We have a new 527 political organization specifically set up to fight for the representation of science and engineering in politics and policy. Michael Stebbins has the details, and you can read the scientists’ and engineers’ bill of rights here. If you’re interested, join now!
Pharyngula
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
Does this organization only fight governmental manipulation of science (e.g. on climate change and evolution) or also corporate manipulation (e.g. on smoking) and grassroots manipulation (e.g. on thimerosal and autism)?
Alon,
I would assume it is meant to be an organization that represents the interests of it’s constituents, as do all advocacy groups. So yes, it would (or at least should) fight all assaults on science no matter what the source.
We’ll see… so far I’m on the skeptical side of things, mainly because it’s better to focus on education on the local level than to say the federal government shouldn’t endorse educational programs that teach creationism.
Engineers and pseudoscientists already united over at the Institute for Creation Research.
Jim,
why do you refer to the purported scientists as “pseudoscientists” but not the purported engineers as “pseudoengineers”? Could one not equally reverse the language?
Because while you can be a good engineer and still be a creationist, since the skills engineering requires don’t include general critical thinking. Science, on the other hand, requires one to be a critical thinker.
You’re kidding, right?
Hrm…
Are computer science students (who happen to be interested in the natural world in their spare time) qualify as scientists? Or engineers, for that matter?
What about mathematicians? Can we join, too? We’re not really scientists, and we’re definitely not engineers…
You’re kidding, right?
It’s a lot easier to succeed in engineering with a bounded rationality than in science (and I think it’s even harder in the humanities and social sciences, but I’m not sure).
I have no idea whether that’s true or not, but I’d be fascinated to know how you arrive at that conclusion. In particular, I’d like to know what manner of critical thinking you applied in reaching that conclusion.
Don’t know about real engineering, but ‘software engineering’ surely doesn’t require general critical thinking skills. If you don’t believe me, try using a computer some time.
(Disclaimer: I’ve been a professional software developer since college, and I’m constantly appalled at the myriad bugs and design errors that are best explained by assuming one of my fellow programmers (perhaps even me :-) had insufficient critical thinking skills. )
llewelly,
a couple of things:
firstly, wouldn’t your conclusion, if correct, imply that good software engineering does require critical thinking skills?
secondly, I’m not at all sure that your conclusion is the correct one. Specifically, that myriad bugs and design errors are best explained “by assuming one of my fellow programmers had insufficient critical thinking skills”. Are there no other possibilities which should be examined and carefully eliminated before arriving at that conclusion?
Speaking as a professional engineer, I don’t quite agree with the claim that “it’s a lot easier to succeed in engineering with a bounded rationality than in science.” I think it is more accurate to say that engineering as a profession encompasses a broader range of careers than the practice of science. Consider, for example, someone working as a newly hired test engineer for an electronics company. They indeed are an engineer, even if a new undergraduate currently performing fairly routine tasks until they gain more experience.
In contrast, who do we call a scientist? Certainly not the test engineer described above, even if her undergraduate degree is in physics. We tend not to call someone a scientist unless they are either doing research, or have published papers in scientific journals. These criteria overlap to large extent, and usually go hand-in-hand with having completed or working to complete a Ph.D.
If we were to label everyone with an undergraduate science degree a scientist, we would find far more “scientists” who believe in creationism, astrology, and all sorts of junk. Conversely, if we refused to call someone an engineer until they had published a couple of research papers, we would find a lower proportion of engineers who believed such things.
That said, these are just tendencies. The brain has an amazing ability to compartmentalize. It’s absolutely astounding that any professional neurologist would believe in the soul. But some do.
This is such a good idea, I’ll take a moment to offer these people some advice:
You will be a collection of highly intelligent, often brilliant, highly knowledgeable, creative, competitive people.
May I suggest you overcome your community’s widespread arrogance about and dismissiveness of public communications, an attitude that has produced amateurish, often disastrous, attempts at mass communication. [see, IPCC and Hockey Stick]
We need much more work like you are doing. But screwing it up is counter-productive. Treat the fields of public communication and persuasion-based communication as you would an unfamiliar field of science — acknowledge your ignorance of the accumulated skills-of-craft it’s developed, show respect for its and its professionals’ knowledge, and solicit and follow the advice of it’s best practitioners as much as possible. Over a couple decades, U.S. media habitat underwent a massive, invasive biota turnover. Old species couldn’t adapt, died off, and are presently fossilizing. This invasive biota is rapidly spreading around the globe, like Homo out of Africa. Adapt or die.
