[fnid2]

I was thinking about this particular type of ad hominem argument the other day and decided I loathe it. Imagine if people told Plato he couldn't write about philosophy because he didn't go to harvard and get a degree in philosophy. Or tell galileo that he was wrong because he didn't have a degree in astronomy.

Valid scientific investigations don't require scientific training. This person, who wrote some code and plotted some numbers on a graph may know more about math and programming and data visualization than many of those running weather stations, so it isn't productive to say this person has nothing to contribute because he's someone without scientific training.

You don't even know that statement is true. Regardless of its truth, the numbers, the code, and the result should speak for themselves. It doesn't matter whether the investigator is trained in science or not.

As a "trained" computer engineer, I am personally capable of taking a raw data set and plotting their numbers on a chart and drawing conclusions from them.

Of course there are additional steps one could take with this data to help the human mind comprehend it. I'll tell you one thing for sure, the chart looks nothing like this scary one http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Instrumental_Temperature_R...

Why? If you have scientific training, refute the facts, write another set of code, analyze the data and see what you get. Is it different? Can you replicate the results?

Or can you just say this person doesn't have any scientific training and write him off? Personally I think it's awesome that someone is taking the initiative to test a hypothesis. Really, there is nothing more scientific than that. It takes work and I commend this person.

[ugh]

I agree with you that excluding someone from a scientific debate because he has no academic credentials or even just not the right kind of academic credentials out of hand is wrong. Certainly wrong in this case, because the linked article doesn’t even make any grandiose claims.

Valid scientific investigation doesn’t require scientific training. That’s certainly correct. That doesn’t mean, though, that every investigation has the same weight. I have no expert knowledge. How am I supposed to know whether an amateur is brilliant or crazy? Academic credentials are more often than not a useful filter to figure just that out. Not perfect, but better than giving everything equal weight.

(Cue conspiracy theories about the academic establishment and generous East Anglia email quoting – NOW! :)

[diego_moita]

> Imagine if people told Plato he couldn't write about philosophy because he didn't go to harvard and get a degree in philosophy. Or tell galileo that he was wrong because he didn't have a degree in astronomy.

Very interestingly, your examples only add to my point. Plato didn't had a degree in philosophy because philosophy was just being "invented"; Socrates (his master, btw) had just brought rigor to the sophists blabering. And Galileo didn't get a degree in astronomy mostly because it didn't exist by then. He did however get one in mathematics and tought astronomy in a university before he made his observations to support Copernicus' model. You see, both men where very far from amateurs giving opinions in a complex field.

> Valid scientific investigations don't require scientific training.

Bulshit. Most of times it does. Particularly in complex matters. That's why the peer review process matters. Numbers don't "speak for themselves"; that's why we talk about "lies, damned lies and statistics".

As a pratical exercise, I'd suggest you, as a "trained computer engineer", to let your projects to be designed and implemented by a non-trained computer engineer. You'd know what I mean.

[azgolfer]

Seems to me an a guy who couldn't get hired as a physicist had a rather large effect on physics in 1905. The hiring process is a form of 'peer review'.

[vena]

I really don't think you should take your understanding of Einstein's early career from Yahoo Serious movies.

[azgolfer]

from Wikipedia "After graduating, Einstein spent almost two frustrating years searching for a teaching post,"

[vena]

Which is about 1/10th of what your post is implying. You might want to read something deeper than a wikipedia summary.

[azgolfer]

Peer review is neither necessary nor sufficient for science.

[gizmo]

I suspect you completely missed the point of the parent.

The "Check for yourself" part is only in the editorialized headline, implying that the READER of the article is capable of drawing his own conclusions. This is obviously dishonest, because you can't draw your own conclusions unless you do the research yourself (like the independent researcher who wrote the article did).

The No Spin Zone (O'Reilly) uses the "We present the facts, YOU DECIDE" mantra. So do most conspiracy theory movies: "We'll just show you MONEY IS DEBT, and AMERICA is due for RUIN. But is this bad? YOU DECIDE!"

And so on.

But for any scientific work this is unacceptable, because the way in which you present the results matter. Pick one scale on a graph and people will assume the problem is huge, pick a logarithmic scale and people will conclude there is no problem. It's the responsibility of the researcher to both present the facts and to explain what they mean.

The you-decide tactic is manipulative, and it doesn't belong in HN titles.

- I should note that I don't have any issue with the article itself. I liked it, and I commend independent research.

[Tichy]

Nothing against amateur scientists. However, it says "At Armagh Observatory", so it is hardly global warming - it's probably Armagh warming? Haven't read all the details, so I can't say. But there seem to be other data sets out there that show rising temperature? So why should this one data point be more significant than others?

[jbooth]

http://www.xkcd.com/675/