Academic psychology is just playground nonsense
Climate shrinks pimp themselves to the government and its agencies. But behind the nano-thin veneer of academic respectability is a failed science wrapped round a tired political project.
Academic psychologists see criticism of academic psychology and its application in the public sphere (i.e. to service political agendas and projects) as 'conspiracy theory/ideation'.
Academic psychology presupposes itself entirely. And its adherents are pathologically averse to debate. Especially debate about academic psychology and its application. It was manifestly driven by ideology in the USSR. And it demonstrates no improvement in 2022.
Academic psychology seems to have leapt on to the climate issue in particular. But as I've been asking for a long time, how does an academic psychologist get a baseline of his own grasp of climate, such that he can evaluate others' grasp & form general theories about them?
They cannot, because the matter is complicated, and plenty of those diminished as 'deniers' and victims of 'conspiracy ideation' have much deeper and more sophisticated understanding than the climate shrinks themselves have.
Thus, academic psychology can only take *orthodoxy* -- ideological and political orthodoxy -- as the baseline measure of an individual or group's departure from 'fact' or 'science', not the facts or science themselves.
A simpler demonstration...
A | Erstwhile chief scientific adviser: "There will be ten thousand deaths per day in this heatwave".
B | Climate 'denier': "No there will not be any significant increase in deaths."
Only A's statement registers on the academic psychologists radar.
Moreover:
A | Erstwhile chief scientific adviser: "People who deny climate change are funded by Big Oil PR campaigns."
B | Climate 'denier': "I am not involved in any PR campaign, but the scientific adviser is funded by three green philanthropists with green energy interests."
Only B's views get registered as a 'conspiracy theory', or as 'motivated reasoning', etc.
Academic psychology is not merely blind to its own ideological presuppositions and political context. It is hostile to debate that reveal it. Let's call it 'organised bad faith'.
I'm not the only person to have noticed it, of course.
Psychology’s Replication Crisis Is Running Out of Excuses
Another big project has found that only half of studies can be repeated. And this time, the usual explanations fall flat.
But climate seems to be the refuge of the worst of the the worst.
Because to take issue with academic psychology on the climate battlefield is to mark oneself as a climate change denier.
It is worth noting that it was as the field was experiencing a total collapse of credibility that it pitched itself to government as a miracle cure for its own crises of legitimacy too. Psychologists now opine on people's views on climate and covid and are part of policymaking.
But as pointed out above, and further evidenced by academic psychologists *passionate* adherence to an ideological movement, academic psychology of this kind is only capable of understanding 'denial' as dissent from political orthodoxy, not from fact or science.
It is hostile to debate (and by implication, democracy), because debate presupposes the possibility of the orthodoxy's error. And that would be to destroy academic psychology's necessary presuppositions.
People cannot be allowed intellectual or moral autonomy.
You may think I'm overstating it. But academic psychologists, committed to the radical transformation of society through the engineering of values and coercion are extremely well-funded by government and private interests, and given roles in policymaking.
At the very least, this signals a departure from what we could put crudely as 'normal democratic politics', to a more technocratic model, which gives academe a new role and which furthermore implies a transformation of the relationship between the public and government.
I could put it much more strongly. But the point is that there is a face-value case that this political transformation has occurred, but to theorise about the nature of this transformation will appear to the academic psychologist as 'conspiracy theory'.
"There should be a vote on Net Zero."
"There cannot be because the issues are too complex, the stakes are too high, and your minds are too easily shaped by powerful PR campaigns funded by private interests."
"What were you saying about conspiracy theories?"
The discipline itself is so debased, its adherents have managed to make respectable the lowest form of tin-foil-hat wearing conspiracy ideation. And it pimps itself to a no less debased political establishment. This special pleading is what drives the transformation.
On which point...
Again, not a novel observation. But it is nonetheless an observation that precedes the elevation of academic psychology, when it ought to have urged caution. But 'science'. 'Follow the science'. Etc.
Fixing the Problem of Liberal Bias in Social Psychology
We should seek to reduce bias, not balance it out
Final point.
My concern is not that the techniques of psychology work. I doubt it is anything other than bad science. The problem is that academic psychology legitimises authoritarianism in just the same way as it allows its own special pleading.
There are many widely agreed facts about climate that remain out of the common knowledge due to the prohibition of threatening the orthodoxy with any educated and reasoned discussion.
1) The theoretical warming of the Earth's surface by a doubling of CO2 is hotly contested and has a huge uncertainty acknowledged by the UN to be from 1.5C to 4.5C.
2) The uncertainty of CO2's warming power has made little progress since the 1978 Charney commission report. The UN models apparently have contributed little knowledge, likely because they have so many guessed variables.
3) If doubling CO2's warming is just 1.5C (we are now at half way) it's actually turns of to be lucky beneficial effect. It may be just enough warming to counteract the more dangerous natural cooling that is scheduled to end our pleasant little interglacial, which civilization enjoyed for the last 10K years.
4) The surface has been cooling for ~7000 due to astronomical cycles. Just 400 years ago (the little ice age) was the coolest point in the last ~10,000 years as we came out of the last glaciation. So, since we have only been putting significant amounts of extra CO2 into the air for the the last 100 years our current warming actually started naturally ~300 year before that.
5) If civilization had not formed there's a virtual certainty that reglaciation would begin in the next 5000 years and perhaps would have have begun as early as 100 years ago. The tipping point is still not well understood.
6) Storms have not gained strength or frequency within any statistical confidence in the last 150 years. Diddo for wildfires.
7) CO2 is causing deserts to green and crop yields to increase because the Earth's atmosphere had developed a sub-optimal level of CO2 over the last 100 million years. This CO2 starvation may or may not have caused the Quaternary Ice Age we have been in for the last 1.8 million years. It might also be due to the closing of the North and South American land masses, restricting circulation to the arctic (meridional transport).
Great article Ben. I think academic psychology is a busted flush after Lockdown. The fear tactics employed were awful and won't be forgot by many (but a good proportion of people still love the technocratic authoritarianism - i'm convinced they like to align themselves with illiberal elites as they believe it elevates them to a higher intellectual plane). That idiot Cameron brought the Nudge Unit to the heart of Govt and look where it has got us to... Great swathes of the population still living in fear of catching Covid very single day. Never under-estimate the damage politicians can do. Here's a thing... most AGW believers seem to want to suspend the climate to the state it was back in c1850. If anyone seriously thinks the climate can be held in suspension they are surely a denier. It's them, not us.