Reinventing Discovery: Book Review, Part I

In Arthur C. Clarke's story "Into the Comet" he describes a spaceship with a computer malfunction that dooms all abroad to eventual death by starvation/oxygen deprivation, whichever comes first. The solution is a device older than the computer: the abacus. The entire crew ran calculations on acabi, and they make their way out of the comet's nucleus successfully. That is an extreme example of citizen science (or oh-my-God-we're-all-going-to-die science) but it shows the principle, that collaboration by a large number of people can solve very complicated problems. Michael Nielsen's excellent book, 'Reinventing Discovery' tells us about many such examples, though in most of them participants have to do a lot more than just calculate without thinking.

Source

Take 'Galaxy Zoo': volunteers can help classify galaxies (it turns out people do it faster and more accurately than a computer). It all began when one overworked grad student, Kevin Schawinski, wanted to prove that elliptical galaxies aren't always old, but had simply too many galaxies to go through in order to prove his theory. He and a post-doc, Chris Lintott, joined forces and opened a website which allowed anyone to come and classify galaxy photos. The project is an enormous success, with 22 scientific papers so far and the spin-offs Galaxy Zoo 2 and Galaxy Zoo:Hubble.

Another story Nielsen recounts is the story of the Polymath Project: Fields Medal recipient Tim Gowers posted a mathematical problem in his blog and asked for a collaborative efforts. Twenty-seven people wrote 800 comments and solved the problem within 37 days. Now there is a Polymath blog which keeps up the good work.

These projects were a success, but Nielsen also studies failed projects and the reasons for their failure. He argues (which I wholly agree!) that scientists are rewarded by writing as many good scientific papers as possible. Contributing to, say, Wikipedia, essentially takes away time from research and gives nothing in terms of academic reputation.

Galaxy Zoo is a success because it gives astronomers something to write about, and it's possible the Polymath project succeeds because it A. involves people with tenure and B. involves people who want to be noticed by people with tenure.

Personally, I think the solution to scientists' reluctance to cooperate in collaborative projects is simple: put them in a spaceship and tell them they won't be able to make it home until they collaborate. However, it is possible the oxygen run out while they'd argue about whose name gets to be first in the authors' list. Also, spaceships are very costly.

Next part: what Nielsen has to say about Arxiv and the future of open science.

Bora's Review

Joerg Heber's Review

Michael Nielsen talks Open Science in a TED event:

Nielsen, Michael (2011). Reinventing Discovery Princeton University Press Other: 9780691148908

Students and pseudo-scientific beliefs

"The Dean insists that we add creationism and crystal theory and spiritualism to the curriculum."

"They already have those--"

"Not as equal time in the physics and chemistry departments"

Fallen Angels (Niven, Pournell and Flynn, 1992)

Luckily, chemistry and physics departments aren't forced (yet) to add these kind of courses to their curriculum, but that doesn't stop the students from believing in all sorts of pseudoscience, from astrology to faith healing. Since 1988, students (mostly freshmen and sophomores) at the University of Arizona were given a questionnaire in order to determine their attitudes toward science and pseudoscience, as well as examine their basic scientific knowledge. Normally, the students take the survey during the first week in General Education astronomy courses, before any discussions in class about astrology and/or pseudoscience.

Do students consider astrology a science?

Less than a third of the students "disagree" or "strongly disagree" with the statement "The position of the planets have an influence on the events of every day life." Female students tend significantly more to believe that astrology is "sort of" or "very" scientific.

Students majoring in science did better than students studying non-scientific majors:

Strangely, the findings of the National Science Foundation (NSF) in the U.S. regarding astrology are considerably better: in 2006, 65% of the Americans said that astrology was "Not at all scientific", in comparison with 5% who thought it was "Very scientific", 26% who thought it was "Sort of scientific" and 4% who didn't know. Female respondents tend to think more than male respondents that astrology is "Sort of scientific" (29% and 23% respectively). Five percents of both genders believe that astrology is "Very scientific".

The authors aren't sure why the NSF results and their differ so much. They mention that the NSF survey takes place over the phone, as opposed to their paper-based survey. Also, the survey is given as a part of an astronomy course and the similarities between "astrology" and "astronomy" might have confused the students. While the NSF survey population comes from all over the U.S., this survey's population is mostly for the Southwest, so the sample might be location-biased.

Science literacy and astrology

There is a negative correlation between belief in astrology and science classes. The more science classes student take, the less they tend to believe in astrology.

On the other hand, there was only a small (though significant) difference in the number of correct answers to the scientific knowledge questions between those who thought astrology wasn't scientific and those who did. Out of 15 questions, the former answered, on average, 12.5 questions correctly (83%), while the latter answered 11.6 correctly (77%).

Pseudoscience and scientific knowledge

Nearly 39% of the students think that "Some people possess psychic powers". About 32% have no opinion about the matter, and only about 29% "Disagree" or "Strongly disagree". Things are a bit better with "Some ancient civilizations were visited by extraterrestrials": only 15% or so said they "Agree" or "Strongly agree". More than half of the students (51.66%) didn't have an opinion about the subject. Less than 40% "Strongly disagree" or "Disagree" that "Faith healing is a valid alternative to conventional medicine".

In conclusion, it seems that scientific knowledge doesn't necessarily make people (at least Arizona students) disregard pseudoscience beliefs. However, studying science correlates positively with rejection of pseudoscience such as astrology.

Sugarman et. al (2011). Astrology Beliefs among Undergraduate Students Astronomy Education Review