Motivation
This session was part of “Is science systematic?” wherein, i presumed that, some aspects of the structure of sciences as they are conducted today need to be discussed. In the same spirit was the last blog, how science research works and so on. It isn’t very apparent that its society that commands where science will go. This was brought to light in some ways from a discussion i had with Sumithra S. and Priyadarshini K. , and it struck me as new and interesting. Although a subject that could be very deep, philosophically as well as technically, i only skim through in here.
Content
systematic knowledge 2- The first thing to distinguish is the difference between science and technology. This was asked around and as expected, this is hard to distinguish between then, given that they have so intermingled over the past couple of centuries. So, in my naive point of view, technology is a soup that has many ingredients, of which one of them are the sciences. A relatively new one too. For all history, this tool making species (not the sole one though – Incredible tool use in the animal kingdom) has significantly lived with tools by the bedside. Technology, the art of making tools and achieving something more than one can do either in terms of access, processing and simply efficiency, is the foundation of development. But why certain things work better and certain do not, the why was not always been easy to access. Technology was driven by observation primarily, thinking and manipulating objects around. Why a wheel should be round was not an idea based on static, dynamic and rolling friction concepts but on observation of which design works best. Surprisingly, even today a lot of engineering does happen in this same way, the archaic but well proven way of Observation & Trial & Error (OTE). However only recently, the since the why was pursued (sciences), both technology and sciences developed so much so that we have been able to use the foresight from scientific understanding to cut down on the OTE and make significant disruptive advances in the technological domain. All this was kind of discussed in class, i am not sure how much of it got conveyed. Surely more examples could have done this job better, definitely better!
- Then we discussed what are the core driving needs of sciences and tried to see who is willing to share “my precious” (money) for such causes. The ‘spiritual’ was an interesting point in this list. Many disagreed that science has anything to do with the spiritual business in the first place. PK and i were of the opinion that the questions of wonder, those that can be classified as not-practically-relevant, such as why we are here, what is beyond this universe, what is time, and this endless line of Qs – could be seen as similar to what a spiritual quest would also juggle about. The routes may be different, but nonetheless the directions may overlap. Truth, it seems, calls for many ways, one of which are definitely through the path of the sciences. Coming back to who can fund these? It is obvious that scientific yearnings which promise leading to utility and profit in the market economy, or political currency or address the common population’s immediate needs gets well funded. However, the ultimate quests, the whys of the universe or whys of the life and so on, could be a very tough thing to get funded. Earlier, in the Europe and India and probably elsewhere, astronomy and mathematics had a religious role of figuring out dates and help in doing the rituals right – so they had religious patrons. But now, these sciences have to search for secular funding. Science for the sake of science or for the sake of understanding human context does happen surprisingly! Example: the CERN experiments, all the astronomy we do, GMRT and Hubble and so on. I think there is a significant overlap with spiritual quests and answering these neutral and innate ‘queryscape’ of the conscious human being. Maybe all this could have been more acceptable if ‘spiritual’ wasn’t used to describe the core questions – but hey it was to spark the discussion!
- Next we talked about why patronage (money and social sanction) are required for sciences to develop and add to human society. The last bit, freedom from market pressures was not so easy for students to accept. More examples here could have helped rather than doling out abstract concepts such as job pressure, marked driven scientific direction, etc.
- In the next few slides we discuss the funding trends in the US – a major source of scientific work for past 100 years! Social sciences (blue line at bottom) get one of the least of funding relatively as compared to the other sciences – why? This doesn’t make sense if one can see that most of human civilization’s problems are due to the lack of understanding of the human being and its immensely complex network of collaboration (Y. Harari’s words) called the society. It maybe a very interesting and pertinent question and may lead to fantastic insights into our world! Other slides talked about other trends and India’s GDP marked out for sciences.
- In slide #9 the breakup of R&D funding in India is very interesting. A significant portion goes into defense research expenses followed by department of space and then by atomic energy. Its not wonder that ISRO has been so successful – money does work! However could the same be said for DRDO the outcomes of which have not be spectacular. To be fair, DRDO, DoS and DAE need significant capital investments in often rare and exotic imported technologies at a significantly higher scale than those used by other divisions – so that could occupy a good portion of the assigned budget.
- Again a summary of ‘why’ of funding from the funding body’s point of view.
- We also discussed the various difficulties arising out of reduction or instability in funding. These points were discussed in brief, but i am sure much deeper could be explored.