Oh yeah, a good idea……never, ever use the term, nor conceptualize anything you do as public education. Ever! Ban it from use! Purge it! It’s one of those fossilizing species. The public doesn’t want to be approached that way and will resist mightily if you try. There’s a trail of failures from this approach. If you don’t understand my point, go to the experts for an explanation — the persuasion industry.
Congratulations! Now get to work.
Alon
I don’t quite understand the focus on the fed’s role. But educating students and the public as the primary way to counter ID/anti-science, won’t work. Think through what must be done, then run the numbers. We can’t simply educate our way out this problem.
The ID movement and the Discovery Insitute understand this. That’s why the DI is bascially a giant, national psychomarketing campaign and the ID people are focused on changing curriculum at a local level, where they always have a pool of passionate believers to tap and can swing more influece with the decision makers.
Public decisions, issues, whatever nomenclature, need to be addressed and campaigned on a national level. One creates national campaigns that build environments/realities in citizens’ minds, that are then activated, specified, adapted, and used locally. This is how it’s done now in the U.S. by the winners.
A second thought about career and rationality: The one career group with which I’m familiar where I’ve never met anyone who believes in creationism, astrology, or similar claptrap is the high-tech venture capitalist. Anyone want to speculate on the characteristics of that career, vis-a-vis “bounded rationality”? :-)
This, of course, is exactly what my rude joke was intended to imply. I apologize for any offense.
Bugs are due to many factors. No single bug can be unambiguously attributed solely to any other cause. Moreover, objective techniques for determining the causative factors of software deficiencies are used only in limited areas of software development (such as embedded hard real-time systems). Subjectively, I attribute software deficiencies as follows:
(0) 12% of software deficiencies are due to spending 80 hours a week coding and another 80 hours a week playing video games and watching Dr. WHO.
(1) 12% of software deficiencies are due to unfamiliarity with the proper libraries or tools.
(2) 12% of software deficiencies are due to unfamiliarity with basic algorithms covered in undergraduate CS courses.
(3) 12% of software deficiencies are due to unfamiliarity with techniques covered in specialist books that can be bought for ~$50 online.
(4) 12% of software deficiencies are due to unfamiliarity with techniques covered in specialist books one has purchased, but are presently buried under a stack of D&D books and SF novels.
(5) 12% of software deficiencies are due to unfamiliarity with common answers to common questions which are posted (via cron) to various specialist programming forums.
(6) 12% of software deficiencies are due to insufficient critical thinking skills.
(7) 16% of software deficiencies are due to pure invention of statistics.
Perhaps they should hire a fiction writer. It worked for the global warming denialists. Are you perchance looking for work, SkookumPlanet? :-)
(Please don’t be offended by the comparison to Michael Crichton . (Even though I dislike most of his fiction and feel he used his skills to harm people who trusted him, he is a supremely effective communicator.) I know you have higher standards.)
llewelly,
that sounds about right. I particularly like #7 :-)
Russell,
I almost brought that area up… my (engineering) employer has a VC arm, and engineers are always called in to assess the technical claims of potential investees :-)
Good move, though I’m generally skeptical of group formation (it seems all anyone ever does these days is form groups that churn out PR releases), this one seems like its filling a void. Most scientists and engineers are too busy doing stuff to notice the abuses of their profession and science going on that need fighting.
[Most scientists and engineers are too busy doing stuff to notice the abuses of their profession and science going on that need fighting.]
Some of them are hopeless at promoting their work to the public. That just doesn’t make the situation any better.
If I had to guess, it’s probably because less of engineering overtly contradicts the Bible.
It’s surely because the consequences of failure in engineering are more direct and career-damaging. A scientist is equally satisfied (at least in theory) if the results are positive or negative – either way it’s an addition to knowledge, right? A pseudo-scientist is happy as long as they can maintain uncertainty.
Failure of an experiment in engineering can lead to death, injury, public humiliation, unemployment and bankruptcy. Hence, pseudo-engineers get naturally selected out of the meme pool, or adapt to their environment by adopting a false consciousness.
Not at all a good assumption. Previous similar organizations such as “Science in the Public Interest” have had distinct political goals (promotion of vegetarian lifestyle, and at least in the 1970s-1980s, opposition to areas of science often unfairly perceived as “right wing”, such as behavioral genetics/sociobiology). The problem is that people who organize such groups tend to be political first and scientists second. I would love to see an organization that would be willing to counter both climate control skeptics and anti-gm propaganda, and simply be on the side of science, but such an organization is unfortunately unlikely.
Engineering is applied science. Engineers have to be rational because everything we do ends up being scrutinized by the public, and you can’t argue with physics or chemistry. However few engineers work in fields that would directly contradict any religious doctrines, which can also be said of many scientists.
