Slashdot Mirror
Crowdsourcing and Scientific Truth
ygslash writes "In an
opinion piece in the New York Times Sunday Review,
Jack Hitt states that comments posted to on-line articles, and elsewhere on line,
have de facto become an important factor
in what is accepted as scientific truth. From the article: 'Any article, journalistic or scientific, that sparks a debate typically winds up looking more like a good manuscript 700 years ago than a magazine piece only 10 years ago. The truth is that every decent article now aspires to become the wiki of its own headline.'"
It's long been true that a top reason to go to academic conferences isn't only for the paper presentations, but rather for the hallway/dinner/bar conversations about those papers. More formally, many scientific journals will publish short letters or commentaries about papers they've previously published, and that practice used to be even more widespread (at some journals a "letter" has morphed into a mini-paper, but they used to really be letters to the editor).
The same is now true online with something like Terence Tao's blog: it's interesting as much for what other mathematicians post in reply, as for what Tao himself posts (though his posts are quite interesting). The main difference as I see it is that the number of people participating is much greater (which has good and bad parts), and, in comparison to hallway conversations, the conversations persist and get referenced back to more, since they're in a semi-durable written medium (that's the "wiki-like" aspect the article discusses).
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Since you're our resident first-poster for this article you're forgiven for not having RTFAed. :) The article actually sings the praises of comments sections in their ability to dissect evidence more efficiently than one or a handful of time-constrained professionals, points out how similar annotations in old books gave rise to the first dictionaries, argues that we need to treat 'comments' sections more respectfully as a result (and call them perhaps 'glosses', borrowing the term used for said mediaeval–Renaissance marginalia), and then insinuates that the original article was undoubtedly in error, particularly since the bird has been "sighted" very several very convenient times in the past when conservationists' efforts were frustrated.
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looking more like a good manuscript 700 years ago than a magazine piece only 10 years ago
What does this even mean? I can't parse it and its early Sunday morning but I'm not that drowsy or stupid (although some would disagree with the latter).
Obviously its relevant that he references GOOD 700 year old vs just "a" 10 year old. Obviously its important that magazines are time filling fluff for the masses / chewing gum for the mind, and in the old days manuscripts held real individual contributions of science work (like a modern journal / preprint archive / e-journal). Manuscripts didn't do much for complimentary copy other than the occasional thank god here and there, but magazines are almost all complimentary copy now?
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
Is the article author aware of how pervasive astroturfing is in the comments sections? Perhaps if the article is about a subject that no one has a financial or political interest in, comments sections could serve this way. But as soon as someone's got an interest to protect, you can't trust the comments to be anything other than posts made by paid people creating fake personas to do so. Slashdot has had articles about this type of astroturfing before.
'Any article, journalistic or scientific, that sparks a debate typically winds up looking more like a good manuscript 700 years ago than a magazine piece only 10 years ago.
Not here. Two or three lines of summary are usually enough for the equivalent in comments of a thermonuclear war.
Good thing the debunking campaign wasn't led by a Slashdot poster, otherwise the home page would've been "this-woodpecker-is-dead.com"
Its interesting to observe how much commentary on articles is devoted to shouting down the opposition rather than making observations and/or corrections of the original content. Given the accelerated pace of such discussions on-line, the utility of spurious research in support of questionable legislation has been reduced significantly. In other words, if you spot an ivory-billed woodpecker today, your claim might not survive long enough to secure funding or implement conservation measures. That is; without your supporters declaring that the time for further research and comments is over and now its time to act.
Today's crowdsourcing serves to reduce the half-life of bad science.
Have gnu, will travel.
Jack Hitt makes an excellent point. The value of comments are to provide context to the article. What is the value of comments? Is is (the value of Web 2.0) - (the value of Web 1.0).
Comments contextualize the article. The questions raised in comments are the test by which the article itself is valuable or not. Does the article speak to the questions? If yes, the article is valuable.
There is a huge difference between scientific truth and, alternately, popular perception. I don't even want to try to explain that, it's so obvious - and there may some be more pertinent matters to address, in this.
I think we can accept that comments sections do not make much of a forum for development of scientific anything. Comments are comments. Comments are not journal articles. Comments can be said to be peer reviewed, to some extent, but then again, comments are not journal articles, comments need not follow any specific format for reporting of questions and results, comments are just comments.
