Hal Lewis: My Resignation From The American Physical Society

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Hal Lewis: My Resignation From The American Physical Society

Friday, 08 October 2010 17:19 Hal Lewis
The GWPF.org EXCERPT:



From: Hal Lewis, University of California, Santa Barbara
To: Curtis G. Callan, Jr., Princeton University, President of the American Physical Society
6 October 2010
Dear Curt:
When I first joined the American Physical Society sixty-seven years ago it was much smaller, much gentler, and as yet uncorrupted by the money flood (a threat against which Dwight Eisenhower warned a half-century ago). Indeed, the choice of physics as a profession was then a guarantor of a life of poverty and abstinence---it was World War II that changed all that. The prospect of worldly gain drove few physicists. As recently as thirty-five years ago, when I chaired the first APS study of a contentious social/scientific issue, The Reactor Safety Study, though there were zealots aplenty on the outside there was no hint of inordinate pressure on us as physicists. We were therefore able to produce what I believe was and is an honest appraisal of the situation at that time. We were further enabled by the presence of an oversight committee consisting of Pief Panofsky, Vicki Weisskopf, and Hans Bethe, all towering physicists beyond reproach. I was proud of what we did in a charged atmosphere. In the end the oversight committee, in its report to the APS President, noted the complete independence in which we did the job, and predicted that the report would be attacked from both sides. What greater tribute could there be?
How different it is now. The giants no longer walk the earth, and the money flood has become the raison d'être of much physics research, the vital sustenance of much more, and it provides the support for untold numbers of professional jobs. For reasons that will soon become clear my former pride at being an APS Fellow all these years has been turned into shame, and I am forced, with no pleasure at all, to offer you my resignation from the Society.
It is of course, the global warming scam, with the (literally) trillions of dollars driving it, that has corrupted so many scientists, and has carried APS before it like a rogue wave. It is the greatest and most successful pseudoscientific fraud I have seen in my long life as a physicist. Anyone who has the faintest doubt that this is so should force himself to read the ClimateGate documents, which lay it bare. (Montford's book organizes the facts very well.) I don't believe that any real physicist, nay scientist, can read that stuff without revulsion. I would almost make that revulsion a definition of the word scientist.
So what has the APS, as an organization, done in the face of this challenge? It has accepted the corruption as the norm, and gone along with it.
END EXCERPT
 
I downloaded those documents the day after they were released. In the intervening time, I've read them and have poured over their content. IMO, I think they reveal an overt subversion of the peer review process on a massive level. They reveal massive manipulation, fabrication, and destruction of data. They reveal a blind trust among politically aligned scientists who interpret data without questioning it's source. They reveal an international conspiracy, run by a few people, where most people involved have no clue.

The press coverage of these documents has been poor. The MSM cherry picks information from various snippets and shows how they are all taken out of context, well, they are taken out of context. The context of the whole of the files that were released show a pattern of obfuscation and deception that most people wouldn't believe possible. The Climategate documents are the Pentagon Papers of our times.

The release of these documents hopefully put the globalist Carbon Tax and Cap and Trade scams six feet under.
 
I downloaded those documents the day after they were released. In the intervening time, I've read them and have poured over their content. IMO, I think they reveal an overt subversion of the peer review process on a massive level. They reveal massive manipulation, fabrication, and destruction of data. They reveal a blind trust among politically aligned scientists who interpret data without questioning it's source. They reveal an international conspiracy, run by a few people, where most people involved have no clue.

The press coverage of these documents has been poor. The MSM cherry picks information from various snippets and shows how they are all taken out of context, well, they are taken out of context. The context of the whole of the files that were released show a pattern of obfuscation and deception that most people wouldn't believe possible. The Climategate documents are the Pentagon Papers of our times.

The release of these documents hopefully put the globalist Carbon Tax and Cap and Trade scams six feet under.

