Contingently accepted

I saw a painful video clip of Senate testimony that was really almost too embarrassing to finish. The president of The Sierra Club, to which I have contributed money over the years, was testifying to his understanding that global warming was a real issue. Unfortunately he was then cross-examined by Senator Ted Cruz, a former Solicitor General of Texas (having argued nine cases before the US Supreme Court) with a quick and capacious mind. Cruz, quite properly, is pointing out the dramatic gap between climate model forecasts and actual observed temperatures and arguing that we ought to base policy on real data and not on some mythical scientific consensus, the embarrassing position of the Sierra Club president. The video is here.

Clearly it was an unfair match and Cruz made his point. It's just unpleasant to see someone so politely discredited as was the Sierra Club president. But I suppose that is the inherent risk undertaken when you vocally advocate positions you don't actually understand and can't defend. Frequently appealing to a false "consensus of scientists" and stipulating that points of discussion are "not up for debate" is a strident and usually indefensible position.

Which leads to the second, rather interesting article I stumbled across, Disproved Discoveries That Won Nobel Prizes by Ross Pomeroy.

Pomeroy identifies three instances where an award recipient was recognized for work that turned out to be wrong.

Johannes Fibiger in 1926 recognized for his discovery of a parasitic worm which causes cancer. The worm exists but it does not cause cancer.

Enrico Fermi in 1938 for demonstrating the existence of new radioactive elements. This belief arose as a result of Fermi's work with Uranium. It turned out that what he had done was not to create new radioactive elements but to create nuclear fission. So the work was remarkable and game-changing but the details for which he was recognized were not quite right.

Camillo Golgi in 1906 for work on the structure of the human nervous system which ended up being disproven.

The science is never settled, just contingently accepted until a different or more refined understanding is reached.