Faking It

[bascule]

http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/daniel_davies/2006/10/faking_the_physics.html

 

Harry Collins, a sociologist, managed to convince a panel of physicsts that he knew more about gravity waves than a gravity wave physicist.

 

From the article:

 

Are we sure that what Prof Collins displayed was "simulated" understanding, rather than the real thing? In his writings on the sociology of scientific knowledge, Collins makes the distinction between "interactional expertise" (the ability to carry on a sensible conversation with a specialist) and "contributory expertise" (the ability to contribute to the field). But are we really sure that this difference is based on something that the scientists understand but the layman doesn't? If a layman can intelligently discuss the physics, then surely he understands the physics?

[Severian]

This guy gave a talk to my department the other day (which has a big gravitational waves group). He showed us his seven questions and both answers, and to be honest I would have just been guessing to tell which was which. That is not to say that he got all the answers right - he didn't, and I could see that myself (I actually objected in the talk) but does one really expect a gravitational wave physicist to get all the questions right?

 

The answers from the 'real' physicist looked a bit evasive, with hindsight probably because he didn't want to make a silly mistake, and Collins admitted that this was probably the reason why the 'experts' like his answers better. His answers seemed more confident, even though some were wrong (though not way-out wrong).

 

The questions were very experiment orientated, about interferometers, so were very unmathematical. He admitted that he could not have done the same thing with a theoretical particle physicist.

 

However, his main point in the talk (and I think the main point of this exercise) was to show that one can make a contribution to physics (eg. in a management role) without having any grasp of the mathematics. Only the actual research physicists need the maths, but this is a rather small proportion of people who do physics degrees. Therefore, he said, we leave out the maths when teaching physics and just teach the words.

 

I argued rather strongly against this during the question session at the end. After all, 99% of English literature students will not need a knowledge of Shakespeare's plays in their final workplace, but that does not mean we should stop teaching Shakespeare.

[Martin]

Bascule, he has been hanging out with physicists in this one specialized area of research for 30 years!

 

He has been talking with them and following developments in this one specialized area (detection of gravity waves)

If after 30 years he didn't think and know and sound pretty much like an expert in that research field, it would be surprising.

 

30 years of osmosis has got to be approximately as good as 6 years of graduate school, if the guy is bright to begin with, at least at a conversational email level.

 

=====quote from your article=====

 

Prof Collins is a sociologist who has spent the last 30 years studying the community of scientists who work on the detection of gravity waves. The idea was originally to study the dissemination of a major discovery through the scientific community, but unfortunately the discovery of gravity waves was imminent in 1976 and has been imminent ever since, but there you go.

 

===endquote===

 

still, its a funny story.

 

if he was an anthropologist who had spent the last 30 years living amongst the Hottentots in remote Hottenland, he would probably be able to speak pretty good Hottentalk---enough to fool you in email

[ParanoiA]

However, his main point in the talk (and I think the main point of this exercise) was to show that one can make a contribution to physics (eg. in a management role) without having any grasp of the mathematics. Only the actual research physicists need the maths, but this is a rather small proportion of people who do physics degrees. Therefore, he said, we leave out the maths when teaching physics and just teach the words.

 

I don't know how this plays out in physics, but in electronics the maths helped in the learning of the concepts of electricity which strengthens the understanding of the words. I don't like this lazy approach to technical fields at all where we find excuses not to have to learn the math.

[Mokele]

Th thing is, he's artificially handicapped himself by choosing a field with a very difficult tool, math. Had he looked at ecology or even genetics, he'd've probably reached contributional level knowledge by now, because the tools can be explained to him. His handicap is merely one of lacking one tool; he'd be in the predicament if it was Buddhist theology and he didn't know sanskrit or pali, but not if it was Mormom theology, which is all in english. He knows the concepts, just not the primary tool.

 

but does one really expect a gravitational wave physicist to get all the questions right?

 

Depends on what the questions are. Are we talking the sort of questions that need detailed, specific knowledge, or as we talking about questions that deal with the broad concepts of the field? If the latter, then yes.

 

Mokele

[Severian]

Depends on what the questions are. Are we talking the sort of questions that need detailed, specific knowledge, or as we talking about questions that deal with the broad concepts of the field? If the latter, then yes.

 

They were rather specific questions. Let me give you an example (I am paraphrasing and I may be remembering wrongly since I didn't write it down and it was last week):

 

Imagine an interferometer examining a distortion of space-time which was spherically symmetric, so would effect both arms of the interferometer in the same way. Would the interferometer be able to measure the distortion?

 

The physicist said yes; you only need one arm of the interferometer in principle to measure distortions, since you can just time the light pulse. But since you have the same thing happening to both arms, you will not generate an interference pattern, and must time the light separately (which you don't need to do in a normal interferometer). Typically the time difference will be too short to measure, so this would be very difficult.

 

Collins answered no: the interferometer has two arms in order to set up an interference pattern when the distances travelled by the light in each arm is different. In this case, the distance is the same, so no interference pattern.

 

He claimed the panel marked him correct and the physicist wrong, because they were expecting the answer 'no'. I think this is a bit crap (and said so in his talk) because the physicist was completely right - it just comes down to the definition of 'interferometer'. (I think I phrased the question more clearly than they did - I think they may even have said LIGO rather than 'an interferometer', but I can't remember.)