I'm afraid that that all may be beside any points raised in the linked article, however. What the article looks like to me, in all my sense of bias: It looks like a way of trying to excuse a lack of significant content in articles, in lieu of some kind of perceptual bias about comments. It think it's just as well for the birds, though I know it's been said, "It's the thought that counts."
Definitely not. In that sense, it's very predictably naive. I mean, you can trust me on it or RTFA, your choice. :) If only NYTimes had a non-paywalled, publicly-accessible comments section so we could tell them...
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very good
Comments are comments. Comments are not journal articles. Comments can be said to be peer reviewed, to some extent, but then again, comments are not journal articles, comments need not follow any specific format for reporting of questions and results, comments are just comments.
I did not RTFA. I second your point. But even if we were to take a more generous view of commenting sections, the problem of noise filtering remains. Comment sections are a perfect example of what Asimov said best :
“Anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.'”
The amount of effort required to parse through comments to find gems of significant value is enormous. I know that this is that age of the crowd and so on, but there are certain issues on which the opinion of the crowd has on average very little value because of the complexity of the topic and the years of experience required to make informed conclusions. The trade-off between expert opinion and open crowdsourcing varies widely depending on what is the topic under discussion, and the userbase of the particular site. Vaccines and autism on a Californian site, for example.
Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem.
Well known bullshit. See 'Alan Sokal'.
Social 'scientists' should shut the fuck up before further embarrassment results.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
As OP (here on /., not the author of the article), I'd like to re-raise here in the comments a point in my original post
that got edited out:
There are many who disagree with the thesis of TFA. It is interesting to note that they are trying to make their point - where else? - in the comments on the article, in comments here on ./,
and elsewhere in the blogosphere.
Don't worry, it's an article-writer noticing that the internet is doing something (crowd-sourcing research, which it did in this example), and trying to take credit for himself, in his own comment section.
This article is the soul-searching of an author, trying to find relevance in the post-newspaper world.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Since "science" cannot prove historical events, the only thing left is opinion. By definition, if something is repeatable or testable, it cannot be "proven" by scientific methods. All you are left with is belief.
In thinking about how I look at articles and commentary I realized I factor in comments almost as much as the article itself, particularly any inherently subjective article, for example one that discusses the social or economic impact of a scientific discovery.
The article itself is likely to have a good signal to noise but suffers from bias, the comments typically have very poor signal to noise but can often correct or at least expose the original biasing. Taken together I at least feel like I have a better sense of 'truth', particularly if the subject is likely to expose my own bias.
In other words, yeah the article makes sense initially but I'll reserve judgment till more people have posted about it on slashdot.
Although the author set out to analyze the role comments play, I found his objective disposition of woodpecker sightings' impact on environmental fundraising. Almost bordering on cynical, the author does point out the suspicious nature of theses sightings in a way that I'm sure will ruffle the feathers of many set-in-stone environmental saviors.
https://www.accountkiller.com/removal-requested
What's common is the accusations of astroturfing by fans of competing products, theories, or systems. It's become the "in thing" to claim that any dissenting opinion is astroturfing.
Unfortunately for those who like to use terms without understanding their meaning, it's only "astroturfing" if you're compensated for broadcasting a statement. People are entitled to share their opinions as they see fit provided they're not paid to take a side.
Even if they disagree with you.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
Excellent points, Ms. Sam! If the Web had existed when I was a kid, I would have early on learned about G.F.B. Riemann, and hence known enough to have studied real physics: GFB Riemann > > Paul Dirac > > David Boehm > > John Bell (Bell's Theorem or Inequality > > Julian Barbour (and skipped Bohr and Einstein). The Web over Internet is a true cognition multiplier.
The Web over Internet is a true cognition multiplier.
Very true, the only problem is that the multiplicative factor is highly variable and in many cases can be much less than 1.0.
Somehow I don't think we're exhaustively on the same page here. That's just a summary of the article—in practice the web is as full of bugs and dirt as anything else. Wikipedia notes that Dr. Barbour's theory of timeless physics is considered controversial, and the fact that he stopped publishing academically in the late sixties suggests that his work may not have been put through rigorous critique. If anything what you're saying highlights the greatest danger of the web: it becomes trivial to avoid critical analysis of what you're looking at if it makes you uncomfortable, and it's hard to be certain of the authoritativeness of a given statement.
