Is being an amateur science a freelance/home career?

[D H]

I agree that this is something that could make you bitter if you derived a lot of security from the idea that scientists are generally good and pure. But why should you have to assume that scientists are either generally biased or unbiased to critically work with scientific knowledge and data?

 

You are being silly. Scientists are neither pure nor "generally biased". Scientists are human and don't quite know what they are doing. "If we knew what we were doing, it wouldn't be called research, would it?"

[mississippichem]

I think you underestimate the ability of academic structuring to stifle innovation. I'm not saying there aren't exceptions, but many people go into academia thinking it will help them pursue their dreams and end up getting talked into playing the academic hoop-jumping games and eventually narrowing themselves to some sub-specialty of a specialty, which convinces them that they are only qualified to be an expert in that one sub-area and to basically give up free-thinking on topics they have come to view as others' territory. Basically, academic structuring protects people with high institutional credentials from having to compete or share the spotlight. If people start to pay attention to your ideas, all someone has to do is point out your lack of credentials and call you a crackpot. They can say, "well if this person's science is so good, why don't they have a PhD or peer-recognition in their field?" That's a social reason, not one based on content, but since few people critically understand content, they take the word of experts. Then, if the experts have learned to filter ideas through aesthetic standards of style, method, etc. they will have basically unlearned the capacity to critically examine radically different approaches to their subject area. They see unorthodoxy simply as evidence of crackpottery without even knowing where to begin to critically evaluate them for legitimacy except by beginning with established canons they learned in their academic training. There are very few totally open critical empiricists anymore that are capable of evaluating knowledge-claims in a totally neutral way, free of bias due to established discourse, imo.

 

I think there has been discussion about this before on the forum. The consensus among the resident experts seemed to be that it takes way more time and energy to debunk theories from amateurs that don't understand already established principle than it does to point out inconsistencies in a theory from trained scientist to trained scientist.

 

If the scientific establishment gave equal review time to every theory that came along, nothing would ever get accomplished. Amateurs often lack the rigorous mathematical and research training that facilitates finesse debate over disputed topics. Things that are often obvious to physical scientists are still up for debate among amateurs.

 

If I came out with a "theory" that the moon was actually shaped like a cube, anyone in their right mind would dismiss that as quackery instantly; even non-scientist types. Well, when someone comes out and says they've built a perpetual motion machine with an overbalanced wheel, scientists see that as being about as valid as the cubic moon I mentioned previously. Amateurs often don't realize or acknowledge the well established principle that if the math doesn't line up, it doesn't happen. It takes way too much time to debunk someone's stupid idea about string theory when they don't understand differential equations. It's much easier to just say: show me the math...Oh! no math...come back once you've educated yourself further.

[Mr Skeptic]

I agree that this is something that could make you bitter if you derived a lot of security from the idea that scientists are generally good and pure. But why should you have to assume that scientists are either generally biased or unbiased to critically work with scientific knowledge and data? My questioning of scientists' discursive neutrality comes from a general regard for discourse after having studied the politics of representations and language. Scientific language/discourse and representations, while geared toward objective knowledge are still created and communicated by humans with subconscious cognitive biases that cause them to desire to manage their social position in the interest of not losing it.

 

Scientists are human. Sure, most of them are "good" and try their best to remove any trace of error or bias they can. A few are unscrupulous and might publish bad or made-up data if they think they can get away with it. But in the end, the system is designed to remove errors and bias and uncertainty, and will eventually do so.

 

Strongly criticizing well-renouned researchers in your field puts you in the position of greater scrutiny for your own work, so people tend to basically nod and bow to the big names and stick with critical debates with people at a level they can afford to lose at. Who wants to go head to head with Einstein's ghost and end up squared off with Hawking in the public discourse to establish "who's top dog" between the two? Thus, scientists tend to socially discipline each other and amateurs to basically respect hierarchies of authoritarian position, imo. Call it cynical if you like, but to transcend this would allow for enormous social-professional mobility as junior researchers in low-ranked institutions would suddenly rise to the status of canonical names. This would upset so many people that there is resistance to even imagining it is possible.

