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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   32966 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 13, 2023

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I am fascinated by your idea of what actions make a scientist. If an experiment I am conducting needs some beakers washed, does it make me less of a scientist if I have a freshman undergrad wash them--so long as I check that it's done properly? If the experiment that I designed needs some chemicals mixed in particular proportions and sequence, does it make me less of a scientist if a senior undergrad does it--so long as I check that it's done properly? If I design three experiments to test a theory, does it make me less of a scientist three first-year graduate students carries each experiment out--so long as I check that they are done properly? If there are multiple competing theories in my field and I have good ideas about how I can test them but to design the experiments in detail I would need to have a thorough and detailed knowledge of several disparate sub-fields and possibly fields in adjacent disciplines, and also I would need to raise substantial funds to finance such experiments, does it make me less of a scientist if I recruit a team of grad students and post-docs, each specializing in some particular sub-field and tasked with designing and carrying out experiments there, while I use my broader expertise and established credentials to convince whoever I can to finance these projects?

Are you less of a programmer because you don't program in Assembly? Or because you import modules? Are you less of a software engineer if you spend your time with the client determining their needs, then oversee the development of architectural design, APIs for relevant modules with appropriate testing system, and then hand off the actual code writing to a team of programmers?

I wrote a wall of text, so maybe you missed the bit where I said "He does not write any of the scripts to analyze the data his students collect." It's not that the grad students are the experimentalist and he is doing all of the experimental design and analysis, they do all of the analysis. My understanding is that the experimental design process is somewhat collaborative between the PIs and grad students, and I would say that participating in these experiment design meetings is doing science, but doing a bit of science on the side does not a scientist make.

The analogy with programming is not importing modules, it is writing design docs. You need to be a good programmer to write good design docs, but if all you do is administrative management tasks plus collaborating with actual programmers to write design docs, I'm sorry, you're not a programmer.

I agree with your assessment of what makes one a programmer. Programming is a specific technical skill, and what makes one a programmer is being good at--and doing--that technical skill.

A software engineer, on the other hand--or better yet, a software architect--need not necessarily do any programming. They can offload the tasks that require that specific technical skill to programmers.

I suspect that this is at the root of the contention between your perspective and mine. Do you regard doing science as a set of technical skills? Or do you regard doing science as making progress on our ability to predict and manipulate the physical world?

And once I phrase it like that, I find that the specific issue of our contention--under what conditions you/we call the people who progress our ability to predict and manipulate the physical world "scientists"--stops mattering so much.

The current system (in US) where one can progress our ability to predict and manipulate the physical world on a fundamental level is done mostly in university-based labs. These labs rely on funding to continue to make their progress. Funding depends on maintaining a solid and clearly-legible track record of previous progress (which in our system involves high-quality publications in peer-reviewed journals that are well-regarded in the field). Funding also depends on seeking out and getting those grants, and then making sure to satisfy their conditions so the lab can get more of such grants in the future.

So if I run a bio-chem lab (the Hooser Lab at Stanbridge) and my goal is to progress what we know about what causes aging and what may halt the process in mammals, then my main job is to make sure that my lab can actually make useful progress in my goal. I need to break down what my lab needs to do, what resources it needs to do that, and how I can get those resources. Then I get those resources, and oversee the process. And as much as I enjoyed writing scripts to analyze data when I was a postdoc at Whatihear Lab at Oxbridge, maybe my time would be better spent on reviewing drafts for publications (because I have the breadth of knowledge to connect that esoteric result to broader field, or to suggest in the discussion multiple probable interesting consequences), and speaking with grant-giving foundations (because I have built my reputation as a serious scientist and they will take me seriously), while a postdoc in my lab oversees the data analysis.

A software engineer, on the other hand--or better yet, a software architect--need not necessarily do any programming. They can offload the tasks that require that specific technical skill to programmers.

There is no meaninfful distinction between programmers and software engineers. I consider myself a programmer because I feel like it captures what I do more accurately, and refer to myself as a software engineer in situations where it is financially beneficial. Software engineering is programming plus bureaucracy. Lots of things involve bureaucracy. When it comes to software engineering, programming is the main bit. If you take out the programming, it's not software engineering anymore. I have no patience for someone who thinks they are contributing technically by building a pie-in-the-sky UML diagram and demanding that actual programmers implement their out of touch vision.

I suspect that this is at the root of the contention between your perspective and mine. Do you regard doing science as a set of technical skills? Or do you regard doing science as making progress on our ability to predict and manipulate the physical world?

