Severe Weather Event Attribution: Why values won’t go away (2019) Eric Winsberg, Naomi Oreskes, Elisabeth Lloyd
We start by reviewing the complicated situation in methods of scientific attribution of climate change to extreme weather events. We emphasize the social values involved in using both so-called ``storyline'' and ordinary probabilistic or ``risk-based'' methods, noting that one important virtue claimed by the storyline approach is that it features a reduction in false negative results, which has much social and ethical merit, according to its advocates. This merit is critiqued by the probabilistic, risk-based, opponents, who claim the high ground; the usual probabilistic approach is claimed to be more objective and more ``scientific'', under the grounds that it reduces false positive error. We examine this mostly-implicit debate about error, which apparently mirrors the old Jeffrey-Rudner debate. We also argue that there is an overlooked component to the role of values in science: that of second-order inductive risk, and that it makes the relative role of values in the two methods different from what it first appears to be. In fact, neither method helps us to escape social values, and be more scientifically ``objective'' in the sense of being removed or detached from human values and interests. The probabilistic approach does not succeed in doing so, contrary to the claims of its proponents. This is important to understand, because neither method is, fundamentally, a successful strategy for climate scientists to avoid making value judgments.
Climate Change Attribution: When Does it Make Sense to Add Methods? (2019) Elisabeth A Lloyd, Naomi Oreskes Epistemology & Philosophy of Science, 56 (1), 185-201
A specific form of research question, for instance,“What is the probability of a certain class of weather events, given global climate change, relative to a world without?” could be answered with the use of FAR or RR (Fraction of Attributable Risk or Risk Ratio) as the most common approaches to discover and ascribe extreme weather events. Kevin Trenberth et al.(2015) and Theodore Shepherd (2016) have expressed doubts in their latest works whether it is the most appropriate explanatory tool or the way of public outreach concerning climate events and extremes. As an alternative, these researchers focus on complementary questions, for example,“How much did climate change affect the severity of a given storm?” advocating a “storyline” approach. New methods and new research questions are neither foreign, nor controversial from the standpoint of history and philosophy of science, especially those, related to …
Criteria for Holobionts from Community Genetics (2019) Elisabeth A Lloyd, Michael J Wade Biological Theory, 1-20
We address the controversy in the literature concerning the definition of holobionts and the apparent constraints on their evolution using concepts from community population genetics. The genetics of holobionts, consisting of a host and diverse microbial symbionts, has been neglected in many discussions of the topic, and, where it has been discussed, a gene-centric, species-centric view, based in genomic conflict, has been predominant. Because coevolution takes place between traits or genes in two or more species and not, strictly speaking, between species, it may affect some traits but not others in either host or symbiont. Moreover, when interacting species pairs are embedded in a larger community, indirect ecological effects can alter the expected pairwise dynamics. Mode of symbiont transmission and the degree of host inbreeding both affect the extent of microbial mixing across host lineages and …
Women's Experience of Orgasm During Intercourse: Question Semantics Affect Women's Reports and Men's Estimates of Orgasm Occurrence (2018) Talia Shirazi, Kaytlin J Renfro, Elisabeth Lloyd, Kim Wallen Archives Of Sexual Behavior, 47 (3), 615
The name of coauthor Kaytlin J. Renfro has been corrected since this article was originally published.
Climate Modelling: Philosophical and Conceptual Issues (2018) Elisabeth A Lloyd, Eric Winsberg Springer.
This edited collection of works by leading climate scientists and philosophers introduces readers to issues in the foundations, evaluation, confirmation, and application of climate models. It engages with important topics directly affecting public policy, including the role of doubt, the use of satellite data, and the robustness of models. Climate Modelling provides an early and significant contribution to the burgeoning Philosophy of Climate Science field that will help to shape our understanding of these topics in both philosophy and the wider scientific context. It offers insight into the reasons we should believe what climate models say about the world but addresses the issues that inform how reliable and well-confirmed these models are. This book will be of interest to students of climate science, philosophy of science, and of particular relevance to policy makers who depend on the models that forecast future states of the climate and ocean in order to make public policy decisions.
