‘SEEING SCIENTIFICALLY’An introduction to Science and Technology StudiesDelivered 16.04.2014 as part of the UCL Outreach Widening Participation Year 12 Masterclasses Programme (http://www.ucl.ac.uk/prospective-students/widening-participation/wp-home )

Oliver MarshDepartment for Science and Technology StudiesUniversity College Londonhttp://www.ucl.ac.uk/sts/students/marsh

© Oliver Marsh 2014

Introduction Activity:Take the object on your desk and look at it ‘scientifically’.Some suggested things to think about:• What interesting ‘scientific’ questions could you ask about it?• How might you get ‘scientific’ answers from it?• How could you make sure other scientists believe your answers?• What have you been taught by science lessons (or science books, websites, documentaries…) that might come in use?• What ‘unscientific’ things should you avoid, and how will you try to avoid them?NOTE: DO NOT ASK ME WHAT ‘SCIENTIFICALLY’ MEANS – TRYING TO WORK THIS OUT IS THE POINT OF THE EXERCISE! (So don’t worry about actually getting scientific answers from your object…)Share the object and discuss your thoughts in groups.You have 10 minutes, and then we’ll all have a class discussion.

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NATUREThings that exist and happen in the world, independent of humansSCIENCEHumans talking about those things

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SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY STUDIES (STS)Humans talking about humans doing science, and its connections to other things humans do.Three ways of doing this…PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE: Asking the very basic questions, like ‘what is science?’ and ‘how do we know science is actually true?’HISTORY OF SCIENCE: Looking at how scientific ideas, tools, and jobs developed in connection with other historical situations (governments, economic situations, wars…)SOCIOLOGY OF SCIENCE: Looking at what scientists do nowadays, including how they work as social groups and what happens when they meet other groups (like the general public).(the first two have been around longer, so Science and Technology Studies is sometimes called ‘History and Philosophy of Science’ (HPS). Some people even call it ‘History, Philosophy, and Sociology of Science, Technology, and Medicine’….

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So what is ‘science’?“Science is what scientists do”

(yeah great, thanks for that Ernest…)Universally correct statements, not personal opinions(‘Objective’, not ‘subjective’) Based on observing things actually happening in the world – not just guesses, wishes, or lies…(‘Empiricism’)

Ernest Rutherford, physicist, chemist, discovered the nucleus

Trying to connect things up, not just leaving them as isolated observations(finding ‘causes’ and ‘laws’)© Oliver Marsh 2014

Scientists look for RIGHT ANSWERS……But this can mean different things to different scientists:Many scientists want to find THE TRUTH – they want to discover things that are really there, and understand how they really work. (REALISM)

… “How does one alter the charge on the niobium ball? ‘Well, at that stage,’ said my friend, ‘we spray it with positrons to increase the charge or electrons to decrease the charge.’ From that day forth I’ve been a scientific realist. So far as I’m concerned, if you can spray them then they are real.”

- Ian Hacking, philosopher of science, in his book Representing and Intervening

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Scientists look for RIGHT ANSWERS……But this can mean different things to different scientists:Some scientists want to find answers THAT WORK without fully understanding why they work (INSTRUMENTALISM)

• Ian Hacking can’t actually see the things he’s spraying, they’re too small – so how can he be certain that they’re positrons? • Similar effects can be brought about by lots of different causes, and you may not know which is the ‘correct’ cause – see, for example, homeopathy (this is called ‘under-determination’)• ‘Made up’ things (like energy) can be really useful when maths gets hard.• Can anyone ever fully explain something? • Surely it’s better to just say ‘the experiments are giving the same answers as my predictions (and medicines are working and bridges are staying up), isn’t that good enough?’• But lots of scientists would find that quite boring…Richard Feynman, awesome

physicist (if a bit sexist…)

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Historical Example – THE ‘FUNDAMENTAL FYSIKS GROUP’

The full story is in David Kaiser’s excellent book ‘How The Hippies Saved Physics’ http://www.alibris.co.uk/booksearch?S=R&qtit=how+the+hippies+saved+physics&qauth=kaiser&qtopic=&qisbn=&qsort=p&afsrc=1&utm_medium=affiliate&utm_source=b4uyWwyIxag&utm_campaign=3&siteID=b4uyWwyIxag-iFk.VCX6owODL_ajmp6xuQ

(Or just read the Wikipedia article) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_Fysiks_Group

During the 1940s-1970s Quantum Physicists made progress by the motto:‘SHUT UP AND CALCULATE’… but what’s really going on in these weird quantum processes?

