Ten REAL myths about scientists debunked.

Seven Ten REAL myths about scientists debunked.

By Bart Pander and Roel van Klink

Recently, seven “myths” about scientists were published on The Conversation, and subsequently reblogged by half the world and its mom. As scientists, we doubt that anyone but scientists (and maybe their close friends) would even care about these things, so they shouldn’t be called myths. Or at least not myths worth of debunking on an internet click-bait list. So here’s  a list of seven ten REAL myths about scientists which we regularly encounter. While writing them we discovered that every myth might actually need an whole article so there is something we might write revisit this topic in the future.

 

1. Scientists are arrogant smart-asses.

This myth is so common that if you go to google and type: ‘Scientists are’ one of the first suggestions is ‘Scientists are arrogant’. Now, before considering whether this is a myth or not, we can definitely say that many people believe they are. There are some interesting reasons why this might be  the case and will expand on this in a future article. Here’s the short version.

First, to be honest, we indeed know quite a few scientists who are smart asses, but very few who are arrogant about it (yes this seems odd but really isn’t).  Appearing to be a smart-ass just kind of happens if you know a lot about a certain subject and then talk to someone who does not. This is of course a poor excuse for bad behaviour, and we should be careful not to over do it. However, this is not only true for scientists, and other people also smart-ass us, for instance about sports, or Hollywood movies, and we both can probably be pretty smart-assy about music. So lets say people are sometimes smart asses.

Now about real arrogance, this does happen in our fields and other “hard” sciences (such as biology, chemistry, physics and mathematics). In recent books about neurobiology, the authors (senior professors) have had no scruples to impose their conclusions onto other, “softer”, scientific fields, such as law, sociology, or ethics. This is definitely arrogance.

So, if there is so much truth to this, maybe it is not a myth but rather a fact? No, it is mostly a myth. Science should be, and is for most scientists a very humbling experience. Although you learn a lot, you also learn how hard it is to find new knowledge, and you will come to realize how much you actually don’t know. By studying nature we get more in awe of the complexity and intricacy than we were before. Doing research makes anyone less arrogant and more understanding of what we don’t know. And that is not even mentioning the traumatic experiences of getting your research bashed during peer review. So concluding: the truth is more nuanced and definitely not fully true.

2. Scientists are socially handicapped

The stereotypical scientist in Hollywood movies are odd figures and often not the most social persons. If you think this is an accurate description of scientists, you would be amazed how social people are if you would visit a research group. Most of us have healthy relationships and lots of friend both inside and outside of science. Science itself is a very social type of work: we help each other doing observations and experiments, write articles together, present and discuss our work at conferences etc. How often did you read a piece of literature written by more than one author?  most scientific paper have at least 2 authors but 5-6 is more common and a paper with much more authors appear more and more often. Do you really think this would work is we all would be unable to communicate and be social and emphatic to each other? The research group of one of us [BP] has about 70 members, which is considered huge in (micro)biology. Although all of the members of the group have an active social life outside it, our group also has a rugby team, a football team, go out together to the pub or concerts etc. That scientists are bad in social situations is thus clearly nonsense.

So where does this myth come from? We have to be honest: there is probably a higher proportion of shy and socially underdeveloped people in science.  And this is fine, because you can be a good scientist without being socially very skilled (unlike teachers, journalists, entertainers or politicians, who have to be socially gifted.). This probably led to a higher tolerance to social awkwardness (as long you do good science),  explaining why shy and socially inept people probably feel at home in science.

3. You have to be brilliant to become a scientist

The average IQ of scientists is probably higher than that of the general population, but not (much) higher than other academics. The largest part of becoming a scientist is just perseverance, hard  work, creativity and luck. The idea that people excel in science because of some innate special ability is actually very bad for science. In science we should focus on the quality of the work done,and presented, and be able to question everything and everyone. By putting people on a pedestal you make them and their ideas immune for criticism which undermines the scientific process. It also puts off people who want to do science but are uncertain if they are smart enough. If you want to do science try it!