Climate Change Attribution: When Is It Appropriate to Accept New Methods? (2018) Elisabeth A Lloyd, Naomi Oreskes Earth's Future, 6 (3), 311-325
The most common approaches to detection and attribution (D&A) of extreme weather events using fraction of attributable risk or risk ratio answer a particular form of research question, namely “What is the probability of a certain class of weather events, given global climate change, relative to a world without?” In a set of recent papers, Trenberth et al.(2015, https://doi. org/10.1038/nclimate2657) and Shepherd (2016, https://doi. org/10.1007/s40641‐016‐0033‐y) have argued that this is not always the best tool for analyzing causes, or for communicating with the public about climate events and extremes. Instead, they promote the idea of a “storyline” approach, which asks complementary questions, such as “How much did climate change affect the severity of a given storm?” From the vantage of history and philosophy of science, a proposal to introduce a new approach or to answer different research questions …
Holobionts as Units of Selection and a Model of Their Population Dynamics and Evolution (2018) Joan Roughgarden, Scott F Gilbert, Eugene Rosenberg, Ilana Zilber-Rosenberg, Elisabeth A Lloyd Biological Theory, 13 (1), 44-65
Holobionts, consisting of a host and diverse microbial symbionts, function as distinct biological entities anatomically, metabolically, immunologically, and developmentally. Symbionts can be transmitted from parent to offspring by a variety of vertical and horizontal methods. Holobionts can be considered levels of selection in evolution because they are well-defined interactors, replicators/reproducers, and manifestors of adaptation. An initial mathematical model is presented to help understand how holobionts evolve. The model offered combines the processes of horizontal symbiont transfer, within-host symbiont proliferation, vertical symbiont transmission, and holobiont selection. The model offers equations for the population dynamics and evolution of holobionts whose hologenomes differ in gene copy number, not in allelic or loci identity. The model may readily be extended to include variation among …
Satellite Data and Climate Models (2018) Elisabeth A Lloyd Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. 65-71
In this brief chapter, Lloyd sets the stage for the following three papers, most centrally, Santer et al. (2008a), which discusses whether the satellite data fit with climate models. Its target is a paper by Douglass et al. (Douglass DH, Christy JR, Pearson BD, Singer SF, A comparison of tropical temperature trends with model predictions. Int J Climatology 28:1693–1701, 2008), which claimed that satellite and weather balloon data showed that the climate models were wrong and could not be trusted. The Santer and Wigley “Fact Sheet” (Chap. 4) gives a nontechnical summary of what is wrong with the Douglass paper, while the full story is in Chap. 5, a reprint of the Santer et al. (2008a) paper. The context and import of this work is discussed in Lloyd (Chap. 6). In this introduction, Lloyd emphasizes the timeliness of this work, as climate deniers testify in Congress presently.
The Role of “Complex” Empiricism in the Debates About Satellite Data and Climate Models (2018) Elisabeth A Lloyd Climate Modelling, (), 137-173
Climate scientists have been engaged in a decades-long debate over the standing of satellite measurements of the temperature trends of the atmosphere above the surface of the earth. This is especially significant because skeptics of global warming and the greenhouse effect have utilized this debate to spread doubt about global climate models used to predict future states of climate. I use this case from an understudied science to illustrate two distinct philosophical approaches to the relations among data, scientist, measurement, models, and theory. I argue that distinguishing between “direct” empiricist and “complex” empiricist approaches helps us understand and analyze this important scientific episode. I introduce a complex empiricist account of testing and evaluation, and contrast it with the basic hypothetico-deductive approach to the climate models used by the direct empiricists. This more developed …
Differences in orgasm frequency among gay, lesbian, bisexual, and heterosexual men and women in a US national sample (2018) David A Frederick, H Kate St John, Justin R Garcia, Elisabeth A Lloyd Archives of sexual behavior, 47 (1), 273-288
There is a notable gap between heterosexual men and women in frequency of orgasm during sex. Little is known, however, about sexual orientation differences in orgasm frequency. We examined how over 30 different traits or behaviors were associated with frequency of orgasm when sexually intimate during the past month. We analyzed a large US sample of adults (N = 52,588) who identified as heterosexual men (n = 26,032), gay men (n = 452), bisexual men (n = 550), lesbian women (n = 340), bisexual women (n = 1112), and heterosexual women (n = 24,102). Heterosexual men were most likely to say they usually-always orgasmed when sexually intimate (95%), followed by gay men (89%), bisexual men (88%), lesbian women (86%), bisexual women (66%), and heterosexual women (65%). Compared to women who orgasmed less frequently, women who orgasmed more frequently were more likely to …
