Tomorrow, Earth Day, will see Marches for Science in many parts of the country. I hope to march myself on our Niantic Bay Boardwalk. Science has its own set of process values that are very much like those of collaborative work. The scientific method is all about how we treat evidence and inference as we look at natural and experimental observations and try to understand something about our Universe.

The one value that sometimes seems to be missing from science is how we treat one another in the process. In fact, both historical and fictionalized accounts of scientific debate are rank with stories of scientists criticizing, attacking, and demonizing those who don’t agree with them. The source of this is the same as the source of most human conflict: positions. Once you take a position on anything, including scientific theories, you cannot allow for the possibility of the other position.

The whole March for Science movement we will celebrate tomorrow is a perfect case in point. There are here, as nearly everywhere else, forces in opposition. One force is the need to champion the scientific method, to champion process values, in a world where people are ready to believe all manner of pseudoscience, fake news, spin, and propaganda. The other force is the risk of politicizing science, of making people take a position for or against science, of dragging process values down into the mire where no one cares about evidence, inference, or one another. This issue was covered in the March 7 edition of 1A, an NPR news program that deals with first amendment (1A) issues. But instead of exploring the opposing forces represented by concerns with ignoring science and politicizing science, they found scientists who had taken positions for or against the March and set them at one another’s throats. Great radio, but exactly why we need to March for Science and the process values it represents.

Comments

  1. A reader who does not have a profile sent me this comment:
    Having worked in a scientific organization, I know that scientific debate includes criticizing the other's position and sometimes it seems like an attack, but only when those outside science (usually the
    religious) get involved does it become demonization. To a non-scientist these "debates" do take some getting used to and do seem like attacks.
    But to the scientists it is an essential part of checking their facts, ideas, and conclusions. A (granted unusual) way of learning from your peers. At least in my experience with a weekly seminar in which the speaker was always greeted in the Q&A with Debate, I rarely found that the scientist took it as a personal attack. All were still colleagues when it was over. Regarding the media, they don't seem to be able to have a "discussion" without inciting argument and that is very unfortunate!!

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    1. From what I have read (admittedly in the media so from what you say I will take that with a grain of salt, but still) I think you are probably lucky to have worked in a culture where how the scientists treated one another during the process was valued. Scientists are people and unless the culture puts value on how we treat one another we will become self centered, narrow, and fanatical. That is the main PURPOSE of culture, to teach us how to balance self interest with community interest, and that is the main failing of modern culture.

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