- And finally, a small look at the challenges scientific community faces now. The referred paper (see footnote on slide) studied some huge chunk of scientific literature published to come to the conclusion that large teams usually follow established lines of inquiry and improve on them, develop them further. However small groups tend to be more ambitious and have higher probability to create disruptive new science. The plot shown describes how different subjects perform under this lens of size of the team and amount of disruptive knowledge created. Interestingly computer sciences are oblivious to team science change – that maybe because they are of highly collaborative nature and the internet does make the communication extremely agile and free.
- Another paper discussed the many issues with science not progressing as it was before the past 20-30 years. Here also the authors mention team size as an important factor. Scientific investments are high, but in terms of well defined discoveries the paper argued were not so many. They used the Nobel prizes as the yardstick, which could be an arguable point. Although i spoke with reference to the paper, in retrospect my stance could have been more realistic and proper. I could have read a bit more on this subject to give a better picture. Instead of giving the impression that sciences have ‘dried out’ – which was not intentional at all- i could have elaborated the differences in past ‘golden days’ and modern sciences harboring on the complexity modern sciences are dealing with and the consequent increase in team sizes and hence the lack of ‘spectacular’ single person discoveries and so on.
- The last slide, we discussed the ‘cheating’ that is now becoming so hard to distinguish from unintentional mistakes, based on this article.
- Simply by the shear number of research papers published due to the ‘publish or perish’ model – it has become nearly a matter of luck if each of those works will be repeated by some other research group. This unverified work, evaluated through the well-intentioned checks of peer review, but significantly weak measure as compared to the timeless check of repeatability by unconnected groups, is getting added into the body of scientific knowledge. When the luck strikes and someone tries to repeat the past published works, they simply don’t stand as claimed.
- Often the work published is not repeated by the same group itself to have sufficient statistical power to make conclusions. This measure is different for different experiments and needs to be implemented by the peer review process, but….
- A lot of researchers, as mentioned by the article, claimed that data that matches the agenda of the paper were reported in the paper to make all fit into a nice story. Francis Bacon’s line about it is especially stinging – “Man prefers to believe what he prefers to be true”.
- And a recent example of a significant number of papers of a reputed institute in India that turned out to be either plagiarized or fraudulent.
Critical analysis
It seems all this was ‘doled’ out with emphasis to accept since the instructor is telling them. Examples and student observations as a response to the examples and conclusions could have been the alternative and better way to conduct this session, but that amount of in-depth study didn’t exist in the instructor’s mind, neither could it cover so many aspects in a 2 hour session. As compared to previous session, less images were used to convey the idea and more text, that could have made this very boring as was evident from the sleepy faces of the poor souls. Also some of the conclusions seem to be shallow and say more about the instructor’s point of view (opinionated) than from general observation. Can this be changed for better?
As an instructor i realize the ‘goal’ in my preparing and delivering a session now has become more of conveying the session contents (and hence my ‘duty’) irrespective of if they simulate and excite the listener’s minds. That is a serious degradation and surprisingly so because i have complained the same about my teachers very vehemently! It has been noted in the hilarious paper: “Incidence of and risk factors for nodding off at scientific sessions” where a lecture is “a means of transferring notes from the pages of the speaker to the pages of the audience, without going through the mind of either”.
Questions
- UB
- How intertwined are science and spirituality? There would be a number of people who believe that spirituality is based on science and science is ‘responsible’ for (fulfilling) spiritual needs and beliefs. Is it true or even partially true?
- Can freedom from market pressure actually be possible (for scientific research)? The funds are dependent on market values and pressure and aren’t there market pressures enough to keep the funds being given on edge? as long as market forces are stable, the funds being supplied should be stable if the market becomes unstable will the economy and the government have enough to fund these scientific bodies/institutions?
- If our country starts importing material and instruments for scientific purposes illegally, will it be justified? If caught this could be bad for international relations. Should any country be denied funds or resources for these experiments while other countries are being allowed? (A: I guess this is with response to atomic energy developments?)
- As the rate of discoveries is decreasing, is this going to or already affecting science? Is this disruption going to cause problems for scientists as they spend their lives dedicated to finding more and knowing more but ultimately not making much progress?
