Science

Science bloggers and their sometimes troublesome relation to science journalists is a topic that I have come across many times since I started writing this blog. And in many instances I have heard statements of the sort that blogging will render journalism obsolete. Bora’s recent post a id=”a097091″ href=”http://scienceblogs.com/clock/2008/12/the_shock_value_of_science_blo.php”emThe Shock Value of Science Blogs/em/a is a nice example. He writesbr /blockquote“The job of translating Scientese into English (or whatever is the local language) has traditionally been done by professional science journalists. Unfortunately, most science journalists (hats off to the rare and excellent exceptions) are absolutely awful about it. They have learned the journalistic tools, but have no background in science. They think they are educated, but they only really know how to use the language to appear they are educated. Fortunately for everyone, the Web is allowing scientists to speak directly to the public, bypassing, marginalizing and pushing into extinction the entire class of science “journalists” because, after all, most scientists are excellent communicators. And those who are, more and more are starting to use blogs as a platform for such communication.br /br /[I]n science journalism, there exist out there people with real expertise - the scientists themselves - who now have the tools and means to bypass you and make you obsolete because you cannot add any value any more.”/blockquotebr /He than bashes around a bit on George Johnson and John Horgan, and ends with sayingbr /blockquote“Perhaps if we remove those middle-men and have scientists and the public start talking to each other directly, then we will have the two groups start talking to each other openly, honestly and in an informal language that is non-threatening (and understood as such) by all. The two sides can engage and learn from each other. The people who write ignorant, over-hyping articles, the kinds we bloggers love to debunk (by being able to compare to the actual papers because we have the background) are just making the entire business of science communication muddled and wrong. Please step aside.”/blockquoteWell, there is two things I have to say about that.br /br /For one, as far as I am concerned most scientists are not particularly good writers (I include myself in that) and since I appreciate a piece of good writing I sincerely hope professional journalism will prevail. Having acquired the necessary skills and appropriate education certainly helps to this matters. I don’t know what Bora’s standards are, but I find the vast majority of science blogs not particularly well written (YOU obviously belong to the minority of brilliant writers).br /br /Second, reporting by scientists about their own research is always bound to be biased, and an important task of journalists is to provide an objective outside view. This might not always work out to the scientists’ favour. John Horgan eg is certainly known for his cynical view on some branches of science, and it is of little surprise some scientists are put off by this. But such criticism fulfils an important function in disconnecting topics from people who are their direct originators, much like editorials in newspapers are not generally written by politicians.br /br /I am not saying that science journalism presently is fulfilling this task very well (see eg earlier post a href=”http://backreaction.blogspot.com/2007/11/fact-or-fiction.html”emFact or Fiction?/em/a, and a href=”http://backreaction.blogspot.com/2008/12/when-capitalism-fails.html”emWhen Capitalism Fails/em /afor why this is the case), but it has its place and I think we need it. Science blogs can certainly contribute to communicating science, by providing the details that journalists don’t cover - details about the research or also the life as researcher. But leaving science journalism completely over to bloggers is not a good idea.pppdiv class=”blogger-post-footer”"You do not really understand something unless you can explain it to your grandmother.” ~ Albert Einsteinimg width=’1′ height=’1′ src=’http://res1.blogblog.com/tracker/22973357-811570642500633896?l=backreaction.blogspot.com’//div

Some random things I came across recently and thought you’d enjoy:br /br /ulliIf you still haven’t understood what universal health insurance is good for, read this: a href=”http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/18/nyregion/18insure.html”For Uninsured Young Adults, Do-It-Yourself Health Care/a. Statistically, this is the most healthy agegroup…/libr /liRobert has a href=”http://atdotde.blogspot.com/2009/02/better-than-refereeing-fees.html”an interesting post about and agaist refereeing fees/a. See also our posts Peer Review a href=”http://backreaction.blogspot.com/2006/03/peer-review-ii.html”II/a, a href=”http://backreaction.blogspot.com/2008/02/peer-review-iii.html”III/a, a href=”http://backreaction.blogspot.com/2008/02/peer-review-iv.html”IV/a and a href=”http://backreaction.blogspot.com/2008/11/peer-review-v.html”V/a./libr /liPaul Kedrosky comments on a href=”http://paul.kedrosky.com/archives/2009/02/18/cheap_credit_an.html”Cheap Credit and Higher Education Tuition/a. Where is your country going?/libr /lia href=”http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v442/n7099/images/442125a-i1.0.jpg”Great Photo/a/libr /liQuotation of the week:br /br /“If all economists were laid end to end, they would not reach a conclusion.” br /div align=”right”~ George Bernard Shaw/divbr //uldiv class=”blogger-post-footer”"You do not really understand something unless you can explain it to your grandmother.” ~ Albert Einsteinimg width=’1′ height=’1′ src=’http://res1.blogblog.com/tracker/22973357-2931580317872678930?l=backreaction.blogspot.com’//div

