I was checking over some old emails these morning, looking for a particular nugget of information (which I found, by the way. Thanks for asking), when I came across an email from Jenny. We were talking about LabLit and how one achieves activation energy to sit down and write something (in this case, how do I turn a notebook full of random scribblings into a coherent novel?).
Jenny said
Another thing might be to start small – say to yourself not that you are Writing a Novel (sounds insurmountable) but that you are really keen to write a great scene (500-1000 words, just like in the webstory) towards that novel
and I suddenly thought “That’s just like science!”.
We all want the big paper in Science Nature, but I wonder what drives us on the daily, get up to come into the lab in the morning/afternoon/small hours, basis? Do we ever think to ourselves ‘today I will cure cancer’, or is our motivation more ‘today I will get that blasted PCR working’?
All science is driven by little steps. We find our motivation in those little things (yes, yes — of course we keep the big picture in mind; if nothing else it’s how we fool the grant agencies into funding us). We chop up the big questions into chewable lumps.
Now, I don’t expect that I’m telling anyone here anything new. But how much is public perception of the way science is actually done is coloured by the big papers, by the Nobel prizes, the PR departments? In what way can the ‘general public’ meaningfully call the shots if we don’t talk about how it’s actually done? Is there, in fact, any point in doing it?
I’d like to think so. And I’d also like to think that there is some way of taking people like this, of encouraging them and holding them up as an exemplar. Those kids get it. And they are the ones who will understand when we say that after 30 years of research we don’t have a cure for cancer (or a vaccine against HIV) because science is complex, it is expensive, and it is hard.
Little steps are all we can take some days. Most days. I suspect most people (outwith the rather rarefied atmosphere of the scientific endeavour itself) do not understand this, and get disappointed and angry when Science cannot answer their questions satisfactorily. We have only ourselves to blame.
I am not sure that the world at large would take comfort in the knowledge of our tough little nuts to crack and in the back-and-forth nature of our daily scrum. In my outreach work I have already encountered bemused irritation at the notion that scientists don’t always agree with one another and that often there is not one objective ‘truth’ to be gleaned.
Do they need to know what it’s really like?
Absolutely.
Will they like it?
Probably not.
Absolutely.
It’s why the charlatans and tricksters, pseudoscientists, IDers and homeopaths have such a hold: people want, they need certainty.
And we more often than not can’t offer it.
I like Jenny’s advice: “start small”. Reminded me of the film Touching the Void where a similar philosophy is applied to get an abandoned, injured climber down a mountain. Well worth a look.
And I think we have to get people to face up to uncertainty in science, as in life. Whether they like it or not, there’s no better game in town for remedies to humanity’s ills and illnesses.
I can’t take many steps at all today, even small ones, because I’ve injured my right foot.
Henry: I can’t take many steps at all today, even small ones, because I’ve injured my right foot.
Can I refer you to my previous comment? Unless you’re stuck, all alone, close to the freezing summit of a Peruvian mountain with an impact fracture of the femur, no food and no way down but on your arse, then I think you can stop whinging… 😉
Point taken. Ouch.
I can’t figure out which side of the argument I am on here. On the one hand, I think that there is a great deal of mistrust of scientists, which can only be exacerbated by revealing that scientists disagree and there is hardly ever such a thing as incontrovertible proof of a hypothesis. On the other hand, it is important to demystify science, to make it seem approachable so that more people want to get involved. So is it better to put forth a united front as ‘scientists!’ or is it better to come across as people who do science. I dunno. I can’t tell if you are conflicted on this subject, Richard, but I sure am.
Anna: …there is a great deal of mistrust of scientists, which can only be exacerbated by revealing that scientists disagree…
It almost sounds as if you are making the case for scientists to collude to try to fool the public into accepting that we are one big happy family. If so, I think that would be disastrous. I suggest we have to be rational and honest – and courageous enough to be open about the nature of disputes with the public. Anything less than that is likely – rightly – to be perceived as patronising and would earn further mistrust.
I realize that’s what it sounds like, Stephen, but no, I don’t think it would be a good idea to try to fool the public. That would be a pretty stupid idea, in fact. I do think that there is a fine line to walk though, and that’s what I was trying to get across in my comment. I am sorry if I didn’t make it clear enough. I think that the need to present clear, easily understandable, and to the point messages about science is what often gets the media in trouble. They also have to walk the line between telling the public too much information (pros and cons, doubts and strong points) and having the message seem confused or diluted, and overstating the case (they often veer toward the latter, clearly). I guess all I am saying is that the task at hand is a tough one and I for one, don’t yet know what the solution is.
Very good point – well made! I’m glad we agree – particularly since this is a publicly available forum! Now, I suggest we meet later in the Gryffindor Common Room to talk about the muggles behind their backs! 😉
Seriously though – it ain’t easy (as you say) and this touches on issues that have been well rehearsed around here. But it’s got to be worth trying to make the uncertainly of science accessible.
