Don’t you see the joker laughs at you?

Over at Physics and Physicists, a followup to an earlier post, to which I had added my two cents.

In an earlier post, I responded to a writer who called professional scientists the “most scientifically illiterate group in the US” and pointed out several fallacies of that statement. The problem here is that the level of expert knowledge that scientists consider themselves to have. We know what it means and how it feels to know something very well. This is why when we read other area of studies, we know we do not have the same level of expertise and would rather be inclined to refer to a true expert in such a field.

Once again I find myself agreeing, and wanting to add a little more than would comfortably fit in the comments.

What is it to be scientifically literate? We really have to define the term before deciding whether scientists are or are not. When stories surface about scientific illiteracy, it seems that they are pretty basic science questions that are being asked, not in-depth inquiries that require an advanced degree to answer. If we’re going to set the bar that high, then virtually everyone is scientifically illiterate, but that means that “literacy” is the wrong word. “Literacy” is being able to read at an n^th grade level or college level (argue amongst yourselves, both of you, as to what that means), but it doesn’t require that you be a literature major, capable of dissecting the works of Hemingway in great detail. But there is a continuum of ability above the threshold of “literate” in terms of what you can get out of the material. Being literate means you can read “An Old Man and the Sea” and understand it. If you think you have to be able to discuss the imagery in it to be considered literate, you’re just making it up.

So scientific literacy has to be the ability to understand the basics of science in general, and some of the major tenets of various disciplines. i.e. how is science conducted, and what’s important about physics and stamp collecting biology, chemistry geology, etc. Do you possess some knowledge, and can you apply it?

I think it boils down to how good your bullshit detector is.

Someone who thinks there is no gravity is space, and that men were able to walk on the moon because of heavy boots get no points toward their scientific literacy score, and are probably more likely to be scammed by someone peddling a perpetual motion machine. Likewise for anyone who doesn’t understand the very basics of evolution by natural selection and some of the major scientific arguments against creationism, or the chemistry-based dismissal of homeopathic medicines.

I would expect a scientifically-literate person to be able to recognize that a medical claim backed by a test that wasn’t double-blind probably shouldn’t be trusted, even though they can’t explain the specifics of the disease or the purported treatment. He or she doesn’t need to be able to explain quantum entanglement, but should be able to tell that an article claiming that it violates relativity and can be used for faster-than-light communication means the reporter got it wrong.

Now, it’s probably fair to hold scientists to a higher level of literacy — to understand some of these tenets of the sciences in more detail than the average person. And that’s related to what Zapperz goes on to say, and is part of what is in the book review of Rethinking Expertise that’s under discussion.

What Collins and Evans claim as original is their identification of a new type of expertise, which they call “interactional expertise”. People who have this kind of expertise share some of the tacit knowledge of the communities of practitioners while still not having the full set of skills that would allow them to make original contributions to the field. In other words, people with interactional expertise are fluent in the language of the specialism, but not with its practice.

So a scientist might be expected to have this interactional expertise, even if a scientifically literate person does not. A scientists who recognizes when they are out of their depth and goes to consult someone more knowledgeable is being a good scientist, not an illiterate one.

The review also discusses how one of the authors,a sociologist, learns enough physics lingo to probably be able to pass as one of them.

But what does it mean to learn a language associated with a form of life in which you cannot fully take part? Their practical resolution of the issue is to propose something like a Turing test — a kind of imitation game in which a real expert questions a group of subjects that includes a sociologist among several gravitational physicists. If the tester cannot tell the difference between the physicist and the sociologist from the answers to the questions, then we can conclude that the latter is truly fluent in the language of the physicists.

That sounds to me a little like Professor Higgins coaching Eliza Doolittle to con everyone at the embassy ball. I’d change things a little, to avoid the possibility of rote memorization: if I can explain some concept to you and you can aske me some intelligent followup questions (i.e. not like the eponymous ELIZA program, where you are just parroting some key words, then I’ll consider you to have some minimal level of interactional expertise.

Goo goo g’ joob