Ravetz concludes:
Ultimately, effective quality assurance depends on trust. And science relies on trust more than most institutions. As Steven Shapin, a historian of science at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, showed in his 1994 book A Social History of Truth, trust is achieved and maintained only by mutual respect and civility of discourse. In a digital age, civility should be extended to, and reciprocated by, the extended peer community.Not everyone agrees. Paul Krugman, for one, sees incivility as a virtue and strongly defends his brusque approach to discourse:
Scientists have a special responsibility, but also a special difficulty. When their training has been restricted to puzzles with just one right answer, scientists may find it hard to comprehend honest error, and may condemn those who persist in apparently wrong beliefs. But amid all the uncertainties of science in the digital age, if quality assurance is to be effective, this lesson of civility will need to be learned by us all.
I understand that many people find the notion of a world in which Nobel Laureates and ECB presidents declare that 2+2=5 very unappealing, and that they wish we lived in a different and better world. But we don’t — and it’s not my job to create the illusion that we do. . .Krugman, and other bloggers who adopt discourteous approaches, may be confusing getting attention with being correct, being forceful with being influential and being a pundit with being an expert. After all, Kim Kardashian also gets a lot of attention and Rush Limbaugh is plenty forceful and Bill O'Reilly is a pundit. Of course, all are very effective, in the contexts in which they operate. But are they models for what experts really wish to become?
I realized that I also wanted to say something in response to the concern trolling, the “if you were more moderate you’d have more influence” stuff. Again, this amounts to wishing that we lived in a different world. First, there is no such thing in modern America as a pundit respected by both sides. Second, there are people writing about economic issues who are a lot less confrontational than I am; how often do you hear about them? This is not a game, and it is also not a dinner party; you have to be clear and forceful to get heard at all.
If the goal of public discourse is to divide people along partisan lines, to raise their intensity and to demonize one's opponents, then Krugman no doubt has the correct strategy. But if the goal is to help society pursue common interests, to open up opportunities for compromise and to reinforce the integrity of institutions, then Ravetz surely has the more appropriate approach.
Society is a big place and there is plenty of room in the blogosphere and elsewhere for Krugmans and Ravetzes -- both play important roles in a democracy. However, for the scientific community broadly, Ravtez is correct that science is more constrained in its options -- seeking to be "respected by both sides" is not just the right thing to do, but it is the only way that science will sustain as an effective institution in the broader society.
Image above (of Ravetz and a few other academics) and a hat-tip to Klimazwiebel.
17 comments:
Roger:
I am not sure that there is anything special about scientists that distinguishes them from other advice givers. Have you seen the now classic article by Chris Argyris - Teaching Smart People How to Learn.
http://velinleadership.com/downloads/chris_argyris_learning.pdf
I believe he is making the same points as Ravetz in a more operational way. A Krugman-type strategy leads ultimately to distrust and ineffectiveness as is illustrated in the Argyris article.
"Part I:
***"Scientists have a special responsibility, but also a special difficulty. When their training has been restricted to puzzles with just one right answer, scientists may find it hard to comprehend honest error, and may condemn those who persist in apparently wrong beliefs. But amid all the uncertainties of science in the digital age, if quality assurance is to be effective, this lesson of civility will need to be learned by us all."***
I think that the emphasis placed on civility here is misplaced. IMO, the emphasis should be placed on discussion about what comprises fallacious reasoning, and valid reasoning and civility are not one and the same.
I also think that there is too much emphasis placed upon scientists here, as they are no more or no less responsible for the uncivil dialog ubiquitous in the blogosphere. Not to say that they don't need to keep their own houses in order.
***"I realized that I also wanted to say something in response to the concern trolling, the “if you were more moderate you’d have more influence” stuff. Again, this amounts to wishing that we lived in a different world."***
On the other hand, I think that Krugman is wrong here, also. He seems to think that uncivil response from "experts" is somehow more effective than civil response. I don't know that it is necessarily less effective (although I would imagine that it is but think that civility is somewhat beside the point), but it's ridiculous (IMO) to think that it is inherently more effective. Uncivil discourse sometimes rallies support from those who already agree with you, but it rarely, if ever, garners support from those who already disagree or those who are neutral.
