"Algae specialists, long near the bottom of the biology food chain, are becoming the rock stars."

Bourne, National Geographic, Oct. 2007

Saturday, January 7, 2012

"The Language of My Science"

Hoffman, R. (1988). Under the surface of the chemical article. Angewandte Chemie International Edition in English, 27, 1593-1602.

In case you want to read it too.  I recommend it.

Hoffman looks at the chemistry article through a non-science scholar's eyes and paints a beautiful picture of what chemistry (and science) really is, and how the reality of science can be obscured by the emotionless form of the scientific article.

My husband and I have a fundamental disagreement on the beauty of nature.  He sees chaos and danger, while I see an amazing interconnected world in which every drop of water, every leaf, every living, moving thing is amazing.  Except maybe spiders.  I might agree with him on spiders.

Anyway, the way I see nature is why I became a scientist.  The world is cool, and I wanted (and still want) to know more.  My view of nature is why I am so driven to share with others.  I want to make sure they're not missing out.  I'm really not trying to be sappy and melodramatic here, but it is true.  This world is crazy exciting.  Going deeper just makes it better.  Like ogres.

The thing is, most people don't see that kind of excitement when they read a scientific article.  Most of the time, it is because it is not there.  Science and science writing are supposed to be objective and unemotional.  Hoffmann argues that because of this personal distance in our writing, scientists come off as cold and stoic, an automaton that doesn't make mistakes.

I agree with Hoffmann. I think that this image has done science a bad turn.  When we remove humanity from science, science becomes this vague "thing" that does this or that.  Thus, when some public scandal hits one scientist, it hits us all.  But, who reads scientific articles anyway?  Not laypersons (not usually, anyway.  I do know a few.).

Hoffmann points out in this article that the current concise and objective form of the scientific article came about because of "Natural Philosophers" who pulled evidences from and described "Nature" without verifying what nature is actually like.  Thus, a standard format requiring experimental evidence squelched the poets and sages.  Has the squelching gone too far?  Maybe.  Scientists have a really hard time (in general) communicating with the outside world.  Maybe we do need to reconsider how we communicate with one another. 

I think perhaps that I should put on my history of science hat and think about this a different way.  The point of the article is, that the scientific journal article never tells the whole story.  It leaves out the real process - the trial and error, the frustration, the emotion, the fact that I had three months of sample data missing because I  dropped and broke an entire tray of crucibles containing my samples.  We might be able to understand the progress of the field by looking at trends in articles, but we'll never understand the progress of a single article by reading that particular article.  And yet, this does not invalidate the progress of science (see Hoffmann's Personal View #6: As a system, science works).

There is a lot to say about this article, and I haven't even really expressed a kernel of what Hoffmann succeeds in saying.  Perhaps the main take-home message is that the language and the form of the scientific article communicates more than we think and less than it should.

7 comments:

  1. That seems odd to me that your husband sees chaos and danger in nature. From personal experience I know the guy is as logical and thoughtful as you are and he really enjoys theological discussions. It surprises me therefore that he doesn't see that God created things in a logical, orderly and beautiful manner.

    Playing Devil's Advocate, I wonder if his Lutheran upbringing highlights original sin and therefore would highlight more of the disorder and chaos in the world. If that's the case then, I myself as a Lutheran as well, would argue it's us as humanity and our sin that brought chaos and danger into nature; rather than it being inherently so.

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  2. Thanks, Carrie, for sharing these ideas about Roald Hoffmann's article. Hoffmann's Wikipedia article and website show what a remarkable figure he has been, both as a leading 20th century chemist (receiving the 1981 Nobel Prize in chemistry) as well as a notable writer on science and literature. He truly straddles the two cultures, so his thoughts on the main format used by scientists to convey their work demands attention.
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roald_Hoffmann
    http://www.roaldhoffmann.com/pn/

    I'm curious about what you think about his suggestions for a way forward in altering the style of the scientific article. What wiggle room does the scientific article format allow, and how can scientists (and science students) who have a more humanistic perspective take advantage of that wiggle room? How can they help to counter the mis-impressions conveyed by the constraints of the article format as presently practiced? Do his suggestions seem viable now at all, after nearly 30 years?
    Peace, Kerry

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  3. Thank you Brian for your response. I will let my husband speak for himself on that one, although I agree that he is a very logical and thoughtful person! He just hates being in nature.

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  4. @Brian; Oh, I see a beautiful and orderly world in nature, but my tolerance for it has diminished over time. Carrie had dragged me out into Oklahoma's wilderness in the summer of 2010 for about 40 days, where we were in hills, forest and swamps. Nature becomes oppressive, the trees seem to creep up and crowd you... It's because of my upbringing in Nebraska, the Empty Canvas of America, where every tree is in a row from Depression era workers, and you can see for miles in every direction. But I would concur on the Lutheran position- original sin makes humans unsuitable for the natural world God created for us. Thus, we develop culture in opposition to nature, and we impress OUR will upon what GOD made. I'll take a concrete block, lightposts, sidewalks, and buildings that reach for the sky anyday. (hence, my love of building games- Civilization series) Call it my sinful nature : /

    @ Carrie; I meant to respond yesterday, but you know how busy we were with errands, paperwork and meetings. Here we go....

