Climate Policy

[Kevin]

Science is a nearly perfect system for obtaining knowledge, but it is conducted by imperfect people. In the long run, it works out. In the short, it is often dominated by personalities, prejudices, and expectations.

Even Einstein would not accept the conclusions that his own equations drew, that the Universe was in fact expanding and not in a steady state. When it was pointed out he said something along the lines of "There is nothing wrong with your mathematics, but your physics is an abomination." So yep science, like pretty much everything else, is still dominated by people and the flaws that people have and you can pull examples from everywhere, to point that out.

I too have also had to "fight" the bad computer model. Trying to convince the person that his code was not doing what he thought it was, because fixing the coding errors meant that the model didn't produce the results he wanted, was not fun.

I do agree that it really is as bad as you state, and in many fields. Civic centers have collapsed because people believe the computer models that were based on incorrect assumptions. I've seen a kiln exploded thanks to bad computer models. Sure not everything is bad, some of the stuff that is done, in the aerospace industry especially, when it comes to computer modeling is phenomenally helpful. But I don't trust most of the weather or climate models either. GIGO Garbage In = Garbage Out. If you have bad assumptions you are just feeding in garbage. For most of the theoretical sciences the lack of review of the modeling software is a major major issue and impediment to progress and the grant process is horrendous (I work at a University I get to see a lot of it 2nd or 3rd hand).

But again much of it boils down to people, as always. :)