4. Scientists all work very hard

It is true that most scientists work excess hours without payment, but the 80 hour workweek is mostly a myth (although they sometimes happen). If you want to say that you work very hard you should compare with comparable jobs and in fact, most university educated people we know work long weeks. If your work is something you chose (which is true for most higher educated people) you tend to do lots of work out of hours, because you want to. The long hours of scientist is for a part fun driven. The days are also broken up with long coffee breaks, work meetings in which indeed we discuss our experiments (and TV series, sports, music, internet memes) and we attend presentations by other researchers. We do our experiments because we are curious. We might make long days but most of it we would do voluntary. The other reason why many scientist work more hours than they are paid for is because of really fierce competition. Science is competitive and if the most successful people are always working overtime, then everyone who wants to stay in science has to. But any truly hard working people, such as miners or farmers would laugh if someone would call lab work, field work or computer work hard. And then there also are people who treat science as any job, working no more that 40 hours a week.

5. Scientists are all skeptics

They should be, but unfortunately most aren’t very skeptical about many things. We have colleagues who believe in fairies, homeopathy, that our food is toxic, or follow every new health fad  out there. Even though they would apply the rules of science and skepticism to everything in their direct work, they are happy to live their lives as if the scientific method does not exist. We do not understand how they do this but they are nice people (mostly) and it gives something light to discus at lunch or in the pub.

6. Scientists are all atheists

There are plenty of religious scientists, but indeed the proportion of atheists in science is probably higher than in the general population.

7. Scientists all have a nerdy passion about their little field of expertise

Indeed many do, the two of us certainly are, but we also nerd also about other nerdy stuff such as sci-fi, computers and death metal. Most science nerds try to be knowledgeable about a broad range of subjects. But what many people would not expect that there are also quite a few scientist who treat it as any other job and who do not care so much about science as they do about celebrities, mainstream music or football. A few of our colleagues are not only not nerds, they are not even science nerds (and still good scientists).

8. Scientists are from wealthy or elitist backgrounds

This was definitely true before the middle of the twentieth century. The bit of truth that clings to this myth is depending on many factors, among which geographical location. In most North-western European countries, higher education is either free or can be followed using reasonable government loans, while in the Anglo-Saxon world university attendance can depend on your wealth and thus a higher proportion rich kids get to become scientists. And it might especially be true in the third world where it is very hard to follow education without money. Secondly, it is well know that the chances of even considering going to university are much higher if you are from an educated background, no matter your location on the world.

That said, we both a have humble background as do many of our colleagues. Children of factory workers, stay at home moms, people on welfare, miners, farmers, lorry drivers and even criminals are or have been our direct colleagues.

9. You can trust scientists to know what they talk about, they are experts and should not be questioned when they say something.

Although most scientists probably are experts about something very detailed, even in that subject they might not know everything. When they stray from their field of expertise they quickly become as knowledgeable as any academic, which might be disappointingly little. For some reason politicians, businessmen, artists etc are asked critical questions in the news media but when one scientist gives an opinion that is taken as the consensus view of science (which it is often not). Almost every news article about science or where a scientist has been asked for their opinion it is assumed that the research is done correctly and the correct conclusions are drawn while in fact this is not always the case.

10. Scientists are cold, unemotional people

This is one the myths we come across a lot. The classic example is that scientists do not experience the beauty of a flower or a rainbow. This is just horrible bullshit that is quite frankly a bit insulting.  The reason why most people start of as scientists is because they think that the world is just amazingly beautiful. Rarely you will such childish enthusiasm in adults for simple things in nature as in scientists. We both have been stared at because we are moved to sheer ecstasy when we find a beautiful insect in a crowded street, a fossil in the limestone of a medieval church etc. If we claim that something is interesting most people outside of science might not appreciate that to us that is a fairly strong emotional exclamation. If something is interesting it means it is worth knowing more about (almost everything is interesting) which is a form of love for that something.

Related is the myth that science destroys beauty and wonder. The mistake made here, is that people seem to think that understanding how something works takes away the wonder, while actually the opposite is true. Knowing how something works just deepens one’s appreciation for it, and humbles you about what you don’t yet know. The only thing research sometimes does is destroy your unsubstantiated hypothesis. Now we are sorry if you’d believed (and thought it was beautiful) that leaves turn green again in spring because gnomes come to paint them at night, it turns out that the truth is different but the beauty of spring remains.

