Week 5
Communicating Scientific Truth
Rhetoric and Discourse
Scientific genres
There are conventions about how to write scientific papers; we can call them genres
Genres are unstable; they change over time. What counted as a scientific report in the 60s may be considered less scientific now or in the future
The goal of the report/paper, however, remains the same, to convince the reader in a certain point
We can look at papers from this perspective: what kind of tools they use to convince readers.
The strength of the argument
The point of most science is to establish facts
But what are the markers of a fact?
Latour and Woolgar (1986) argue that the key characteristic of a fact is the lack of history or modality: facts are presented without trace of their origins
The best scientific facts are not even presented but taken for granted
The art of writing a convincing paper is the art of moving statements from heavily modalized to less-modalized positions
The art is to shift statements like “It has never been successfully demonstrated that melatonin does not inhibit LH” to “Since melatonin inhibits LH . . .”
Allies
Actor-network theory (by Latour) draws some discourse analysis: actors are identified when they are invoked in the argument
The strength of an argument depends on the resources or allies that it brings (Latour 1987)
Citations are one source of allies: to cite another publication without modality, with a reference like “. . . (Locke 1992),” means that on that point David Locke will back the text up, that in his 1992 book he provides evidence to support the text’s claim.
Typical scientific arguments stacks allies to convince the reader to take the author’s position
The scientific article is a battle plan (Latour 1987)
Example
Liu et al. 2021
The Scope of Claims
Externality of an argument is the scope of its claims:
drop of nicotine killed a one particular mouse in the laboratory — low externality
nicotine is toxic - higher externality
Externality means to what extend an argument can be generalized
Rhetoric in Context
When discussing results with which they agree scientists use an empiricist repertoire that emphasizes lines of empirical evidence and logical relations among facts
- the empiricist repertoire justifies positions: e.g. we took sample of 1000 individuals because previous research showed …
When discussing results with which they disagree, scientists use a contingent repertoire that emphasizes idiosyncratic causes of the results, and social or psychological pressures on the people holding those beliefs.
- the contingent repertoire explains, rather than justifies, positions: e.g. Paster did not report the unsuccessful experiments on “spontaneous generation” because he was utterly convinced that life cannot emerge out of nothing
Rhetorical techniques
When researchers deal with new or unfamiliar questions, they need to convince their readers that they are dealing with something worth paying attention to
For example, taxonomists often want to introduce a new species:
- they back their claims with pictures, charts, and a depth of observations; they create a unified phenomenon, available to readers
Metaphors and Politics
Almost every scientific framework depends upon one or a few key metaphors (Hesse 1966; Haraway 1976)
For example, a common chemical metaphor for the electron distribution about an atom is a cloud
In Biology, the neurotransmitters fit into the receptors like keys in locks
From a positivist view metaphors are not necessary; they are aids to discover (at the best)
But metaphors often have hidden ideological charge
Examples
neo-classical economics appropriated the formalisms of thencontemporary physics of energy, resulting in a metaphorical connection between energy and value; nineteenth-century physics, then, shaped much twentieth-century economic research, in ways and directions of which the researchers have been largely unaware (Sismondo 2010, 155)
or
the description of the Internet as a highway positions it as infrastructure that serves the public good, that requires teams of experts, and importantly requires government investment (Wyatt 2004). (ibid)
Why metaphors?
Why are there so many metaphors?
Yes, they can be heuristics or conceptual tools; enzymes and receptors are not really like lock and key, but the metaphor nicely summarizes their relation
- we can say that metaphors serve important descriptive and referential functions
Also, metaphors can be taken as evidence that literal language lacks the resources to present new knowledge (Hoffmann and Leibowitz 1991)
Summary on metaphors
Theories and models are abstractions, approximating away from the truth. Too-tight correspondence to the world is something to escape from. At the theoretical level, scientists aim to elucidate the structures of material things. But abstractions have to take place within a framework, in the form of a lens through which to choose elements to abstract. Metaphors can provide such a lens, allowing ideology and truth to coexist. (Sismondo 2010, 156)
Academic Phrasebank
Some jokes about Academese
by Jorge Cham
Some other jokes
by Jorge Cham
Some other jokes
Some other things
The Public Understanding of Science
Humanization of science
Humanization of science shows that science is a social activity
- ideology and politics can permeate even into the hardest of facts
This undermines scientific authority: we cannot say that science simply reflects nature
Knowledge is constructed and based on conventions among scientists
Note: scientists themselves sometimes invoke the constructedness of knowledge when they want to claim ownership or want to explain a mistake (contingent repertoire)
The manufacture of ignorance
That science is a messy affair is sometimes used to advance certain agenda
Climate change stays in the way of many economic and political forces. They challenge climate change on the grounds that science is polyvocal and skeptical
The tobacco industry in the US has tried hard to sow doubt about the harm of smoking, utilizing the fact that science is a messy affair.
