Scientific faux pas in Gallileo protest of Pope
Nobel Prize winner Richard Feynman relates a time when he was part of the panel judging which textbooks should be used in a California school system. This meant he had to spend a lot of time and energy reading every proposed textbook, and deciding which one should be used.
One in a series of three books hadn't been printed yet, but the publisher decided to include a blank book with the series to remind the judges that it would soon be forthcoming.
But Feynman relates that the blank book got a good rating from 80% of the panel.
Obviously, the panel never bothered to open the book. Presumably, they merely took the word of the publisher of what was in the book and okayed it.
A similar mistake seems to be behind the recent protest in La Sapienza University, where 60 scientists signed a paper protesting the Pope's defense of the inquisition prosecuting Gallileo.
Someone at the Vatican who knows how to google did a little research. It happens that the letter denouncing the Pope got the university, the date, and the city of the speech wrong. And the only place that had the same three errors was a Wikipedia entry on the speech.
Now, Wikipedia is an excellent starting point for lay people, but it is written and edited by almost anyone, and therefore it has the scientific accuracy of a blog post, not the accuracy one expects from a peer reviewed scientific journal.
Any true scientist would not have relied on only the Wikipedia article, but have cross checked a second source to make sure that the speech had been correctly posted there. And, of course, any true scientist would have read the entire speech before signing the letter.
So the scientists who signed the paper obviously never bothered to read the entire speech. Like those who gave a good review to a blank textbook, they merely relied on another's "expert" opinion.
What can one learn from all of this?
Well, one lesson is that scientists are humans, and have a life. They don't want to "waste" time trying to understand the nuances of things outside their area of expertise. So and so told them this paper was true, and not having the time or energy to bother to explore the details, they simply signed the paper to go along with popular opinion.
Lesson two is that of Feynman: that even if 1000 scientists sign a paper, their opinion is not as valuable as a single scientist who actually studied the question in detail.
(crossposted BNN)
One in a series of three books hadn't been printed yet, but the publisher decided to include a blank book with the series to remind the judges that it would soon be forthcoming.
But Feynman relates that the blank book got a good rating from 80% of the panel.
Obviously, the panel never bothered to open the book. Presumably, they merely took the word of the publisher of what was in the book and okayed it.
A similar mistake seems to be behind the recent protest in La Sapienza University, where 60 scientists signed a paper protesting the Pope's defense of the inquisition prosecuting Gallileo.
Someone at the Vatican who knows how to google did a little research. It happens that the letter denouncing the Pope got the university, the date, and the city of the speech wrong. And the only place that had the same three errors was a Wikipedia entry on the speech.
Now, Wikipedia is an excellent starting point for lay people, but it is written and edited by almost anyone, and therefore it has the scientific accuracy of a blog post, not the accuracy one expects from a peer reviewed scientific journal.
Any true scientist would not have relied on only the Wikipedia article, but have cross checked a second source to make sure that the speech had been correctly posted there. And, of course, any true scientist would have read the entire speech before signing the letter.
So the scientists who signed the paper obviously never bothered to read the entire speech. Like those who gave a good review to a blank textbook, they merely relied on another's "expert" opinion.
What can one learn from all of this?
Well, one lesson is that scientists are humans, and have a life. They don't want to "waste" time trying to understand the nuances of things outside their area of expertise. So and so told them this paper was true, and not having the time or energy to bother to explore the details, they simply signed the paper to go along with popular opinion.
Lesson two is that of Feynman: that even if 1000 scientists sign a paper, their opinion is not as valuable as a single scientist who actually studied the question in detail.
(crossposted BNN)
Labels: science
posted by Nancy Reyes at
9:24 AM
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