I think you're right about that this is where we disagree. If we take doing science as "making progress on our ability to predict and manipulate the physical world", well that applies to the electron microscope salesmen, academic departmental secretaries, directors of corporate research orgs, plumbers who install chilled water systems in labs, the maintainers of python and r, and any number of other people who contribute in some small way to the broad economic activity of advancing science. You my protest that since science coordinators work a bit closer to the main body of the academic work than the directors of a corporate lab, they are scientists, but both of those roles are mostly about coordinating the technical work.

So if I run a bio-chem lab (the Hooser Lab at Stanbridge) and my goal is to progress what we know about what causes aging and what may halt the process in mammals, then my main job is to make sure that my lab can actually make useful progress in my goal. I need to break down what my lab needs to do, what resources it needs to do that, and how I can get those resources. Then I get those resources, and oversee the process. And as much as I enjoyed writing scripts to analyze data when I was a postdoc at Whatihear Lab at Oxbridge, maybe my time would be better spent on reviewing drafts for publications (because I have the breadth of knowledge to connect that esoteric result to broader field, or to suggest in the discussion multiple probable interesting consequences), and speaking with grant-giving foundations (because I have built my reputation as a serious scientist and they will take me seriously), while a postdoc in my lab oversees the data analysis.

Within our current system, that's what you need to do to push research forward. It doesn't mean you would be a scientist in that situation.

I'm not blaming PIs for the current state of affairs. They are operating within a system of constraints and incentives that they had no role in building. I'm just pointing out that they are not scientists, despite being the best trained people to fulfill such a role.

I think you're right about that this is where we disagree. If we take doing science as "making progress on our ability to predict and manipulate the physical world", well that applies to the electron microscope salesmen, academic departmental secretaries, directors of corporate research orgs, plumbers who install chilled water systems in labs, the maintainers of python and r, and any number of other people who contribute in some small way to the broad economic activity of advancing science.

Excellent point! My follow-up question is therefore: what actual utility is there in distinguishing some of the jobs (professions? tasks?) that progress our ability to predict and manipulate the physical world as "scientist"?

I do think that this utility exists and is important. It reminds me of Feynman's description of cargo cult science:

In the South Seas there is a cargo cult of people. During the war they saw airplanes with lots of good materials, and they want the same thing to happen now. So they've arranged to make things like runways, to put fires along the sides of the runways, to make a wooden hut for a man to sit in, with two wooden pieces on his head to headphones and bars of bamboo sticking out like antennas--he's the controller--and they wait for the airplanes to land. They're doing everything right. The form is perfect. It looks exactly the way it looked before. But it doesn't work. No airplanes land. So I call these things cargo cult science, because they follow all the apparent precepts and forms of scientific investigation, but they're missing something essential, because the planes don't land.

In an organization whose purpose is to progress in our ability to predict and manipulate the physical world--and which has a solid track record of effectively making this progress--who are the people that are essential to the enterprise, and who are in necessary supporting roles?

If the latter: do they require transferable set of skills that are not particular to this specific enterprise? The plumber who installs the chilled water system is such; so is the CPA in HR; so is the janitor. The lab manager (like, in a chem lab) would need to have specialized knowledge to do her job, but it's still transferable set of skills (solid Bachelor's level knowledge of chemistry plus great organizational skills). These people do useful work that enable the enterprise, but they are not essential.

It's useful to reserve the term "scientist" for the former--those who are essential to the enterprise--to keep the telos of their profession foremost in mind. It's useful, because the scientist's telos is frequently in direct contradiction with goals people have (e.g., getting that publication after you put in so much effort into that experiment, if only those couple of observation points weren't undermining your hypothesis). Let me quote Feynman once more:

But there is one feature I notice that is generally missing in cargo cult science. [...] It's a kind of scientific integrity, a principle of scientific thought that corresponds to a kind of utter honesty--a kind of leaning over backwards. For example, if you're doing an experiment, you should report everything that you think might make it invalid--not only what you think is right about it: other causes that could possibly explain your results; and things you thought of that you've eliminated by some other experiment, and how they worked--to make sure the other fellow can tell they have been eliminated.

Details that could throw doubt on your interpretation must be given, if you know them. You must do the best you can--if you know anything at all wrong, or possibly wrong--to explain it. If you make a theory, for example, and advertise it, or put it out, then you must also put down all the facts that disagree with it, as well as those that agree with it. There is also a more subtle problem. When you have put a lot of ideas together to make an elaborate theory, you want to make sure, when explaining what it fits, that those things it fits are not just the things that gave you the idea for the theory; but that the finished theory makes something else come out right, in addition.

In summary, the idea is to give all of the information to help others to judge the value of your contribution; not just the information that leads to judgement in one particular direction or another.

Yeah, I think I basically agree with that unless I'm misreading you. I think "scientist" has a bunch of cachet, and we should assign that cachet to the people doing what is normally thought of as science rather than pushing paper.

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