In short: scientists actually are a bit like normal people…

Ruining a good song part I. Europe – The Final Countdown

By Roel

You all know this one and you may or may not like it. This is a song I, as an 80’s kid, grew up with, but there is just so much wrong with this song that I can’t stand it anymore. I need to get this off my chest

So here we  go:

“We’re leaving together
But still it’s farewell
And maybe we’ll come back
To earth, who can tell?
I guess there is no one to blame
We’re leaving ground
Will things ever be the same again?”
## Ok fair enough, we’ll assume you’ll go on a space mission.

“It’s the final countdown
The final countdown”

“We’re heading for Venus and still we stand tall”
## Ah, you’re heading for Venus. Undoubtedly interesting, but you might want to know that the surface temperature is 462°C, or 863°F, and that the atmosphere consists of 96% carbon-dioxide, with an atmospheric pressure of 93 times Earth’s. No wonder no-one is planning a manned mission to this barren wasteland.
“‘Cause maybe they’ve seen us and welcome us all, yea”
## What? You expect someone to be there waiting for you, and that this entity will be able to communicate with you in an intelligible way???? Given the conditions just sketched, it is highly unlikely that even if life exists there, it is anything you would recognize as such.
“With so many light years to go and things to be found”
##Wait, did you say “light years”???? What kind of de-tour are you taking? A lightyear, is the distance light can travel in a year. This is equal to 9.46*10<sup>15</sup> km, or 300.000 km/sec. Yes, that is almost 10 millionbillion km. Venus is the closest planet to Earth and closest it comes is 38mln km, and the furthest 261mln km (when Venus is on the other side of the sun). If light-speed travel would be possible it would therefore take between 2 and 15 minutes to get there.
“I’m sure that we’ll all miss her so”
## yeah I’m sure you will miss home when you’re suffocating in a furnace whilst looking for little green men

“It’s the final countdown
The final countdown”

For f*ck’s sake, what was this guy thinking???

 

If you need any more songs ruined, you know where to find me.

Science literacy for punks, or: What to believe and what not to believe. Part I: Science in its ideal form

By Roel

(note: the links and examples in this post are purely for educational purposes, and do not indicate that I endorse or support any of them)

Over the last decade, there has been an increase in skepticism towards science. The vast majority of this skepticism is represented by religious zealots (in particular American evangelists) and the industry (fearing a loss of income should the negative effects of their products become known). But also among punks and activists there is a lot of skepticism towards science, probably because it is regarded as “mainstream” and therefore suspicious.

This increase in skepticism has led to a strong response by science advocates, represented by prominent scientists, such as Richard Dawkins and popular blogs and Facebook pages, such as IFLScience and Stop the anti-science movement. This is also an attitude that I frequently encounter among my students and colleagues at the university. These people adamantly believe that science is the only way, because it is true, and that other worldviews are per definition worthless, since they are not true.

Neither of these camps is willing to give the other side’s views much credit. Both camps, however, are selective in the aspects of science that they emphasize, and the information that they convey.

I believe that this debate stems from a lack of appreciation of the scientific method by the skeptics and an unjustified amount of trust in scientists by the science advocates. In this series of blogs I will explain the scientific process and also explain where it can and will (!) go wrong. (Just to be clear, the remainder of this blog will not focus on the views of the religious zealots or the industry, which both have vested interests in discrediting certain scientific findings, but only focuses on reasonable people.)

This first part will describe science in its most ideal form, where all scientific results are assumed to be true. In future posts I will describe where, along the way, things can go wrong. And that is at a lot of places!

In short, the scientific process can be summarized into four stages, all explained in more detail below:

1) Asking a question and generating a hypothesis (an expectation of what the answer will be and the assumptions made), based on prior knowledge of a study system, literature research, logic or theoretical predictions.

2) An experiment or computer simulation to test the hypothesis. It is important that an experiment:

1. Is well designed to test the hypothesis
2. Has an untreated control to compare the effects of the treatment(s) to.
3. Has sufficient replicates to be certain that the results found are not found by random chance

3) (Statistical) analysis of the findings

(possibly stages 1- 3 can be repeated until a coherent story of the workings of the study system emerges)

4)Publication of results in a scientific journal

Then the cycle can start all over again, based on the newly gained knowledge

1) Questions and hypotheses

Logically, the scientific process starts with asking a question of something you want to understand. This can range from the workings of elemental particles to the effects of a new drug or the psychological and sociological processes affecting our dietary choices. Then, a hypothesis needs to be generated as to what you think will be the answer to the question. A hypothesis therefore, is not much more than an expectation of what the answer will be. You might now ask: “if you know the answer, why go through the effort of doing an experiment?” This is a fair question, a hypothesis, however, is not an answer, but a testable expectation, based on the current understanding of the study system.

