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Do Comments On Web Pages Ruin Science?
GregLaden writes "Last week Popular Science shut down comments on their web pages citing the damage being done to the public perception of science as their reason. Earlier research suggested this might be a good idea because trollish, negative comments can color the perception by readers of a news story. However, some have taken Popular Science's move to be anti-science, implying that science itself is positively affected by web and blog comments, as though these comments contributed to the science being done itself. Here, I take exception to this and suggest that while comments are important in relation to the public perception of science (which itself is important) blog and web commentary never, or only rarely, influences the process of scientific inquiry itself."
Nope, no room for that, even in the "science" community.
Conform or be squelched.
Scientists, in my experience, typically respect dissident thought. (I am not going to say that good dissident ideas are always embraced, but they are generally listened to if there is serious thought behind them.) Dissident speech devoid of thought, on the other hand, is generally ignored in science. (It is, after all, not a democracy.)
It's one thing for people of near equal knowledge and ability to have a debate, even a heated one, but when we're talking about every one from credentialed experts to netkooks to astroturfers all posting in a format that seems to give equal weight to everyone, the results are anything but productive or useful.
One of my favorite blogs is by Professor Matt Strassler, a physicist at CERN, and also a damned fine writer, but frankly I ignore the comments to his blog entries because for every legitimate question or observation, there's some bloody nutjob who thinks because they use the word "quantum" in a sentence, that somehow makes what they're saying a legitimate critique.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
What also gets very irritating is someone whose last maths was when they were 15 sitting there, at 46, shouting repeatedly on a website that they have disproved Einstein (not really stating what that means; I normally assume they mean disproving E=mc^2), and then refusing to listen to any response. What is *also* irritating are well-intentioned people who equally are 31 years from their last maths lesson trying to quell that line of thought with something that is simply wrong (and frequently, alas, condescendingly wrong) and then the two sides get in a flame war, and we end up feeling we'd have been better off skipping a comment section entirely.
People with no education in maths or physics claiming without support that Einstein was "wrong" (a word which takes careful definition; no professional physicist would deny, in well-defined boundaries, that predictions of Einstein's theories are incorrect, but that doesn't mean they're "wrong" in the way that is often bandied around) are surprisingly common. About six years back I started compiling a database of emails that I was sent and books my department was sent that argued Einstein was wrong in manifold, creative, naive, inaccurate -- and yet frequently different -- ways. After a few months I got bored of it because they began repeating themselves and the volume was huge.
This was before comments threads. If I'd done it when comments threads were set up I may never have gained my PhD thanks to time spent arguing with people online who refused to learn anything about the topic they were stubbornly opposing - even topics the details of which they stated were inaccurate. Of course, me not getting my PhD probably wouldn't have been much of a loss to science, but I've enjoyed venting anyway.
Ok, here's my take. Consider the voters. There's a huge bunch of dedicated, unswayable republicans. There's a huge bunch of dedicated, unswayable democrats. Almost nothing can make these people change their position. These are in almost perfect balance, because they're not making decisions rationally; they're making decisions based upon a random distribution of single party planks or other factors (like, that's how my wife votes, or that's how the family votes.)
In between are the swing voters who actually decide things. Arguments on web sites don't make them swing. They are thinkers. Arguments on web sites don't make either of the dedicated voter groups change their mind either. They're just talking to hear themselves talk and get a rah-rah from like minded types.
How does this relate to science? I think we have a very similar breakdown. There's a group of people who aren't science oriented, even if they know a few facts. They're influenced by things like religion, "dad told me", the enticement of rumors, etc. These people are not going to change their minds. Then there's a group who knows science is... well, science, and they're aware that it's a process that, in large part, delivers new and reliable knowledge, as well as new and interesting paths where knowledge may be found. They're not going to change their minds either.
Swing science types? Not so many. That would be people who aren't sciency, as it were, and could be convinced (but if someone wasn't convinced by their science classes, I don't hold out much hope for them, unless their science classes were truly awful.) Or, it would be people who are aware of science and its wonderful track record, who are currently going along with yes, science is the bomb, but who would easily be convinced that science is consistently wrong. Know anyone like that? I don't.
Bottom line? The comments... they do nothing. :)
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
That's almost exactly the reply I'd like to have made, except that I don't think a lot of these people are acting just to disrupt. They normally seem to passionately believe that they're correct, and their purpose is to convince you - not to enter into a debate. A friend of mine once took up one of these people who had challenged physicists to find a flaw in his "disproof of relativity" (special, of course, since you don't need much beyond high school maths to follow it), and was offering a million pounds to be disproven. So my friend - a professor in cosmology - took him up on it and a couple of months later said "This is pointless; you spend two pages explaining why a particular statement of his is wrong and he replies 'No, you're wrong.' " It would be impossible to win that man's million pounds (a promise allegedly witnessed by a solicitor with funds that can be checked with his accountant), because it's impossible to convince him that he doesn't understand high school maths.
Absolutely pointless getting into the discussion, since certainly the net result is that you'll have been disrupted.