Scott Alexander estimates the frequency of significant scientific failures to evaluate the plausibility of climate change skepticism. Longer summary

Scott Alexander explores the frequency of scientific failures to assess the likelihood of climate change skepticism being correct. He defines criteria for significant scientific failures and identifies three clear examples: Lysenkoism, Freudian psychoanalysis, and behaviorism in psychology. After estimating the total number of possible scientific paradigms, he calculates a failure rate of about 1.2-3.6%. He concludes that this low failure rate doesn't provide much support for climate change skepticism, as it's similar to the proportion of papers that don't support anthropogenic climate change. Shorter summary

Scott Alexander explores the concept of 'Lizardman's Constant' and its implications for interpreting poll results, especially those concerning unpopular beliefs. Longer summary

Scott Alexander discusses the concept of 'Lizardman's Constant', which refers to the roughly 4% of respondents in polls who give outlandish or deliberately false answers. He explores this through three examples: a personal experience with survey responses, a poll about conspiracy theories, and a controversial study on climate change skepticism. The post argues that when dealing with unpopular beliefs, polls can only provide weak signals that are easily overwhelmed by noise from various sources, including jokesters, cognitive biases, and deliberate misbehavior. Scott concludes that polls relying on detecting very weak signals should be treated with skepticism. Shorter summary