PoMo theoretician threatens to sue students

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Originally posted by Le Tйlйspectateur:
[b]Your rather limited understanding of what science is and your lack of ability to see the kind of science that you practice as just one part of "science" is a little concerning as you bill yourself as "a scientist".

The idea that only people who have been trained in your particular mode of science are authentic scientists, or "insiders" is also rather ridiculous.

The idea that only those from "inside" your sect can critic you believes and practices exposes the fact that you are talking about religion.[/b]

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Again nothing to offer, save for insults.

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Outside of science is quite trivial to define in this context, it's any human being who has not spent many years practicing science.

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It is not a "trivial question" it immediately raises the question of who fits your esteemed category of scientist? Is it only physical scientists,what about geographers or psychologists, anthropologists, archeologists or economists, physicians or engineers. Are mathematicians scientists? How about computer scientists? It also raises the question of what you mean by "practicing science" does that mean only experimentalists or does it include theorists? what about technicians? The reality of academic science is such that most senior experimental researchers don't actually engage in the hands on experimental work but depend on lab techs and grad students? Does that mean they are practicing science? The overarching question to ask after you have finshed with those questions is: What is the actual characteristic or trait or ability that your subcategory of "scientist" share that magically makes them more capable of raising questions of epistemology or methodological assumptions.

In terms of philosophy of science you make a ridiculous distinction based on your own bias and those you agree with you consider "scientists" and those you disagree with are sociologist. You may find it shocking but many of those in the discipline of philosophy of science are neither they are actually philosophers.

so don't ask me to answer stupid questions and get pissy with me when I don't answer them.

[ 29 May 2008: Message edited by: N.R.KISSED ]

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Before this goes any further, can I again repeat that there are elements of sexism and racism here that the participants in this thread, with some exception, are either not interested or unable to confront.

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Quick, a bit of math! How many self-identified female babblers are participating in this thread?

Before this goes any further, can I mention that there are elements of sexism and racism here in this thread that participants, with some exceptions, are either not interested in, or are unable to confront?

My thought really was that it was unfortunate that the women who seemed most interested in this type of theory, no longer post here. This might be part of the reason that there have few female respondents.

[ 30 May 2008: Message edited by: Cueball ]

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500_Apples to martin:

Cut the self-righteous crap nobody's buying it.

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It actually seems like most people are "buying" martin's interpretation. I also agree with him on most points he's made in this thread.

I particularly liked,

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[Venkatesan] was clearly harassed on the basis of her educated opinion and of some alpha males' sentiment that she had no entitlement to issue a strong statement about something that clearly has iconic status in their eyes, Science.

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500_Apples: Do you speak for a silent majority?

[ 30 May 2008: Message edited by: It's Me D ]

writer, why do you think more women are not posting in this thread?

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Originally posted by Cueball:
[b]My thought really was that it was unfortunate that the women who seemed most interested in this type of theory, no longer post here. This might be part of the reason that there have few female respondents.

[ 30 May 2008: Message edited by: Cueball ][/b]

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Well, I'm certainly interested in the types of questions being discussed and I suppose I am competent to discuss them. But, though a critic of modernity and literally "post-modernist", I'm not a "postmodernist" in the usual understanding of the term.

I live for questions like this and would thoroughly enjoy talking about them. But I've been accused of various moral/political sins once too often - not (to my mind) because I am guilty of these sins but because my way of approaching the issues is unfamiliar or unorthodox in the context of this forum. To my mind, that's neither discussion nor debate and it's worse than useless.

(I'm not talking about this thread in particular - there have been some interesting contributions.)

I'm going to reiterate a couple of points, and then present three examples of sociology of science and explain why these are particularly useful and interesting, to illustrate what those terms of mean.

First, about the racism and sexism allegation. It is 100% possible and 100% impossible to know for sure. Between ~25 courses in CEGEP, 46 in undergrad, 5 courses in graduate school, and 4 occasions of being a teaching assistant, I've seen a lot of courses but it's a biased sample. What I've seen is professors command respect through the rigour of the course content, their level of formality and of preparedness.

To return to the topic I've been discussing, on the validity of different means of exploring how science is done:

Case 1: [b]Fundamentalist physics: why Dark Energy is bad for Astronomy[/b]
[url=http://xxx.lanl.gov/abs/0704.2291]http://xxx.lanl.gov/abs/0704.2291[/url]
In it, Simon White discusses many of the cultural differences between physicists and astronomers, the rise of big science, project-specific science, the aura of "fundamental work" and he does this to explain his view. An interesting comparison is presented between the Hubble Space Telescope and The Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy probe, for example. His view is that a strong focus on dark energy research could be very harmful to astronomy due to a lot of these cultural aspects, it could very well crowd out other fields; and there are reasons why it is not inherently more interesting than other open questions, indeed even less interesting. These insights would not be possible from someone not familiar with the field.

