Sunday, March 06, 2005

I Don't Want to See Anymore

As an academic, I have spent a lot of time hiding away in the ivory tower, oblivious to the larger world around me. As a graduate student, especially, I had almost no time to pay any attention to what non-scientists were saying about cognitive science. However, on a fateful day in early 2004, I chose to crawl out of my hole and actually look at what other people were saying. I started reading blogs. And now I want to crawl back in!

You see, I was aware that there were some scientists who were writing well-written, but conceptually poor books on cognitive science (I won't name names, but let's just say that the most prominent such scientist is a little more rose-colored, by name), and judging from conversations with students, as well as their placement on the Barnes and Noble shelves, that people were reading these books, people who probably wouldn't have the requisite background knowledge to determine that these books didn't represent sound cognitive science. I even knew that linguists had a hard time justifying their work to the general public (Ray Jackendoff told me this in the introduction to one of his books), and that it wasn't always easy to explain cognitive scientific concepts, and their importance, to my grandmother. I never knew just how misinformed many people out in the world were about cognitive science, though. Blogs have been one hell of an education.

Recently it seems to have gotten worse. That could be because the scales have fallen from my eyes and I am now able to see (in cog sci talk, I've activated the relevant schemas, making the perception of previously knowledge-inconsistent and perhaps even irrelevant information available), or it could be because cognitive science is getting more and more attention from non-experts. There was Todd Zywicki's kindergartener-like inability to grasp even the simplest concepts related to implicit attitudes, the consciousness and the cognitive unconscious, or the various implicit tests. Then there was Will Wilkerson's attempt to sketch out the implications of Evolutionary Psychology for political thought, despite the fact that it's all-too-apparent that Wilkerson has never really read any Evolutionary Psychology (short of, perhaps, a couple trade books), along with this strange attempt to defend Wilkerson's essay. Finally, there was this shot at the "mirror test" (sometimes called the "mark test") of self-consciousness, which repeats an alternative explanation that was ruled out years ago, a fact that is cited in pretty much every paper on the "mirror test." There have been other examples, but these are three of the most recent, and at least in the first two cases, most egregious misrepresentations, misuses, or just plain misses, on topics of cognitive science in the blogospohere that I have read.

Like I said, I want to crawl back into my hole deep inside the Ivory Tower. But I won't. Instead, I'll offer some advice to anyone who wants to talk about cognitive science, but has not spent a lot of time studying it. This advice isn't unique to the cognitive sciences; you'd probably hear it from any scholar, or at least any scientist, in any field. Naturally, I don't expect anyone to follow it, but I feel like if I'm going to stay out here, I have to actually try.
  1. Read before you write. Do not write about any scientific idea that you have not read about extensively. Extensively. I particularly hope that Zywicki and Wilkerson take this to heart. It's the best way to avoid making yourself look like a fool, or worse, and it also avoids pissing off people like me. I'm not sure the last one is really a motivation for reading before writing (it might actually be a motivation to do the opposite), but I imagine most people do want to avoid looking like fools.
  2. When it comes to science, do not go by what you read in the popular press. The popular press generally doesn't know what it's talking about, either. It may be a good place to discover interesting research, but before you write about it, go read the primary sources. You'll find that at least as often as not, the presentation of scientific work in the popular press barely resembles the presentation of that same work in peer-reviewed journals, and that's not just because the latter is more technical.
  3. Again, when it comes to science, do not go by what you read in books, especially books that weren't written for experts. You can say anything in books, and people do. I have read books on cognitive science that sounded to me like they were written in a parallel universe in which the findings in the field were entirely different than they actually were. Even when they describe the empirical research correctly, book authors may interpret it in ways that no one else in the field would. Often, people write books because they want to express ideas that wouldn't see the light of day in the peer-reviewed literature. This can be a good thing, in that it allows the more speculative ideas of scientists to be expressed, and thus influence the direction of the science (if they're worth considering), but in most cases, it just means you're going to get shitty ideas.
  4. Given 2 and 3, you should probably know what you have to read -- the peer reviewed literature. If you're going to write about, say, the neuroscientific research on moral reasoning, don't, I repeat do not, read a book by a journalist with no training in EP, cognitive psychology, or neuroscience, on a related topic, and think that you are now qualified to make political arguments on the basis of that research. Instead, look at the journalist's citations, go to your local university library, read those articles, and the articles that they cite. After this, search some article databases (you could even use Google Scholar) for papers that aren't cited in the ones you've read, because there may be research that contradicts that you've read, but which you haven't seen cited. Scientists aren't above forgetting some recalcitrant data, now and then, even when it's been published. After you've done this, maybe you can start to think about what you want to say on the subject.
  5. Before you publish something in the press, official reports, or even popular blogs, consult an expert or two. Scholars are generally willing to look over pieces that will be representing their work, or work in their field, to the general public. Hell, if you're writing about cognitive science for a blog, feel free to send me a draft. I'd be happy to look over it, and if I don't feel qualified to evaluate it, I'll send it to or recommend someone who is. I wouldn't recommend sending me posts about EP, of course, because I'll just tell you EP is shit, and you shouldn't write about it. Anything else is OK though.
heeding these five pieces of advice should be enough to keep you from writing something stupid, and from making me want to crawl back into my hole. If everyone followed these guidelines when they wrote about fields in which they are not experts, maybe the public wouldn't have such a god-awful understanding of the sciences.

