Speeding Through Haldane's Four Stages

In 1963 J. B. S. Haldane wrote that the acceptance of scientific ideas goes through four usual stages (PDF):

(i) this is worthless nonsense;
(ii) this is an interesting, but perverse, point of view;
(iii) this is true, but quite unimportant;
(iv) I always said so.

Klotzbach et al. seems to be going through these stages at an unusually rapid pace. Here are some examples.

(i) this is worthless nonsense;

From University of Texas atmospheric scientist Michael Tobis a first reaction, "my BS detector is ringing pretty loud."

(ii) this is an interesting, but perverse, point of view;

From climate modeler James Annan, "an interesting paper which, if correct, helps to align the satellite and surface temperature trends . . . all he seems to have shown is that his preferred metric is even less useful than it at first appeared."

(iii) this is true, but quite unimportant;

Tobis again, a little later, not passing judgment but saying "if they have [actually resolved the temperature trend differential], it means that both temperature records are substantially correct."

(iv) I always said so.

Hmmm . . . I haven't heard anyone yet get to this stage. Perhaps someone will argue that the observational divergence that we document is "consistent with" the behavior of the models based on some enormous spread of heretofore unrecognized uncertainties. But where might that perspective come from? I wonder . . . ;-)

Posted in: