Announcements
- Please note that Test 1 is next Tuesday, 9/29, on Canvas
- Test 1 will open at 7:00 am and close promptly at 11:00 pm.
- You’ll have 75 minutes to do it once you start.
- So called 2nd Intelligence discussion on Charlotte Talks
- If interested, check this out sometime.
- No, it won’t be on any Tests or Exams. It’s just if you’re curious.
Ch. 5: The Non-Detection of Gravitational Radiation
Question inspired by the chapter: How do you prove something doesn’t exist?
Like Pasteur, Weber was trying to convince the scientific community of invisible forces, and he carefully constructed a device to find gravity waves. Like bacteria, you can’t see these waves with the naked eye or feel their force. What does gravity look like?
Because we like definitions…
Gravity is the force that causes objects to fall toward one another.
Gravity is a consequence of the curvature of spacetime.
Gravitational Constant: G=6.674 x 10-11N x (m/kg)2…we’ll leave that one to Physics.
Four Things to Take Away from the Chapter
- There is a heavy burden of proof for someone trying to persuade others of an unusual claim. New claims have to overcome a priori scientific skepticism. {Note the difference in the term a posteriori.}
- Experimenter’s regress: A continuous loop of reasoning that arises when testing for a result with experiments that aren’t decisive tools for confirming those tests. Did the experiment work? We’d need the outcome to answer that. Ok, what’s the outcome supposed to be? Not sure…we need an accurate experiment to test for that; therefore…
- There were 11 reasons—none directly related to questioning scientific facts—for believing or not believing Weber’s results. The reasons ranged from perception of the scientist’s abilities and character to his nationality (p. 101).
- Dedication to one’s area of analysis affects one’s commitment to results.
Key Quotations
- p. 91: “Most scientists agree that Einstein’s general theory of relativity predicts that moving massive bodies will produce gravity waves.”
- p. 92: Finding gravitational radiation is extremely difficult because, a correctly done experiment, needs to record “a minute fluctuation within the tiny force” of a gravity wave pulse.
- p. 92-93: The “Weber-bar antenna….[doesn’t] really detect gravity waves[;] they detect vibrations in a bar of metal. They cannot distinguish between vibrations due to gravitational radiation and those produced by other forces….the bar must be insulated from all known and potential disturbances.”
- You know what this means…can one control for all outside disturbances?
- Also, do you recall other experiments that had to deal with vibrations?
- p. 94: “Weber’s claims are now universally disbelieved….he seemed to find far too much gravitational radiation to be compatible with contemporary cosmological theories.”
- p. 102: “No-one has since [1975] concluded that they found anything that would corroborate Weber’s findings.”
- p. 95-96: Scientists can’t just assume others will accept their results if they themselves are the only ones able to find results. “Persuading other scientists to try to disprove a claim is a useful first step.”
- p. 97: “Picking the right experimental elaboration to convince others requires rhetorical as well as scientific skills.”
- p. 97: As with other experiments, many conditions need to be controlled for or accounted for. How do we know the force of the gravity waves if the device records tiny movements such as atmospheric pressure, vibrations from surroundings machines, or atomic movements?
- p. 97: To dispute the claims also means one’s scientific credibility is on the line.
- p. 99-100: A variety of colorful responses to Weber’s experiment…
- p. 100: “[I]t is hard to know what it means to do an experiment that is identical to another.”
- Step back a second here. Why, if it’s so difficult to do an exact replica of an experiment, is replication key to others verifying you’ve established new scientific knowledge?
- p. 101: “If there are gravity waves a good apparatus is one that detects them; if there are no gravity waves the good experiments are those which do not see them.”
- Let’s unpack the above statement. How else might we say the same thing?
- p. 103: Weber lived, ate, and breathed his device. A contemporary scientist noted “[he] spends hours and hours of time per day per week per month, living with the apparatus….Weber gives his system…dedication—personal dedication.”
- p. 106: “Reporting an experimental result is itself not enough to give credibility to an unusual claim….it must be presented very clearly and with great ingenuity.”
Conclusion: Rhetorical Maneuvers
- p. 105: Early scientists, “in 1972….the first scientists to criticize Weber hedged their bets.” They reported negative results, but they also claimed that they could have done something wrong.
This is a rhetorical move. They might have been more confident than their published results show. They didn’t want to discredit Weber too strongly because they weren’t completely confident in their own results. After all, gravitational waves are theoretically possible. It wasn’t until Garwin emphatically dismissed Weber’s results that the scientific critical mass against Weber was established. Refuting someone else’s results too soon can be just as damaging to one’s reputation as publishing findings too early.
- p. 107: “Before the resolution there was real and substantial uncertainty, and it was very reasonable uncertainty….After the resolution everything is clarified; high fluxes of gravity waves do not exist and it is said that only incompetent scientists think they can see them.”
Collins & Pinch argue that understanding controversial science is important to the non-scientist who must consider scientific matters that affect the public. The political-social dimensions of science and technology affect us more than what happens in a lab. Citizens in a democracy should be informed when they listen to journalists and others who filter technical information for them, and they should be informed voters.
Again, if interested (not required), check out discussion on Charlotte Talks episode from several years ago (2/4/2016).
Ch. 6: The Sex Life of the Whiptail Lizard
We move from physics to zoology, specifically, herpetology. Think about the big picture regarding epistemology because this chapter brings up the important (but often maligned) concept of interdisciplinarity. In many ways, all espistemologies are interdisciplinary because they share overlapping assumptions on how to produce valid knowledge. Interdisciplinary studies are good in that they ask fresh, insightful questions about traditional disciplines, but they are also considered suspect by traditional disciplines because interdisciplinary researchers they’re seen as outsiders encroaching on the establishment’s territory.
In this chapter, we have sub-disciplines within sub-disciplines and a messy route to valid scientific conclusions. Herpetology, the study of amphibians and reptiles, is a sub-discipline under Zoology, which is a sub-discipline under Biology. We could even say Cnemidophorus-ology (I made that “-ology” up) is a sub-discipline under Herpetology. All of these studies overlap in how knowledge should be created, but, as you read, the key players don’t all agree. Scientists have various approaches to their study, and those approaches come with assumptions that filter their analyses. We can assume there’s usually general agreement among members of a discipline (otherwise there would be no discourse communities), but we can’t assume beliefs are universally held by all members.
Three Things to Take Away
- Interdisciplinarity offers new ways to consider traditional sciences, but it also is controversial because it may challenge those traditional paradigms (governing assumptions or worldviews of so-called “pure” experts).
- Normally, scientists’ skills are considered a given; however, when a controversy arises, it’s necessary to show one’s expertise (prove it).
- Unlike physics, where experiments focus the debate, in this case, experiments aren’t possible. Debate surrounds interpretation of observations and pointing to the opponent’s missing evidence.
- Anthropomorphize: to ascribe human form or attributes to (an animal, plant, material object, etc.). Many scientists prefer not to use human-like qualities to describe animals (or other non-human phenomenon). It’s consider in accurate. This is a general attitude and is maintained particularly in academic journals.
Facts are in the eye of the beholder, and “matters of fact are inseparable from the skills of the scientist used to produce them” (p. 116). Facts NEVER speak for themselves; humans speak for them: “As always the facts of nature are settled within the field of human argument” (p. 119).
Key Quotations
- p. 110: Crews studied the red-sided garter snake before the whiptail lizard. He noted a peculiar mating behavior. “The snakes’ sexual activities may seem strange to us, but they have adapted perfectly to the extreme conditions under which they live.”
- p.110: Interdisciplinary—“Like many scientific innovators, Crews brings together approaches from a variety of areas that traditionally have gone their separate ways….By asking new questions of aspects of the behaviour and physiology of species that have already been studied, Crews was posing a challenge to the established experts.”
- p. 111: “[O]btaining a controversial status for a set of ideas such that other scientists feel compelled to reject them in an explicit manner is a substantial achievement in itself.”