I recently came across this astonishing quotation, also referred to as “the F-twist”:br /br /blockquote“Truly important and significant hypotheses will be found to have “assumptions” that are wildly inaccurate descriptive representations of reality, and, in general, the more significant the theory, the more unrealistic the assumptions (in this sense). The reason is simple. A hypothesis is important if it “explains” much by little, that is, if it abstracts the common and critical elements from the mass of complex and detailed circumstances surrounding the phenomena to be explained and permits valid predictions on the basis of them alone. To be important, therefore, a hypothesis must be descriptively false in its assumptions; it takes account of, and accounts for, none of the many other attendant circumstances, since its very success shows them to be irrelevant for the phenomena to be explained.” /blockquotediv align=”right”~a href=”http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milton_Friedman”Milton Friedman/a, a href=”http://members.shaw.ca/compilerpress1/Anno%20Friedman%20Positive.htm”emThe Methodology of Positive Economics/em/a (1953)./divbr /br /I imagine I’d send this as reply to a referee report which criticizes my work on the grounds that I might have found a great dark matter candidate, but not only have I assumed unbroken supersymmetry, my model also has four neutrino generations and, oh, only 2 spatial dimensions. Assumptions that indeed qualify as unrealistic and wildly inaccurate. For not to say, bluntly wrong.br /br /But maybe I am being unfair.br /br /Let me guess what Friedman might have wanted to say. The more parsimonious a model, the easier it is to extract relevant features and get an understanding of its behaviour. That does not mean however, it makes for a better model the fewer and more unrealistic assumptions you have. Certainly, the standard model of particle physics would be nicer if all fermions were massless and chiral symmetry was unbroken. Unfortunately, it doesn’t describe Nature then. That’s why we distinguish between models of the real world, and ‘toy models’ meant as testing ground to increase our understanding of the general features (see earlier post on a href=”http://backreaction.blogspot.com/2008/04/models-and-theories.html”emModels and Theories/em/a).br /br /But maybe also this is unfair.br /br /He might have meant to say that a simplifying assumption does not have to be shown appropriate for a certain range of validity, the range in which predictions derived from the assumption then can be made. Instead, one can just see whether the model works and such justify the assumption a posteriori. Unfortunately, that too is nonsense. If you don’t specify the range of validity of your assumptions (typically by showing that the effect of deviations from the assumptions is negligible for the result) your model is not falsifiable and thus not scientific. If you test it and the outcome does not match your predictions, you can just go and say, well, the assumptions were not fulfilled.br /br /Thus, I am afraid unless you want to redefine what you mean with a scientific theory, this is not a good starting point. One wonders why he felt the need to put “explain” in quotation marks.br /br /See also: a href=”http://backreaction.blogspot.com/2008/10/shut-up-and-calculate.html”Shut up and calculate/apppdiv class=”blogger-post-footer”"You do not really understand something unless you can explain it to your grandmother.” ~ Albert Einsteinimg width=’1′ height=’1′ src=’http://res1.blogblog.com/tracker/22973357-787848371646755096?l=backreaction.blogspot.com’//div

I don’t sleep well at night. One gets used to it. Over the years I have developed a skill in writing imaginary equations on the ceiling. But last night I noticed I’m not the only one in my apartment who is up at night.br /br /My computer presently sleeps on the couch (also known as a href=”http://backreaction.blogspot.com/2006/09/interna.html”‘the ouch’ /ato our long-term readers). That’s because I figured if I work in the living room during the winter I have one room less to heat. And electric heating at an outside temperature below -20 °C makes quite an impact on the bill, believe me. I recently acquired a new computer, a Lenovo Thinkpad, after my Dell had developed more and more bugs and one was eventually fatal (don’t buy Dell).br /br /I wake up around three in the morning and lie around for a while. “Beep!” I hear from the living room. Funny, I think, is this my computer? After a while I hear “Dschingeling!” Indeed, I think, it must be having some kind of dream. And after some more minutes there comes a “Plong!” which I recognize as an error message. My poor computer, has a nightmare.br /br /So I get up and find my computer is wide awake. It seems it decided, after seven hours or so, to notify me that a program didn’t start properly and if I want to send an error report to Microsoft, or maybe restart the program? I hit Ctrl Alt Delete, kill all zombie processes, and put it back to sleep. Not without first switching off the wireless feature. At least so I know it won’t talk to other computers if it has a bad dream.br /ppdiv class=”blogger-post-footer”"You do not really understand something unless you can explain it to your grandmother.” ~ Albert Einsteinimg width=’1′ height=’1′ src=’http://res1.blogblog.com/tracker/22973357-4016057787833105067?l=backreaction.blogspot.com’//div