UPDATE: Mark Liberman responds to this post at Language Log. I agree with his comments on open access wholeheartedly. In fact, open access would making following my advice much easier. The only point with which I really disagree is the one about popular science books. I genuinely dislike them, at least as anything more than introductions to fields and ideas. If that's all you're looking for (and I readily admit that for some fields, like say physics or paleontology, that's all I am looking for), then they're probably OK, but if you want to delve deeper, attempt to draw inferences that go beyond the text, or (and this is the biggie) represent the field you've been introduced to the public, then they should not be relied upon. In fact, given the ways in which our initial exposure to concepts influences our later representations of those concepts, and that there are so many misrepresentations in so many science books, if you plan on doing anything more serious, or more public, than writing about a scholarly idea on a podunk blog like this one, you'd probably do well to avoid trade books altogether.

Also, in response to a couple commenters, I should note that I don't expect every blogger to follow my advice, but I do expect well-read bloggers, especially those who are experts in some other field, and therefore treated as authorities by the throngs, to do so. Whether they like it or not, these bloggers influence public perception, even when they don't know what they're talking about. I believe that influence comes with a responsibility to at least make an effort to get it right. You don't have to agree with what the experts say, but you at least have to know what it is that they say, if you're going to comment on it.

15 comments:

Jeremy Pierce said...

I just asked a question. You answered it. It didn't seem to me that the test ruled out that possibility, so I raised the question, and you assured me that it did (or at least that modified versions of the test did). I don't see the problem.

It's a bit much to ask that I read extensively about anything I want to ask a question about. Part of why I raised the question was to see whether anyone else had thought the same thing and whether those who use this test had done anything in response, and it turns out they have and they did. It might be different if I'd made confident assertions about what research had been done and what hadn't while not knowing, but that's simply not what I said.

This is sort of like requiring people not to write on the problem of evil unless they've read everything Bill Rowe, Al Plantinga, Peter van Inwagen, David Lewis, and Dan Howard-Snyder have written on it. There may be things people have talked about that they don't consider, but it's perfectly ok to discuss it if you don't know everything the experts have done on the topic.

Anonymous said...

As an admirer of your writings, I reluctantly dissent, for some usual and some unusual reasons. Talk of who should write about what, even from the POV of an expert and a guardian of truth, is not wise. If we perpetuate this subject, we hold the door open for more repressive possibilities.

There's lots of bad science writing and thinking from scientists. But the blame is not always on deviance from scientific method or received opinion. It is often due to slavish adherence to myopic specialism. Moreover, scientists (Darwinians are particulary guilty here) should stop whining about public discussions of science.

As privileged and largely publicly funded proponents of knowledge, you should be concentrating on information the public with the knowledge and techniques necessary for them to arrive at your preferred conclusion. If the public lacks the information necessary to come to the same opinions you hold, then who is to blame?

An example is Dunbar's Gossip Theory - a neat piece of Darwinian thinking by itself. But the implication is that the very transdisciplinary, non-specialist application of a specialist field - "gossiped" through a popular book to the masses - is itself a Darwinian process.

Nature makes lots of "mistakes" as it evolves. And one cannot say whether something in the books you critize for misconstruing "facts" as currently conceived might not result in an idea or experiment which you later might truly approve.

Here's my advice to everyone: keep writing, whether you're "approved" or not.

Bora Zivkovic said...

But...blogs are supposed to be rants, off-the-cuff emotional personal responses to whatever bothers the owner at the time. Blog-posts are also questions to readers, offers for discussion, often deliberately one-sided and crude rants written IN ORDER to foster discussion.

Real expertise shows. If I write about Iraq, nobody will read it. If I write an angry rant using Lakoff's model as a starting point, I will get responses in comments and a discussion starts. If I write about chronobiology, people link to me and say: "Go read this - it is good." Readers can generally guess pretty well where one's expertise lies, what is expert analysis, what is opinion, and what is a deliberately provocative rant.