Only in a world where the WTC was a controlled demolition inside job.:lfao:

please read this.:

The House of Commons' Science and Technology Committee said Wednesday that it had seen no evidence to support charges that the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit (CRU) or its director, Phil Jones, had tampered with data or perverted the peer review process to exaggerate the threat of global warming — two of the most serious criticisms levied against the climatologist and his colleagues

Phil Willis, the committee's chairman, said of the e-mails that "there's no denying that some of them were pretty appalling." But the committee found no evidence of anything beyond "a blunt refusal to share data," adding that the idea that Jones was part of a conspiracy to hide evidence that weakened the case for global warming was clearly wrong.

and here:

The climate scientists at the centre of a media storm were today cleared of accusations that they fudged their results and silenced critics to bolster the case for man-made global warming.
Sir Muir Russell, the senior civil servant who led a six-month inquiry into the affair, said the "rigour and honesty" of the scientists at the world-leading Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia (UEA) are not in doubt. They did not subvert the peer review process to censor criticism as alleged, the panel found, while key data needed to reproduce their findings was freely available to any "competent" researcher.
 
There you have it. Links a to a website that says that a committee says "nothing to see here, move along." What more do you want? Sure, they say on one hand there was a "blunt refusal to share data", but then in the next quote claim "key data was freely available to any 'competent' researcher." Clearly this suggests that anyone not on board with the CRU is incompetent. Poisoning the peer review well isn't perverting it, is it?

At any rate... Don't be a denier, the science is in!
 
What do you expect when you investigate yourself for wrong doing? Oh, and Elder999, it might be...and in the future you're going to have to get used to that thought. I love your signature by the way...
 
2 things stand out when I read that exerpt. One is the 'indignation' that physists may just do research that have practical application. Get real, while science for science's sake is great, at some point, that reaearch has to drive to something.

And on his comment on climate change, being a physicist does not make him qualified to comment on climatology.
 
And on his comment on climate change, being a physicist does not make him qualified to comment on climatology.

What are you qualified to comment on? Are you qualified enough to make the above comment? Yes, this is absurd, but so is this tyranny of paper our society worships instead of actual intelligence and ability. Check your premises, the two do not necessarily relate.

I'm not qualified to make this comment though, so no worries, pass the pakalolo... ;)

BTW, this is a pet peeve of mine and I'm not slinging arrows at you CanuckMA. It's this idea...
 
Environmental research is frequently performed by astrophysicists or physical chemists. I don't understand how a physicist is unqualified to comment on climatology?
 
Yes, this is absurd, but so is this tyranny of paper our society worships instead of actual intelligence and ability. Check your premises, the two do not necessarily relate.

Sometimes it's a tyranny, sometimes it's a decades long training process in order to become truly knowledgeable in the field. I've spent 11 years training in my field now, 15 if you count my undergraduate degree, and despite my PhD, I'm still considered a "trainee". I've authored 10 papers now, with a few more on the way, and still a "trainee". Do you know what variables to take into account when performing a non-linear regression of a drug response plot? Do you know how MAPK proteins interface with TNFalpha receptors to induce inflammation and cell stress? If I told you that RANTES is the natural ligand of the kappa opioid receptor, could you tell me if I was right or wrong?

Truly knowing a field is the work of a lifetime. I have no ability to tell Hal Lewis (or Elder999 for that matter) the first thing about physics, and they have no ability to tell me my cell signaling work is incorrect. That is why we have peer review, because the peers are the only ones with the knowledge to even begin to evaluate the work. Can I make pronouncements about the field of climate science or knowledgeably dismiss the entire field? Not a chance, and neither can Hal Lewis, or anyone else here. Much less the legions of committed ideologues that have decided what the truth is about an entire scientific discipline based on their political views without the slightest backing or evidence.
 
Sometimes it's a tyranny, sometimes it's a decades long training process in order to become truly knowledgeable in the field.

How do you differentiate this?