New (very popular) books about on the philosophical questions behind quantum physics…Quantum Physicists start asking new questions, doing new experiments, and discover new (and very important) things…(Nonlocality, Bell’s Theorem, Quantum Information Science…)

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BUT for most scientists these are background issues, which they don’t think about regularly – they don’t really use words like ‘realist’ or ‘instrumentalist’, and happily mix the two.In their day job they’re more concerned with getting ‘right’ answers than asking what sort of ‘right answer’ they’re talking about.

But how do they get these answers anyway? Is there some sort of ‘scientific method’…?© Oliver Marsh 2014

Is there a ‘SCIENTIFIC METHOD’?Lots of scientists say YES and it goes like this:1. You come up with a theory about how the world works2. You make a precise prediction based on that theory3. You do an experiment based on the prediction4. If your prediction was right, well done your theory might be right. (But you should probably make more predictions and do more experiments to be sure. And someone else should probably also ‘replicate’ your experiment to check.)BUT If your prediction was wrong, SCRAP THE THEORY IMMEDIATELY and go back to step 1I said this was the most

important step for science, a view I called

‘falsificationism’Karl Popper,

important philosopher© Oliver Marsh 2014

PROBLEMS WITH THIS SIMPLE VIEW:History points out that lots of science doesn’t work like that really...Lots of great theories didn’t have strong experimental support for quite a while, but people stuck to them anyway (Einstein’s relativity, for example)_Sociology says this doesn’t include everything scientists do in the 21st century world…(We’ll discuss that after the break)Philosophy says this means we’d never be sure we’d got a right answer…

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Is there a ‘SCIENTIFIC METHOD’?Lots of scientists say YES and it goes like this:1. You come up with a theory about how the world works2. You make a precise prediction based on that theory3. You do an experiment based on the prediction4. If your prediction was right, well done your theory might be right. (But you should probably make more predictions and do more experiments to be sure. And someone else should probably also ‘replicate’ your experiment to check.)

© Oliver Marsh 2014

Is there a ‘SCIENTIFIC METHOD’?Lots of scientists say YES and it goes like this:1. You come up with a theory about how the world works2. You make a precise prediction based on that theory3. You do an experiment based on the prediction4.If your prediction was right, well done your theory might be right. (But you should probably make more predictions and do more experiments to be sure. And someone else should probably also ‘replicate’ your experiment to check.)Just because something has always happened in the past, doesn’t mean it will definitely happen that way in all times and places. The sun might not rise tomorrow; gravity might work differently in other galaxies; you just have to assume that laws are universal. I call this ‘The Problem of Induction’

David Hume, very important philosopher from 300 years

ago© Oliver Marsh 2014

SO WHERE DOES THIS LEAVE US?1. ‘Science’ is actually quite messy2. It’s hard to strictly define ‘science’, though finding objectively correct answers seems to be important.3. But making strict rules of how to ‘do science’ is even harder - different people (and places and times) do science in different ways.4. If you try and ‘neaten up’ science with a single definition or method, you meet all sorts of problems.

So… does that mean science is just “anything goes?”Paul Feyerabend, anarchist

philosopher of science

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BREAK

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Maybe science isn’t about producing ‘right answers’, but rather about producing RELIABLE and CONVINCING KNOWLEDGEHey, David, we’ve discovered the Higgs Boson!

