GUEST EDITORIAL: Science Teachers and Recent Scientific Research
I say all that from the perspective of 50 years of active research in materials chemistry and physics. I have written nearly 700 scientific papers (50 in the last couple of years), set up and directed the most influential materials research laboratory in the country, and have been the principal architect of the most influential professional worldwide society in this field which is today the cynosure of contemporary physical sciences.
From that background and having spent 25 years working actively (with funding) in trying to get accurate information about technology and science to the "public" (the 90% nonscientists and engineers who make up our citizenry), I have some advice and admonitions for today's science teachers.
What am I warning science teachers against? Mainly against the hype, exaggeration, overclaim, misleading language which is now endemic in everything you read about science. I can say with virtual certainty that if you read headlines about a new discovery in the general press, it is false or grossly exaggerated. Think about it. Say you had made a really significant big discovery. If it was really basic science -- say you had "discovered" quantum mechanics -- it would be meaningless to the layperson. In any case no one could state that a certain paper was the discovery of such a field. On the other hand, say you had discovered something which maybe could be really useful, like a room temperature superconductor. Would you put it in the newspapers and tell the thousands (yes, thousands) of your competitors? Of course not. If you worked for a company, there would be procedures to follow and strategies to protect and exploit your discovery. None of them would involve an early story in The New York Times. If you worked for a university, what might you do? You would check it carefully. Ask a trusted friend to duplicate it. Start filing patents if appropriate. Start improving them, all the while scrounging for money to do it. Maybe after two years, when your patents -- many are essential if the discovery is at all significant -- are filed, and you have written three or four papers, it will start leaking out that you've done something really new, you'll send off your first paper to a journal so that others won't claim it also. And if it is really new, your so-called peers (reviewers) will laugh at it, reject it, delay it by six months at least (while often duplicating the work or building on it). Think about it; how would you react to something that contradicts what you have believed since Physics 101. A paradigm-breaking discovery is bound to be rejected by the guardians of the paradigm. Reviewers can never, repeat never, assure the truth or accuracy of any paper. All they can check is whether it is consistent with their paradigm. And if it isn't, they must, quite logically, reject it. Q.E.D., no really new work can get past peer reviewers.
Now take the everyday situation of most modern researchers. Their first concern is not their science. It is where next year's money is coming from. When you grasp that fact, you begin to understand why research is being "sold" by hype and exaggeration like skin creams or diet pills. Perhaps there was a simpler era when you could trust what appeared in The New York Times or even Science or Physical Review. Let me assure that for the average case you should automatically disbelieve any report about science as presented in the news on TV or print media. Another key reason! There is not that much "news" in the world of science. Science grows slowly like grass or a brick building being erected the old-fashioned way one brick at a time. Try making a news story out of that. So what happens? A journalism major teams up with an unscrupulous scientist, and out comes the typical science(-fiction) story about the "wonders" of the latest discovery.
Perhaps you think I'm making all this up. Don't. This is my field of study -- the process of scientific research reported from inside the sanctum sanctorum (the holy of holies) of the establishment. As a scientist, you would no doubt like some data. Here are two starters. Our lab has probably the world's greatest concentration of experts on the synthesis of diamonds -- 120 person-years of experience -- among the faculty. Weekly we encounter sheer nonsense, gross exaggeration, mistakes in the literature. You say maybe in poor journals, from China or Russia. No. How about our flagship U.S. journal, Science? In less than two or three years, Science has published four research articles (which is most of what appeared within Science in this field) on diamonds. All of these have been challenged and discredited, two withdrawn by their authors. Now that is my own field, and I find this percentage (100%) of gross errors appalling. All, please remember, were totally okayed by the sacred "peer review" process. If you have been socialized to "believe" in peer review, it is up to you to explain that datum. So what confidence does that breed in me (or in you) when I read the papers in, say, astronomy or biochemistry, in which I am merely a layman?