 

There's at least 3 different things at work here:

1) Don't be stupid, being stupid in public will make people very critical of your work. This is not unique to science. This applies to any mistakes made publicly, either in research or in criticism of someone else. The more established or well-known something is, the dumber you look if you make a mistake criticizing it.

2) Argument from Authority. Though technically a logical fallacy, the argument from authority is nevertheless a useful heuristic. Would you rather use your limited time to check for errors in the work of someone with a stellar reputation, or would you spend a bit more of that time reviewing the work of more average folks?

3) Math is hard! If you want to be able to criticize something, you have to be able to understand it. For example, can you criticize Einstein's theory of general relativity, or string theory? Or are you bowing down and worshiping the fact that they are famous know tensors and multi-dimensional maths? As it turns out, clever people like to work on difficult problems, and less clever people might not consider themselves competent to judge that.

 

But, yes, it would be interesting to see if institutional academics who are active in online forums would shut down ideas created by a top-dog in their field just because they were posted online in unorthodox language. It would at least prove my hypothesis that discursive cues and posturing affect even the most neutral/objective scientists' critical gaze.

 

Well here's a different idea: Let's say there's a paper published in a prestigious journal that has a mistake, and a similar mistaken paper published in a shoddy journal. Which do you think will be hammered with a storm of criticism? The more official-looking, well-written, famous person, whatever, if it has a mistake all that will make for much more and much harsher criticism, whereas a shoddy-looking paper by a nobody will probably get largely ignored, mistake or no.

 

The same goes for this forum, a well-written post appearing to demonstrate a good knowledge of maths/science, yet having a mistake, will be criticized if the mistake is found. A poorly written mistaken post is much more likely to just be ignored. It is also a lot more trouble (on a forum) to criticize dumb people, because first you have to teach them enough math and science that they can see where their mistake is.

[lemur]

You are being silly. Scientists are neither pure nor "generally biased". Scientists are human and don't quite know what they are doing. "If we knew what we were doing, it wouldn't be called research, would it?"

That's a good open attitude appropriate to doing research, imo.

 

I think there has been discussion about this before on the forum. The consensus among the resident experts seemed to be that it takes way more time and energy to debunk theories from amateurs that don't understand already established principle than it does to point out inconsistencies in a theory from trained scientist to trained scientist.

 

If the scientific establishment gave equal review time to every theory that came along, nothing would ever get accomplished. Amateurs often lack the rigorous mathematical and research training that facilitates finesse debate over disputed topics. Things that are often obvious to physical scientists are still up for debate among amateurs.

That may all be true and even make sense from practical standpoint of managing the energy you put into discourse and what you put your time into. However, from another standpoint it is the difference between rational and traditional authority. Yes, the application of rationality has generated traditional knowledge, but there is still a fundamental difference between approaching knowledge as traditional, received dogma than there is with approaching it critically/rationally. I'm not arguing that traditionalism is always negative and I don't want to get into a debate about the relative value of each approach to knowledge. I just find it important to point out there is a difference and that traditionalism shouldn't be taken as critical-rationality, even if the tradition is based in science.

 

Scientists are human. Sure, most of them are "good" and try their best to remove any trace of error or bias they can. A few are unscrupulous and might publish bad or made-up data if they think they can get away with it. But in the end, the system is designed to remove errors and bias and uncertainty, and will eventually do so.

Right, but my issue is that people feel the need to defend or attack science as a social group, i.e. "scientists." To me, what scientists do is a separate issue from what science is ideologically. All scientists could be corrupt and that wouldn't prove that science is a corrupting ideology. All it would prove is that corruption spread to the point of social totalitarianism. Yes, science is designed to remove errors and bias but one it has terrible trouble removing is the will to objectivity and rationality itself. Because of this will/desire, scientists tend to become emotionally invested in their identities as a good or bad scientists and therefore will tend to become emotionally invested in defending against critique of potential bias. This is because they are human and often because their professional status and even their income depends on their maintaining a good reputation. So that is a bias built into the system, even for people who are tenured.

