishing Science?

embellishing present participle of em·bel·lish (Verb)

Yesterday, before heading back to the National Hurricane Center to help deal with Sandy, Chris Landsea gave a great talk here at CU on hurricanes and climate change (we'll have a video up soon). In Chris' talk he explained that he has no doubts that humans affect the climate system through the emission of greenhouse gases, and this influence may affect tropical cyclones. He then proceeded to review theory and data from recent peer-reviewed publications on the magnitude of such an influence. Chris argued that any such influence is expected to be small today, almost certainly undetectable, and that this view is not particularly controversial among tropical cyclone climatologists. He concluded that hurricanes should not be the "poster" representing a human influence on climate.

After his talk someone in the audience asked him what is wrong with making a connection between hurricanes and climate change if it gives the general public reason for concern about climate change. Chris responded that asserting such a connection can be easily shown to be incorrect and thus risks some of the trust that the public has in scientists to play things straight.

This exchange came to mind as I came across the latest exhibit in the climate science freak show, this time in the form of a lawsuit brought by Michael Mann, of Penn State, against the National Review Online and others for calling his work "intellectually bogus" and other mean things (the actual filing can be seen here). I will admit that for a moment I did smile at the idea of a professor suing a critic for lying (Hi Joe!), before my senses took back over and I rejected it as an absurd publicity stunt. But within this little tempest in a teapot is a nice example of how it is that some parts of climate science found itself off track and routinely in violation of what many people would consider basic scientific norms.

In Mann's lawsuit he characterizes himself as having been "awarded the Nobel Peace Prize." Mann's claim is what might be called an embellishment -- he has, to use the definition found at the top of this post, "made (a statement or story) more interesting or entertaining by adding extra details, esp. ones that are not true." An accurate interpretation is that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change did win the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize, and the IPCC did follow that award by sending to the AR4 authors a certificate noting their contributions to the organization. So instead of being a "Nobel Peace Prize Winner" Mann was one of 2,000 or so scientists who made a contribution to an organization which won the Nobel Peace Prize.

Here we might ask, so what?

I mean really, who cares if a scientist embellishes his credentials a bit? We all know what he means by calling himself a "Nobel Peace Prize Winner," right? And really, what is an organization except for the people that make it up? Besides, climate change is important, why should we worry about such things? Doesn't this just distract from the cause of action on climate change and play right into the hands of the deniers?  Really now, is this a big deal?

Well, maybe it was not a big deal last week, but with the filing of the lawsuit, the embellishment now has potential consequences in a real-world decision process. A journalist contacted the Nobel organization and asked them if it was appropriate for Mann as an IPCC scientist to claim to be "Nobel peace prize winner." Here is what the Nobel organization said in response:

Michael Mann has never been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

Mann's embellishment has placed him in a situation where his claims are being countered by the Nobel organization itself. Mann's claim, rather than boosting his credibility actually risks having the opposite effect, a situation that was entirely avoidable and one which Mann brought upon himself by making the embellishment in the first place. The embellishment is only an issue because Mann has invoked it as a source of authority is a legal dispute. It would seem common sense that having such an embellishment within a complaint predicated on alleged misrepresentations may not sit well with a judge or jury.

This situation provides a nice illustration for what is wrong with a some aspects of climate science today -- a few scientists motivated by a desire to influence political debates over climate change have embellished claims, such as related to disasters, which then risks credibility when the claims are exposed as embellishments. To make matters worse, these politically motivated scientists have fallen in with fellow travelers in the media, activist organizations and in the blogosphere who are willing not only to look past such embellishments, but to amplify them and attack those who push back. These dynamics are reinforcing and have led small but vocal parts of the climate scientific community to deviate significantly from widely-held norms of scientific practice.

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