Case 2: [b]A Case Study of Gender Bias at the Postdoctoral Level in Physics, and its Resulting Impact on the Academic Career Advancement of Females[/b]
[url=http://arxiv.org/abs/0804.2026]http://arxiv.org/abs/0804.2026[/url]
In this paper, Sherry Towers explores correlations between job performance and career advancement [i]at the postdoctoral level[/i], specifically at RunII Dzero experiments. Here, internal expertise is helpful on several front, as Towers used to work at Fermilab herself. Where that translated in this case, is that she had very rigorous and knowledgeable measurements of performance and career advancement. She doesn't look at total number of publications... she looks at total number of internal reports; which is a quirk to large-scale particle physics experiments. She uses clever measurements of influence on career advance, and very importantly she knows how to use statistics properly. As a counterexample, I remember when reading some articles on this subject by mainstream sociologists, they would often state the statistic that men and women get the same mean CGPA in undergraduate math courses, a statistic obviously irrelevant to anyone with a clue, but seemingly important to someone without. Here, Towers succeeded in demonstrating discrimination to a high level of confidence in a [i]robust manner[/i].

Case 3: [b]String Theory and the Crisis in Particle Physics[/b]
[url=http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/0805/0805.1911v1.pdf]http://arxiv.or...
Bert Shroer explores the rise of string theory as a dominant TOE in the particle physics community, the different sociological stratifications taking place, and the evolving structure of the physics body of knowledge. He explores how he believes string theory to be a bad development, and he makes, among other things, technical comparisons to previous attempts at a theory of everything. It is not obvious that there are is a crisis in particle physics, and many people have different opinions on the matter. Only one thing is certain, one cannot have an informed opinion on the matter in the absence of familiarity with particle physics. He links string theory's rise to the evolution in dual models, which is not at all obvious.

I highly recommend all these papers for reading. Both of them had huge reactions on the science blogosphere if you'd like to compare notes. I can only speak for myself and from hours of discussions with colleagues that they raise very critical points.

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It is not just about identifying issues, one needs to be able to state them in a coherent manner that others can then explore as well. One needs to come up with the right questions, and the right way to answer these questions, and when needed, using proper statistical methods.

[b]Martin Dufresne thinks:[/b]

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500_Apples would probably turn various shades of purple if he ever heard about Sociology of science (a mere 207 000 entries in Google).

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And there are 33, 500, 000 Google entries for "astrology". It is clear not all of them will be interesting. Similarly with sociology of science, it is not intrinsically obvious that the portion of fraction which are interesting will exceed the type I suspect (i.e. those from people who have a clue about science).

Thus I restate my questions:
1) Is it possible for people without a clue of science to provide useful and original critiques of the sociology and philosophy of science?
2) If not, how much of a clue does one need?
3) What validity can there possibly be to the statement "Scientific facts do not correspond to a natural reality but conform to a social construct."

[ 30 May 2008: Message edited by: 500_Apples ]

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First, about the racism and sexism allegation. It is 100% possible and 100% impossible to know for sure. Between ~25 courses in CEGEP, 46 in undergrad, 5 courses in graduate school, and 4 occasions of being a teaching assistant, I've seen a lot of courses but it's a biased sample. What I've seen is professors command respect through the rigour of the course content, their level of formality and of preparedness.

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How unscientific of you.

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Thus I restate my questions:
1) Is it possible for people without a clue of science to provide useful and original critiques of the sociology and philosophy of science?
2) If not, how much of a clue does one need?
3) What validity can there possibly be to the statement "Scientific facts do not correspond to a natural reality but conform to a social construct."

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You don't know what science is. You only read, think, do, listen to a certain kind of science. You ignorance, and the insistence that it is us who is ignorant, is annoying.

By your own standard you should stop posting in any thread that deals with anything more than physics, which would include this one.

Speaking of the receptive audience, I think one of the most interesting thing about post-modernism is the almost fanatic antipathy many people, especially those in the estbalished elites, have towward it.

Not saying that the behaviour on this thread has beens so great, and a little more perusuasiveness might be in order, but if you look at the context of the thread, and how it is framed by a completely gratutious and bordering on persnally libelous drive by smear, and outright goading from the author of the original post, you can see why people are not really in the mood for civility.

That said, I think 500_apples is being treated a little shabilly.

You mean you did not write that?

I was giving you an answer. I asked you a question.

You said that "the text has no author".

I asked you if you wrote that or not. Pretty simple to respond to that, I should think. Sorry if my questions are short, I am doing something else as we speak.

