# Unsupported Science Beliefs You Hold

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/unsupported-science-beliefs-you-hold/993365>\
**Category:** In My Humble Opinion\
**Created:** [November 19, 2023, 11:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/unsupported-science-beliefs-you-hold/993365 "2023-11-19T11:40:54Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 185

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**Author:** ![echoreply](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/echoreply/32/3641_2.png) [@echoreply](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/echoreply)\
**Post date:** [November 22, 2023, 8:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/unsupported-science-beliefs-you-hold/993365/185 "2023-11-22T20:03:05Z")

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> [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](#):
>
> implicating scientists studying climate and associated geosciences in a cabal that just doesn’t exist

I don’t think of it as a cabal, rather a bunch of decisions by individuals and small groups to downplay things to make it easier on themselves. So no dishonesty needed, just a series of decisions, which may be reasonable, but are also all biased in one directions.

> [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](#):
>
> I’ll note that there is a distinct difference between the policy statements and metastudy summaries which make up “the consensus” that are widely published in the popular press versus the observations and tentative conclusions in technical literature

I completely agree, my unsupported belief is that the conclusions in the technical literature are _also_ biased in the less-dire direction. There really is no way to know other than being in the room when the authors are discussing the models and writing the papers.

This is often going to by hyperlocalized. Nobody except the few people deep into a particular model are going to know they’ve been making conservative predictions. Then when scientists in even closely related aspects find the predicted observations to be worse than the prediction, they are all surprised, while the group that originally made the prediction is thinking, “yeah, that’s what I thought.”

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