Using history and at least one other area of knowledge, examine the claim that it is possible to attain knowledge despite problems of bias and selection.

     According to the most recent IPCC report, our climate is changing in an unfavorable way as the earth’s surface temperature is increasing considerably which threatens the existence of many species and could be highly dangerous to the human race in the long run as well. But above all, they claimed that the “global warming” is mostly due to anthropogenic emission of greenhouse gases which met strong oppositions. In all of them, the NIPCC’s report led by Professor Fred Singer stands out as the strongest resistance. The report accuses the IPCC’s report for being “marred by errors and misstatements” and for ignoring “the scientific data that were available but were inconsistent with the authors’ pre-conceived conclusions”, etc. In fact, the IPCC did admit in its report in 2001 that “In climate research and modeling, we should recognize that we are dealing with a coupled non-linear chaotic system, and therefore that the long-term prediction of future climate states is not possible” which essentially means that they did admit that there are bias and selections but nevertheless it appears to us that they still drew some bold conclusions such as the one mentioned previously.  In the NIPCC’s report, it is made evident that there are various factors that the IPCC did not take into account such as solar activity, negative feedbacks from water, the urban heat island effect… and their computer models such as the “hockey-stick” diagram is not reliable.

     However, there are substantial basis that one can use to persuade others that the global temperature is rising such as the well-known fact that corals are very sensitive to temperature chance and they cannot live in high-temperature regions. Many scientific studies have shown that the Great Barrier Reef in Australia is dying and that corals are trying to move to the colder waters in the north which suggests that the temperature is really rising. The IPCC’s studies have shown that though global temperature varies, it follows an increasing trend nevertheless. Furthermore, recordings from ice cores in the Arctic and Antarctica have shown that the amount of global CO2 gas present is the highest ever recorded. Even though, to draw a conclusion at this point is premature and will not be convincing because it seems that one will commit a “post ergo propter hoc” fallacy. But nowadays, it is commonly accepted that CO2 is a greenhouse gas, one of the major greenhouse gases that we actually have some form of control over (we do not have control over water vapor) and greenhouse gases can retain heat in the atmosphere and possibly heat the atmosphere up. And in addition, there are diagrams that show that the temperature in overall has been rising after the Industrial Revolution which contributed enormously to the atmospheric CO2 layer. Together, one may conclude that there is a rise in temperature and it is due to greenhouse gases, but to what extent, one cannot be sure, at least for the time being. In the end, small variations can be ignored because the starting point and ending point are more important in the sense that they indicate what actually happened overall.

     Is it any different in history? The seizure of power in Russia in 1919 by the Bolsheviks can be a classic example of how bias and selection in sources might affect the result. There have been debates as to whether the famous October Revolution was a “coup d’etat” or a “popular revolution”. When examine this event, there are two main different sources: Russian sources – books written by Russian historians in the Soviet Union and Western sources – books written by historians in the Western world. It is clear that both sources might contain bias to some extent because the Soviet Union was famous for having a strict censorship of all sorts of media while the many Westerners have deep hatred for Communism. So how do we know what actually happened?

     Books such as “The Great October Revolution as a Clandestine Coup D’etat” by Richard Pipes or “A People’s Tragedy” by Orlando Figes accounts the “Revolution” as no more than a mere coup carried out by a handful of Red Guards and Revolutionaries, there was no strong substantial support from the people. On the Russian side , “History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union” by  B.N. Pomomarev tells us something totally different, the “Revolution” is described as a struggle of the working class people and it emphasizes the fact that the workers led the “Revolution” on their own and therefore the event was a popular revolution.

     Now, even though the Soviet Union is well-known for its strict censorship and Soviet documents for most of the time are bias, one cannot know if this book is belongs to all those bias sources or not. One can go very close to the conclusion that this Russian book is just a mere Bolshevik propaganda but this is based on the assumption that because all previous books were censored heavily and used as propaganda tools, this book would be the same which is based on inductive reasoning. And as far as we know, induction is not always a reliable tool to provide knowledge, for instance: people all though that the sun was revolving around the earth until Copernicus, Galilee showed them that it is actually the earth that was orbiting the sun. Furthermore, if Russian sources can be bias, why Western sources cannot be bias? Despite the fact that they were written by highly respected historians, there is no absolute guarantee that they did not create their works with some specific intentions. Perhaps the extent of bias and selection are on a lower level but who are we to draw the line? It is extremely to make a clear-cut here, whether the October Revolution was indeed a “coup d’etat” or a “popular revolution”. However, from all sources, we can come to the conclusion that one event certainly happened: there was a seizure of power of the government. Besides that, there is insufficient evidence to reach a conclusion because the sources truly contradict each other and there is no strong basis to prefer Russian source over Western source or vice versa.

     From both examples from natural sciences and history, one can definitely come to the conclusion that with the problem of bias and selection, it is only possible to attain “partial knowledge”, the amount of data provided is insufficient to reach a definitive conclusion. So the claim that it is possible to attain knowledge despite problems of bias and selection is only agreeable to some extent but not absolutely.

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