Much less the legions of committed ideologues that have decided what the truth is about an entire scientific discipline based on their political views without the slightest backing or evidence.

How do you recognize and avoid this?

This isn't just directed at Empty Hands. I'd like to hear anyone's opinion on this matter.
 
Truly knowing a field is the work of a lifetime. I have no ability to tell Hal Lewis (or Elder999 for that matter) the first thing about physics, and they have no ability to tell me my cell signaling work is incorrect. That is why we have peer review, because the peers are the only ones with the knowledge to even begin to evaluate the work. Can I make pronouncements about the field of climate science or knowledgeably dismiss the entire field? Not a chance, and neither can Hal Lewis, or anyone else here. Much less the legions of committed ideologues that have decided what the truth is about an entire scientific discipline based on their political views without the slightest backing or evidence.

It seems to me -- and I did follow the link to see the whole letter -- that his problem was the process involved in reaching the conclusions and not the conclusions themselves. It seems more like he's lost his faith in the ability of the association to properly conduct peer review and coordinate research with honesty and integrity.
 
Environmental research is frequently performed by astrophysicists or physical chemists. I don't understand how a physicist is unqualified to comment on climatology?


Harold Lewis is Emeritus Professor of Physics, University of California, Santa Barbara, former Chairman; Former member Defense Science Board, chmn of Technology panel; Chairman DSB study on Nuclear Winter; Former member Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards; Former member, President’s Nuclear Safety Oversight Committee; Chairman APS study on Nuclear Reactor Safety Chairman Risk Assessment Review Group; Co-founder and former Chairman of JASON; Former member USAF Scientific Advisory Board; Served in US Navy in WW II; books: Technological Risk (about, surprise, technological risk) and Why Flip a Coin (about decision making)

Don't see a whole lot of climate or environmental work. Closest was chairing a study on nuclear winter. CLose, but not quite the study of climatology in a natural system.
 
Don't see a whole lot of climate or environmental work. Closest was chairing a study on nuclear winter. CLose, but not quite the study of climatology in a natural system.

This doesn't really help. How do you know what this person knows or what he's read? What do you think about those questions I posed to Empty Hands? Those strike to the heart of what is being discussed (around) here, IMO.
 
How do you differentiate this?

The nature of the work. Could a knowledgeable lay person with a reasonable amount of training do the job or make valid judgments on the work? In the case of my job, the answer is "no". In the case of receptionist positions paying $9/hour which now require bachelor's degrees, the answer is obviously "yes". Credentialism is a problem, but not generally in science.

How do you recognize and avoid this?

You recognize it by the nature of the arguments used. Do the arguments address the actual thing in contention, or are they red herrings? In the case of climate science, we hear a lot of dismissal of climate science based on what Al Gore is up to, how the liberals want to control your life, and how environmentalists want us to all live in the stone age. True or false, you will notice that those arguments have nothing to do with climate science. Or pseudo-scientific arguments will be used over and over, after they have been debunked. Such as the old canard "why are there still monkeys?" when creationists challenge evolution. You will know the argument can be taken seriously when it engages the science on a technical level.

As for avoidance, individuals or even governments can avoid people who make such arguments, but it cannot be avoided entirely. Whenever science (or anything else) conflicts with emotional needs like political views, non-scientific or irrational arguments will be used to dismiss the science. Creationism vs. evolution is a wonderful example of this in action.
 
It seems to me -- and I did follow the link to see the whole letter -- that his problem was the process involved in reaching the conclusions and not the conclusions themselves. It seems more like he's lost his faith in the ability of the association to properly conduct peer review and coordinate research with honesty and integrity.

