science trust versus belief

Science: Trust Versus Belief

A couple days ago I was invited to give a lecture at UNH. While I was

there, I was talking with a colleague about the whole creationism/ID

'controversy.' Like many conversations, it meandered towards global

warming (an aside: it is striking that, regardless of personal

ideology or if the scientist is in government or academia, evolution

and global warming are 'flash-point' issues for virtually every

scientist I meet, regardless of the scientist's discipline. I'll have

more to say about that in another post.)

Anyway, back to global warming. I pointed out to my colleague that

most biologists 'believe' that global warming is happening. Now, I put

believe in scare quotes for these reasons:

1. I'm really not competent to rigorously assess the evidence. Like

most biologists, my training in climatology is very limited. I'm

selling myself short, because in the distant past I was a marine

ecologist, and had some limited exposure to climatology.

Nonetheless, I essentially take climatologists' at the word: I

believe them. However...

2. I'm fairly confident that with adequate training, I could

rigorously evaluate the claims of global warming. In my own

discipline, I've managed to master a field that requires abstract

mathematical thought, computational skills, etc. With adequate

training, I probably could become an expert in climatology, such

that I could truly evaluate those claims in great detail-and the

devil in science is always in the details. Training does not mean

reading a couple newspaper articles, and a press release by the

Discovery Institute. Training means immersing yourself in the

primary scientific literature, talking to experts, and actually

using the tools that professionals use. I bring this up because...

3. My 'belief' in climatologists is not based in 'faith', but trust.

I trust that climatologists use similar scientific methods,

principles, and evaluation structures to those that I use in

biology. As I said in #2, it is not beyond my reach to assess the

claims of climatology, even if I currently lack the skills to do

so. However, I'm kinda busy, and I find biology more interesting,

so I will take their word as scientists. When the overwhelming

number of climatologists claim, along with professional society

after professional society, that global warming is real, and that

there is a significant human effect, I trust their professional

judgement. Most scientists who are not biologists trust the

overwhelming evidence for the theories of common descent and

evolution (even if it's been so long since they had to think about

evolution that they don't remember all or most of the evidence).

So why do I raise this? In the popular press, particularly the NY

Times, stories are too often reported as if there is an equivalence in

the 'belief' of IDiots and scientists (happily, there are exceptions).

These two types of beliefs are not equivalent. However, when portrayed

as similar types of 'beliefs', the whole debate then becomes

transmogrified into dueling religions (and that jackass Richard

Dawkins does not help matters).

We need to make it clear that we trust the scientific process, and