No matter how much I want it not to be true I am still bound by the rules of chemistry and physics. Engineers that don’t accept that, won’t be engineers very long.
Re Jim anderson
It’s possible to be a competent scientist in one field of science and still be a whackjob in another field. Case in point, Robert Kaita who is a plasma physicist currently employed at the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory. Dr. Kaita appears to be fully competent in his speciality, else he would not be employed at this facility and is clearly not a pseudoscientist. However, Kaita is also a creationist, so obviously he is a whackjob in biology.
The engineers vs. scientist’s debate above always brings a smirk to my face. The engineers feel that the scientists don’t respect them (sometimes with good reason). But then they go off down the hall to spread a little condescension on the technicians in their organization.
It seems we sometimes forget that just because we chose a particular career as being the best for us it does not follow that our particular career is the best for everyone. Not all engineers are failed scientists, and not all technicians are engineers who just couldn’t cut it. (I’m not sure who the scientists resent. Could they really be the paragon of all that is good and noble, and so have no one to form an inferiority complex around?)
Lets face it, there are woo-woos in pretty much every profession. Some scientists, engineers, and technicians have all let their faith override their better judgment and turned their backs on evidence in favor of revelation. Don’t let the few bad apples spoil the reputation of an entire profession. In short, can’t we all just get along?
llewelly
How could I be offended by a comaprison to any writer who’s made so much money. And generally, Crichton’s pretty good at what he does. It’s not necessarily easy to write genres, as the public might think. I couldn’t come close to him in his niche.
…however, if someone wanted to pay me his type of advance, I think I could give it a good try.
Also I wrote a bit too lengthy comment triggered by your IT one and didn’t post it. I’m a long-time-ex programmer, and just sent Amazon [Monday] a long, spontaneous email after my fourth abandonment of their redesigned site. It was done as a design analysis report. I’m stupified by some of the decisions and some of the mistakes and explained to them they were putting obstacles in the way of customers [me] spending money. They’ve got some of the most basic mistakes imaginable in their help system! Amazon is supposed to be a leader!
If I were an American, I’d ask if a philosopher of science can join, but since I’m not, you have my “moral support” regardless.
Russell: About who to call what, I have argued that it is better to divide the tasks. Someone is a technologist when they are doing technological tasks; they can become an applied scientist or even a basic scientist if they do other things at other times. As for how to tell the tasks apart, I have a paper about that. Gist: the goal is what matters – if you are attempting to discover about how the world works for its own sake (and do all the other things needed – see the paper) that’s basic science. If your area of investigation is determined instead by practical concerns, you’re doing applied science. If, instead, you are investigating / proposing how to change the world (and again, using scientific findings, etc.), that’s technology. These categories have the advantage of categorizing problem cases like some aspects of computer science (which is largely applied science and some engineering and a tiny amount of basic science – the theory of computation, particularly) and pharmaceutical research. The typology is fuzzy at each boundary, but that’s to be expected. On the other hand, the basic science/technology distinction is pretty firm.
Now *that* is democratic behaviour. Whatever errors there may be in execution, I wholeheartedly applaud organizing to amplify your voice. As for separating politics and science and all that: this is about citizens in a democracy who happen to be scientists and engineers exercising their rights and (I would emphasize) DUTY as citizens to be heard at whatever level of amplification they can muster.
Anyone sitting quietly on their opinions (or, just as bad, confining them to the empty space of the comments section of some blog) is failing in their obligations as ruler of a free and democratic country.
Speaking as a technician working toward an engineering degree, I haven’t noticed this condescension you’re speaking of, and I certainly wouldn’t feel the same way. Granted, I have limited patience with people who don’t seem to be able to wrap their minds around simple concepts (trying to remedy computer illiteracy invariably gives me a headache), but that’s a matter of perceived intellectual effort, not of career qualification…
And as a side note, how welcome are technicians and engineering students?
Not all engineers are failed scientists, and not all technicians are engineers who just couldn’t cut it.
I don’t know any engineer that’s a failed scientist or any technician that’s a failed engineer. Is this some sort of stereotype of which I was unaware?
Maybe it has just been my misfortune to encouneter these attitudes at several of the places I have worked. But earlier in this thread, and other threads on this site, I have seen some fairly patronizing scientists say some pretty condescending things to, or about, engineers. I have also encountered the same sort of attitude from engineers regarding technicians.
For the record, I don’t know anyone who fits the stereotype either. That is the most frustrating part. People point to the handful of engineers the disco institute pimps out as if they are representative of the profession. Then they start in with the comments about engineering not requiring critical thinking, as opposed to science which does. This, correctly I think, doesn’t sit well with actual engineers.
