Comments on: Dancing about architecture

By: Scepticon

Sat, 03 Jan 2009 20:12:42 +0000

Recently I have been finding the lack of references in most news stories to be quite infuriating. Even in online articles when the inclusion of a link would be relatively easy. More and more I find I would like get further information, either about the subject or the reliability of the source and have to hope that the information included in the article is enough for me to track it down.

I think if more focus was given to this aspect then people can continue to learn up to their own level without including that material in the original news piece.

If you know of a news outlet that regularly does this let me know, perhaps I’m just not in the right places.

By: Z

Fri, 31 Oct 2008 20:27:57 +0000

It gets some knowledge out there, to be sure. It’s better than nothing. I do think we could make huge improvements in that by explicitly acknowledging that there is more to research than what gets shown in the cheesy documentaries.

I’m not so concerned with exactly how much special relativity people understand. The “dumbed down version” is fine. I don’t think we should try to teach everyone linear algebra in order to make sure they really get it. My point is that we shouldn’t pretend there isn’t any linear algebra and make it seem like a cartoon animation is the sum total of a century of scientific progress on the topic. Learning isn’t just about the concepts and facts. It’s also about understanding what a career in the sciences is like, and why we should trust and value the results obtained by scientific experiments.

By: Progressive Conservative

Fri, 31 Oct 2008 13:39:11 +0000

But don’t you think ‘dumbing down’ still gets the knowledge out there? I always think of the example of just an average guy jumping in a time machine and going back a couple hundred years. Being able to describe, at least in basic terms, combustion engines, airplanes, penicillin, the internet, etc.

Even in the process of ‘dumbing down’ science we still have citizens with vastly more basic knowledge than someone living a couple centuries ago.

By: Z

Thu, 30 Oct 2008 15:33:37 +0000

Okay, I accept your point that archaeology is not all that full of math. You yourself call it a social science. You could have also used the example of political science, or of sociology. Scientific thinking is involved, but math doesn’t have to be. That’s fine. It’s also not really what I was talking about. I wasn’t trying to argue that there’s no aspect of science that isn’t math-intensive, or that there’s no point whatsoever to popular science without math or other concrete details — just that in the difficult balance between accessibility and content in popular science writing, I think people err too often on the side of accessibility and sacrifice some very valuable content. It might not be so bad for society if there was a wider understanding that science does involve some hard thinking. (Maybe people would be less likely to swallow all that pseudoscience that makes no greater attempt at being scientific than using the word “quantum” repeatedly.)

Also, “dumbing down” can bring in funding from some places (if they’re happy to see outreach) but can cut you off from funding from other places (if you dumb down too convincingly and make your work seem easy, or if you get so simplified that you spread misconceptions rather than understanding).

By: Progressive Conservative

Thu, 30 Oct 2008 13:43:49 +0000

From Z: …since it implies you can understand science while being bad at math.

I consider the scientific method as the foundation of science, not math. And as such I know a lot of ‘scientists’ who rely heavily on the scientific method and who are, in fact, lousy at math. As an archaeologist I was surrounded by social scientists who applied the scientifc method every day in the field, in the lab and in the classroom. But the use of math was limited to making sure an excavation unit was 1 meter by 1 meter. And that we accurately measured the width of a layer of stratigraphy.

Also, my company was heavily involved with ‘public archaeology’ i.e. bringing our profession to the public in the form of public digs where we ‘dumbed down’the rhetoric and actually let them participate. But that also sparks interest and they can pursue more knowledge on their own. It also brings in funding, which is equally important. I don’t see a problem with that.