PopSci.com gives up on comments- can't foster "lively intellectual debate"...

[bettyellen]

Interesting take on whether it's a bad thing to even discuss things with some people. Or whether civility matters online. Hmmmmmm.

'Dietram A. Scheufele wrote in a New York Times op-ed:
"Uncivil comments not only polarized readers, but they often changed a participant's interpretation of the news story itself.
In the civil group, those who initially did or did not support the technology — whom we identified with preliminary survey questions — continued to feel the same way after reading the comments. Those exposed to rude comments, however, ended up with a much more polarized understanding of the risks connected with the technology.
Simply including an ad hominem attack in a reader comment was enough to make study participants think the downside of the reported technology was greater than they'd previously thought.
Another, similarly designed study found that just firmly worded (but not uncivil) disagreements between commenters impacted readers' perception of science."

If you carry out those results to their logical end--commenters shape public opinion; public opinion shapes public policy; public policy shapes how and whether and what research gets funded--you start to see why we feel compelled to hit the "off" switch.

Even a fractious minority wields enough power to skew a reader's perception of a story.
A politically motivated, decades-long war on expertise has eroded the popular consensus on a wide variety of scientifically validated topics. Everything, from evolution to the origins of climate change, is mistakenly up for grabs again. Scientific certainty is just another thing for two people to "debate" on television. And because comments sections tend to be a grotesque reflection of the media culture surrounding them, the cynical work of undermining bedrock scientific doctrine is now being done beneath our own stories, within a website devoted to championing science."

http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2013-09/why-were-shutting-our-comments

[longship]

1. Good for them.

There is no alternative science to the theory of gravity. There is no alternative science to the germ theory of disease in medicine. There is no alternative to the theory of evolutionary biology. All these have well over a century of robust research that establish them as scientific fact.

Climate science is also well established. Humans are effecting the global climate in ways that the mathematical models are having a difficult time keeping up with. This week's IPCC preliminary report states this in most plain terms. Humans are pushing the world's climate into terra incognita.

These things are not a dialog with two sides, like CNN's Crossfire. If it were portrayed that way, it would be reality vs. delusion.

[Edim]

4. hmm..

"Humans are effecting the global climate in ways that the mathematical models are having a difficult time keeping up with."

I disagree strongly.
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/climate-scientists-face-crisis-over-global-warming-pause-a-923937.html

[longship]

5. Well, that's a value judgement, isn't it?

I know a little bit about mathematical modeling having done it for some number of years.

The accuracy is dependent on how close to the data are the predictions. The problem comes from projecting into the future. Extrapolations are always questionable. If ones assumptions are inaccurate, your predictions will also be inaccurate.

One of the themes of the new IPCC report is that the models are getting much better at making these predictions. The previous models have understated the effects.

The mathematical models always have to play catch up with the science -- that's just the nature of the beast. It's also one of the vagaries of climate science that the deniers utilize to claim that it isn't happening. Although that claim is increasingly becoming not credible.

I hope that I clarified what I meant in my previous post.

[Edim]

7. I think the previous models

have overstated the effects.

http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/bild-923937-548145.html


The overstatement will become more obvious in the next few decades, as the global temperature indices decline. We're already colder than the commitment scenarios, such as constant CO2 concentrations at year 2000 levels.

[longship]

8. That's not all the models missed.

The big thing the last IPCC missed is the dynamics of ocean heating. At least the preliminary reports have alluded to that.

The predicted atmospheric effects have diminished because the oceans are more effective in storing solar energy than the models previously predicted.

This stuff is fucking difficult. My point is that the modeling is driven by the data, and the theory depends on both. Both are evolving quickly as we are apparently perturbing the climate far more than even the models have predicted. It's why many climate scientists are becoming increasingly alarmed about the denial.

The process will work itself out. And there will come a time when nobody will be able to credibly claim that it's a fraud. That the time hasn't yet arrived states the amount of work we have to do.

[Democracyinkind]

2. This is a rotten fruit stemming from the "2 sides to everything" nonsense.

[Edim]

3. It all started with Feynman, the war on expertise.

"Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts",

[xfundy]

6. Part of the war on thinking

Troglodytes, by choice, have declared war on thought. Just like the church. Fucking amazing.

[bettyellen]

9. I've seen it big time on feminist blogs too. It honestly

Gets disturbing very quickly if you read the comments. MRA types descend like a swarm insisting that women are in accurately describing life as they have lived it. And those are the nicer comments!