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. E.S. RueteApril 22, 2017 at 12:45 PM

    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!!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. E.S. RueteApril 22, 2017 at 12:50 PM

      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.

      Delete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Let’s look more closely at the concept of forces in opposition that must be kept in balance. We talked last week about the three Cs: considerations, concerns, and constraints. Of these, concerns may be the most important. Considerations are the foundation of collaborative work, but no one will be ready to share their considerations until the battles over process values have been won and people are ready to be collaborative. Constraints are critical, but they are found by the proper treatment of evidence and inference. That is perhaps the last battle. Concerns are worries about forces that are acting on the situation. Concerns point to forces that have to be kept in balance. For example, some people are concerned that having a social safety net makes people dependent on the government. Others are concerned that without a safety net people will die, or at a minimum become more of a burden on their neighbors than if early intervention had nipped the problem in the bud. These concer...
Read more
Give a person a fish, you feed them for a day. Teach a person to fish, you feed them for a lifetime. In other words: Give a person content, you give them nothing. Give a person process, you give them everything. This month we are looking at process in some areas besides collaborative work. We are looking at other fields where you have a choice to focus on content or focus on process, to see if valuing process works in those fields. This week we are looking at teaching. Our church is recruiting Sunday School teachers for our summer time schedule. “All curricula and materials are provided. All you have to do is show up and teach.” That’s all. That’s a lot. I used to try and teach Sunday school. Sure, they provided me all the content I needed. But they never provided process. Most of our church’s Sunday School teachers are also teachers. The rest have been teaching Sunday School for so long that they are accomplished teachers. It never occurs to any of them that they need to ...
Read more