While it is generally true, as Krugman says, "there is no such thing in modern America as a pundit respected by both sides," there are people who are certainly less partisan than others, and who don't strongly identify with a "side" or who are open to debate.
And here, "Second, there are people writing about economic issues who are a lot less confrontational than I am; how often do you hear about them?"
This amounts to "Mommy, mommy, they do it tooouu," and my parents impressed it upon me that once someone is beyond middle-school age, such rhetoric seems childish.
Part II:
As for this:
***"If the goal of public discourse is to divide people along partisan lines, to raise their intensity and to demonize one's opponents, then Krugman no doubt has the correct strategy. But if the goal is to help society pursue common interests, to open up opportunities for compromise and to reinforce the integrity of institutions, then Ravetz surely has the more appropriate approach."***
I only half agree. Ravetz is missing 1/2 of what is needed. Part of what is needed is civil discourse that fairly holds partisan analysis to fair scrutiny on an even-handed basis. Civility, in and of itself is not sufficient if it isn't employed from a perspective of an uncompromising goal to control for partisan influences.
And this:
***"Ravtez is correct that science is more constrained in its options -- seeking to be "respected by both sides" is not just the right thing to do, but it is the only way that science will sustain as an effective institution in the broader society."***
That assumes the character, on both sides, of a willingness to respect opinions from the other side. That is impossible to assume without some deeper analysis: People on both sides need to differentiate those who are willing to respect opposing opinions from those who will never respect opinions from the other side. The goal needs to be to try to weed out the "motivated reasoning" to the highest degree possible.
That is why, IMO, "skeptics" who fail to hold other skeptics to account, or who focus disproportionately on the tribalism among "realists" will not effectively contribute to advancing the science, no matter whether they are civil in their discourse.
"Of course, all are very effective, in the contexts in which they operate. But are they models for what experts really wish to become?"
Can you expand upon what you mean by experts?
The focus shouldn't be on the supposed "experts" at all. The focus should be on the work. I know that legions of warmists want to insist that there is a communication problem with climate science. There is, but it's not a problem of how, it's a question of what.
Ultimately, there does need to be trust. But trust is established by transparency, fealty to the scientific method and solid research.
Try a thought experiment. Suppose that a mysterious Dr. X started blogging, publishing research and making all his work totally transparent. And Dr. X (regardless of whether his conclusions argued for or against the warming scare) kept putting out solid work. Dr. X would eventually become a trusted authority. Regardless of his civility. Even if no one knew who he was. Even if he never gave tv or radio interviews. Even if his only method of communication was written words and numbers and graphs on digital media.
If you can back up what you say, you get trust.
-4-Pat Moffitt
Thanks for the question, not sure I get what you are after, but we might think of expertise in terms of substance and standing. The former is about what one knows (e.g., Krugman knows a lot about economics) and the latter is about the positions/roles one has (e.g., Krugman is a professor at Princeton and won a Nobel prize). Here in this post, when I am referring to expert bloggers I mean both.
Ask again if unclear or you are looking for something else. Thanks!
Roger,
Can you blog about this? Is it different/more promising than what you've looked at in the past?
http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2012/01/07/18704304.php
-7-libertard
Unlikely to blog it, but please feel free to discuss in this thread:
http://rogerpielkejr.blogspot.com/2011/12/comments-to-usa-today-on-air-capture.html
Here is the full paper, looks interesting for sure:
http://pubs.acs.org/stoken/presspac/presspac/full/10.1021/ja2100005
Thanks!
Joshua @2
"While it is generally true, as Krugman says, "there is no such thing in modern America as a pundit respected by both sides," there are people who are certainly less partisan than others, and who don't strongly identify with a "side" or who are open to debate. "
This is exactly what I thought when I read Krugman's piece. Stunningly dualistic and oversimplifying.