Chris said...

I definitely agree that the lion's share of the blame for public misconceptions about science rests firmly on the shoulders of scientists. After all, we're the ones who generally write science books (and when journalists or "science writers" write them, they usually spend a lot of time consulting scientists). We're also responsible for science education in this country, at least at the college level, and while I know there are some excellent science professors out there, I'm not sure that scientists, as a group, are succeeding as educators.

Anonymous said...

I agree that most pop science books are crap, but I try not to dismiss them out of hand as I feel that they serve an important purpose, however badly. I plan on writing good popular science books one day, so I refuse to give up hope entirely. For example, there are people like Ray Jackendoff, who are respected in their fields and have written their share of peer-reviewed literature, but who also dabble in what I consider to be 'popular' science writing.

Chris said...

I don't mean that all science books are bad. I've read some good ones (I liked The God Particle, for example), but the problem is that it's impossible to separate the wheat from the chaff unless you know the field. For all I know, The God Particle could be terrible physics. Like I said in the update, science books (as in trade books, not technical books written for people in the field, or as potential texts for graduate courses even) serve as OK introductions to a field or subfield sometimes, but nothing more. If they get more people interested in a discipline, that's great, but when it comes time to write about a field in a public forum, you'd better have something more under your belt.

Anonymous said...

Hi Chris,

I've enjoyed the thread thus far, and am sympathetic to your position (esp. as regards pop-sci books solely for introductory purposes). I'm wondering if you've seen this recent piece in the Guardian on the very subject:

http://books.guardian.co.uk/departments/scienceandnature/story/0,6000,1434400,00.html

Hope you find it of interest. Take care,

Ben

Chris Wilson said...

I wrote the "strange" defense of Wilkinson's article applying EP to politics. Please, o erudite one, do refute my logic. Ahh, but you can't, not if you adhere to your own rules. And why not - because you're not an economist. You're a scientist, and if you take your own advice, you have no business weighing in on topics about which you are not sufficiently well read.

My sarcastic point has been made a couple of times already - if you don't like what people are writing about your esoteric knowledge, it's up to YOU to make it more accessible. Primary sources are fundamentally impractical to all but those who experts or those who are on their way to becoming experts.

And as for your assertion that academics are willing to help out, please send me the address of the parallel universe you live in. I have appealed to MANY academics for assistance in noodling out ideas. As I am a layman, the overwhelming majority of responses are, "Sorry, no time for you. My priority is my work and my grad students."

I even posted an open letter to Leda Cosmides, the pioneer of EP, asking her to weigh in. This after I was welcomed into her house as a prospective grad student. Now that I've decided against grad school, I am persona non grata.

Again - your problem is you. The rest of us are just honestly trying to make some sense of things.

Chris said...

E.C., Your defense is strange since, while Wilkinson is making all sorts of claims about what evolved, but you defend his arguments by writing, "In my view, the only thing natural and readily accepted by humans is the tendency toward reciprocity." Of course, that's not what you really thinkg, as you.

But then, your entire point (about the wealth-creating economy) is orthogonal to all of Wilkinson's, and while interesting, doesn't speak at all to anything I said in my criticism of Wilkinson. It's as if you hadn't read his essay or my post.

Anyway, in my book, all that makes it strange -- the fact that you defend it by saying only one thing is natural, when he says many different types of things are natural; the fact that he makes specific claims, and you in turn make an entirely different one; and the fact that you didn't actually address anything I said about Wilkinson's factual premises or absurd conclusions.

If you want to defend Wilkinson, you will have to do the following:
a.) Show that his claims about contemporary research (e.g., about cheater detection, moral reasoning and property, etc.) are in fact true. Since they aren't, and are born of a complete lack of familiarity with the literature (including referring to research that doesn't actually exist), this will be a difficult task for you.
b.) Show that his statements about the environment in which humans evolved are anything more than speculation based on something other than facts. Since, for instance, there is solid evidence of trade between groups even before the evolution of homo sapien sapien, this again will be difficult for you.
c.) Show that any of what he said leads to the conclusion that capitalism is difficult to understand for evolutionary reasons. You attempt this in your post by saying, "Capitalism is counterintutive," which could be for any number of reasons. For instance, it seems to violate simple folk physics intuitions, and the rules of logic. It turns out that if you hold the right complex premises, the creation of wealth will suddenly make sense, but our inability to see those premises automatically says nothing about the evolution of our minds, other than that it was limited.

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