Reality is real no more. Whom to trust in science?

 

The "World Climate Declaration" returns. It is a document that has been around in various forms since 2009 that has all the appearance of "legitimate" science. It is not, but how to judge? We face an unsolvable epistemological problem.

Recently, one of the members of the Holobiont Group posted the link to a document titled "There is No Climate Emergency" on FB. He defined it as "bonkers" -- it was clearly irony. Yet, Facebook's Fact-Checkers don't know irony, and the post was promptly censored and branded "false information."

That highlights, I think, the problem we have with science. Place yourself in the shoes of a person who has no training in science, and knows only what can be read in the media about climate. What should she think about this story? 

We have a document that, at first sight, it looks legitimate. The signatories are bona fide scientists, although one may notice that some of them are a little old (actually, more than a little) (*). But being over 90 does not mean being automatically wrong. And what to say about the anonymous "fact checker" who so peremptorily deemed the document to be "false"? The link provides leads only to a post in Croatian, written by a young lady named Melita Vrsaljiko (https://www.linkedin.com/in/melita-vrsaljko/). She has a degree in journalism awarded by the Faculty of Political Science in Zagreb. Probably she is the "fact checker" hired by Facebook who struck down the post. If this is the case, one could reasonably be a little vary of a fact check based on something written by the fact-checker alone. 

Machine-translated into English, the "fact check" is not much better than the documents it purports to check. Among other things, we are told the document is "false" because it was diffused also by a site that diffuses "anti-vaxxer" information. And also because only a few of the signatories are climatologists. The accusation of the authors not being climatologists is a little perplexing since it comes from someone who has no other qualifications than a degree in journalism. (**)

The problem, here, is that when we deal with climate change, most of us, even scientists competent in our fields, are unable to comprehend the immense complexity of the story. The only way that people can do that is based on the principle of authority. But are 1200 old scientists signing a document titled "There is no Climate Emergency" a sufficient authority? Or you'd rather trust the large number of scientists who adhere to the IPCC (I don't know how many, but surely many). But truth, as we all know, is not based on the majority of believers and from the time when Karl Rove said that "we create our own reality, reality has ceased to be real. So, why should trust FB's fact checkers? Or anyone else?  

This is just not possible. We cannot do science in this way. We need to rethink the whole idea. You may think that I am a little manic (probably I am), but I think we should apply the concept of holobiont to science, too. Maybe we could think of a "horizontal" science, where facts and ideas are shared among peers, that is all of us. That is they do not arrive from the sky, screaming, "trust me, I am Science!!!" They come from our peers, whom we trust. Science cannot come as a revealed trust. It must come from all of us. 

We keep at it. Onward, fellow holobionts!

(*) The Nobel prize at the top of the list is 93. The Italian member of the group (Prof. Zichichi) is 92. About this Italian member, I can tell you that he has made a fool of himself in public so many times that there is an entire popular literature dedicated to his mistakes (for those of you who can read Italian, there is a popular term "Zichicche," not literally translatable, but more or less meaning "Zichichi's gems" -- intended as howlers). On this, though, I can tell you that I have no respect for the people who have made money and a reputation for themselves by selling books that ridicule a scientist who, with all his idiosyncrasies and naivety, has some merits.

(**) I am not criticizing Ms. Vrsaljiko. She did her best, and her article is good in many respects. But the task she was charged with was basically impossible.