On Peer Reviewed Science

[andreasmaaan]

I don't agree. Dispassionate science doesn't care what other stories people make from it. Nor does it have 'interests'. (Being very purist of course).

But yes, I think what you say is the gist of the article - I just don't agree with it!

It's certainly a pragmatic rather than idealistic approach.

 

[Cosmik]

Our job as scientists is to find the truth. But we must also be storytellers

The clue is in the headline. One reading of it is that the 'but' hints that there may be some conflict between the truth and the story. 'And' would have worked, but would not drop that hint...

 

[Cosmik]

It's certainly a pragmatic rather than idealistic approach.

Do you have a real example of where it would have been in science's best interests to have defined the story from the outset? Or a hypothetical example?

 

[SIY]

Our job as scientists is to find the truth. But we must also be storytellers

The guy isn't a scientist. He just puts on a (virtual) lab coat and pretends. The "our" in that statement is particularly mendacious.

Remember the rule of thumb: if you have to tack "science" onto the end of the name of your field of interest, it's likely not science. I don't do physics science or chemistry science or biology science, I do physics, chemistry, and biology. They don't need "storytelling," they need actual research.

 

[Wombat]

Science is fundamentally, evolutionary/progressive. Open to challenge. Any challenge is considered. New information can change the status-quo. At least there is a methodology in place, unlike the opinion driven 'audiophile' subjective world which takes umbrage with disagreement.

Philosophy is about an all-things-go debate. Let us recognise the difference. Science is searching for physical truth, the other is all about discussing intangibles. Agreement is death to philosophical discourse.

 

[andreasmaaan]

IMO science - and I mean real, hard, dispassionate science - is always invested in storytelling, at both a macro and micro level.

A scientific theory is a story (if you want an example, the big bang theory is narrative at its best).

Every scientific study, with its problem-action-resolution narrative, is a story.

So in this sense, scientists are always telling or participating in stories.

I think in English the word "story" can tend to have a connotation of being made-up, but this is not the case in all languages (in German for example the same word denotes "story" and "history"). And I certainly don't think this connotation of being made-up is what the author intends. A story can be truthful, and in the world of science, it should aim to be so.

And FWIW, the author comes from the field linguistics, which I would certainly not call a science - lol.

 

[svart-hvitt]

IMO science - and I mean real, hard, dispassionate science - is always invested in storytelling, at both a macro and micro level.

A scientific theory is a story (if you want an example, the big bang theory is narrative at its best).

Every scientific study, with its problem-action-resolution narrative, is a story.

So in this sense, scientists are always telling or participating in stories.

I think in English the word "story" can tend to have a connotation of being made-up, but this is not the case in all languages (in German for example the same word denotes "story" and "history"). And I certainly don't think this connotation of being made-up is what the author intends. A story can be truthful, and in the world of science, it should aim to be so.

And FWIW, the author comes from the field linguistics, which I would certainly not call a science - lol.

What do you mean by «real, hard, dispassionate science»?

I guess you will heat up people once you start defining what’s not real, what’s not hard and what’s not dispassionate.

BTW, language is definitely worthy of scientific efforts. All software is made up of language. And people claim the borders between software and hardware may not always be so clear.

 

[andreasmaaan]

What do you mean by «real, hard, dispassionate science»?

I guess you will heat up people once you start defining what’s not real, what’s not hard and what’s not dispassionate.

BTW, language is definitely worthy of scientific efforts. All software is made up of language. And people claim the borders between software and hardware may not always be so clear.

I tried to define science in earlier posts as having the scientific method, and in particular, experimental falsifiability, at its core. This is what I meant by "real" and "hard". By "dispassionate", I meant free of bias.

When I said the author was not a scientist because he is a linguist, I meant that the field linguistics does not have the scientific method at its core and is not subject to experimental falsifiability.

Linguistics is better characterised as a branch of philosophy IMO.

EDIT: nothing is free of bias, but dispassionate science aims to separate the scientist's practice from their biases.

 

[dc655321]

When I said the author was not a scientist because he is a linguist, I meant that the field linguistics does not have the scientific method at its core and is not subject to experimental falsifiability.

Linguistics is better characterised as a branch of philosophy IMO.

Do the mathematical aspects of language exclude it from classification as science?
IOW, does this aspect of linguistics make it a philosophical pursuit?
I don't know if Chomsky would agree with that position or not...

If you've never constructed or delved into the guts of a compiler (I'm looking at you, GCC!), then I can understand how only looking at human languages and semantics would lead one to this position.

I don't agree. Dispassionate science doesn't care what other stories people make from it. Nor does it have 'interests'. (Being very purist of course).

That seems like a very blunt (militant?) position to take for such a multi-faceted issue.
The scientists I've worked with care a great deal about how their work is received: scrutiny from peers, understanding and appreciation from general public, securing funding from those holding the purse.

The desired reception among the differing audiences can only be achieved by great communication skills.
Sadly, as you and others have pointed out, those skills often fall short.

 

[andreasmaaan]

Do the mathematical aspects of language exclude it from classification as science?
IOW, does this aspect of linguistics make it a philosophical pursuit?
I don't know if Chomsky would agree with that position or not...

If you've never constructed or delved into the guts of a compiler (I'm looking at you, GCC!), then I can understand how only looking at human languages and semantics would lead one to this position.

I think linguistics is probably too broad a field to place the whole lot of it into the category of philosophy, so I should have qualified my remark somewhat.

However, I'd place Chomsky's "universal grammar" particularly in the category of philosophy

 

[Cosmik]

That seems like a very blunt (militant?) position to take for such a multi-faceted issue.
The scientists I've worked with care a great deal about how their work is received...