The second is a more serious example. We all see interminable stories on the wonders of molecular biology, biotechnology, and gene therapy. Well, those of you who read The Washington Post, Newsweek or The London Economist will know that the U.S. National Academy of Sciences Committee reported that after two decades of funding (at $200 million per year) not one single human had been helped by any gene therapy. Would you like to compare that fact with the tens of thousands of stories about the wonders of gene therapy and how the biological revolution will change everything? Have you ever pondered why there have been no major technorevolutions after the genuine world-class life-changing shakeups of air transportation, semiconductors, and computers? The next in line historically was biotechnology. But after 25 years of promises, and billions upon ten billions of R&D and investment, it has turned out to be pretty small potatoes. You don't agree? Tabulate for yourself the investment and the total product value and employment generated by post-DNA biotech in 25 years.
Now the last thing I want my readers to get is the idea that I am against doing science. I am only against telling lies to the defenseless public about what science has found or done for the public. Or misleading the public with subjunctives and future tenses: will, or maybe, or perhaps, someday, can be developed. The applied sciences have filled our world with absolutely fantastic achievements -- real ones, which you can show and touch and demonstrate -- which actually affect humans and their society. Let us, in our classes, impress the public with these incredible, impressive, real achievements. There is so much to crow about. Leave the future to the science fiction writers. Science teachers should teach their students about the myriad real advances, confirmed, "in the bag." They should teach students that media science is 99.44% nonsense and cheats the taxpayer.
Most of us agree that science is not a random collection of acts, data, ideas, and theories. The metaphor of building an edifice (due to Henri PoincarŽ), standing on the shoulders of our giant predecessors (due to Isaac Newton), is apt. What some of us (at great professional cost) are saying is that science is an articulated edifice -- a well-designed building -- it all fits together: the architectural designs, the electricity, the plumbing, the plants, the air conditioning. Science has been marvelously successful. The building has more or less been completed. Of course there are an infinite number of details to be added; but you cannot suddenly discover a new ballroom or bathroom to be hung on the outside. When scientists and my Congressperson friends appeal to "something will come up," I reply, "Of course it will, but it can never make much of an impact on the basic edifice of physics and chemistry we have built, because very clever people, including American entrepreneurs, have seen to it that all the major needs of humans have been fulfilled." The proper image the public should have of the two million research scientists worldwide is that of first century workmen carrying a small bucket of concrete or the next stone to add to the uppermost reaches of the Colosseum or some Cheops pyramid. Most individual contributions are going to be small.
Technology and engineering on the other hand are very different from science. They can continue to expand and respond to new needs with a very large array of devices, gadgets, whatever. All the while they will apply all the science (if it is relevant) as they have always applied the science sitting on the library shelves to help address human needs for millennia ahead.
The teaching of attitudes toward that portion of our culture which passes under the name "science" is perhaps the most important teaching which science teachers in K-12 do. Statistically, it is absolutely certain that less than 2% of the population will be professionals in science and engineering. At most 5-10% will need or utilize the information contained in the high school PCB (physics, chemistry, biology) courses, which we so egregiously have equated to "science." So science teachers have a very, very significant duty -- making sure these young minds are trained in relevant science and to be neither for nor against "science" but always to be skeptical about media science and promises from scientists.
(Editor's Note: Rustum Roy is Evan Pugh Professor of the Solid State at The Pennsylvania State University, perhaps better known to STSers as the first President of NASTS. He wrote this editorial in response to the editor's request that he put in writing the opinions he espoused in his presentation of "The End of Science and its Treatment in Education" on 8 March 1997 at STS-12. Roy notes that he "wrote very precisely about the end of science in my Hibbert Lectures in 1979 (Experimenting with Truth, Pergamon Press, 1981)" and cites four more recently-published works which support his feelings: John Horgan's The End of Science, Daniel Sarewitz's The End of Illusion, Jean Gimpel's The End of the Future, and Terence Kealey's The Economic Laws of Scientific Research. Professor Roy's responses to the Editor's queries about this editorial are printed below. Additional responses will be welcomed and should be sent to John L. Roeder, Editor, 194 Washington Road, Princeton, NJ 08540-6447.)
