Are you aware? Science textbooks are censored

[Tapeworm]

I have a perception that even the medium level science learning materials in English world are censored. Many books written in English are difficult to learn from. Even though there are numerous science & maths textbooks and internet materials, few of them are workable. Book comments in amazon often talk about this: poor notation, missing important ideas... I mean it is a kind of knowledge and technology prohibition to the public. By overwhelming publication of the fake textbooks to suffocate the public's engineering power. I don't know the situation in other countries(languages). Are foreign languages more transparent to science & technology?

Edited October 8, 2012 by Tapeworm

[StringJunky]

Science is not deliberately obfuscated; when one starts to talk about fundamental mechanisms and phenomena in the verbal or visual form we have to use abstractions and analogies that use real world examples that are, in reality, only coarse approximations of what's really happening. The only way to really get to grips with it is via the use of maths. If you can't do that you are going to have a tough time understanding it properly. Most scientific concepts are mathematical constructs derived from measurement...it's quite removed from everyday methods of analysing things and this is probably why you find it so alien. Just keep reading science by scientists and you'll eventually get used to it.

 

You could ask here for layman's treatments of any ideas that you are interested in. John Gribbin's books for cosmological subjects are quite accessible for example.

Edited October 8, 2012 by StringJunky

[ajb]

Book comments in amazon often talk about this: poor notation, missing important ideas...

 

Due to space considerations an author will have to prioritise what to include and at what depth. This means that some topics, that may well be very important or at least to other people, are not included. With this in mind I usually like to use more than one book when trying to get to grips with a subject.

 

I am myself working on a book project and know that I won't be able to do all the topics the justice they deserve: mainly as they would distract from the main message of the book, not that they are unimportant in any way. They are not needed in any depth to get to where I want the book to end up.

 

Notation can also be an issue, especially where ideas from many branches of science and mathematics are encountered. This is just as true of research papers as text books and monographs.

 

However, there is no major conspiracy to keep knowledge from people.

[Tapeworm]

I have a large grievance. Please listen to me, the facts may be embarrassing to educators, which I never thought of. We can even delete this thread when necessary. I am not knowledgeable to make an accusation. If you have a friend who is a practitioner or an engineer, he knows.

Edited October 22, 2012 by Tapeworm

[ACG52]

I am not knowledgeable to make an accusation.

 

Then why are you?

[Tapeworm]

Sorry, I mean I'm not knowledgeable to bring about the evidences, but still (have the right to) accuse "them".

Edited October 22, 2012 by Tapeworm

[ACG52]

Sorry, I mean I'm not knowledgeable to bring about the evidences, but still (have the right to) accuse "them".

 

 

So you are making an accusation with no evidence to support it. I assume you adhere to the Napoleonic code of justice?

 

 

BTW, who's 'them'?

[Tapeworm]

Yes, there are evidences, just my academic background is not enough to lay off them. Effort on my own is not enough to unveil the problem.

Some of "them" are renowned professors, textbook authors and publishers. The allegation is serious? That's why I made sounds to call for public investigation.

Edited October 22, 2012 by Tapeworm

[Ophiolite]

Do textbooks contain errors? Of course they do. They are produced by humans and humans make mistakes. Textbooks are produced to deadlines, generally by individuals for whom the production of the textbook is only one of their tasks. Publishers and editors make solid efforts to avoid these errors, but it is impractical to expect 100% perfection.

 

Do textbooks omit important information? Almost certainly. I have written no published science textbooks, but I have written numerous internal training documents and created numerous instructor led training courses in engineering. There is a lot of material I leave out. Why? Numerous reasons: limited time; material that likely exceeds the capacity of the student to understand at this point in their career; better alternative ways of conveying the information; rapidly moving field, so that no clear consensus exists; judgement that I am not sufficiently personally comeptent to write on the topic; etc

 

Is any of this a coordinated effort to conceal 'the truth' from the public? Of course it isn't. The 'truth', if you want it is readily available through primary research publications. Any decent university course will direct students to this material from the outset. Lectures and textbooks work in conjunction with such material.

 

ajb has pointed out that he likes to use multiple books when studying a subject. This is excellent advice. I like to collect old geology textbooks from the 60's onwards. It is fascinating to see not only the evolution of ideas over decades, but to recognise the different slants taken on the same subject by authors of the same vintage. Is this a conspiracy? Again, no. That is just silly.

 

You say you have no evidence - so, what actually causes you to even suspect such a bizarre thing? Are you paranoid about anything else?

[swansont]

Thee is one small aspect of truth to this, in that the state of Texas wields an inordinate amount of influence over textbook selection, and have shown a willingness to exclude textbooks that treat some science (e.g. evolution) in too favorable a light. That exerts a certain amount of economic pressure on textbook content. However, that doesn't seem to be the topic being broached. Other textbooks exist and nobody is stopping anyone from making a book freely available if they choose to do so.

 

An accusation with no examples and no evidence is well over the line of being ludicrous.

[Jens]

(I agree to Ophiolite)

 

To your question about textbooks in foreign languages: I have read both German and American textbooks in the area of Biology, Biochemistry, Genetics. At least for those American textbooks which are sold also in Germany (mainly in English, rarely translated) I find the authors of the American textbooks have invested much more work in making things interesting to read and easy to understand. There is clearly more effort to make science more attractive than can be found on average German textbooks.

 

So at least from my experience you cannot expect more from foreign textbooks than from the good American ones (those which are also sold in other countries).

 

Read two different books on the same topic, if you really have the feeling that the authors only provide a view from one side.

Edited November 20, 2012 by Jens

[overtone]

Not just textbooks, but books in general, are not thoroughly proofread, indexed, or edited, these days. (Neither are newspapers, magazines, etc. And God help you if you rely on the internet, where such concerns are not even in general awareness).

 

Especially in matters such as proofreading, the new corporate owners of the major publishing houses see inefficiency and needless expense - surely a competent author can write what they want to say, and minor spelling, grammar, etc issues can be handled by the word processing software?

 

In technical books this is exacerbated by the difficulty and extra expense of finding someone even capable of proofreading, editing, etc. These people tend to come from the English department of the local university. I've heard at least one copyeditor mention that they were at sea - that they didn't know whether the stuff they were checking was even rightside up on the page.

 

No conspiracy needed.

[Jens]

No conspiracy needed.

 

Agreed.

 

To avoid getting paranoid, it helps to apply the following sentence in many matters of life:

 

"Never attribute to evil what you can attribute to incompetency."

 

So if in recent German school books about the topic "Great Depression 1929" the stock exchange speculation bubble is not even mentioned as cause, you could assume a conspiration of the world wide banking system that still wants to continue with their speculations world wide and try to influence the authors of school books. However, applying the rule above it is much more likely that the author of the schoolbook was simply very theoretic and far from real life.

 

And with regards to university level text books:

While manipulation of school books (e.g. by religous fundamentalists) is at least a potential danger, nobody will invest the work to manipulate university level books (less people, and more difficult to manipulate).

The reality is much more that the highly skilled authors invest a lot of their time, energy and love to the topic to write them, without getting much back (especially not with regards of money).

[Ophiolite]

I can't help wonderiing Tapeworm, if you are working from a mindset that thinks there is an absolute truth and that mistakes just shouldn't be allowed to happen. Perhaps you could comment on that thought.