It may be worth looking at expert bloggers in different areas. Programmers were possibly the first expert bloggers and have helped coding along considerably. But coding is usually not that adversarial, indeed outrageous statements made by coding gods like Linus Torvarlds on C++ are usually laughed off by people with some nous. It's hard not to see blogging in programming as anything except beneficial.
This is in contrast to politics where shouting at each other seems to be the norm. It's also arguable that there are no real 'experts' in politics because no one is any good at prediction. Tetlock's Expert Political Judgement showed this. So little is left other than shouting.
Economics is politics with numbers. Hence the blogs tend to be fairly shouty and quite make things worse because everyone just yells. The best you can do is something like Mark Perry's Carpe Diem that presents intersting numbers regularly.
Finally, to get to climate, climate is something that crosses the spectrum from the scientific (what is the situation, what is likely to happen), to the economic (how much will this cost), to the political (what action should we take). So many climate blogs are just shouty political blogs while a few are actually blogs where people have useful expertise and make the debate better.
Roger,
Thanks for your reply. I would submit that the “walls coming down” are not so much between the scientist and the Public but rather between two classes of scientists- the “expert” and the” non-expert”.
-10- sien,
I agree that many people ignore other people in the world of programming on the Internet. A better example, however, is probably Theo de Raadt. And I think that he has definitely turned people off with his incivility.
There are plenty of persistent flame wars, too (e.g., GPL vs BSD, Java vs MS, emacs vs vi, etc). That's not to say that the online culture hasn't advanced the state of the art, but the programming blogosphere is hardly a model of civility.
I generally agree with those saying that this advice goes beyond scientists, but saying that Ravetz or Roger are missing something by focusing on scientists or experts comes across to me as being obtuse. They're just focusing on their area of knowledge / expertise / research.
Most commentators (also on this thread) tend to assume that experts must be scientists giving advice and going public. It is worth thinking about expertise in a different way. As I argue with Nico Stehr in our book Experts: The knowledge and power of expertise (Routledge, 2011 - see here for short review), experts are mediators. They are not necessarily knowledge producers themselves but provide knowledge (or access to knowledge) to their clients.
I think such a notion resonates much more with the problematique outlined by Jerry Ravetz and others. Tearing down walls only makes sense if the walls serve no longer any function, except maintaining an obsolete elite status. As we live in a knowledge society many more people (knowledge workers) are experts in some area, compared to previous historical periods. And new media enable them to communicate much more effectively than in earlier times.
lIt is incorrect to look at scientists as monolithic as there are 2 classes- the academic and the non-academic. It is the academic whose career revolves around publishing in recognized journal and as such expertise to most are associated with peer reviewed work and academic awards. This class of scientist sees itself by virtue of its "standing" within the peer review literature, university position and awards to signal expertise.
However there are 100s if not thousands of equally competent scientists, statisticians and engineers for every academic equivalent working in the private sector/non-academic arena. Many of these professionals have non-publishing objectives - patent, design, corporate research and financial/actuarial analysis. For many of these scientists the expert appellation is not as meaningful because of the differences in career incentives.
Up until the last two decades these two classes of scientists worked fairly independently of one another. However the growth of the environmental/climate sciences (controlled by academics/regulatory scientists) have increasingly intersected with public policy and confronting energy, agriculture, natural resource, epidemiology sectors and their professionals. The science blog allows the science professional to push back through an extended peer review not open to them by Journal gate keeping and lack of incentive to publish.
The "problem" is not one of scientists failing to communicating with the Public-- but academic experts failing to communicate with non-academic/non-regulatry science professionals. -The science blogs for the first time allows thousands of non guild scientists doing extended peer review which the guild takes as an attack on their status as experts.
