The Scientists Who Cried Wolf

In one of Aesop's fables a shepherd boy cries wolf to relieve his boredom. Of course the villagers rush to defend the flock but then get angry when they learn that there is no wolf. The young shepherd is so stubborn that he repeats the offense several times, until finally the villagers refuse to believe him. That obvious lesson seems lost on some scientists in the climate debate.

We have now been treated to the saddest spectacle of scientific fraud in my memory. The Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia in England is one of very few institutions where the raw data on climate history is supposed to be stored. It is now documented that “scientists” at that institution modified data and discarded the original information. In the ethics of science that is equivalent to a clergyman ordering changes made to the Bible. All data and other information from that institution are now suspect. In fact Phil Jones has now stepped aside, at least temporarily, as director of CRU while this is under investigation. The scandal now even has a name, it's being called “Climategate.”

Is this limited to our friends in England? Sadly no. Michael E. Mann at Penn State also appears to have been involved and others may be. Furthermore, some support for the CRU seems to have come from U.S. tax money, a fact that has caused the U.S. Department of Energy to put a litigation hold on information in case the lawyers get involved. Information in that department cannot be discarded in case it is subpoenaed. At this time it is uncertain just how deep the deception runs but information now available is enough to cast doubt on the databases used to prove the man-made global warming theory.

As if that were not enough, the “scientists” involved were attempting to censor scientists with opposing viewpoints. Science depends on a peer-review process to verify that papers are worth publication. It is a good system but some involved in this controversy attempted to manipulate it. Referring to two papers in opposition Mann wrote, “I can't see either of these papers being in the next IPCC report. Kevin and I will keep them out somehow — even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is!"

The hush is on elsewhere as well. At the UN Climate Conference in Copenhagen, video journalist Phelim McAleer asked Professor Stephen Schneider about the Climategate issue. Schneider's response was to call in armed guards to have McAleer thrown out and threaten to confiscate the camera with the evidence.

Two of the most important pillars of science are integrity of data and open discussion of results. Jones, Mann, and their cohorts appear to have attacked both of those pillars. And considering how dependent climate scientists around the world have been on their data, they have cast doubt on the entire theory of man-made global warming. We have to wonder, if man-made global warming is so clear, why did they need to twist and purge data? Usually people only do that to bolster a weak case.

This is a serious problem. We must remember that in Aesop's fable, a wolf did later appear and that time the villagers failed to respond to the boy's cries for help. If scientists are caught corrupting their data we will not believe their false claims. However we are also likely to reject their claims even when true. Climategate does not disprove the global warming theory but it does put it in serious doubt. If global warming is a real problem, Jones, Mann et al have done serious damage to our ability to deal with it. Whether it is a problem or not, they have done serious damage to science as a whole.

We need to find people with impeccable integrity and the scientific ability to do the job. Than those people must be tasked to review the entire body of climate data and determine what is true, what may be true and what is false. Only such an effort will restore our faith in science on this important issue.

Personal Note: I’ll be taking some time off for Christmas so probably will not post anything here for a couple of weeks. Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukah, or if you don’t celebrate either of those, I wish you an enjoyable season in any case.

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Mob Rule, Part 3

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The mob mentality – it is dangerous to both our personal character and to society at large. If we subordinate our actions to the beliefs and decisions of a group we become less human, less than we should be. We also endanger others and risk passing along false or bigoted beliefs to our families. This is a problem that has plagued society throughout history and it shows no sign of going away on its own. If it is to be eliminated we must take action against it.

How do we recognize the problem so we can deal with it? Perhaps the most insidious aspect of the mob mentality is that we can so easily participate in it without realizing it. Indeed, the essence of a mob mind-set is not thinking about what we are doing, a severe form of groupthink.

How then can we stop this nonsense? How to eradicate or at least reduce the mob mentality in our society? It won't be easy but there are ways to do it, and it starts with each of us. We must look at our own lives and thinking patterns before we can presume to tell others how to correct their own mind-sets. A recipe for starting to do this is:

First, self-awareness. We must learn to ask ourselves if we really believe what we say in public, or are we just putting up a front? Are we just “going along to get along?” This self-examination is probably the hardest part. Ideally we will learn to examine ourselves in the heat of a group consensus. However even thinking about it afterwards is helpful, that can be a step towards clear thinking in the face of inappropriate group consensus.

Second, if we find that we are showing signs of a mob mind-set, we can attack the causes directly. If we are deindividuating ourselves we can stop and think of ourselves as individuals. I could say to myself, “Hal, you are a person, an individual with a brain and integrity of your own. Why don't you act like it? Who will you see in the mirror tonight, a real person who acted like a man or someone who gave up his personhood to others?”