- p. 112: “All biologists agree that [the a, b, c, d illustrations—figure 6.1] is what happens. They disagree over the meaning to be given to the observation.”
- p. 113: Cuellar & Cole, critics of Crews, saw him as an “inexperienced upstart….[who] immediately seized upon a peculiar piece of behaviour, noticed in a very few animals, and [blew] it up into a sensational claim.” Also, “the sexual exploits of lizards made for compelling media coverage.”
- p. 113: the critics felt “[t]he behavior [Crews] had observed was trivial: it was unnatural and a product of captivity.”
- p. 115: A common rhetorical stance is to write a paper that portrays “scientists [as] merely mediators or passive observers of Nature.” This is important for maintaining the perception of objectivity.
- p. 115: Rhetorical savvy—Cuellar, a critic of Crews, admitted seeing the “pseudo-copulatory behaviour,” but, because he didn’t conclude the way Crews did, Crews “then went on to treat his failure to realize its significance as stemming from his own preconceptions.”
- p. 115: “Accusations of carelessness are ineffective in resolving disputes because they tend to circularity.” In other words, one could say another observer is being careless about drawing (invalid) conclusions about an observation; on the other hand, the defendant could claim the critic is being careless for NOT coming to the same conclusions about an observation.
- p. 117: Never able to definitively prove whether or not observations in captivity were ideal settings or distorted whiptail lizard behavior.
- p. 118: Gentleman don’t engage in lowly bickering—“Many scientists are wary of getting entangled in controversies and perceive them to be the repository of shoddy science.”
- p. 118: “By appealing to the rhetoric of experiment and testing…Crews can appear to have found a way to have advanced beyond the earlier controversy.”
- That earlier controversy being a product of “a lack of firm experimental tests and decisive evidence.”
At the end of the penultimate section of the Chapter “Love Bites and Hand Waving,” Collins & Pinch claim, based on Crews’s approach to countering other criticisms, “the reader can speculate about the possible lines of argument Crews could have adopted in defence” of Cole & Townsend pointing out that his not recognizing “basking [of the whiptail lizard] from hand waving [as] a credibility problem” (p. 117-118).
What could those conclusions be? After having read the chapter, consider Crews’s perspective and think of three ways he, the rhetorically savvy scientist, would counter Cole & Townsend’s attack on his credibility as an observer.
The End…
Eventually, the controversy ended in a draw according to Collins & Pinch. Crews appears to be the more rhetorically savvy participant even if he wasn’t considered to have the same expertise in studying Cnemidophorus as Cuellar and others. Using hindsight, Crews appears to have rewritten the early history of the debate as “premature: an over-reaction of an underdeveloped field….By appealing to the rhetoric of the experiment and testing…Crews can appear to have found a way to have advanced beyond the earlier controversy.”
Lesson: Rhetorical savvy isn’t just for politicians and other charlatans. How one presents findings is important. Knowledge of the best, most well-done experiments never have a chance to get disseminated if the purpose for the communication isn’t established and it doesn’t conform to audience expectations.
Observing the “Same” Behavior
Although this isn’t exactly behavior, imagine what people observe when viewing animals in captivity. What might guide their conclusions?
Next Class
We’ll be finishing Collins & Pinch’s Golem: What You Should Know about Science on Thursday, 9/24, when we review Ch. 7 and the Conclusion. Then, on Monday, 9/29, you have Test 1 on Canvas. You take Test 1, Test 2, the Midterm Exam, and the Final Exam anywhere you have access to the Internet. Test 1 opens at 7:00 am and closes at 11:00 pm. You have 75 minutes to complete Test 1 once you start. Of course, that assumes you start it by 9:45 pm. The test will close promptly at 11:00, so my advice is to do it early.
We’ll move onto the Prefaces and Ch. 1 in Collins & Pinch’s The Golem at Large: What You Should Know about Technology on Thursday, 10/01. Don’t blink! The semester will go by quickly!