2) Testing these hypotheses

So if you have generated a hypothesis, this means that you have a fairly good idea how this can be tested. Hence and experiment can be designed. An experiment must be designed to give plausible results, which means certain rules must be observed, some of which are very straightforward:

First, there must be an untreated control (group) which is equal to the treated group, in all aspects but the treatment. For example, a control group of patients will need to receive a placebo instead of a tested drug, otherwise the researcher can’t be certain whether the patients were affected by the drug, the other substances in the pill, of just the fact that they swallowed a pill!

Secondly, there needs to be sufficient replication to be certain an effect exists, and how large this is effect is on average. Returning to the drug example: no one will believe that it works if it was tested on only one, or five, or even 20 persons

Finally , an experiment must be designed to unambiguously test the hypothesis. If any other explanation can be invoked to explain the results, this means that the experiment was not very well designed! An extreme example of this happens in medicine, where both the testers and test subjects are human, and humans can influence, and be influenced by, a great many things: When testing a drug, it is of course important that the patient receiving either the drug or the placebo does not know which of these (s)he receives, as this knowledge alone might affect his/her health. But it can go much further than that: If a doctor or assistant knows which patients are given the real drug, and which are given the placebo, (s)he might inadvertently treat these groups differently, for instance by being nicer to the people receiving the real drug. This can also affect the health of the subject, and lead to false results. This effect is not only known from research on humans, but also affects animals, and recently it was even shown that animals are even affected by the sex of the researcher administering the drug! For these reasons it is extremely important to do double blind experiments, where neither the subject nor the researcher knows which treatment is being administered to which subject. I personally do not trust any medicine/health study that was not carried out in a double blind way.

3) Statistical analysis

This part is important to discern between random chance and actual effects: here, three aspects of the results are important: (1) the effect size: how large is the effect of the treatment, or how many of the test subjects show effects in comparison to the control group. (2) There is always variation around the average (especially in biological or social systems), but sometimes more than others. It is therefore important to know how much of this variation is explained by the treatment. And (3) what is the probability that these results are a result of random chance?

4) Publication of results in a scientific journal

Results achieved by experiments or other ways of scientific recourse, are to be shared with the rest of the world. This is typically done by publishing articles in scientific journals or books. These articles are usually rather dry, and are generally aimed at the rest of the scientific community, rather than at the general public. If you are curious what a scientific article looks like: an extreme example here, a less extreme example by my own hand here. To browse the enormous amount of journals out there, check the website of one of the biggest publishers, Elsevier.

Scientific journals have existed as means of communication between researchers since 1665. In the past this was always done in paper magazines, but now, in the digital age, almost all scientific publications can be accessed online. Usually, however, not for free, and this will be the topic of a later post.
Not all journals are created equal, though, and there are large differences in the scope of journals. The journals that are highest in regard usually have the broadest scope, and have the largest audience. They cover everything from experimental psychology to nuclear physics, and usually have sections on science policy and careers as well, but only publish research that they believe is most important. The highest ranking journals in the “hard” sciences are Nature and Science, and almost all scientists dream of publishing in these journals. On the other end of the spectrum are extremely specialized journals, which are of interest to a smaller number of people, in my field for example Insect Conservation and Diversity. Journals are ranked according to impact factor, which is also a topic that I will come back to in a later post.

When publishing research, journals do not just simply accept or reject a manuscript at face value. Usually, the subject is so specialized, that the people working for the journal (editors) are not able to judge its novelty, or its methodological rigor. For this reason “peer review” has been invented. This means that when the editor of a journal finds a received manuscript of interest, (s)he will send it out to other (in my field usually 2 or 3) researchers in the field to judge whether it is good and interesting enough to be published. Based on these reviews, the editor will decide whether a manuscript will be accepted or rejected. Usually, some revisions are necessary before final acceptance by the journal. If a manuscript is rejected, revisions are usually also necessary, and the researcher will find another journal to submit the manuscript to.