The Guest Editor responds to the Editor
Roeder: If scientists need to scrounge for funding, how should they do it without resorting to making a strong case for what they are doing (which is tantamount to media hype)? Is the problem that the funders of scientific research have not come to accept the PoincarŽ-Newton metaphor of science which you have espoused? Can the funders be educated about it without losing interest in funding science?
Roy: Funding can be done by formula (as in the U.S.'s successful agriculture research base "formula," or on objective performance). The fact is that 90% of the world's science is not funded by the draconian peer review process. U.S. industry obviously doesn't use it. Most U.S.. government labs do not. No Japanese companies use it nor do most of their other institutions. The elite Max Planck Institute of Germany does not. Most significantly, the U.S. Department of Defense, the country's premier funding agency which proactively seeks out the best, has obviously managed very well, thank you, by trusting the judgments of highly informed managers (as in industry). Funders should be given incentives to produce results, not just hand out money.
The established best predictor of success is past record. The Bible tells us that "you do not gather figs from thistle bushes." The only review necessary is of the objective track record of any candidate for the last 3-4 years. What research did she do? How many papers? Presentations? Significant advances? How useful to others? In industry? How many students trained?
Roeder: Granting that the peer review system exists only to insure that scientific publications fit in with current scientific paradigms and that it obstructs developments that are truly revolutionary, what measures should be undertaken to avoid publication of scientific papers that have no validity in terms of any paradigms (i.e., "crackpot" papers)?
Roy: I have founded four scientific journals and edited them for a combined total of 62 years. The number of "crack papers" submitted has been essentially zero; it is a complete red herring. Of course there are some poor papers, inadequate or badly written papers, and some with obvious errors of reasoning. But now contrast that with the much (order of magnitude) larger number of papers that do get published, after "peer" reviewing, that are just plain wrong (see examples from Science mentioned above). No science teacher in K-12 should fail to convey to young minds that science is an evolving worldview. We make mistakes; we correct some of them. Give dozens of how, for example, less than 50 years ago the world's leading geologists laughed at continental drift; they derided my Ph.D. student F. Dachille when he published a book claiming that the craters on the moon were caused by meteorite impact as talking nonsense -- and more so when he claimed that a similar event caused the disappearance of the dinosaurs. Today plate tectonics and meteorite impacts are the hottest field in geophysics. Certainly everything called science at any one point in time is not "true." Question authority!
Mistakes and even cheating in a scientific paper has never done any major harm to society or technology and can be caught by highly trained peers in science. Contrariwise, hype (= cheating) on the public should be equated with grand larceny. It is the most vicious kind of scientific misconduct because the public is defenseless against the barrage of exaggerated claims. The supercollider hype almost cost the taxpayers $38 billion. "Life on Mars" hype (= lies) will probably cost us a few billion.
Roeder: You state at the end that you are for teaching "relevant" science. A speaker named William Daggett has claimed that American education does not prepare students for the workplace because it does not include the skills they need: technical reading and writing; speaking and listening; statistics, logic, and probability, and applied physics. By imparting rigor without relevancy, he maintained that American education leads only to membership in the club of college graduates but not to a job. What do you think of that?
Roy: I agree completely with Mr. Daggett; and, by the way, that is what America's greatest educator John Dewey also advocated. Relevancy should be absolute, not only for a job but for real learning. Estimating is more important mathematics than punching computer buttons. Fuzzy logic is more difficult than rigorous logic but more useful. Rigor is brittle; relevancy is flexible. I have written extensively* on the topic of substituting real (i.e., relevant) science for the abstract parts of PCB in K-12 for most (not all) students. The Rutgers math department proved that we should never introduce abstractions (even "x" vs. "y") early for elementary students.
*See Materials Research Society Bulletin, 17, 2226 (Sep 92); J. Mater. Educ., 12 (5 & 6), 429 (1990).
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