I don’t think you have, I think your sensors are just picking up something that looks like the Higgs Boson (underdetermination)

No David, we’ve checked the results against everything we know that looks like a Higgs Boson and it isn’t any of them

But what if there’s something you don’t know about? Even just one unknown factor could make your whole theory wrong, you need to keep testing to check (falsificationism)

We’ve been testing since the 1990s!

But that doesn’t guarantee you won’t get a different result tomorrow. And anyway, have you ever found a Higgs Boson anywhere outside the Large Hadron Collider? (problem of induction)

SHUT UP DAVID WE OUTNUMBER YOU

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BUT HOW DOES THIS OUTNUMBERING COME ABOUT? HOW DO SCIENTISTS EVER AGREE ON WHAT IS ‘RELIABLE’ OR ‘CONVINCING’ KNOWLEDGE?… and this is where ‘seeing scientifically’ comes back inScientists are a group. To join this group, you need to be trained. This training helps you to ‘see scientifically’

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BUT FOR SCIENCE THIS ‘SEEING’ IS MORE COMPLICATED THAN JUST USING YOUR EYES…‘Seeing Scientifically’ also involves:• Choosing what to look for and what to discount as irrelevant• Looking at evidence and deciding if it’s convincing• Can you see all the important details, or is something relevant missing?• Does it look like the science – particularly the really good science – you’ve seen in the past?

I collected these factors together into a single word ‘paradigm’

(though I didn’t define this word very clearly and there’s been lots of arguments about it…)

Thomas Kuhn, historian and philosopher of science

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But, as we discussed earlier, there is no one ‘correct’ paradigm. Instead paradigms change over time…• I got results by trying things out with my apparatus,

and writing down precisely what happened each time.• I was trying to prove that I’d found something new to

other ‘natural philosophers’• I recorded everything in lots of detail so that other

people could do my experiments too (and then they’d have to believe me…). The fact that I was a gentleman, and so probably trustworthy, helped too.

• (But, unlike most other people at the time, I also didn’t try to give underlying causes for things like gravity - if the maths and experiments worked, I was satisfied. Because my work was so successful, this became the fashion amongst scientists – a new paradigm)

• We get results by getting lots and lots of different equipment to look at the same event.

• We’re testing the predictions made by theorists.• This gives loads of data which we compare

using computers. We also cut out background ‘noise’

• We don’t give answers in terms of ‘this happened’ or ‘this didn’t happen’, but rather in probabilities)

• Instead of giving all the details of our experiments – there would be too many – our papers include links to other people’s work which people can follow if they don’t trust us.

Isaac Newton, natural philosopher and very strange man from 400 years ago

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I talk about this in my paper ‘Discipline and the Material Form of Images’

I discuss this in my paper ‘Towards an Analysis of Scientific Observation’

Mike Lynch, sociologist of science

Trevor Pinch, sociologist of science

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WHAT HAPPENS WHEN SCIENCE GOES BEYOND SCIENTISTS?SCIENCE COMMUNICATION PUBLIC ENGAGEMENT WITH SCIENCE (‘PES’)

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So when scientists are talking to the public, what sort of things do they need to think about?

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Activity (for after the break):Take a controversial science-related topic (climate change, medical scares, teaching creationism in schools…)

1. Pretend you hold the opposite opinion to the one you actually do.2. Try and think of (good) arguments for this opposite opinion.3. Think carefully about what might happen if the two sides were to meet. What good things might they be able to do to resolve disagreements? What bad things might they do which stop productive discussion? (Think about some of the material we’ve just discussed…)

Either think about this on your own, or form small groups (2-4 people). When we’re all ready we’ll have a class discussion. © Oliver Marsh 2014

BREAK

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BREAK

With thanks to @BeckiePort https://storify.com/BeckiePort/overlyhonestmethods

© Oliver Marsh 2014

Activity:Take a controversial science-related topic (climate change, medical scares, teaching creationism in schools…)

1. Pretend you hold the opposite opinion to the one you actually do.2. Try and think of (good) arguments for this opposite opinion.3. Think carefully about what might happen if the two sides were to meet. What good things might they be able to do to resolve disagreements? What bad things might they do which stop productive discussion? (Think about some of the material we’ve just discussed…)