[ 31 May 2008: Message edited by: Cueball ]

S'ok Cueball, slightly distracted myself. Here's something thats on a slightly different angle but might be germane to the general topic, especially the other students replies. This may be the start of a trend, good, bad or indifferent, so should be watched for:

[url=http://www.secularstudents.org/node/462]http://www.secularstudents.org/n...

I, for the record, agree with much if not most of what I hear so-called post-modernists say -when it comes to the social content- as they may be speaking from direct experience as well. It's mostly the way they get there that puts us mortals off -though we can never say for sure. Maybe another thread should be opened on "science and social constructs" in the Humanities forum, in respect to Writer's request. Maybe start with what's often called "scientism", as in the belief, that might be a better lead in.

[ 31 May 2008: Message edited by: Erik Redburn ]

So, you are saying that you said something and that I failed to interpret it in the way that it was meant?

You are right. I should not have used the word "Inherent in this attack...." Since the students attack upon the professor centered on some stuff someone was doing on "eco-feminism." The relationship is explicit. And I don't particularly see the distinction between the actions of the students and the article since the overt misrepresentations of the article are more or less a continuation of the attack, and I am not particularly convinced this information is delivered to us free of similar intent, even though it appears to be free of extra comment, since later the author of the OP openly derides the professors distress:

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Originally posted by Snuckles:
[b]The funniest part of the WSJ article:

Did the physician diagnose her, or impose a social construct on her? Discuss. [img]wink.gif" border="0[/img] [/b]

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Again coupling the theoretical attack upon post-modernism and the attack upon the professor, using the professors distress at what she believes to be a racist attack upon her as a tool to ridicule the professor and the theoretical framework she is using.

Nor am I particularly suprised by any of this, nor did I say anything in particular about science, in the way of saying it was not valuable. I would say though that even if it is valuable, it is also socially constructed. Many things that are socially constructed, remain valuable.

Who said they were not?

[ 31 May 2008: Message edited by: Cueball ]

Who said that science has no value?

Again why are you asserting that because something might be defined as "socially constructed" this lessens its meaning/value (power). It seems to me that where knowledge (science) becomes increasingly socially constructed, is when it enters the greater discourse.

[ 31 May 2008: Message edited by: Cueball ]

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Originally posted by 500_Apples:
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Lorentz invariance would be true even if there were no humans around to comment on it. Saying it's a social construct, equivalent to modern art or to chocolate dessert is to lessen its significance, and inevitably, its validity.
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There would be no "Lorentz invariance" at all if "there were no humans around to comment on it," as you indicate when you say "something that looks like THIS universe." Who is doing the looking, anyway?

[ 31 May 2008: Message edited by: Cueball ]

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Originally posted by 500_Apples:
[b]

Yes Cueball, I realize that the term itself would not exist without humans having called it that.
[/b]

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Good. Obvious of course. And I note so much of this is obvious that it amazes me there are arguements about it. But perhaps the implications are not so obvious, for example humans determine what they are looking at.

Right, so for example there is a lot of research into sub-atomic particles, and their use for making explosive divices, and this research specifically rests in larger social constructs such as politics, and the military industrial complex. So in fact "what we know" is defined by its position in the larger social construct, and its value to that construct.

I agree with Cueball that the social environment has an enormous effect on what research is conducted and determining "what we know". Nonetheless, we do know what we know. Concretely, this means that, for example, a lot more is known about using the properties of subatomic particles to cause enormous explosions than is known about generating electricity from solar power. Nonetheless, a nuclear weapon can cause an enormous explosion and destroy an entire city. About 15 years ago, the natural law party ran candidates in most parliamentary ridings. If I recall correctly, the claimed that their type of prayer would prevent the effects of nuclear explosions. Some claim that the claims of the natural law party have an equal level of validity as those of the campaign for nuclear disarmament. To be clear, I'm not saying anyone on this board believes in such an equivalence.

Such claims of total equivalence are also used by fundamentalists to support the teaching of intelligent design. In short, it appears to me that such claims waste time on the left and support the right.

More than one poster on this board seemed to support the claim "Scientific facts do not correspond to a natural reality but conform to a social construct". I'd agree with "our knowledge of scientific facts correspond to natural reality but also conform to a social construct" or "The ability of scientists to gather facts about natural reality is constrained by social factors". I'd object to the claim that scientific facts do not correspond to reality in anyway. How's this fit with what other people say?

Which "certain babblers" said that? I think there is a difference between saying empirical discovery is not "absolute" for precisely many of the reasons you have outlined, and saying that it has no value. Saying that the scientific narrative has no value would be at variance with the idea, I think. After all, it is also a narrative. What is in question is the rightful dominiance of that narrative over others, which seems to be the presumption.

The presumption that the scientific narrative has inordinate access to "the truth", and that its objectivity is not variously impugned by human factors that define the discourse, social constructs and so on and so forth.