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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   32959 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 13, 2023

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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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