Whatever the argument does not supply, the paradigm conveniently fills in

From To Predict Environmental Doom, Ignore the Past by Todd Myers.

While the essay is a critique of a poorly argued article on global warming, the author has a deeper insight which I think is significant.

The need to avoid perceived global catastrophe also encourages the authors to blow past warning signs that their analysis is not built on solid foundations – as if the poor history of such projections were not already warning enough. Even as they admit the interactions “between overlapping complex systems, however, are providing difficult to characterize mathematically,” they base their conclusions on the simplest linear mathematical estimate that assumes nothing will change except population over the next 40 years. They then draw a straight line, literally, from today to the environmental tipping point.

Why is such an unscientific approach allowed to pass for science in a respected international journal? Because whatever the argument does not supply, the paradigm conveniently fills in. Even if the math isn’t reliable and there are obvious counterarguments, “everyone” understands and believes in the underlying truth – we are nearing the limits of the planet’s ability to support life. In this way the conclusion is not proven but assumed, making the supporting argument an impenetrable tautology.

I have been arguing in my work on decision-making about how critical it is for a team of individuals to explicitly articulate what they understand about the context of the decision they are about to make, i.e. describe the environment and its characteristics in which this decision is to be made.

Myers' comment suggests that there is a more fundamental issue that needs to be explicilty brought to the fore - what is your paradigm? Somewhat challenging to do but probably not wrong that it ought to be done. I have often encountered individuals and teams who have an unshakeable conviction that what they are doing is the right thing without their being able to articulate why it is the right thing to do. Simply refuting them on a factual point by factual point basis is hard work and usually not all that productive. That is not the way to take down an "impenetrable tautology".

At this particular point I do not have a good answer as to how you do that but I recognize that in some circumstances that is what needs to be done.