Category Archives: science-y observation

Expert Texpert

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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 nth 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.
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You're So Analytic

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Sometime you have to let art flow over you. But apparently, this is not one of those times. How To Win the New Yorker Cartoon Caption Contest

Should you make a pun or, perhaps, create a visual gag about a cat surreptitiously reading its owner’s e-mail? Neither. You must aim for what is called a “theory of mind” caption, which requires the reader to project intents or beliefs into the minds of the cartoon’s characters.

I’ve entered this exactly once. To me, caption contests are backwards. I have an idea and draw a situation to match — the trick is distilling an allegedly funny idea into something that I can draw in a single-panel cartoon.

The “theory of mind” approach lets you take a single point in time — the utterance of the whatever’s in the caption — and force the reader to construct what has just happened (and sometimes the drawing does that anyway), but that and the common experience the reader must have is as much of a setup as you get. I’ve had people tell me a joke and suggest that it would make a funny cartoon, and I have to point out it took 45 seconds of talking to set up the punchline. It’s rare that that will lend itself to a single-panel cartoon.

via Cosmic Variance

I Feeeel Good

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I knew that I would.

[T]he placebo theory of suffering is one window through which to view blogging. As social creatures, humans have a range of pain-related behaviors, such as complaining, which acts as a “placebo for getting satisfied,” Flaherty says. Blogging about stressful experiences might work similarly.
[…]
Located mainly in the midbrain, the limbic system controls our drives, whether they are related to food, sex, appetite, or problem solving. “You know that drives are involved [in blogging] because a lot of people do it compulsively,” Flaherty notes. Also, blogging might trigger dopamine release, similar to stimulants like music, running and looking at art.

Hmmm. Blogging = bitching = placebo

And what of those who blog while listening to music, looking at art and running, all at the same time? Bring on that dopamine!

Heh. So much for blogging being bad

via EvolutionBlog

Required Reading

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The Nerd Handbook

OK, it’s a little bit slanted toward the computer nerd, but many things apply to general geekage.

Your nerd might come off as not liking people. Small talk. Those first awkward five minutes when two people are forced to interact. Small talk is the bane of the nerd’s existence because small talk is a combination of aspects of the world that your nerd hates. When your nerd is staring at a stranger, all he’s thinking is, “I have no system for understanding this messy person in front of me”. This is where the shy comes from. This is why nerds hate presenting to crowds.

The skills to interact with other people are there. They just lack a well-defined system.

The Peter Gabriel Operator

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There’s an article in Seed entitled “So” and subtitled “The anatomy of a scientific staple” which purports to discuss the use of the word as a preface to scientific pronouncements in the classroom and, I presume, in conference talks as well. I thought perhaps the author was overanalyzing things, but there is this observation:

In the 1990s, Columbia University psychologist Stanley Schachter counted how often professors said “uh” and “um” in lectures and found that humanists said them more than social scientists, and natural scientists said them less frequently of all. Because such words mark places where a speaker is choosing what to say next, Schachter argued, natural scientists’ low hesitation rate underscored the hard facts they were communicating. “So” can be said to have the inverse relation for exactly the same reason. It relays a sense of accuracy and rigor. One doesn’t have to worry about what to say as much as when to say it. “So” is the organizing device for a logic-driven thought process.

I don’t fully agree with this. The delay does help you organize your thoughts; I’m not sure if the observation from the article is necessarily a fair comparison. Does a scientist use “um” rather than “so” when discussing topics in the humanities or social sciences?

Anyway, just a few days ago the Quantum Pontiff gave some empirical data on this; I had been tempted to comment on that but it kinda slipped away from me, but now I shall do so. It was my favorite word as well, when I started teaching. My experience lecturing was in the navy, and since the military is all about training, I was afforded the opportunity (if mandatory training can be considered an opportunity) to acquire and then improve my lecturing technique.

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