Third, we can also look at the “enemy” as individual human beings, not part of an amorphous group. I can think that each person who opposes me is a human with a face, with human desires and needs. Those people may enjoy the same sports I enjoy, watch the same sunset I watch, and in many other ways be the type of people I might enjoy knowing. The fact that we have different colored skin or disagree on politics, religion, or other things is really only a small part of who we are. If I can call those people by name that will help even more. It can be easy to hate someone for the disagreements we have or the color of their skin. It is more difficult to hate Bill Smith who likes football and barbecues, but happens to disagree with me in one area.

By such measures we can reduce our own susceptibility to mob mentality. That is an important beginning. What next? How do we help and encourage others to do the same? The first step is to have the courage to speak up. Frequently a group will refrain from anti-social action if only one person points out the problems. That should not be surprising since most members of a mob are indulging in groupthink. They believe everyone else agrees with the group. One person speaking out can destroy that fallacy and they may all wake up to the reality of what they are doing.

However there are cases in which one person opposing is not enough. I doubt a Ku Klux Klan cross burning would stop just because one person spoke out. However even then there are measures that can be effective. The first is to reverse the deindividuation, essentially re-individuate some of the mob members. If possible call them by name and mention something in their lives that calls them back to their humanity. In the book To Kill a Mockingbird Scout does this by calling Mr. Cunningham by name, then apologizing for the fight she had with his son. Suddenly that man must recognize himself as an individual. He can no longer put aside his own personhood.*

Though a work of fiction, I believe that is an example of how a person can be reminded that he is not simply part of an amorphous group, he is a human being. I suspect that even a KKK member, if he can be identified by name, would respond to such an approach. His anonymity would be removed and he would be forced back into the world of individual persons.

OK, I know I've given my readers (if I still have any) a tall order. However nothing worthwhile is likely to be easy so I challenge you to do your part by first examining yourself, then by having the courage to speak out when a group is going off into the mob mentality. It may not be easy but I promise that it will be worth it.

*I thank the author of the Wikipedia article on “Deindividuation” for reminding me of that episode in the book.

Mob Rule, Part 2

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Imagine if you will the following:

Situation 1: You're walking home when you see a wallet in the gutter. Inside you find $250 in cash. It turns out that the wallet belongs to your neighbor. Do you keep the cash and claim the wallet was empty when you found it, or do you return it intact?

Situation 2: A major storm just passed through your area. It dropped a few limbs from a neighbor's tree in your yard but did no other damage to your property. While cleaning up you accidentally break a window. Repair will cost $250. Your insurance won't cover the damage because you broke the window yourself. Had the window been broken by a falling tree limb it would have been covered. Do you pay for the repair yourself or do you claim that it was storm damage and get the insurance company to pay for it?

Most people would probably return the money to their neighbor. In fact many would return it to a stranger. However many of those same people will cheat and tell the insurance company that the storm broke the window. Often people who consider themselves honest will not only defraud the insurance company but will take a few “unauthorized benefits” from their employer or help themselves to some items at the store that they didn’t exactly pay for. Some business managers will divert company resources to their personal use. Why that disconnect in honesty? I think the cause is similar to the mob mind-set discussed yesterday; actually what we might call the reverse mob effect. Anonymity and diffusion still play a big part, but in a different way.

First, anonymity and deindividuation: The wallet owner is an individual, but the insurance company is an amorphous entity. In this case it is the victim, not the perpetrator that gets deindividuated. It is the victim who lacks personhood. That makes it easy to think we are harming nobody when we cheat that company.

Second, diffusion: The effects of cheating the company are diffused over a large number of people, doing very little damage to any one of them. In this case it is not the responsibility that is diffused but the damage. Stealing that $250 from the insurance company is still fraud, but is less visible because only a little is stolen from any one individual.

This reverse mob effect affects business and public life. For example, once when I complained about wasteful government spending I got the response, “I regard it as my duty to get as much federal money spent in the county as I can, even if it is spent on wasteful projects.” The speaker was a county commissioner, allegedly a fiscally conservative republican. I had complained to him about the waste but he just wanted to get money into the county. He didn’t think of the fact that he was taking tax money from the widow in Nebraska, the struggling young family in Wyoming, or the parents in California trying to pay for their daughter’s education. The reverse mob effect allowed him to ignore the overall results of his efforts.

Such shortsightedness is common. It is easy to convince ourselves that nobody is hurt when we take maybe a hundredth of a cent from millions of people. We don’t want to think that millions of people may be doing the same, stealing in the aggregate rather large sums of money from each victim. Nor do we remember that a business or government is nothing but a collection of people. Those people need and deserve the fruits of their labor to care for themselves and their families.

Businesses do not manufacture money; instead they exchange goods or services for it. If they lose money to theft they must make it up by raising prices, cutting employee pay or benefits, or reducing payments to stockholders. Worst case, they go out of business and leave customers, employees, stockholders, and even creditors without funds. When we cheat a retailer, insurance company, or any other business we are really cheating the people who depend on that business. Spreading our crime over many people does not change the fact that it is a crime.