The ‘Alice in Wonderland’mechanics of the rejection of (climate) science: simulating coherence by conspiracism (2018) Stephan Lewandowsky, John Cook, Elisabeth Lloyd Synthese, 195 (1), 175-196
Science strives for coherence. For example, the findings from climate science form a highly coherent body of knowledge that is supported by many independent lines of evidence: greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from human economic activities are causing the global climate to warm and unless GHG emissions are drastically reduced in the near future, the risks from climate change will continue to grow and major adverse consequences will become unavoidable. People who oppose this scientific body of knowledge because the implications of cutting GHG emissions—such as regulation or increased taxation—threaten their worldview or livelihood cannot provide an alternative view that is coherent by the standards of conventional scientific thinking. Instead, we suggest that people who reject the fact that the Earth’s climate is changing due to greenhouse gas emissions (or any other body of well-established …
Assessing climate change impacts on extreme weather events: the case for an alternative (Bayesian) approach (2017) Michael E Mann, Elisabeth A Lloyd, Naomi Oreskes Climatic Change, 144 (2), 131-142
The conventional approach to detecting and attributing climate change impacts on extreme weather events is generally based on frequentist statistical inference wherein a null hypothesis of no influence is assumed, and the alternative hypothesis of an influence is accepted only when the null hypothesis can be rejected at a sufficiently high (e.g., 95% or “p = 0.05”) level of confidence. Using a simple conceptual model for the occurrence of extreme weather events, we show that if the objective is to minimize forecast error, an alternative approach wherein likelihoods of impact are continually updated as data become available is preferable. Using a simple “proof-of-concept,” we show that such an approach will, under rather general assumptions, yield more accurate forecasts. We also argue that such an approach will better serve society, in providing a more effective means to alert decision-makers to potential …
Multilevel Selection and Units of Selection Up and Down the Biological Hierarchy (2017) Elisabeth A Lloyd The Routledge Handbook of Evolution and Philosophy, 19-34
There has been considerable debate in both biology and philosophy about which entities undergo natural selection and what it is that fits them for that role. For nearly forty years, some participants in the “units of selection” debates have argued that more than one issue is at stake. Richard Dawkins, for example, introduced “replicator” and “vehicle” to stand for different roles in the evolutionary process (1982). David Hull (1980) broke Dawkins’s category of “replicator” up into “replicator” and “interactor.” In an essay in Keywords in Evolutionary Biology (Lloyd 1992), and later in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (2012), I delineated two further roles which I called the “beneficiary” and the “manifestor of adaptation.” In sections 2–6 of this chapter, four quite distinct questions will be isolated that have, in fact, been asked in the context of considering what is a unit of selection. The following four sections return to the …
Orgasms and Objectification (2017) Elisabeth A Lloyd Archives of sexual behavior, 46 (5), 1191-1194
This is a fascinating and incisive article by Chivers (2017), from which I learned a great deal. I do have a few questions and remarks, which I offer to stimulate conversation about the various mysteries and ideas raised in the article. 1. Orgasm Variability: With regard to Hypothesis 9, Greater variability in sexual rewards among androphilic women, Chivers writes:‘‘Although androphilic women may be sexually attracted to men, preferred gender cues may not be as strongly linked with prolonged reward-seeking behavior by dint of the commonlyobserved lower frequency of orgasm during partnered sex among androphilic women… Heterosexualwomen’slessconsistentexperienceoforgasm [thanqueerwomen] wouldnot, bycontrast, selectively reinforce male sexual cues, and the result would be a nonspecific pattern of sexual response.’’I think that much more research could be performed to either confirm or disconfirm this …
Exaptation Revisited: Changes Imposed by Evolutionary Psychologists and Behavioral Biologists (2017) Elisabeth A Lloyd, Stephen Jay Gould Biological Theory, 12 (1), 50-65
Some methodological adaptationists (perhaps unconsciously) hijacked the term “exaptation,” and took an occasion of Stephen Jay Gould’s misspeaking as confirmation that it possessed an evolutionarily “designed” function and was a version of an adaptation, something it was decidedly not. Others provided a standard of evidence for exaptation that was inappropriate, and based on an adaptationist worldview. This article is intended to serve as both an analysis of and correction to those situations. Gould and Elisabeth Vrba’s terms, “exaptation” and “aptation,” as originally introduced, are very useful, unlike the faded adaptationist echo of “exaptation” devised by the methodological adaptationists, which has made the term incoherent. We will discuss how exaptation relates to function, to aptation, and to adaptation, both primary and secondary. These ideas have been rendered practically useless through their …0