Despite growing evidence that smoking caused cancers, the industry argued that correlation is not causation
The industry also funded scientific research to challenge the connection, and to study other possible causes of cancer
Scientific journalism
For scientific journalists science is their source of income
But scientists also need journalists to make their research more visible and more eligible for funding
Scientific and journalists communities are connected by many formal and informal ties
Some scientific journals, like Nature or Science send out copies of articles to select writers, on the condition they not publish anything about those articles before the journal does (Kiernan 1997)
Scientific journalism 2
Science journalism emphasize findings and their importance, but not processes (e.g. Gregory and Miller 1998).
Newspaper and other editors are interested in stories that excite. They are about findings, not about doubts, questions, and caveats.
Readers are left with the impression science as a whole proved something.
Popular science writing idealizes the genius and logic behind a new discovery and creates a “narrative of nature” (Myers 1990).
The Dominant Model and Its Problems
This idealized account of science in popular writing got many names: a “dominant model” (Hilgartner 1990), “canonical account” (Bucchi 1998), or “diffusionist model” (Lewenstein 1995).
Science produces knowledge, but that knowledge is too complicated to be widely understood.
There is a place for “translators” who put “academese” into a plain language
Popularization, then, is a necessary evil, something that scientists themselves would not rather do
But
Scientific articles that appeared in public media tend to be cited more
And citation is one of the main currencies in the academic world
Popularization also can change public and policy-makers’ attitudes toward areas of research and bring more money into them
in the 1980s and 1990s, a number of planetary scientists promoted the idea that possible impacts of large asteroids posed a significant threat to Earth. Their work sparked and then drew on science fiction novels and films, which helped to create a narrative on which nuclear weapons in space would be heroic saviors of the planet (Mellor 2007). (Sismondo 2010, 171)
Popularization as a tool
When scientific discipline is established, novel findings easily fit the existing structure of the field or rejected.
When disciplinary boundaries are weak, scientists may use popular media as an alternative form of communication.
They may play out disagreements in the public eye, and negotiate the science/non-science boundary. It happens when disciplinary resources are not enough to resolve conflicts.
There are some examples in which researchers shape fields on the basis of powerful popularizations, such as Richard Dawkins’s The Selfish Gene (1976).
The Hwang affair I
In 2004, Woo Suk Hwang, a prominent scientist at Seoul National University, published a paper in the journal Science announcing the first cloned human embryonic stem cell line.
Hwang had gained national attention, and proved mediagenic in his modesty, his work ethic, his religiosity, and his nationalism, all highly valued in South Korea. He became a national hero.
The country had invested heavily in biotechnology, identifying that as an area for new growth.
The Hwang affair II
It turned out, later, that Hwang apparently forged data; a group of journalists started investigation
Hwang challenged the journalists’ competence and authority to investigate his work, in light of its validation by publication in Science.
Hwang charged his accusers with unethical journalism, because to obtain information they had lied to laboratory workers about how much they knew.
Hwang mobilized supporters to start a mass boycott of products advertised on PD Notebook (the journalists)
Only a university investigation, concluding fraud, saved the show and the television network.
The Hwang affair III. Aftermath.
Despite the misconduct, Hwang remained a celebrity in the South Korea; there was strong emotional investment in his stem cell work.
Around the world, people were excited about the field and its funding, because it promised near-miraculous cures, when stem cell technology would allow for the re-growth of specific tissues.
When the fraud was announced, researchers and journalists did careful boundary work (Chapter 3) to maintain hope for the field.
They separated Hwang’s particular research from promise of stem cell research, blaming the failure on distinctive styles of Korean science, and distinguishing different types of stem cell research (contingent repertoire)
Popularization as science
Scientists routinely complain about simplifications and distortions in popular science.
But most steps in the scientific process involve simplifications: descriptions of techniques are simplified in attempts to universalize them, the complexity of data is routinely simplified in attempts to model it, and so on (Star 1983).
Although particular cases of this reshaping are seen as distortions, in general it is accepted as legitimate.
No sharp distinction can be drawn between genuine knowledge and popularization: “Scientific knowledge is constructed through the collective transformation of statements, and popularization can be seen as an extension of this process” (Hilgartner 1990).
The Deficit Model
Dominant model is somehow unproblematic; scientists do science, journalists report on it
Some scientists problematize the public knowledge of science: The public is characterized as deficient in knowledge
Typically, it illustrated by the number of people who believe that the Earth is flat and so on
Given the centrality of science and technology to the modern world, scientific illiteracy is presented as a moral problem
For scientists, the deficiency also represents a political problem, because the scientifically illiterate are less likely to support spending on science and more likely to support measures that constrain research
But why some people do not believe in science?
- The case of Cumbrian farmers (on Friday)