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Well, there's sometimes a question as to whether one stops publishing academically or is not being published academically?
Also, if you are familiar with Riemann's thesis on quantum geometry, perhaps Barbour would appear more cogent?
sgt_doom
I thought science looks for "consensus" nowadays, not "truth."
Liberty in your lifetime
"Yes it is"
"No it isn't"
"You are an idiot"
"I am the smartest person in the world!"
Repeat until the next subject is posted.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
Astroturfing is creating a grassroots appearance when no such grassroots movement existed previously. Money doesn't have to change hands as directly as you hint at, and certainly not 'if you're compensated for broadcasting a statement'.
Here's the difference: Astroturfing is also the term for when a well-funded interested party creates and funds a 'think tank' or 'activist group' that has the unstated mission of forwarding their goal. The astroturfing group can recruit people that share an interest, track membership, fund gatherings, push information to assist their membership, and promote spokespeople without giving any of these people money. Every person that appears on behalf of that position has their activist efforts easier due to all these little helpful moments, but can be completely unaware that they're 'funded'.
A mob that splits the work and cost among many members to lighten the load, and lacks deep pockets behind the scenes is a 'grassroots' organization.
An org with deep-pockets supporters lightening the load is astroturfing.
Having (insert celebrity) call attention to your case isn't astroturfing.
Having (insert celebrity or wealthy benefactor) provide substantial direct funding is astroturfing.
There are many shades of grey between these two, but I'd venture that a key detail is whether wealthy benefactor(s) want to use grassroots' perceived lack of economic motive to hide an existing economic motive, and/or to hide their financial backing.
Sorry this went long; am interested in the topic-- I'm willing to concede this was written ad hoc, so other views / opinions are welcome.
I just occasionally see 2nd-order astroturfing firms (for lack of a better term) out there that do as I've described: surround themselves with unpaid teammates and pretend like they're so good at all the hassles of a campaign because of supporters or great karma, rather than the cash that funds all the background efforts that otherwise would take considerably more volunteer supporters.
so an organisation like GetUp! (http://www.getup.org.au/) is astroturfing or not? it is funded by small donations, but also by unions. It pushes a very definite political agenda.
I can see an argument both ways, so I'm curious about whether that would be classed as an astroturfer or not...
Business/App ideas are like arseholes: everyone's got one, they're mostly shit, but very rarely they contain a diamond
I'm afraid I'm not familiar with anything of Riemann's work beyond his sums, so I can't really comment on the subject matter from the position of an expert. What cursory research I have done on Barbour suggests his theories are now getting more attention. (Still, I'm a little troubled by the statement that you felt reading Einstein was unproductive—one of the few things I do definitely know about theoretical physics is that his work is considered absolutely essential.)
You're correct there's a distinction between a decision to leave academia and trouble getting published, but it still means that the theory hasn't been subjected to criticism with the same rigour as one that has been published.
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Heh. We all can have fun mocking the "social science" sort.
But there's the perspective of the old wise crack, attributed to various singers (Louis Armstrong, Bill Broonzy, et al.) when asked if what he was singing was folk music: "I ain't never heard a horse sing a song.".
Similarly, all known science is done by gangs of humans, so it is inherently a social construct. Various historians of science have elaborated on this, by explaining that the scientific method has been rediscovered many times in many societies, but only one of them has developed a successful "science". The reason is that, in all the others, scientific methods have been developed by very small groups of people, typically in a "guild" or sorts, who hold the information very close and don't share it or their methods with outsiders. Eventually a small group dies out, and their knowledge dies with them.
The founders of modern, Western "science" developed not because they also discovered scientific methodology. Rather, their success was from their process of open publication. This enabled the "standing on the shoulder of giants" phenomenon, as Isaac Newton put it. But even that quip wasn't original with him; he just found a more elegant and memorable way of expressing it than his predecessors. It was published, so we remember it. With open publication of methods and results, Western science became a social construct that slowly spread to a large population. With that population, plus all the published material from previous generations, it all snowballed into the world-changing system that we see today.