He presented no evidence or argument that impeached peer review. He made two claims: 1) the "ClimateGate" documents revealed the global warming "scam" (his word), and 2) the APS froze out member desires when making their global warming statement. Even if both claims were true, they do not impeach peer review, since "ClimateGate" involved 2 out of thousands of peer scientists, and individual scientists, not organizations, always conduct peer review. He presented not the slightest technical evidence, data or argument that called into question Global Warming, which is rather remarkable, since he had no difficulty in calling it a "scam." This is not a scientific argument. These are red herring arguments, which as I noted in my above post, is a mark of political ideology instead of scientific rigor.

The guy is a crank. It's written all over this letter. Everything from how scientific giants walked tall in the past (When he was an active scientist, natch. How convenient.) to how science nowadays is corrupted and base. How the past was pure and wonderful, and the present is evil and corrupt. These are the exact same things you hear people say about The Kids These Days or how Even The Air Tasted Better Back Then.

This letter wasn't written in a scientific fashion. Bring the data, or the Professor Emeritus is no better than a conspiracy theorist slavering all over himself on FreeRepublic.
 
I appreciate your thoughtful response and I'll try to reply later when I have more time. However, I can give a short reply to this quote of yours.

You recognize it by the nature of the arguments used. Do the arguments address the actual thing in contention, or are they red herrings? In the case of climate science, we hear a lot of dismissal of climate science based on what Al Gore is up to, how the liberals want to control your life, and how environmentalists want us to all live in the stone age.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=skW6krOLL20&feature=related

What kind of argument is being offered here?

Google Splattergate.
 
The nature of the work. Could a knowledgeable lay person with a reasonable amount of training do the job or make valid judgments on the work? In the case of my job, the answer is "no". In the case of receptionist positions paying $9/hour which now require bachelor's degrees, the answer is obviously "yes". Credentialism is a problem, but not generally in science.

Generally, this may be the case if we are comparing apples to t-bone steaks, like a PhD to a high school dropout, however, why isn't it possible for people in related fields, with similar levels of education, to be well read on a broad span of subjects? I think perhaps we are getting hung up as a society on who can make "authoritative" comments on a subject, rather then looking at arguments presented.

This is an obvious logical fallacy, btw.

You will know the argument can be taken seriously when it engages the science on a technical level.

This is a good benchmark, however, it is not flawless. Technical arguments depend on many details, one of them are data sources and, often, these sources have been shown to be poisoned, manipulated, or fabricated.

The Climategate documents are a good example of this. Data from multiple sources was manipulated, created, and repackaged for dissemination to other research institutions who trusted in the good name of the institution. This data was the basis for the IPCC report and a number of related reports.

Climategate documents conversations from scientists about this matter, computer programmer notes on how this manipulation was done, and conversations about how the scientists were going to frustrate FIOA requests for the original data by other skeptical scientists. The documents also record a concerted effort by this small group of scientists to deny funding, pull articles from peer review consideration in a broad spectrum of journals, and deny the tenure of skeptics.

This could be the biggest case of scientific fraud in the history of science and as I read through these documents, I wonder if anyone would trust the scientific establishment again if the full story was released.
 
Generally, this may be the case if we are comparing apples to t-bone steaks, like a PhD to a high school dropout, however, why isn't it possible for people in related fields, with similar levels of education, to be well read on a broad span of subjects?

There is no "well read" in science, not at the level of the practicing scientist. You can't read a few reviews here and there and call yourself knowledgeable. To stay knowledgeable in a field, it must be your job. We all devote hours every single week to staying on top of our disciplines, and it never ends. There is such a vast amount of intricate and interlocking knowledge, much of it practical, that you can't possibly read a small amount and be knowledgeable. A good example: I love advanced physics and astrophysics. I read quite a lot. But my understanding is stunted and puny, not the least because I don't have a solid grasp of the math. If I wanted to be at the practicing scientist level in quantum physics or particle physics or whatever, I would have to start at the beginning and devote most of my time to it. It would be the work of years.

You can't really appreciate how vast science is, even in our narrow specialties, until you try to master if yourself. Like I said about myself, 11 years and 10 papers, and I'm still a trainee.
 

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