Blog #1: An introduction to how science works.

As I write this (late Feb. 2022) Russia has just invaded the Ukraine. My head is full of rage and sorrow, and it’s hard to concentrate. I keep thinking, if the world had listened to the world’s climate scientists years ago, Europe would now be on renewables, Putin would have no nestegg and no leverage. I can put it no better than did the climate scientist Svitlana Krakovska last Sunday, at the UN climate meeting: “Human induced climate change and the war on Ukraine have the same roots, fossil fuels, and our dependence on them.” The way we are headed threatens all life on earth.

Several years ago, some municipalities around here declared “climate emergencies.” Perhaps they thought that was enough., because so far there has been precious little action on this front. A small group of us here in West Grey, fed up with lack of concrete results, have decided to vent our feelings and spread our limited knowledge by producing this blog. There is no schedule-posts will appear when we write them. The frequency will be determined by our time and energy-this is totally an unpaid, volunteer effort. We hope you will find the contents interesting, perhaps illuminating, and that we will in some small way get things finally moving.

I’m Michael Risk, and I have volunteered to write the first piece, because I think you, my friends and neighbors, could stand to learn a bit more about Science and the people who do science. This is another area where disinformation is rife. I am a retired McMaster Prof. and I have been lucky enough to work in many fascinating fields of science. To the best of my knowledge, I am the only climate scientist north of Guelph. I won’t bore you with my life history. If you would like to have a look at what I have done over the years, here is a link to my Google Scholar site: https://scholar.google.ca/citations?user=Ayaf5QoAAAAJ&hl=en

As I write this, we seem to be slowly returning to normal after a long couple of years of our lives being dictated by a virus. As we raise our heads above the parapet and gaze around with fearful optimism, we will shortly be reminded that we have serious work yet to do, serious issues to deal with. During the time we were busy dealing with lockdowns and vaccinations, and with the frightening realization that there are deep divisions in our society, the planet continued its inexorable warming. Physics doesn’t care about our preoccupations.

One of the most distressing aspects of our time in Covid was the fault lines that opened up in our society, pitting vaccinated against the unvaccinated. Each side tried to support its case by citing science. There was a depressing and infuriating barrage of plans and counterclaims, with a great deal of misinformation and disinformation. [Misinformation is when you are mistaken, and disinformation is when you are lying.] This was a unique virus, one we had never seen before. We can all be thankful for the vaccines that saved so many lives.

We can see the same divisions of our society in the Climate Wars. Civil discourse seems to have given way to partisan divides, with both sides shouting past each other. The rise of the Internet has made this worse. Back in the day, every village had their idiot, and people knew to stay clear of them. Now, they can connect with one another-there is no idea so bizarre that some adherents can’t be found out there. This makes sorting into tribes much easier. We are also seeing the conflict between what have been termed the “Practicals” and the “Virtuals”-people who work with their hands, as opposed to people who stare at screens. This is not a firm division, of course. I would probably be called a Virtual, but I cut firewood and build houses. But I am also cursing my Macbook, because a recent system update managed to lose all my passwords and I can’t figure out how to get them back. But in general the division is based on education. The further ahead technology advances, the more those with little education are threatened. It will not have escaped the people in the sad, ill-advised Truckers Convoy that their jobs will disappear soon, with the rise of self-driving trucks.

Although we are not out of the woods yet, we can say that science has probably saved the lives of millions who would otherwise have perished from the disease. It would be no exaggeration to say that many more lives will be lost to climate change if we allow it to continue unchecked. It has been said many times that we have to ”Science our way out of this.”

We have learned of the looming threats from climate change from the work of scientists, and-if we “follow the science”-their work will help get us through the coming hard times. But-who are these mysterious people, and what motivates them?

There are about 90,000 government and university research scientists. That’s about 0.2% of the population, so the chances are very good you have never met one. And the chances are you wouldn’t recognize them in a crowd-because we are very normal people, not pencil-necked geeks with big heads. It all starts with interest-in something. How things work. Then long years at university. Almost every research scientist has a PhD, and many have done post-doctoral work before landing a job. That means 8-10 years in university: about twice as long as it takes to train a doctor, and three times that for a lawyer. The comforting thing to bear in mind is-no one ever went into science for the money. The same cannot be said for professions like Law, Business, Accounting…we are in it for love, not money.

We are, of course, paid in our jobs: but some figures may surprise. Consider two people with fresh BA or BSc degrees. One goes straight into teaching, and the other becomes (after a long, drawn-out process!) a professor. When the professor reaches their mid-50’s, their salary will finally equal that of the teacher-but they never make up the shortfall, from when they were in grad school living below the poverty line on Kraft Dinner and the teacher was making a decent salary. (I’m not really picking on teachers here, it’s just that the data are there.)

Take my own example. McMaster is one of the few universities offering Merit increases. These are hard to measure, sure, but the Committee looks at your publications, your teaching evaluations, and your service, and takes a shot at your raise that year. I did well, got large increases, published lots, was on the news lots, made it into some huge database of the world’s top 1% of scientists. The year that I retired, at the top income I ever made, my salary was less than that of an Ontario high school Principal.