    "I want to make sure they're not missing out." - Ah, I recognize that in how I share the trivia that pops up in my head when I experience something with others (ie, a movie, a restaurant, etc.). I see our culture has incredibly connected by ideas, ideologies, and memes.

    "Hoffmann argues that because of this personal distance in our writing, scientists come off as cold and stoic, an automaton that doesn't make mistakes." I think it is more because of a different lexicon- jargon is offputting to others, and generally speaking, the American public sucks at general scientifically derived knowledge (ie, order of planets, reason for seasons, effect of gravity, strong/weak atomic forces, the periodic table of elements and why lead can never be turned to gold, etc.). It's an entirely different discourse of knowledge, and for a long time, scientists (and scholars in every distinct field) are only talking to each other. Hence, why no one gives a damn when federal funding gets cut for scholarship.

    " I think that this image has done science a bad turn. When we remove humanity from science, science becomes this vague "thing" that does this or that. Thus, when some public scandal hits one scientist, it hits us all." I agree partially- because scholars have only partially drowned themselves- we can thank the periodic anti-intellectual movement in our politics for the rest. It is celebrated to appear stupid- see George W Bush's presidency as proof of concept (ie, the guy you'd rather have a beer with Common Wisdom).

    "Thus, a standard format requiring experimental evidence squelched the poets and sages." -When I read about early work when Science was young, I see a lot of tools being tried out (starting with observation, description, and then moving on to testing/experiments). Over time, many of our early tools lay in disuse (qualitative); I think this drift away from foundation has warped the perspective, and thus, the relate-ability with the lay populace.

    "The point of the article is, that the scientific journal article never tells the whole story. It leaves out the real process - the trial and error, the frustration, the emotion, the fact that I had three months of sample data missing because I dropped and broke an entire tray of crucibles containing my samples." Ah, the things we do for Ethos, and to not appear silly for our peers. It is much like dating- we put our best foot forward, and we lie by omission. It's very human.

    "Perhaps the main take-home message is that the language and the form of the scientific article communicates more than we think and less than it should." I've always been critical of published scholarship as alienating the public, by continuing to speak in as obtuse and jargon laden language as it can. If you want society's resources to help research, speak the lingua franca and explain the benefits of said research to the common man or woman on the street.

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  5. Kerry, thank you for those questions. Just to give a short summary, Hoffmann suggests a humanizing of the scientific article. Currently, the scientific article strives to be as concise as possible; Hoffman suggests including more of the truth of the actual process within the article, to recognize the limitations of language and graphics, and to value style. The final line of his paper sums this up best: "I think chemistry has much to gain from reviving the personal, the emotional, the stylistic core of the struggle to discover and create the molecular world."

    There are such a wealth of scientific journals currently published, so I am going to focus on the coveted top tier journals such as Nature and Science. Articles with any chance of being accepted to either journal may not exceed 5 pages, which according to each journal is somewhere between 3000 and 4500 words. The methods sections themselves are usually included at the end of the article, and are around 300 words, which is little more than an abstract. All of this to say, if we use the "gold standard" of scientific articles, there is not much wiggle room. What is happening, even in those journals, is a move away from passive voice and avoidance of first person. This is a start.

    Another issue is one of trust, especially when it comes to sharing the back story of a study. I was at a conference once, where a scientist was chatting with my adviser, talking about the actual field conditions and how they differed slightly from the conditions required of the method. His coauthor, sitting next to him, says very seriously, "Shhh - that paper is still in review." His concern was that anyone nearby could be a reviewer on the paper, overhear the conversation, and can the paper.

    Thus, given these two issues, changing the nature of the scientific paper itself is challenging. The only paper (one of my personal favorites for this very reason) that has ever come close is:

    Efford, I. E. and K. Tsumura. 1973. Uptake of dissolved glucose and glycine by Pisidium, a freshwater bivalve. Can. J. Zool. 51:825-832.

    This article begins, "In the summer of 1968, rather than discard some 14C glucose, we poured it into a beaker of lake water containing Pisidium."

    While I do think that scientists can implement some of the stylistic changes in their articles, I have a hard time imagining stories like Efford's article that explain the chain of events leading to the findings regularly making their way into journals.

    However, 30 years ago, the world wide web did not exist as it does today. As I mentioned in my original post, most laypersons are not regularly reading scientific articles; I would argue that most cannot readily access scientific articles. However, many people can and do access webpages, blogs, and YouTube videos. This is certainly the area that the National Science Foundation is targeting for scientists to begin to reach out and make their research approachable and understandable. Perhaps it is within the online world where Hoffmann's suggestions will take hold.

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  6. Carrie, thanks very much for your thoughts in response to my question about wiggle room. Very interesting. I love the honest wit of Efford and Tsumura. :)
    Peace, Kerry

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  7. Just as a note - here is a recent National Geographic article that highlights the "struggle" of research. I promise I'll post more soon, it was a busy week!

    World's Smallest Frog Found—Fly-Size Beast Is Tiniest Vertebrate
    news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2012/01/120111-smallest-frogs-vertebrates-new-species-science-animals/?fb_ref=.TxIaFw3quCQ.like&fb_source=home_multiline

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