The Golem:What you should know about science

After going through the book though, I'm unconvinced by the authors' arguments and conclusions drawn from their eight examples. First off, I think that selectively sampling from the history of science in order to draw conclusions about how science is done generally tells us more about what direction the authors are trying to steer their arguments--rather than give us anything definite about the workings of science. In spite of the fact that the authors say they are doing 'interpretative history', their arguments and conclusions are simply unwarranted. In my view, what they are really pointing out is that the process of discovery in science is a messy and complex business; but this really has no bearing on scientists' justifications in their acceptance or rejection of theories. Saying that deeply-disputed science is never resolved by better experimentation or evidence is contradicted in their solar neutrino and gravity wave detection examples. As of June 2001, physicists from Canada, the United States and the United Kingdom announced that the solar neutrino problem has been solved. (http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns9999897) Additionally, resonant-mass gravitational wave detectors are currently on-line and free-mass gravitational wave detectors monitored with laser interferometers are being built in five locations around the world. If the scientific community didn't think these expensive observatories would produce data that would go into answering or resolving some key questions, why would they go through all the trouble of securing financing and building these facilities then?

In the cold fusion, molecular memory and the spontaneous-generation-of-life examples (the Pasteur-Pouchet debate), Collins and Pinch fail to mention conceptual implausibilites with these examples. In the spontaneous generation example, conceptual difficulties and hard questions arise. If life appears spontaneously, how does it manage to do this? Shouldn't life always arise in any material--no matter what you do to it? Why would life bother to reproduce itself if it could just arise de novo? Where would the available energy come from to produce this spontaneous life? Why would a process such as fermentation stop? How can complex single-celled organisms assemble themselves from mercury for example? Pasteur also carried out decisive experiments that lent support to his claims; and Koch and others added to, and corroborated Pasteur's bacteriological discoveries. Nature favored Pasteur.

As for cold fusion, why do Fleischmann and Pons need the approval of the scientific community? Why not just build a cold fusion cell, put it in your car and start selling them... if cold fusion works. It has been 15 years since their announcement: where are the commercial applications? According to physicists, cold fusion is contrary to everything that has been empirically well-established in nuclear physics. Contrary to what the authors say, we don't get science as normal; we get questionable results and a breach of proper scientific protocol. Turf protection is irrelevant; the phenomenon doesn't exist.

Molecular memory is another of their examples loaded with conceptual problems. How are our literally 100,000s of memories stored chemically? And how do we retrieve, or 'read off' these 'chemical memory bits' neurologically?

In the relativity example, other previous lines of confirming evidence, the unification of previous successful theories and the consistency of the mathematical arguments will affect the interpretation of new evidence or experiments that go into corroborating a new theory (as in general relativity). If the authors looked at all the above-mentioned factors in dealing with their relativity example--and this was pointed out to them in the criticisms at the back of their book by Mermin (Physics Today; March 1996, April 1996), I think their case is substantially weaken. Was Eddington's data, and his interpretation of it, questionable? Perhaps. In Eddington's Space, Time and Gravitation (1920), the data seemed to point towards Einstein. (I would say that Eddington's results couldn't be any weaker than what the authors present here.) Their arguments about the unresolved existence of the ether--based on Miller's ambiguous data--is just wrong. Collins and Pinch never really explain why Eddington's data is weak while Miller's data is plausible. Einstein got it right. It had nothing to do with the end of the Great War.

Finally, throughout the book there is a continual conflation of science with its application or technology. And because technology has spawned endless disasters, science becomes guilty by association. But technological abuse really has nothing to do with science proper. (The more sinister example of that classic mushroom cloud is always mistakenly paired up with E=mc2. But the equation simply states a matter-energy equivalence. What could be `bad' about it? How it is used is a completely different question.) One has to wonder how to take analyses of science history episodes by academics who don't seem to have a clear grasp of the actual science content being discussed (Special and general relativity example is alongside the cold fusion example). Their lumbering Golem metaphor depiction of science is simply disingenuous. ...

Nonetheless, I cannot say that I got the message of the book. In all cases finally the "scientific principle" worked out nicely, i.e. the claims and conclusions of researchers have been controlled by other scientists. Since we are all human beings, one must be naive to believe that scientists were immune against a personal bias of their work, and, of course, influece, leadership (more or less due to competency) and the way how data and criticism are presented has an impact on how scintific findings are being discussed. It is important to remind oneself to be as objective as possible in scientific work, but there is no reason to discard the present scientific system.

By exploring how scientists actually conduct themselves and describing the scientific and extra-scientific stakes, the authors (two sociologists of science) dispel many scientific myths in a lucid, approachable style. Even with casual study, they can bolster scientific understanding. The books are of potentially special value to undergraduate and graduate students studying and doing science themselves. I'm tempted to say that if you're a young scientist, these books cannot fail to make you a better one. Even if you're not a scientist, and never intend to be one, these are fascinating stories.

Of course, many scientists have known for a long time what Collins and Pinch have tried to convey. J.B.Conant was such a scientist. His case studies, published in 1957, provide historical examples in the same mold as Collins and Pinch, who explicitly admit to having drawn inspiration from The Harvard Case Studies in Experimental Science edited by J.B.Conant

I read it as part of a university course in research methodology, and I must say it gave a somewhat more nuanced view of how research is carried out in practice - sometimes far from the idealized view of how science is done!

"The Golem" is by the way a very appropriate name for this account of scientific history - don't know what a Golem is? Read and find out...