Mistakes Happen, But Trust Scientists To Do Science

Words by Paul Fennell. Image from AP.

In 2007, the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released its Fourth Assessment Report (commonly known as AR4). The nature of its findings was clear, with the summary stating in bald terms:

• Warming of the climate system is unequivocal.
• Most of the observed increase in global average temperatures since the mid-20th century is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations.

Rajendra Pachauri. Not perfect - get over it

Predictably, this report was controversial among those who deny the scientific reality of anthropogenic climate change. One of their lines of attack was to seize upon an error in the document. This error concerns the rate of loss of Himalayan glaciers.  In fact, the error was made by the WWF (though why they asked wrestlers about complex scientific questions, I don’t know).   

I am a lecturer in Chemical Engineering.  One book that we use for teaching purposes, and frequently to help in our research, is “Perry’s Chemical Engineers Handbook”.  Now, if you read the “multicomponent distillation” part of the (seventh edition of the) book, you will find that, half-way through the discussion of Underwood’s equations, the author of that section makes a mistake – the flows leaving his column are not 100, when his basis set is. 

Of course, I did the only responsible thing to do, and used Imperial College’s press office to continually hound the leading author of the book, demanding to know how such a travesty could have happened, that he resign, and that the university where he worked be disbanded.

Well, I guess I could have done these things, but like the responsible (and self-important) engineer that I am, I e-mailed the editorial office (I also told my students about the error, thus inflating my ego further, though I suspect not necessarily their opinion of me).  Apparently, the error had already been identified (deflating my ego) and so had already been corrected in the 8^th Edition.  So, I wrote a note in the margin of the 7^th edition, pointing out the error, being careful not to be spotted by the librarian, who takes a different view to me over the superiority of my knowledge to that originally presented in the book.

So, what have we learned? Three things:  1. Mistakes can happen in highly technical books of around 3000 pages, with multiple authors.  2.  It was corrected because as well as me, some other scientists and engineers had mentioned it.  3. I am prone to self aggrandisement.

Of course, the observant amongst you will probably have realised the parallels with the IPCC’s 4^th assessment report.  Rajendra Pachauri was the Chairman of the IPCC when this happened.  Now, I haven’t read the entirety of either Perry or AR4, but I can tell you this with some confidence:  both have further unreported errors within them. But the fact that they do does not mean that the vast majority of the information and science within them is incorrect.  If scientists never made mistakes, we’d pretty much know everything that there was to know by now.  The fact that there were some errors in such large pieces of work doesn’t mean that either of the people in charge of putting the books together should be fired.