Many science disciplines have moved to a post-expert world. Paleo-climatology as an example requires expertise in 3 areas: statistics, climatology and plant physiology -perhaps 2 expert areas too far. The statistical methods used are now subject to extended peer review by some of the best statisticians in the private sector and one can often say- better statisticians. The paleo-climatologist also finds themselves up against the experts in plant physiology /foresters and climatologists as well as isotopic analytical experts. The expert’s experimental design is further critiqued by instrumentation experts.
As a consequence of complexity and the interdisciplinary nature of environmental sciences means an expert can no longer claim a greater expertise than the collective expertise of the extended peer review. And that expertise extends well beyond the ivy covered walls of academia.
Academic experts in an attempt to maintain status have adopted an often imperious attitude towards non-academic science professionals-dismissing their expertise because they have not published in academic journals. This power to shun is a long-standing strategy- however it only works within the academic community. Science professionals have their own metrics for expertise and unlike grad students are little awed by an esteemed professor. In many cases this imperious attitude has backfired- causing the science professional to double down on their efforts.
Experts have not yet fully understood the science blog has forever broken the protection afforded guild members. And they continue to fail to appreciate the fact equivalent expertise resides outside academia and in the professional scientists.
Perhaps the first step in science communication is the need for academic "experts" to respect the qualifications of the professional scientist. Given these professional scientists are an order of magnitude greater in number and have more geographic diversity they have far more personal contact with the non-scientist public and act as the science filter for a far larger segment. The "experts” have not yet appreciated the personal contacts of "non-expert scientists" can often trump the unknown "experts."
Why is it no surprise that Krugman embraces incivility?
As a person who plays a lot of live poker, I associate incivility with people whose only goal is winning. The process and decision making doesn't really matter -- only the results. I see an analogy and think that's the underlying goal of people who engage in uncivil behavior in science and economics too.
I have also found that as the more uncivil poker players gain experience, as they learn the true nature of the game, they try and observe decorum better. But often their basic personalities hamper this.
In regard to the issue of just what class of people constitute "expert" may I point out the early work of Thomas Allan of MIT.
Allen,T., Managing the Flow of Technology: Technology Transfer and the Dissemination of
Technological Information Within the R&D Organization, MIT Press, Cambridge Massachusetts, 1984
Allan studied how new ideas on technology are brought into organizations and, in one case; specifically studied how new ideas were brought into US national labs. He found that there was a network of what he called "gatekeepers". A gatekeeper would be someone who would maintain awareness of the progress of certain types of ideas outside of the lab, interpret in terms of the needs of the lab and bring it in and make iot available to others within the lab. A network of gatekeepers would spring up with each gatekeeper specializing in one aspect and the totality covering the totality of an area for the lab. No one gatekeeper knew of the existence o the total network but the network shared information across it. Other people within the lab would be attached to one or more of these gatekeepers and would rely on them for interpretations and understanding of these new ides that were suited to the needs of the lab. The netork was the means by which the labs took these technologies etc., studied them and brought them into the context of the labs
Allen found that the possibility of success of a research project was proportional to the degree in which its members took advantage of the network of gatekeepers. So perhaps the types of people we need as experts are the class of people that Allen called "gatekeepers" and that the possibility of our success is tied to the success of the gatekeeper network.
Perhaps this is what the IPCC was set up to be. It is a group that is charged with the task of interpreting an area of research and bringing it into the context of the issue of responses to AGW. So perhaps, the problem is not in identifying just what would constitute an expert but that the issue is that there is a fundamental disagreement of what should be the context of the response to AGW. Political movements have seized upon the AGW issue and are using it as a stalking horse to drive their own agenda. Anti-capitalists,. anti-consumerists, movements for north south equity, hedge funds, libertarians, new urbanists all use the AGW issue as justification for a preferred AGW response context. Searching for experts who can clarify the AGW issue will not help until we collectively decide how we want to frame that response. An IPCC cannot function if the context that it will serve has been clarified and agreed to. An IPCC cannot find a scientific consensus unless these is consensus on the purposes of that consensus. A political consensus has to be found first. Experts can only function if they kow what they are looking for,
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