It almost sounds as if you are making the case for scientists to collude to try to fool the public into accepting that we are one big happy family. If so, I think that would be disastrous. I suggest we have to be rational and honest – and courageous enough to be open about the nature of disputes with the public. Anything less than that is likely – rightly – to be perceived as patronising and would earn further mistrust.
Well, exactly. But the closed-ranks approach has characterized the official public-understanding-of-science line all along. I still rankle at an editorial by John Durant I read in the Independent several years ago that said that the public should all be lined up and filled with a lot of facts that he and his colleagues would obligingly provide, as the official canon of what was right and true and scientific.
That was the old age of science
Many opinions, approaches, many individualities, many disagreements (e.g. Einstein never accepted Bohr´s interpretation of quantum physics), but one common science, respect and friendship.
As I keep saying, science isn’t about facts. There’s an age-old and popular misconception that it is. How do we change that?
But scientists are the public, aren’t they? I never understand articles and other lines of debate that seem to put scientists in one box and “the public” in the other.
Henry: I still rankle at an editorial by John Durant I read in the Independent several years ago that said that the public should all be lined up and filled with a lot of facts that he and his colleagues would obligingly provide
Couldn’t agree more!
Maxine: I never understand articles and other lines of debate that seem to put scientists in one box and “the public” in the other.
Yes scientists are members of the public and have a duty as responsible citizens. But I think there’s a useful distinction between professionals engaged in science, who know from the inside what it’s like, and the wider public, who may be interested but not so familiar with the process or with how to evaluate the outcomes. So, to my mind, there is a gap in understanding – one that we need (on both sides) to bridge. Maybe we can get out of our boxes and go to the pub…!
RICHARD
As I keep saying, science isn’t about facts. There’s an age-old and popular misconception that it is. How do we change that?
Boris: Even, “facts” do not exist 🙂 – all the efforts of (neo)positivists to build the science on the facts was proved as “age-old and popular misconception”… I suggest to get the science in more philosophical way and to explain to public that every “fact” is “fact” only in light of a theory, i.e. Quine-Duhem thesis
But, I am with Dewey in this way: Although the facts do not exist, we can say if theory is functional or not (obviously, some theories led to cars or power stations, because they was proved by experiments – experiment is something very similar to praxis as every car or power station is many experiments together).
MAXINE
I agree totally!
Stephen: Maybe we can get out of our boxes and go to the pub…!
Boris: Pub is the best way even for “pure” science 🙂 – at least how to get ideas and to meet interesting people in non-formal way.
Thinking about Richard’s original post – that when it comes down to it, all we can do is take one step at a time. If you are writing a novel, you know you are writing a novel (rather than an isolated scene, or a short story) and it’s going to be, say, 80,000 words long, but of course you don’t sit there and think you have to write the whole thing at once. I find that the best thing is to divide the task up into manageable targets, which is, I guess, why I like to write while travelling on the train. I know, say, that the journey between London and Norwich is two hours, and experience suggests that I can write between 500 and 1500 words in that time, depending on how I’m feeling and whether my mojo is working that day.
But your post, Richard, has allowed me to take heart. After I did my PhD I published precisely one (1) paper from my thesis – but there’s a lot more I really should have published, but never got round to.
My problem has always been working out the scope of any or each paper I might derive from my thesis. I’ve always wanted to start small, but when I try to actually write anything, the work takes in larger and larger chunks of my thesis until I feel I’ll have to publish the whole thing at once. And then I give up. But perhaps if I focussed more rigorously on the small-acorns approach than I have hitherto, I might get somewhere.
Thanks, Henry. In my view, to write, for instance, poetry is totally different than to write scientific paper… the science is much more boring :).
On the other hand, to read Feynman´s lectures is as exciting as to read Goethe´s Faust. Consequently, science I do is not, at least as yet, as interesting as Feynman did… Or science explained in wide context by a genius is worth to be called poetry ;).
Or science explained in wide context by a genius is worth to be called poetry
Boris – what an interesting comment, particularly as you mentioned Goethe, who said of his scientific critics that they “forgot that science arose from poetry, and did not see that when times change the two can meet again on a higher level as friends.”
@henry Gee
“but there’s a lot more I really should have published, but never got round to.”
Good data doesn’t go stale. You could probably still publish it somewhere.
Yes, I know. But there is what Jenny and Richard called ‘activation energy’. This is now a near-insuperable barrier given that I’m now twenty years adrift from my research (and twenty years behindhand in the literature), and given that nobody would really care very much.
Boris – what an interesting comment, particularly as you mentioned Goethe, who said of his scientific critics that they “forgot that science arose from poetry, and did not see that when times change the two can meet again on a higher level as friends.”
Boris: I love Goethe… even his Theory of Colors is not really wrong (although Newton was, of course, right). What you mentioned is my lifelong dream: philosophy, science, and poetry (art) together creating the culture and civilization as it was during 18th and 19th century.