- Does bad science not cause problems in funding and progrss in the field of sicnes? Are back sciences causing the slowing down of progress in science towards obtaining results and are they becoming reasons for problems in funding for these experiments? (A: Good tangent, didnt think of this angle. Must be explored…)
- PK
- Do you think patronage for making science a public entity? I feel science to become for people’s body, government needs to build science parks, develop programs for science exhibitions and science fairs. (A: Interesting, but government is already doing that in someways. But one needs to be also aware of government’s agenda for this popularization of sciences, could it be to only feed the enlightened crowed again into the same old power consolidation game? For eg. see Kishore Darak’s article: Prescribed marginalization)
- Isnt it important to look at narratives that India built through mass-media around S&T since independence if we don’t have statistical data?
- Is entire social context of science limited to funding, people’s achievements and bad sciences? (A: It should not be, but i thought these are the most pressing forces in India now: money for a career in science, heros to inspire the scientists and avoiding doing bad science when many around are cutting corners.)
- When you talked about “breaking of community” (due to funding issues) you said that scientific knowledge is between the community – isn’t that the exact problem then – the nature of scientific community?
- What happens to caste/class/gender and others that determine social context in the age of science? How do they interact with science?
- MM
- Can technology exist independent of sciences?
- Do you think science is purely derived out of human curiosity?
- Is science a mass appeal?
- Why do people/government dont fund social sciences? (A: wish i had the answer, but its a question worth studying very deeply).
- Does philosophy help in development of scientific attitude? (A: Great questions. In fact it does tremendously. But sadly i do not have much clear understanding of it or a good concise reference for this question.)
- SD
- In an environment where the government and its representatives are believers of pseudo-science but funding for technology and research is good, what way science would develop? (A: Often, there are good visionary scientists and bureaucrats in-between the political powers and the common on-ground science work, so that cushions out such direct infringement to some extent i guess. But one never knows how well this performed and whats the future.)
- What is the main motivation for scientists? market or quest for knowledge?
- How is democracy related to the progress in science? (A: Interesting, should be studied.)
- SV
- What is the absolute definition of science and technology?
- Science is about asking questions and finding answers. Doesn’t that mean science had begun since time immemorial?
- For a long time, we believer earth is flat and that atom was the smallest particle because scientists said so and we didn’t know better. How much can we trust scientists today?
- Why would people fund long term research with less possibility of successful outcome? so not, how do researchers face this obstacle? (A: As we saw in case of ISRO and DAE, funding pays and all these were very long term projects! So its a matter of vision by the top leaders ultimately and the conviction of the scientists to give sufficient reasons to fund long term work.)
- With so much fake news (pseudosciences) floating around, lots of chaos arises among laymen (non-experts). Are there ways to tackle this?
- Science has caused conflict, violence (maybe) and brought peace too. So discovery of science is it a boon or a bane? (We really underestimate the disadvantages and negative consequences). (A: Therefore we distinguished science and its use in technology in this session. That should more or less answer.)
- KG
- When in the process of invention of particular object, something else gets invented – is the project then a failure or success? Can you give more examples such as the microwave?
- If science starts explaining spirituality, where do we draw the line between observed and experimented science and the theories that define human existence and psychology but have no scientific backing?
- If there is a huge capital invested in long term research and the experiment fails, then how is the funding behind science justified when same capital could be used for more productive activity?
- If science is to be protected from larger part of the society (market driven funding supply) then how do we expect science and society to integrate?
- How does India as a country expect to become one of the major powers in science if they invest such small part of national income in sciences? what can be done to increase india’s role in scientific developments internationally?
- if political forces impact scientific development in a country, how could scientific development and progress possibly be estimated in pure terms?
- JP
- isnt science (just) a method of explanation?
- how does technology meet spiritual needs and how does it matter who funds S&T?
- is there a way to separate sciences and its funding from politics?
- How can government policies help to eradicate “publish or perish” ideology and mediocrity that it leads to ?
- Why aren’t the investors who fund ‘bad sciences’ concerned about the production of pure/accurate knowledge? (A: How will they know what is good and bad science if the next replication efforts by other groups take place 5-10 years later? No one funds bad science deliberately!)
- MG
- Can you explain little more about spectral absorption (with reference to microwaves and water and cooking)?
- You mentioned space tourism. Do you think in a couple of decades normal people would be able to travel to space for a short trip. If yes, how?
- We saw certain graphs relating to the US government’s funding for sciences. Do you think more spending on space research as compared to environmental science and development of alternatives for non-renewable fossil fuels means that it is widely believed people would rather establish a new civilization if they find an inhabitable planet instead of trying to fix damage that we caused to our own?
- Why is research and development not good enough in India? What can be done to promote it?
- Do you think its always essential to have a ‘problem pressure’ for developing science and technology? why and why not?