{"id":28341,"date":"2016-08-26T11:00:46","date_gmt":"2016-08-26T01:00:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/?p=28341"},"modified":"2016-08-25T09:53:25","modified_gmt":"2016-08-24T23:53:25","slug":"the-physics-of-scepticism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/the-physics-of-scepticism\/","title":{"rendered":"The physics of scepticism"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Image<\/a><\/p>\n

Every morning I\u2019m quite sure that two people wake up thinking, \u2018thank goodness Nic Stuart isn\u2019t a theoretical physicist\u2019. I\u2019m one. The other is my science teacher.<\/p>\n

The point of this revelation is that when theoretical physicists observe phenomena (they never simply \u2018see things\u2019), they draw plausible deductions by noting correlations between one occurrence and another. It\u2019s the sort of people they are. That\u2019s why Andrew Davies and Mark Thomson\u2019s recent (detailed, and exhaustive) post<\/a> provided an interesting exploration of whether there were any meaningful relationships between more than 250,000 defence contracts released between 2007 and 2014.<\/p>\n

I, on the other hand, am a journalist. This means first, that I\u2019m not nearly so well paid as my theoretical physicist friends and second (and quite possibly as a directly correlated result of the first difference) I\u2019m naturally far more bitter and suspicious. I \u2018know\u2019 the card deck\u2019s stacked against me and so yes, I\u2019m naturally mistrustful. Particularly of government and big institutions.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m certainly, most definitely, absolutely not the sort of person who\u2019s likely to rush into print and write a gushing blog post about the fact that the system seems to be working\u2014even if that does, indeed, appear to be the case. Instead I\u2019ll examine exactly the same data set to search for conspiracy, duplicity, and bungling. Because I know it\u2019s there. It must be!<\/p>\n

So that\u2019s why my immediate reaction on reading the Davies\/Thomson post was to assume something had to be wrong. Not with their information or workings, of course, but with their conclusions. Sure, I thought to myself, the physicists might possess the data and they may, indeed, have the numbers. But it\u2019s journalists who own the questions and the nagging doubts. So let\u2019s give scepticism full rein\u2026<\/p>\n

The dataset Davies and Thomson lay out is certainly smooth. So too is their conclusion. I suspect that (like me) they\u2019d expected, maybe even hoped, to find anomalies: that the Army, Navy and Air Force would spend up big whenever they got the chance and, as a result, the dollars (and the spending) wouldn\u2019t be predictable and would appear in random, spluttering bursts. It turned out that isn\u2019t the case. It seemed to take them rather a lot of words, graphs and numbers to explain their point and come up with a null result<\/a>, although that’s always part of the problem with scientists. They feel the need to explain things beyond doubt and then waste time \u2018interrogating their findings\u2019 to ensure they\u2019re \u2018robust\u2019. That\u2019s something that no journalist ever worries about.<\/p>\n

That’s for a very good reason. We know that if the system seems to be working, then it\u2019s been designed to answer the wrong question.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s just take it as read that the scientists didn\u2019t discover any glaring anomalies or evidence of anything beyond the mundane. The point is that Davies and Thomson were looking for unexplained deviations; the incongruous; inappropriate expenditure. They haven\u2019t found it and are thus happy. Well, as happy as a couple of physicists can be when they\u2019re given data-sets and x and y axes to play with.<\/p>\n

And who can doubt the evidence? The ADF certainly looks today to be better prepared for potential challenges than possibly ever before in peacetime. In the late 90s we were lucky to be able to get away with carrying off the intervention in East Timor without disaster<\/a> given the parlous state of the forces.<\/p>\n

Today, however, it\u2019s a very different story. No one can doubt that there’d now be a real capacity to intervene decisively in most plausible scenarios that would require the use, or threat, of force. Similarly when it comes to contributing to a multi-national force. The extended deployments in the Middle East have given all three services considerable operational experience and familiarity with the challenges of working with allies. Finally, the military has also demonstrated it has the capacity to keep the continent\u2019s maritime border secure. These are certainly remarkable accomplishments and these achievements fit into the broader image drawn from the dataset.<\/p>\n

Nevertheless, it\u2019s with exactly that picture that the journalist in me wants to quibble. If we\u2019re prepared for these challenges then it seems quite clear that these aren’t the ones we\u2019re going to have to face in the future. And the danger is that, if we sit around and pat ourselves on the back about being prepared to face the predictable challenges, the big new ones are going to suddenly catch us unawares.<\/p>\n

Now I\u2019m certainly not suggesting any complacency exists, least of all amongst the physicists at ASPI. The gaps, however, are real and worrying. Our inability to effectively cope with a potential terrorist incident is being chronicled daily in the Sydney newspapers<\/a>. There is dangerously little social resilience.<\/p>\n

Excellent work has recently been published by retired Air Vice Marshal John Blackburn demonstrating Australia\u2019s vulnerability because of dependence on oil stocks<\/a> and other work by John Blaxland on the desperate lack of regional language skills and understanding<\/a> that we exhibit as a society. And those two deficiencies are just ones detailed by people whose names begin with the letter \u2018B\u2019; imagine how many others we could list by the time we got to \u2018S\u2019.<\/p>\n

We need to focus on addressing these issues urgently, before it\u2019s too late.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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