It seems that anyone can compartmentalize thier career from other areas of thier life, and apply different methods and standards of evidence to each. And often this is a bad idea. If the question at hand involves how things work “out there” in the objective world we have to let the evidence play the central role in determining our beliefs. This Bill of Rights looks like a decent attempt to implement this.
llewelly,
You forgot (8) Not actually understanding what the software is intended to do before coding and (9) typographical errors that don’t result in compiler errors. :)
MattXIV,
To which I would add (10) an emphasis on plug-and-chug engineering techniques without a real understanding of the underlying principles of programming, especially the math.
Specifically, that myriad bugs and design errors are best explained “by assuming one of my fellow programmers had insufficient critical thinking skills”. Are there no other possibilities which should be examined and carefully eliminated before arriving at that conclusion?
Being a part time software engineer myself, and having spent time with otherwise bright people that did bloody stupid things while learning to become such, I would have to say the correlation is fairly solid, if not 100% irrefutable. lol
Want an example? A friend of mine in highschool needed to draw a checker board for a project in the computer class. We used Apple IIs, so there where line drawing and dot drawing functions, but not one for “fill” or “box”. His solution was to figure out what color a square should be (required two “for next” loops), draw a box, then use two more “for next” loops to “fill” the boxes… Mine was to simply draw a line between one box edge and another, for every line, calculating the color needed as it went, and *skipping* a huge number of redundant tests, by doing “0 to 297 skipping 33” for the X direction, instead of just “0 to 297, without skipping”. He finally created the board, saved it as an image and reloaded it as needed, which was even faster. The guy was “usually” a bit better than me, but this time he didn’t think carefully enough and his initial solution spent literally five minutes drawing 81 alternating colored boxes on the screen.
But seriously, critical thinking “must” be involved. MS for example thought “integration” would be a great boon, failed to consider the value of modularity, resulting in a mess that is now so horrible that an “incomplete” flow chart of the OS takes a poster that is 33 inches x 408 inches (or 34 feet long and almost 3 feet tall, and an OS that they **can’t** fix or add new features to, without making things worse. The *had* planned several improvements, including switching to .NET as the API for the OS. .NET is *still* something you have to install seperately on Vista, which still uses the old API, is still in integration hell, and *still* has all the security flaws. Their current theory for securing it seems to be something like, “If we lock the doors tight enough and make sure no one slips any matches in, we won’t need to worry about the tons of fireworks, barrels full of nitro glycerin lying every place and all the primacord some fool strung around all the building’s walls.
They *should* have known, and some did, but where promptly fired for mentioning it, that this was the single most idiotic design they could have come up with. Note: Most software uses the same APIs and interfaces, so even if your own staff has “perfect” critical thnking skills, there is no certainty that even “prefect” code will survive on Windows without crashing for no good reason.
Or, to put it another way, if you build something designed to survive floods and earthquakes, but the *real* problems turn out *after the fact* to be tornados and quicksand, its not going to matter how “critical” your thinking was when building it. ;) lol
I posted Michael Stebbins page to the scientists’ and engineers’ bill of rights and this is the response I received from a person taht works in the field of physics, employed by a research and developement company of some sort.
Looking through the group, I think I’ve answered my own question. Primarily academics, better known for hot air than accomplishment.
As a member of AOAC International, I can tell you from first hand experience how things really get done when industry, academic and government scientists work together on important issues. And rarely is congress in the position to initiate changes like these.Outside of his derogatory tone, does he have a point? Would it not be better working through an organisation such as AOAC? It seems to me the AOAC are for hire and isn’t exactly an altruistic group.
Lets try that again. Sorry.
I posted Michael Stebbins page to the scientists’ and engineers’ bill of rights and this is the response I received from a person taht works in the field of physics, employed by a research and developement company of some sort.
Outside of his derogatory tone, does he have a point? Would it not be better working through an organisation such as AOAC? It seems to me the AOAC are for hire and isn’t exactly an altruistic group.
Crossing fingers
Sorry PZ. Maybe you can remove the posts I screwed up. I was necessary to get the quotes in the right place.
I posted Michael Stebbins page to the scientists’ and engineers’ bill of rights and this is the response I received from a person taht works in the field of physics, employed by a research and developement company of some sort.
Outside of his derogatory tone, does he have a point? Would it not be better working through an organisation such as AOAC? It seems to me the AOAC are for hire and isn’t exactly an altruistic group.
Crossing fingers
Quotes are screwed up still.
His quote starts at Rather and ends at “changes like these”.