Likewise, government has no real way to obtain resources except from the people. Even borrowing or printing money is just a different way to get those resources from you, from your retired first grade teacher, and from other citizens who have to give up the results of their work to provide for government projects. If we demand and get a fancy sports stadium at taxpayer expense, we are really taking the money from those people, many of whom don’t care a fig about sports.

We can improve our economy if we get everybody to realize that there is no such thing as stealing from government or business. Those organizations are only intermediaries between us and other individuals, flesh and blood people with names, homes, families and their own wants and needs. When we defraud a company or the government, we are really defrauding each individual who has an interest in that organization.

Mob Rule, Part 1

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It was in the 1930’s when Hugh Nibley, a doctoral candidate in the classics, proposed writing his dissertation on the perennial phenomena of the mob in the ancient world. The topic was rejected. Too unreal, too irrelevant to the mood and spirit of the modern world the committee said. Nibley, later a renowned scholar, had to choose a different topic. The institution that rejected a study of the mob as irrelevant to modern society was the University of California at Berkley.

As Berkley found to its sorrow, the mob is very relevant to our society. Not only have we had riots in many inner cities, but less publicized mobs often affect public decision-making. It’s worth examining the mob mind-set not only for that reason but to see how it affects some of our own even non-violent actions. I’m not a psychologist but I have read a bit about the subject and I conclude that there are two components of that mind-set:

First, the anonymity of the mob, what psychologists call deindividuation (essentially losing ones individuality). Participants don’t think of themselves as individually responsible for the mob actions. Removing that personal responsibility allows them to do things they would never do if they thought they would be recognized and called to account as individuals.

Second, diffusion of responsibility. Mob members can easily think that they had no part in the decision to act, so they are not responsible for their actions. Everybody just follows the crowd with no conscious decision-making on the part of most mob members. This is groupthink writ large.

The result may be a lynching, beating up someone of different ethnicity, stealing merchandise from a store during a riot, or other anti-social action. It may just be the crowd getting out of hand at a rock concert. In the minds of mob participants none of it is their fault; they are just going along. The fact is that people will do things as part of such a group that they would never do as individuals.

Those moral gyrations may sooth consciences, but the participants are still responsible for their actions. The person who steals a TV during a riot is just as guilty of thievery as the burglar who breaks into the store at night. The Ku Klux Klan member who helps beat up a black person is just as much a thug as the mugger who beats someone without hiding behind a white sheet. The lynch mob member who helps hang a potentially innocent man is a murderer, quite as guilty as the guy who gets mad at his neighbor and shoots him.

“That’s all well and good,” you say, “but how does it apply to me? I’ve never been part of such a mob.”

Are you sure of that? You may have never been part of a violent mob but look again at those two aspects of the mob mind-set. Do they not apply to non-violent group actions as well? I would call anything done with that mind-set a mob action.

Look at business decisions for example. If “the company” decides to mislead customers or cut corners on quality, is that somehow better than if you or I as an individual did the same? Yet it is easy to mask our part by anonymity or by diffusing responsibility, especially in a large corporation. In fact the Spanish term for corporation is “sociedad anónima,” literally anonymous society. The large group allows a mind-set similar to that of a mob; people can think of themselves as not responsible for their actions and unlikely to be held accountable for them. Yet the employee who helps mislead a customer is just as guilty of fraud as is the charlatan who sells snake oil.

Other organizations can have similar problems but there is one that exceeds them all – Government. Government is most prone to this problem and is in a position to create the most damage by its mob action. In addition to deindividuation and diffusion of responsibility, government adds a patina of legitimacy to the mob mind-set. This is combined with a power beyond what any private organization possesses.

Few people are willing to steal from a neighbor to get money for entertainment. However we accept all too readily such things as congressional earmarks for museums of dubious value or a bridge to nowhere. Cities are all too willing to provide tax money for sports teams or artwork, which only a small minority of their citizens will ever enjoy. Local governments even force people to sell their property to private businesses preferred by the politicians. Those actions amount to thievery, regardless of how they are justified. The elected officials who support them are thieves and the voters who demand them are thieves as well. The anonymity, diffusion of responsibility, and patina of legitimacy associated with government do not change that fact.

Fortunately we have progressed beyond the time when people thought slavery was acceptable because government approved it. Now we need to get beyond thinking that government thievery for earmark projects or favored groups is acceptable.

We can hope that people will catch on to this and realize that they are responsible for their actions, either as individuals or as part of a group. However the only way that will happen is for those who already know this to spread the word. As citizens we must avoid demanding government-based thievery for our benefit, and we must oppose it when others make such demands. In our work we must refuse to take part in mob-like actions of deceit and fraud. And of course we must teach this to our children, Lord knows the schools won't teach it.