There’s an article in yesterday’s New York Times about doubts the public is having about the goodness of scientific publications as they learn more about what the peer-review system does, and does not, involve. It’s worth a read, if only to illuminate what non-scientists seem to have assumed went on in peer review, and to contrast that with what actually happens. This raises the obvious question: Ought peer review to be what ordinary people assume it to be? My short answer, about which more below the fold:Not unless you’re prepared to completely revamp the institutional structure in which science is practiced, and especially the system of rewards.
Category Archives: Scientist/layperson relations
Commenter calls for better terminology.
A couple posts ago I posed these questions:
What do you want lay people to have as part of their store of scientific knowledge? What piece of scientific knowledge have you found especially useful, or would you like to have if you don’t already?
Among other things, my query prompted this response from commenter tbell1:
I’m usually just a lurker here on science blogs, but I have a pet peeve about the use of the terms ‘lay’ or ‘lay people’ in reference to nonprofessionals in science. Doesn’t it just stink of religion? Am I the only one who hates the term? Can we generate an alternative? ‘non-professional’ is a mouthful, but can’t we just say ‘people’ or ‘the public’ or educated citizens or something?
Scientific knowledge for the masses.
Over at Evolgen, RPM links to an article that lists ten “basic questions” to which ten different scientists think high school graduates should know the answers. (It was one question from each scientist, so it’s unclear whether all ten would agree that they are the ten most important questions, or even that all ten of these scientists could answer all ten to the others’ satisfaction.) RPM opines that the list seems heavy on trivia (or at least seemingly random facts) and light on really helpful scientific knowledge. He writes:
Let’s focus on two things: the hypothetical deductive method and essential information that you must know to be able to read the science section of a newspaper.
Well, I’m a bandwagon jumper-upon of long standing, so let me add some items I’d like the masses to be able to take on:
“The Real Science Ethics Issues”
Today at Inside Higher Education, an article identifies “The Real Science Ethics Issues”. Which means, I suppose, you don’t have to keep taking my word about what’s an issue and what is not. The focus of the article is not on the flashier instances of fraud, but on more mundane stuff that may rot the scientific enterprise from the inside.
Earthquake anniversary musings on what science doesn’t give us.
One hundred years ago today, 18 April 1906, a major earthquake (estimated to be 7.9 on the richter scale) nearly destroyed the city of San Francisco and did some serious damage to other communities in the area. Here in the Bay Area, there are various commemorations of the event taking place, and the local papers have all hit the vaults to dig up accounts of the quake, and of the fires that followed. (See, for example, the Chronicle’s “Great Quake” page. Of course, the U.S. Geological Survey has a page with great quake links, too.)
So in a very obvious way, you could say there’s lots of earthquake “awareness” in these parts. But the commemoration (some even call it a “celebration”, although no one is actually celebrating the destruction and deaths caused by the quake) has an uneasy feel to it.
Journalism, science, politics, and choosing sides.
In a post last week, I was trying to work out whether science journalism can do something more for us than just delivering press releases from the scientists. Specifically, I suggested that journalists with a reasonable understanding of scientific methodology could do some work to assess the credibility of the research described in the press releases, as well as the credibility of the scientists issuing those press releases.
Although the post was concerned with the general question of whether science journalism can do this bit of evaluative work for a lay audience that, by and large, is both rusty on the basics of scientific methodology and at least a little scared of thinking hard about technical issues, it was prompted by the particular strategy Chris Mooney set forth for his reporting in The Republican War on Science, and by Steve Fuller’s critique of that in his essay for the Crooked Timber seminar on Chris’s book. And, in a comment on my post, Steve Fuller brings us back to the question of the particular strategy Chris was using, and of the sorts of standards to which journalistic work guided by this strategy ought to be held. I think this is a fair question, but it brings us into the turbulent waters at the confluence of science and politics, where journalism may go beyond presenting an objective picture of the terrain and may exhort us to choose a side.
So you might want to grab a life-jacket before we begin.
Lancaster follow-up: the Antelope Valley Press gets it.
You’ll recall that the Lancaster(California) school district has recently adopted a “science philosophy” that calls for critical thinking about evolutionary theory … but no other scientific theory in the curriculum.
You’ll recall that the school district trustees didn’t seem to view this as having anything to do with opening the door for the teaching of creationism or intelligent design.
If you read the comments, though, you’ve discovered that Alex Branning, the entrepreneur who spearheaded this new policy, and who claimed to have no truck with creationists or ID proponents, is the registered owner of the domain evolutionisimpossible.com.
If you really want critical thinking, why restrict where you’re calling for it?
Hey, guess what? A California school district has adopted a new science policy aimed at getting students to think more critically … about evolutionary theory. It is not entirely clear whether members of the Lancaster School District board of trustees recognize that the policy effectively singles out evolution for scrutiny, or whether they were duped. But I’m pretty sure I’ve heard this song before.
Serving two masters is sometimes impossible.
The last two meetings of my ethics in science class have focused on some of the history of research with human subjects and on the changing statements of ethical principles or rules governing such experimentation. Looking at these statements (the Nuremberg Code and the Belmont Report especially) against the backdrop of some very serious missteps (Nazi medical experiments and the Public Health Service’s Tuskegee syphilis experiment), it’s painfully clear how much regulation is scandal-driven — a reaction to a screw-up, rather than something that researchers took the time to think about before they embarked on their research. Worse, it’s clear that researchers are perfectly capable of ignoring existing moral codes or standards to get the job done.
What some of these researchers may not have understood (but my students seem pretty well attuned to) is that in ignoring the norms that one ought, as a physician or a scientist, to be committed to, one comes perilously close to choosing not to be a physician or a scientist.
OK, let’s get rid of basic research.
Yesterday I flailed vaguely in the direction of a case we could make for funding basic research with public monies. I was trying to find an alternative to the standard argument usually advanced for funding such research (namely, that basic research frequently brings about all manner of practical applications that were completely unforeseen when the basic research was envisioned and conducted). The standard argument makes a reasonable point — we can’t usually tell ahead of time what basic knowledge will be “good for” — but it strikes me that this strategy boils down to saying “basic research is really applied research, only the applications are fun surprises down the road.”
Some of us, I think, see basic research as potentially worthwhile even in the absence of applications down the road.
But who cares what the technocrats think! If it’s the public’s money, then it’s the public’s opinions that matter here. Why on earth should they fund research whose only payoff is to deepen our knowledge and understanding of some bit of the universe?
As commenters to the earlier post point out, the public cares little for expanding the knowledge base if it doesn’t translate into direct benefits to them — in health care, gas mileage, tastier chips, tinier iPods, whatever. Scientists are free to pursue the answers to the deep foundational questions that keep them up at night, by why should we have to pay for it?
Maybe basic knowledge isn’t the same kind of societal good that a museum or a park is. (Maybe it is, and the public doesn’t want to fund museums or parks, either.)
So, it is resolved: The public shall no longer fund basic research. What now?