Scientists might care, but the science itself isn't supposed to - if you see what I mean. The science is meant to be separate from the people who pursue it. It even extends to the way it is written down - depersonalized, no first person, etc.

 

[dc655321]

Scientists might care, but the science itself isn't supposed to - if you see what I mean. The science is meant to be separate from the people who pursue it.

I vaguely understand what you mean. Maybe...

Something like, "the body of knowledge should be free of personality"?

Anthropomorphization (?) does no favors for the argument, though ;-)

It even extends to the way it is written down - depersonalized, no first person, etc.

But, that is a deliberate communication technique.
It is taught, rightly or wrongly, to scientists and engineers as the position to communicate from, among peers.

Eons ago, Aristotle's Rhetoric tried to convey that effective communication must embrace ethos, pathos, logos in equal measure.
It seems the dispassionate communication you refer to above leans entirely on the logic (logos) footing, to the detriment of the field.

 

[Cosmik]

...to the detriment of the field.

In what way?

 

[dc655321]

In what way?

Accessibility.

Scientists must communicate one way (impersonally) among themselves, then switch tact (dramatically!) to communicate to a non-expert audience.
I can't think of very many that have managed this trick (Feynman?, Sagan?) with great success.
The alternative, and present situation, is that communication to the public is managed by so-called science press. IMO, they fail miserably, missing the balance I mentioned above.

 

[Cosmik]

Accessibility.

Scientists must communicate one way (impersonally) among themselves, then switch tact (dramatically!) to communicate to a non-expert audience.
I can't think of very many that have managed this trick (Feynman?, Sagan?) with great success.
The alternative, and present situation, is that communication to the public is managed by so-called science press. IMO, they fail miserably, missing the balance I mentioned above.

What is special about science that means *it* needs to be communicated with a non-expert audience? We're all specialists in our fields e.g. I'm an engineer, and I don't feel the need for my *engineering* to be communicated to a non-expert audience. I may, as an 'extra-curricular' activity enjoy talking about engineering to other people, but that is then just me pontificating about engineering. It isn't the engineering ('science') itself.

Scientists seem to think that their work is so important that *it* needs to be communicated to a wider audience. Can't scientists separate the science from the communicating? Blurring them together seems to be a dilution of the objectivity of science.

 

[SIY]

BTW, I posed the question about "is linguistics a science?" to a close friend and a brilliant dude who is the chairman of the linguistics department at a reasonably prominent university (my apologies, I have to keep his identity in confidence). Here's his answer:

No, I don't consider linguistics to be a science. For the sake of simplicity, just looking at theoretical linguistics, I would say the field is closer to mathematics in that it attempts to describe a formal system. While linguists can and do glean empirical evidence from experimentation (mostly phonetics - which is basically a branch of biophysics at this point), there is enough of the field that works from a priori reasoning (semantics and pragmatics, especially).

 

[andreasmaaan]

What is special about science that means *it* needs to be communicated with a non-expert audience? We're all specialists in our fields e.g. I'm an engineer, and I don't feel the need for my *engineering* to be communicated to a non-expert audience. I may, as an 'extra-curricular' activity enjoy talking about engineering to other people, but that is then just me pontificating about engineering. It isn't the engineering ('science') itself.

Scientists seem to think that their work is so important that *it* needs to be communicated to a wider audience. Can't scientists separate the science from the communicating? Blurring them together seems to be a dilution of the objectivity of science.

I think the important question is not whether it *needs* to be communicated to a non-expert audience, but that it *is*.

Given that is the case, the question becomes one of how.

 

[dc655321]

Scientists seem to think that their work is so important that *it* needs to be communicated to a wider audience.

Some of it is that important to the pursuit of life, liberty, and happiness.
Earth and medical science, in particular.
Without support ($$$) garnered via effective communication, research and advancement doesn't happen.

I'm an engineer, and I don't feel the need for my *engineering* to be communicated to a non-expert audience.

That's 'cause nobody cares about engineers ;-)
I say that in jest as a fellow engineer.

 

[sergeauckland]

I think the important question is not whether it *needs* to be communicated to a non-expert audience, but that it *is*.

Given that is the case, the question becomes one of how.

Much of the funding for science ultimately comes from Government, and those decisions are made by politicians and Civil Servants that aren't scientists themselves, although may have scientists as advisors. Nevertheless, the decision is made by non-scientists so scientists have to explain what they do and what they need funding for, in ways that non-specialists can understand. Add to that an often hostile press, who really don't, or want to, understand the scientific method, and it's no surprise that scientists have to have story to tell.

If the science that's being done is, for example, medical research, then that's a lot easier to put across than a lot of very important fundamental research into, say, cosmology or quantum mechanics. It's a wonderful thing that CERN and the LHC got funded and keeps going, but I wonder how much of their work ever gets into the mainstream press or gets discussed down at the pub.

S.

 

[Fitzcaraldo215]

What is special about science that means *it* needs to be communicated with a non-expert audience? We're all specialists in our fields e.g. I'm an engineer, and I don't feel the need for my *engineering* to be communicated to a non-expert audience. I may, as an 'extra-curricular' activity enjoy talking about engineering to other people, but that is then just me pontificating about engineering. It isn't the engineering ('science') itself.

Scientists seem to think that their work is so important that *it* needs to be communicated to a wider audience. Can't scientists separate the science from the communicating? Blurring them together seems to be a dilution of the objectivity of science.

But, what about just communication to students of science, rather than to the non-expert general public? If you have ever sat in an advanced science course taught by a professor with an impenetrable Asian accent, as I have - what fun -the importance of communication of complex concepts becomes rather clear. Is the science so self evident that how it is communicated is totally irrelevant? Is it not important to educate students in science, even at high school or lower levels? Are teachers of science not themselves capable of being scientists?