Talk:List of popular misconceptions about science/Archive 2

While I understand your re-titling, I think it's a cop out. "Mythology" is a perfectly meaningful word, and while it is misused and ruffles some feathers, I think it's better to clarify its real meaning than to simply avoid it.


 * You're assuming, Lee, that once we've covered all the stories of science, we'll have a large, important topic in addition, called the mythology of science. I really doubt that.

And besides, if we are going to cover mythology at all, how do we justify using the word for Greek, Roman, Sumerian, and other cultural and religious traditions and not for Christian, Hindu. scientific, or other cultures? The only difference, it seems to me, is there aren't any Sumerians around to complain. That's hardly a difference worth changing titles for. --LDC


 * As I see it, it's easy to justify that. To wit, there aren't (to my knowledge, anyway) Greek, Roman, and Sumerian religionists about to complain that their stories are actually true, and that we should not be prejudicing Wikipedia's readers against them.  There are many Christians, Muslims, and Jews about who will rightly complain that saying that their stories, which they believe are true, are part of a "mythology" is inherently biased.  If everyone stops believing those stories, then in the context of Wikipedia with its neutral point of view policy, we can safely label them "mythology." --LMS

Sorry to rain on your parade, but there are over a million Neopagans, a religion based "mythology". A minority, yes, but where do you draw the line? Most Neopagans don't believe the stories to be literally true, but then again most Christians don't believe all the Christian myths to be literally true, either. Other than fundamentalists, for example, few really believe Jonah lived inside a whale's stomach for 40 days or whatever it was. --Dmerrill

That doesn't mean that Christians will not take great offense at their stories being called "mythology," David. This is just basic politeness, as I see it. --LMS

Readded the influence on story telling to science. The problem was brought up by James Burke. Some of the examples of how story telling affects scientific education are my own, but 1) I think I am qualified to make those statements based on personal experience and 2) they aren't particularly controversial statements among science teachers. -- Chenyu

James Burke is not, to my knowledge, a well-respected authority on the history of science: he is a popularizer, isn't he? --LMS

Joseph, with great respect for your expertise otherwise, I very much doubt you are an expert on this. Am I wrong? In what articles or books have you developed this theory? --LMS


 * For example, according to Joseph Wang scientific myths often contain an inspired "heroic" genius, and this obscures the role of social communication and collaboration in the scientific process as well as contributes to the perception that science is too hard for mere mortals to undertake. Also, scientific myths often contain an "evil" establishment, and this obscures the fact that there are often good reasons why the establishment believes what it does and that in many cases, the established view turns out to be correct. Scientific myths also tend to either overstate or understate the role of chance in scientific discovery, and the tendency to emphasis the dramatic, tends to understate the incremental progress that consitutes most scientific advancement.


 * Also in the effort to create a dramatic story, scientific myths tend to reduce theory verification to one dramatic experiment which is claimed to prove a theory (i.e. Michaelson-Morley). This leads to the misperception that scientific theories are fragile in that they are based on a few crucial facts, when in fact most scientific theories are robust in that they are based on many independent lines of evidence and can withstand cases in which some interpretations of data later turn out to be incorrect.

I think I'm enough of an expert in this area. I'm making these statements on the basis of my five years of personal experience teaching astronomy at a university level and my doctorate in astrophysics. There huge amount of effort goes into "unteaching" stories and misconceptions that people have about science. Also, those statements aren't particular controversial, especially among people who have actually taught science to undergrads. -- Chenyu

Just wondering--when did "original research" become a recognized term on Wikipedia? It seems to be popping up with increasing frequency as a justification for deletion, putting the burden of proof on the contributor instead of the deleter. --TheCunctator

It's not a "recognized term" on Wikipedia at all, as far as I know. If you wish to argue against this view I have, do feel free. I would enjoy the debate--it's a very interesting topic. Please do not imply that I am trying to foist my views onto other Wikipedians without open, free debate.

It has long been my explicitly stated view, both on Nupedia (where a respected classicist actually quit over this issue) and Wikipedia, that we should not be trying to state our own views, or the results of our own research here. In fact, this has come up multiple times before. I think most people have agreed with me about it. --LMS

Burke is indeed a popularizer, but he is also a pretty well-respected historian. And this is, after all, an article about popular stories and oral traditions within the culture, (i.e., mythology) not an article about the history of science (except as it relates to those stories), and so the "experts" on that would be the popularizers, not the working scientists or historians. It's also hardly original stuff--Dennett talks about it, as does Gould, Asimov, Feynmann ("Cargo-cult science"), and others.

Chenyu is right that his stuff is not particularly controversial, but I suppose it does have some flavor of commentary to it (indeed, it reads a lot like my own Myth of the Lone Inventor), so I could see leaving it out until we find some more relevant specific quotes. --LDC

It might be that flavor of commentary that put me off, but that by itself wouldn't be enough for me to delete it. If indeed it is not particularly controversial among experts, if it's the sort of thing that is often said in textbooks and basic lectures on the history of science, then it should be in the article, and I was simply mistaken to delete it.

Really, all I wanted was attribution. Actually, "it's common opinion among historians of science" is good enough for me, and I'm assuming Joseph will tell me that it is indeed common opinion among historians of science (and not just physicists who teach science). So, I'll put the text back in on that assumption! --LMS

Looks good. -- Chenyu

I think that one of the issues here was what I posted was so much of the "common knowledge" among people I've worked with, that asking for an attribution confused me. It was as if someone asked for the source of a statement that George Washington was the first president or that the sun works through nuclear fusion. Off hand, I don't know of any scientific historian, scientist, or scientific educator who would disagree with that statement, and I wouldn't have posted it without extensive revisions if I did.

I agree 100% with the above. We couldn't get anything done if we had to have attribution for every statement. But when something sounds controversial, or possibly controversial, attribution is necessary, I think, at least if we're going to make this a respectable, reliable resource. --LMS - I think attribution is important in this case because it seems a lot more controversial than it really is, so in this case there needed to be a statement that this really isn't too controversial among the experts in the field. -- Chenyu