Assigning fault is overrated. Remember that it happens, adjust when you find it has, and move on.
Travelling through a wormhole in space
Assigning fault is overrated. Remember that it happens, adjust when you find it has, and move on.
Absolutely. But not *scientists*! They're not politicians, or PR people. Anything you hear from them is really secondary to the hard work they're busy doing. And if they fail to communicate it well - that's unfortunate, but that's not what they're busy trying to do. Take that up with your teachers and college lecturers, maybe - that is their job.
So ask questions; but be nice to the scientists and don't call them names like "stupid" because you didn't understand something. That's just mean, and says more about the speaker than the subject. They're just normal people working hard. That's reasonable, don't you think?
Yes. However, I don't think that is what is happening here. The way to poke at scientific fact is with scientific experiment. Casting shade on the efforts of hundreds from the comfort of relative anonymity and you own home? That doesn't serve.
Mishihari Lord
First Post
That first bit's not true at all. A successful scientist has to be a PR person, politician, and marketer to win funding and other resources for their work. Convincing people of the value of their work is part of their job, and if they can't do it they don't get far. Politics in academia can be vicious, and in the corporate world it can be bad enough. Decisions do get driven by social dynamics rather than data, and when they do, it's reasonable to call it "stupid," although you can soft-pedal it with other terms if you wish. Freyar pointed me to some info that showed that the emphasis on dark matter is reasonable than I had thought, but based on my previous readings the research emphasis looked a lot more like something driven by social dynamics than by data. Your "trust the experts" stance is not always helpful because sometimes the experts act like a herd of lemmings. Umbran's "you must not understand science" approach is not helpful because it doesn't convince, and just because someone doesn't agree with you doesn't mean they don't understand. Frex in my case, I've participated in research so it was a bit insulting. Freyar's approach of engaging on the subject matter is the one that's useful.
Mishihari Lord
First Post
Experiments don't happen unless someone looks at what's there and says "hey, that doesn't look right" first.
This is an unpleasant viewpoint that I can't engage with. If you feel you're entitled to call working scientists stupid because they didn't spend enough time explaining what they were doing to you, I really feel we have no common frame of reference.
I didn't say that. You're misrepresenting my position. I said don't call them rude names just because you don't understand something.
But their job isn't to convince you of anything. The universe doesn't ask for your belief, or even your understanding! You jumped into the thread and called scientists "stupid". Umbran and Freyar are kindly spending their own time to explain stuff to you as a courtesy, because they're nice guys and chose not to take offence.
Nobody said that, either. What they said was that *when* you don't understand something (as in this case) calling people who do understand it stupid is rather rude.
If anyone on EN World other than freyar, myself, or a couple of others are going to engage in any such experiment... I will be pleasantly surprised.
Until then, though, I'm unimpressed by your methodology.
freyar
Extradimensional Explorer
Scientists are marketers in a sense (some more so than others). I just got back from a presentation by a Canadian MP (who is a PhD physicist), who made a pretty clear case that scientists are way behind most other groups in terms of marketing to the public, developing a clear constituency, and influencing policy. This is an important issue, because it influences how much money goes into science overall and to some big earmarked projects in particular. Outreach, or explaining things to the public, is something that I feel is also part of the job in a sense, since the public is generally who pays for science.
However, nearly all individual projects are funded based on peer review, both anonymous referees and expert committees. These are not generally composed of people from the same subfield as the applicant, which reduces the chance of "group think." Now, "trendiness" does sometimes enter into hiring decisions in academia, which is problematic, though generally the pendulum swings back after some time leading to an eventual balance. It's also fair to say that there are good reasons for this in the cases I've observed --- research areas are particularly productive, a big experiment is coming on line, etc.
I'd also say that I haven't seen group think lead to major errors over a long period of time. Scientists, like other people, are pretty competitive. We always want to be the first to come up with the right idea, so it means you try to shoot holes in other people's ideas. Ones that don't work eventually get knocked out. And when there are multiple good ideas, people are pretty honest about it. Now, this competitiveness also means that some people hold onto ideas that appear unworkable, but (1) that's easy to recognize and (2) it's part of the system that continually tests all the ideas. Science is adversarial in some ways, even though it is also a cooperative enterprise.
It's also worth distinguishing physics research from medical research in a couple of ways. First, the body is a really complex system, so a lot of research looks at correlations more than causation. It's necessary, and it's the way we advance knowledge, but it can lead to apparent reversals. But what I think is also important is that medical research gets reported widely very quickly, so sometimes I think the public gets a perception that the science is settled by one study when really a lot more work is needed. Of course, this is not my area, so that's just an outsider's impression. Physics doesn't usually get that kind of scrutiny.
freyar
Extradimensional Explorer
One of the very nice perks of my job is getting to meet a lot of very cool and interesting people. I'll try not to name drop, but as even just a fairly successful physicist, I've met and in some cases gotten to know quite a few famous and extremely smart and interesting scientists. Recently, the top scientists are experiencing this themselves by increasingly meeting celebrities (mainly actors from what I gather). For example, my PhD supervisor (who is one of the top theoretical physicists) posted a selfie he took with Anna Kendrick at an Oscar party to his facebook timeline this year. I'm also pretty sure Morgan Freeman narrated the video his sister put together for his 60th birthday. It's actually a little surreal in some ways.
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