Dennis Overbye recently had a nice opinion piece in the NYT, titled “a href=”http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/27/science/27essa.html?_r=2″Elevating Science, Elevating Democracy/a.” Since we have discussed the topic of Science and Democracy repeatedly on this blog (a href=”http://backreaction.blogspot.com/2006/06/science-and-democracy.html”Part I/a, a href=”http://backreaction.blogspot.com/2006/06/science-and-democracy-ii.html”Part II/a, a href=”http://backreaction.blogspot.com/2007/03/science-and-democracy-iii.html”Part III/a) I thought it is worthwhile to comment on this piece (see also a href=”http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/cosmicvariance/2009/01/28/science-democracy/”Daniel’s comment/a).br /br /Before Overbye spirals off into an elaboration on China’s problems, he lays out values that are essential both for science and democracy:br /blockquote“Those values, among others, are honesty, doubt, respect for evidence, openness, accountability and tolerance and indeed hunger for opposing points of view.”/blockquotebr /I agree with him on that, but this is about were similarities end. In its function, democracy serves an entirely different purpose than science, and it uses a different mechanism to reach this aim.br /br /Democracy, as other forms of government, is a way to take people’s opinions and come to a common conclusion about what to do, which eventually reflects in the organization of people’s lives. In a monarchy, this process is pretty simple: neglect everybody’s opinion except that of the king. In a grassroots democracy you might sum everything up and take the majority opinion. In a representative democracy the process is quite involved. It gets even more complicated due to the constraint that legislation should be self-consistent.br /br /The aim of science on the other hand is not to come to a common conclusion about people’s opinions by whatever mechanism. The aim is to come to a common conclusion about Nature. The decisions in the end are not made by scientists, but by the evidence we have gathered, whether we like that or not. In this process, opinions hopefully come to largely agree on some insights that then enter the established body of knowledge. Ideally, the evidence becomes so clear that virtually nobody in his right might holds differing opinions.br /br /But if you want to know what the scientific opinion is on a matter that has not yet been settled, you are not going to get a reply in unison. (Possibly not even if you ask one single person.) Indeed, if that was the case it would pretty much mean that science is completely disfunct. Instead, you might be offered a selection of different approaches and their pros and cons, the present status of research and the lacking pieces of the puzzle. But there is no formal process by which a decision about open question is made.br /br /There are certainly also in politics questions that are highly discussed during some period, and later become pretty much settled. Think about slavery, women’s right to vote, or homosexual’s right to marry. (Well, there are so-called ‘civilized’ countries that are a bit behind on some of these issues.) But these are questions of opinion, opinions that evidently change over time, and as much as you’d want to argue such neither opinion is “wrong” in the scientific sense as that it can be falsified by experiment.br /br /What I had been writing about in my earlier posts (eg a href=”http://backreaction.blogspot.com/2008/07/we-have-only-ourselves-to-judge-on-each.html”here/a or more recently a href=”http://backreaction.blogspot.com/2009/01/change-you-can-believe-in.html”here/a) is a different aspect of democracy in science, which does not address the question of how a scientific fact becomes established, but about the process of knowledge discovery itself. As I have argued many times, the present organization of scientific research leads to an inefficient use of human, financial and time resources. Besides inertia, the dominant reason for this state of affairs to prevail is that scientists have virtually no influence of how the system they operate in is organized. That, sad as it is, currupts the status of the above quoted values Overbye ranks so highly.br /br /Overbye has further many nice words for scientists - he goes so far to praises science as “the most successful human activity of all time.” I would have thought the most successful human activity is sex. But maybe I am confusing matters.pppdiv class=”blogger-post-footer”"You do not really understand something unless you can explain it to your grandmother.” ~ Albert Einsteinimg width=’1′ height=’1′ src=’http://res1.blogblog.com/tracker/22973357-897235897965018319?l=backreaction.blogspot.com’//div