 

There's at least 3 different things at work here:

1) Don't be stupid, being stupid in public will make people very critical of your work. This is not unique to science. This applies to any mistakes made publicly, either in research or in criticism of someone else. The more established or well-known something is, the dumber you look if you make a mistake criticizing it.

"Stupid" can be a very subjective label, though, although I agree with you subjectively.

 

2) Argument from Authority. Though technically a logical fallacy, the argument from authority is nevertheless a useful heuristic. Would you rather use your limited time to check for errors in the work of someone with a stellar reputation, or would you spend a bit more of that time reviewing the work of more average folks?

I get annoyed reviewing academic writing of people who are sensitive to critical discussion because it's their life work. When you treat someone's MA or PhD thesis like any other article and you see them longing to just hear you praise it as being well done, there's no real scientific value in that. I'd rather read a forum post that is just a summary of an idea and discuss it critically than get into a social dance where the person I am questioning is potentially the leading expert on "their" topic, etc. Blind peer-review is good for this reason, but totally blind forum discussions are even better, imo.

 

3) Math is hard! If you want to be able to criticize something, you have to be able to understand it. For example, can you criticize Einstein's theory of general relativity, or string theory? Or are you bowing down and worshiping the fact that they are famous know tensors and multi-dimensional maths? As it turns out, clever people like to work on difficult problems, and less clever people might not consider themselves competent to judge that.

Although it annoys me when ppl make fundamentally math-ignorant claims, I am also aware that higher math is used to weed people out of popular academic programs. Thus there is a lot of math that seems more functional as a challenge for people to prove their math sophistication than it has actual applicability-value. That said, I am biased because I have less patience for math than many people with my level of interest in science, so I am more prone to overlook the value of such math in many cases.

 

Well here's a different idea: Let's say there's a paper published in a prestigious journal that has a mistake, and a similar mistaken paper published in a shoddy journal. Which do you think will be hammered with a storm of criticism? The more official-looking, well-written, famous person, whatever, if it has a mistake all that will make for much more and much harsher criticism, whereas a shoddy-looking paper by a nobody will probably get largely ignored, mistake or no.

That may be true, but it doesn't really prove that social-cultures of subjective bias don't form in prestigious discourses. Besides, my point was not that good work isn't always good, though it may not always be. My point was that if good work was published in an online forum using unprestigious language by someone claiming to be an amateur, it would attract more bullying by amateurs or disgruntled professionals who feel better by pecking people 'lower' than them because they get pecked from 'above.'

 

The same goes for this forum, a well-written post appearing to demonstrate a good knowledge of maths/science, yet having a mistake, will be criticized if the mistake is found. A poorly written mistaken post is much more likely to just be ignored. It is also a lot more trouble (on a forum) to criticize dumb people, because first you have to teach them enough math and science that they can see where their mistake is.

Yes, it is logical that a jumbled post will just be ignored because it's hard to read. But sometimes they are hard to read because the poster is using an amateuristic language that seems foreign yet contains interesting unorthodox ideas. You're right, though, that it's hard to filter through them and see the value when they're not closely resonant with discourse that's familiar to you.

 

 

[mennans]

I want to know can an amateur scientist have a home business or being self-employed. Do you know of successful scientists that are amateurs in this world, today?

 

Learn about physics, and you can be an engineer or inventor. Learn about programming and you can build robots or design cheap computers. Biological study can lead to insights in the natural world and medicine. Science often takes place in isolation when one challenges status quo.

 

These are specific examples, but the scientific process itself can show you opportunity for gain. I'm not home employed, but I make do with very little money (and therefore, time working and doing things I don't enjoy) by not paying more than I need to. For example, common items that I used to pay 3-8$ for, I can find identical replacements for at the dollar store. In a $20 bag I can have "$100" of merchandise if I pay the standard retail jab. It's all exported labor, but one is packaged and marketed effectively.

 

You can apply reasoning and science it self to create opportunities for finance, and more importantly, overall satisfaction with life.