We tend to enjoy what we do, and are for sure not in it for the money.

What we most like to do is research. That’s big fun. Finding out stuff. How do we get funded? The major funding agency for scientific research in Canada is NSERC, the National Science and Engineering Research Council of Canada. We conceive of a project, or a plan, that sounds interesting and important. We write a grant application to NSERC, and they have it assessed by a Grant Selection Committee. These are all fellow scientists, maybe with a bureaucrat thrown in the mix so the Panel doesn’t try to give away too much money. Not all grants are funded-far from it. The success rate in Canada hovers around 25%. In the US it’s depressingly low, around 10%.

I have reviewed grants from many different countries: US, Australia, UK, EU…the criteria are all very similar. Grants are evaluated on only a few criteria:

– Is the work important? No one gets funded for trivial work.

– Is the work original? No one gets funded to repeat the same old stuff we already know. -Is the budget reasonable, and can it be done?

And that’s pretty well all. From time to time there are attempts to “direct” science-the thought of politicians telling scientists what to work on is always good for a rueful laugh. About 10 years ago, in fields like Chemistry and Earth Sciences, if you proposed work that might help the oil companies you got funded, while “blue sky” research languished. But those attempts are, fortunately, rare.

There are strict rules governing how research funds may be used. The first rule, and one often not understood, is that we can take no income from grants. These are audited ruthlessly, by the universities and the feds, and if they discover someone has diverted any funding-there’s hell to pay. People have been fired. I once had a big project in the Bay of Fundy, looking at the biology of the intertidal flats, and trying to see what would be the impacts of tidal power developments. Yes, even back then we were thinking of alternatives. I really enjoyed the work, hired a bunch of smart kids who have all gone on to do well. We dug up critters with shovels (did I say this was high-tech work?) and counted them. When the field season ended, we drove back to Hamilton in a van full of mud and shovels. I could not take one of the shovels home to dig in my garden that Fall, because it had been bought with research funds. It had to sit in a closet until next Spring, rusting away.

What do we do with the grant money? We pay for analyses, for field work-and most important, we support grad students. These are smart young people, the next generation. They work on their research, supported by the prof, and do some teaching at the same time. Everywhere in the world, with the possible exception of North Korea, they live under the poverty line. That’s OK, because they are in a sense apprentices.

More to the point-why should you tax dollars help me do research? Because it’s a great investment. It is extremely hard to estimate the “worth” of research, but that hasn’t stopped people from trying. In the US, every $US spent by the NIH typically returns economic input worth $2.21, within the year. Other estimates are all over the map, with rate of return on investment ranging from 25% to 160% (Salter and Martin, 2001). Countries gain by supporting research, plain and simple. How are we doing?

Well, Canada’s SCIENTISTS do very well. We punch far above our weight internationally, producing 4% of the world’s scientific papers, and ranking #7 globally. Canada’s POLITICIANS have failed us miserably. We invest 1.6% of GDP in research, down from 2% in 2001-well below the OECD average of 2.5%, and well below our stated goal of 3%.

Diverting into the political for a brief moment: the only significant increase in science finding in Canada in recent years was during the brief Joe Clarke government. After that there were years of unmet promises, and then the crushing Harper years. Not only did his government cut funding-they diverted money towards oil companies and away from the environment. There was hope when the Liberals were elected-they SAID they were going to increase funding. Like many Liberal promises, this one fell short. It’s a real mystery to me why our governments have not stepped up…maybe if more people yelled at their MP’s about this, there would be change. Things might be better if we elected more scientists, but that rarely happens. The only examples I can think of are Margaret Thatcher (MA Chemistry) and Angela Merkel (PhD Quantum Chemistry)Physics), whose talents as leaders cannot be denied-but maybe that just means we need more women in politics.

Scientists are only human, and are certainly capable of the same mistakes and pratfalls as everyone. They can for sure be dishonest. One of my major areas of research is coral reef ecology, and coral reef biologists, especially in Florida, can resemble a nest of snakes-except that most snakes are benign. One well-known Florida reef biologist wrote papers stating that nutrients had no effect on reefs-while receiving more than $200,000 in consulting fees from developers who were discharging nutrients. Another, a man I consider a (sort of) friend, was retained by the US Navy in a court case. The Navy had been using the Island of Vieques, off the east coast of Puerto Rica, as a bombing range until finally a local NGO sued, saying the Navy was damaging the reef. This man testified that those funny-looking circular holes in the reef front had been made by-hurricanes.

Individual scientists are only human, but science as a rationale, a way of looking at life, is better than a collection of fallible humans. Science is self-correcting: we like nothing better than proving someone else is wrong, so every experiment, every paper, is scrutinized ruthlessly. When most of the world’s scientists believe in something, you can bet it’s valid. Sure, science deniers will say “consensus is not science”, but that’s just a way of saying “I choose not to believe what you say and I hope someday there might be evidence