Publishing has become increasingly important over the last decades, which has led to a growth in the number of journals. It was estimated that the 50million^th scientific article was published in 2009, in one of at least 23.000 journals (2006 estimate). Taken together, the accumulated contents of all scientific publications and books constitute humanity’s total body of scientific knowledge.

Conclusion

Described like this, there is little room for error in the scientific process, and should therefore lead to unbiased knowledge and an ever increasing understanding of the workings of the universe. This is the view that the science advocates have, or at least the view that they like the rest of the world to see.

It is however, an extremely simplified view, and a lot can distort it, at basically each step of the process. These will be the topics of future posts, covering among other things:

• Is science true?
• A religious belief in science
• Paradigm theory
• Publication pressure journal ranking
• Scientists are human
• Sources of scientific funding
• Scientific progress is SLOW, and policy changes even slower!
• Pay walls and open access publishing
• Science is rational and COLD! Where is the wonder?

(links will be up as parts appear)

Punks in Science

So here it finally is, the Punks In Science weblog. I have been walking around with the idea of doing a blog for quite a while now, but didn’t really know what to add to the enormous amount of information out there on the internet. And then, about a couple of months ago, it hit me: A blog aimed at bridging the gap between the activist/punk scene, in which I spent the most formative years of my life, and science, which is my profession.

So, why is this important? You may ask. And the answer is that I have noticed over the last few years that there is a great deal of misunderstanding between activists and scientists. This seems to be due to a lack of understanding of how science works (the scientific method) and leads to expressions like “science is just an opinion”. Of course there is a deeper reason for mistrust against science and scientists, especially among punks. These issues will be the focus of one of my first blog posts. Other posts from me will cover for example: animal extinctions, what is punk about science, rewilding, vaccinations, homeopathy, tattoos and lots more.

Is this blog only aimed at punks and/or scientists? No of course not. This blog is aimed at everyone, and in particular at people who live an alternative (sometimes referred to as “autonomous”) lifestyle (like punks, metalheads, satanists, (cyber) gothics, hippies, vegetarians, vegans, all sorts of activists, trekkies, you name it), and is interested in the relationship between science and society. My sincere hope is that this blog can increase people’s understanding of science, and be a source of inspiration and collaboration between these two worlds.

Together with some of the few people from the Dutch hardcore-punk scene working in academia, Ferry Koster and Pytrik Schafraad, I will be running this blog. It will be based on anarchist principles, so no rules, no strict weekly updates, and everyone is free to write about whatever he likes, as long as the division between scientific fact and opinion is clear. This of course means that each contributor in responsible only for his own posts.

We also very much encourage other (international) punks who have a career in science and want to share something, either as guest contributors or as ‘staff’ member. Just hit us up.

 

So now a little bit about myself: how I got to be a scientist and how I got to be a punk, and where my interests lie.

I am a biologist. An insect ecologist, to be more precise, and I study how biodiversity of insects is affected by external forces, such as human influence, or just natural causes. I have known I wanted to be a biologist since I was a little boy, because I have always just been fascinated by the fantastic diversity that can be found in nature. And it can therefore not be a surprise that the topic of my PhD thesis was the conservation of insects and spiders. I also worked on this topic for my Msc thesis (insects in the agricultural landscape) and last year as a post-doctoral researcher in the Oostvaardersplassen rewilding area.

So how did I become a punk? The hardcore punk scene was my second home (and at times my first) since 1997, when I visited my first concert in Amsterdam. What especially appealed to me was its social and political engagement, its idealism and its general differentness. From this point of view my scientific and punk careers are much entwined.
I started playing in bands in 1996 and ultimately my bands Eye of Judgement and Civil Terror were the most successful. In fact so successful that I put my scientific education on hold for three years (2006-2009) to spend as much time as I could making music, playing shows, recording and touring. When I started my PhD research in 2009, it became rapidly clear that these two lifestyles were incompatible in terms of time investment, and I ultimately pursued my scientific career, which is where I’m at now.
I am currently ‘in between jobs’ after 4 years of my PhD research and a year as post-doctoral researcher. I finally found some time to start this blog, finish all the papers that I have been working on, and even make some music every once in a while.

I hope to entertain you with my perspective on science, the underground scene and society.

Roel