Either think about this on your own, or form small groups (2-4 people). When we’re all ready we’ll have a class discussion. © Oliver Marsh 2014

© Oliver Marsh 2014

Post-Normal Science?• Lots of scientific issues today deal with complex systems (the climate, economic behaviour), so trying to be 100% sure of your answers is very difficult.• Lots of these issues also affect people, so we can’t just keep on saying ‘wait while we do more research’. We have to accept some uncertainty when we make decisions.• We have to think about what is ‘scientifically right’ in terms not just of experiments and mathematics, but also of morality.• The only way to do that is to include everyone who might be affected by the science in decisions over whether the science is good or not. • ‘Seeing scientifically’ will also include judgements of what is safe and fair – an important role for non-scientists.• So maybe it’s a good thing ‘science’ is so broad, flexible, and hard to pin down – that gives us something to build on...

WHAAAAT?

© Oliver Marsh 2014

Thank you for listeningAll these slides will be uploaded onto http://sidewayslookatscience.wordpress.com /

If you have any questions, or want recommendations on what to do next, please feel free to email me at oliver.marsh.13@ucl.ac.uk© Oliver Marsh 2014

Pictures thanks to…Slide 2: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/46/General_Sherman_tree_looking_up.jpghttp://images.nationalgeographic.com/wpf/media-live/photos/000/010/cache/messier-81_1086_600x450.jpghttp://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c9/Sedimented_red_blood_cells.jpghttp://www.bayerus.com/msms/msms_about/images/jemison_m.gifhttp://1.bp.blogspot.com/-J1cN1d13vkk/UT42CFv8W7I/AAAAAAAAArw/2sn-asDHv5A/s1600/DSC01902.JPGhttp://www.nasa.gov/images/content/272628main_NSH_Science_story.jpgSlide 5:http://www.bulletin.uwaterloo.ca/images/2011/1003hacking.jpgSlide 7:http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/culturelab/2011/06/27/SCAN0057.jpgSlide 9:http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/43/Karl_Popper.jpg Slide 12:http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1c/Allan_Ramsay_-_David_Hume,_1711_-_1776._Historian_and_philosopher_-_Google_Art_Project.jpgSlide 15http://d.ibtimes.co.uk/en/full/417228/cern.jpg?w=601&h=400&l=50&t=50Slide 16:http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/45/Duck-Rabbit_illusion.jpghttp://www.tomlichtenheld.com/childrens_books/images/books/duckrabbit/duckrabbit_illustration2.jpghttp://3.bp.blogspot.com/-hRsHmRqRCqk/T77nRG0hQBI/AAAAAAAABD8/xVav0XObrXc/s400/old-lady-young-optical-illusion%5B1%5D.jpg

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Pictures thanks to…Slide 17:http://savpeople.com/images1/thomas-kuhn-9.jpgSlide 18: http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Books/Pix/pictures/2009/1/26/1232964114343/Sir-Isaac-Newton-001.jpgSlide 19:http://phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/files/2013/04/brain-990x622.pnghttp://cdn.phys.org/newman/gfx/news/hires/howcanweusen.jpghttp://i1.ytimg.com/vi/j5HcIdI5Ckc/hqdefault.jpghttp://i.ytimg.com/vi/85Wi31ePsIw/0.jpgSlide 20:http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-d_g6uh7prZA/T_75sIVcgVI/AAAAAAAAAoE/PTGmjcpeQ2g/s640/grant-museum.jpghttp://news.bbcimg.co.uk/media/images/53438000/jpg/_53438503_53438502.jpghttp://www.centrallondonhumanists.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/darwinday2014.jpghttp://wineandcrisps.files.wordpress.com/2013/01/dara-and-brian-cox.jpghttp://www.ucl.ac.uk/museums/about/grant-visitorshttp://uclexcites.files.wordpress.com/2014/02/img_5281.jpg?w=750

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