Andrew_FL (Comment#13556) May 13th, 2009 at 9:30 am

“The moment one has offered an original explanation for a phenomenon which seems satisfactory, that moment affection for his intellectual child springs into existence, and as the explanation grows into a definite theory his parental affections cluster about his offspring and it grows more dear to him…As this parental affection takes possession of the mind, there is a rapid passage to the adoption of the theory. There is an unconscious selection and magnifying of phenomena that fall into harmony with the theory and support it, and an unconscious neglect of those that fail of coincidence…

When these biasing tendencies set in, the mind rapidly degenerates into the partiality of paternalism. The search for facts, the observation of phenomena and their interpretation, are all dominated by affection for the favored theory until it appears to its author or its advocate to have been overwhelmingly established. The theory then rapidly rises to the ruling position, and investigation, observation, and interpretation are controlled and directed by it. From an unduly favored child, it readily becomes master, and leads its author whithersoever it will…

When the last stage has been reached, unless the theory happens, perchance, to be the true one, all hope of the best results is gone.” ~ T C Chamberlain

When one is wedded to the hypothesis of dangerous warming, you naturally want to use only the hypothesis tests which will fail to reject it. So the confidence intervals today are ginormous. In other matters they maybe narrower, whatever suits the need.

Granted, this doesn’t mean that Gavin or his hypothesis is wrong, but it is one explanation for why he likes the tests of models he is doing.