No single human could have ever done this. It required a social system, with massive sharing of information. Calling it a "social construct" is merely an elegant way of saying all this. It's why modern science has been so more successful than previous local, personal development of knowledge. It's also much of what gave a small, local population on the western fringe of a continent so much control over the rest of the world.
As the biologists have been telling us, the dominant species tend to be the social ones. And it's their social behavior that makes them win over their less-social relatives. We see this within our own species with the sub-population that developed the social construct that we call "science".
Of course, I wouldn't deny the fun we had when Alan Sokal managed his publication feat. That was hilarious. Nobody says that social things are always correct. The history of science is full of mistakes and dead ends. Open publication means that society can learn from them, and not repeat them.
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
Is it just me, or is it quite ironic that at the time of writing this, this will be only the 47th comment on a subject active for 12 hours on slashdot. Apparently metacrowdsourcing (crowdscourcing about crowdsourcing) isn't all that popular.
For reference sake, there have been 7 more articles up (at least by my filters) which have already garnered the following amounts of comments. Notice that the less scientific seems to be where more, er, uh "crowdsourcing" happens. :)
Is Google the New Microsoft? --> 366
Study Aims To Read Dogs' Thoughts --> 113
Apple Security Blunder Exposes Lion Login Passwords In Clear Text -- >144
Biochemist Creates CO2-Eating Light That Runs On Algae --> 76
Some USAF Pilots Refuse To Fly F-22 Raptor --> 191
Ask Slashdot: What Language Should a Former Coder Dig Into? --> 229
Unblocking The Pirate Bay the Hard Way Is Fun --> 51
One man's pink plane is another man's blue plane.
I would say "no". To my mind there has to be malice, i.e. a hidden agenda for an expression to count as astro turfing. I.e. it's a fake, grass roots movement. An organisation/special interest group that is open with the fact that that's what they are, cannot thus be astro turfing.
Stefan Axelsson
I think we can accept that comments sections do not make much of a forum for development of scientific anything.
So what? You don't need much of a forum for "development of scientific anything". There's a means to publish scientific knowledge via arXiv and a means to discuss it via blogs and community discussion sites. This argument boils down to "but they don't have formal peer review". Put that in and journals become obsolete.
and different media can be used to discuss the falsifying data. So, what does "type of media" have to do with "scientific truth"? (hint: nothing) I guess the author's main point is that "crowd sourcing" is being ignored by the "elite scientific media". NYTimes, not your best moment here...
What's common is the accusations of astroturfing by fans of competing products, theories, or systems. It's become the "in thing" to claim that any dissenting opinion is astroturfing.
Spoken like a true shill for Big Nylon Grass.
Ceci n'est pas un sig.
Consensus != Truth
Casteism
Comment boards and science don't mix. Comment boards are the new religion, spreading FUD and turning nonsense into science simply because "enough" people have drunk the Kool-aid.
I haven't thought of anything clever to put here, but then again most of you haven't either.
You would be amazed at what you would understand after reading Riemann, and why I mentioned about skipping Bohr and Einstein --- who (especially Einstein) were essentially repeating Riemann. Very enlightening.....
Appeal to authority, whether the authority is a crowd or a bearded man in a white robe, is a logical fallacy.
I hate to tell you this, but the social 'scientists' didn't learn a lesson from Sokal. They hate him for pointing out they are wear no clothes. But they aren't putting on any clothes.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Well, yeah, but note that they're not "scientists"; they're publishers. ;-)
I can assure you, from personal contacts, that at least some actual social scientists thought it was hilarious. As did many other kinds of scientists, of course.
Not that this means much. I've forgotten who said it, but someone has observed that "All we learn from history is that people don't learn from history." Hmmm ... Google's not much help here. It turns up over 36,000 matches for that sentence, but the first several pages don't seem to contain any attributions.
OTOH, Newton's famous "on the shoulders of giants" comment is well known and also widely attributed to him. And it's not difficult to find lists of similar comments by his predecessors. This is a fairly clear statement that sometimes people actually do learn from history, though Newton probably said it mostly as a form of humility.
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
Sokal's point wasn't that publishers/'peer reviewers' are too stupid to realize that they are being mocked.
Sokal's point was that 'Social Scientists' are a faith based group. _Everything_ is socially constructed is their primary axiom. They are wrong and too narrow minded to even accept the possibility.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'