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03-June-2007, 10:40 PM
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Arrogance in scientific disciplines
Here's a poll for everybody: in what scientific discipline is arrogance the most prevalent?
My vote goes to: particle physics. I have observed a tendency for people in that field to think they know everything simply because they can draw and interpret Feynman diagrams. The irony is I used to be in that field (I was in the high-energy physics group in grad school way back in the 1990s). What do y'all think?
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The dose makes the poison--Paracelsus (1493-1541) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paracelsus I don't know. That's why I'm asking--Noclevername Intelligence may not be clearly defined, but you know stupid when you see it--Noclevername Science is a way of thinking much more than it is a body of knowledge--Carl Sagan (1934-1996) 
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03-June-2007, 10:42 PM
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Creationism. (Just kidding)
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"If this were play'd upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction." Shakespeare, Twelfth Night "The Mayan symbol for "book" looks a lot like a triple hamburger, but I've never seen them claiming it as proof the Mayans had Big Macs." - KaiYeves "Distance doesn’t matter much in space, where if you just start a thing off with the right kind of shove, sooner or later it will get where you want it to go." -Frederik Pohl, Mining the Oort
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03-June-2007, 10:54 PM
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I think that science tends to foster arrogance. It is interesting that new discoveries tend to go to the younger generation and belief of the established order tends to be characteristic of the older generation; but then perhaps that's just human nature. I think it also keeps everyone honest and forces the young to sweat the details that we tend to want to skip. :">
My generation will get its chance to shake up the established order, and we will also some day probably be seen as an obstruction to a younger generation.
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03-June-2007, 11:04 PM
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No wonder the public image of scientists is so bad!! Not every scientist is guilty of this; there are plenty of modest people in every field.
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The dose makes the poison--Paracelsus (1493-1541) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paracelsus I don't know. That's why I'm asking--Noclevername Intelligence may not be clearly defined, but you know stupid when you see it--Noclevername Science is a way of thinking much more than it is a body of knowledge--Carl Sagan (1934-1996)
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03-June-2007, 11:17 PM
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Do you know who devised the theory of plate tectonics? Didn't think so  There's a few self-promoters in the discipline, but it's a rare trait.
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03-June-2007, 11:30 PM
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Arrogant, and proud of it.
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Well, as a former particle physicist myself (grad school in the mid 80's) I have to agree at one level. Yes, we can be arrogant, but what of it? You don't think Einstein was arrogant? Or Fermi? Feynman fairly oozed arrogance. Pauli certainly did (it takes arrogance to tell someone they're "not even wrong".) Like successful people in most fields, a certain amount of arrogance is necessary for any good scientist. I think one reason for this (in this case at least) is that most particle physicists feel they know more about other fields than people in other fields know about physics. Lord knows I feel that way. Now perhaps someone in biology (or chemistry or any other science) would make the same claim. In fact, I'm sure they would. The question to ask is "is the claim is justified?" If the scientist in question can demonstrate knowledge, or even expertise, in a field outside their specialty, then to some extent the arrogance is justified. In Feynman's case, I would say it was. If not, feel free to bust their chops (a la Steven Jones and his misguided claims to engineering expertise on 9-11 issues). Myself, I tend to limit my non-physics pontificating to those areas where I know I've read up a lot in the field, even if I haven't made an academic career of it. Another reason for this attitude, especially on the part of physicists, is that we tend to view ourselves as the last "Renaissance persons." That is, physicists see themselves as people who perhaps have an area of specialization, but have wide interests outside of that area as well. And in this day of excessive specialization viewing ones self as a broadly based person can be seen as arrogance by others who perhaps are proud of their specialization. So, to wrap up this bit of arrogance, yes, I'm an arrogant particle physicist. And I'm proud of it.
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"I often say that when you can measure what you are speaking about, and express it in numbers, you know something about it; but when you cannot measure it, when you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge is of a meagre and unsatisfactory kind." - William Thompson, 1st Baron Lord Kelvin "If it was so, it might be, and if it were so, it would be, but as it isn't, it ain't. That's logic!" - Tweedledee This isn't right. This isn't even wrong. - Wolfgang Pauli
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04-June-2007, 12:01 AM
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Well, he developed the theory of continental drift but with no mechanism for movement. He was pretty much laughed out of geology. His ideas were given a second look though in the 1950's and 60's with the discovery of seafloor spreading.
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04-June-2007, 12:02 AM
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Is there a difference between arrogance and pontificating? Could Sagan be said to have been a pontificater, without being arrogant? Or do the two necessarily go together? Dawkins is said to be the UK's top scientist. Yet even fellow evolutionists have critisised him for coming across as insufferably arrogant, dictatorial even.
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04-June-2007, 12:08 AM
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On the other hand, I remember watching the TV from JPL when the Voyager data from Uranus started coming back. The scientists were practically dancing and singing, "Everything we know is wrong! Everything we know is wrong!" How many people in other professions are so happy to be mistaken?
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Everything I need to know I learned through Googling.
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04-June-2007, 12:30 AM
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04-June-2007, 12:45 AM
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ToSeek, as usual, has put his finger on a very important aspect ...
Arrogant when talking to (or pontificating at) an audience which is not comprised of PhDs in {insert your favourite discipline here} with a minimum of 25 years' of research papers under each's belt is one thing*; humility when confronted with good observational or experimental results which are inconsistent with their favourite theories, at the many sigma level, is quite another ... FWIW, the calibre of the tilts taken at the windmills of (most) astronomy, these past decades or six, is quite reasonable (objective) grounds for pontification. Arrogance is a beast of a different hue; its relationship to pride? Question for the particle physicists: how did you greet the news of the research results showing neutrino oscillations? Well before then, did you feel that astronomers had simply not done enough work (or, worse, done sloppy research)? or did you feel that the 'solar neutrino problem' might reveal something truly wonderous about particle physics? *and yes, there are quite a few, very notable exceptions.
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04-June-2007, 12:52 AM
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Anyway, the story of the devising of plate tectonics will be a movie someday. It's got intrigue, and scandal--if the principals would allow that.
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04-June-2007, 01:53 AM
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Does the perceived arrogance stem from the scientists themselves, or might those who control distribution of the scientists' findings have something to do with it?
(Thinking of Congress' current investigation of NASA's Inspector General, being televised for the last two weeks on C-SPAN.)
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04-June-2007, 02:27 AM
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I think arrogance doesn't observed only on scientists but in every person who has in-depth background in every scientific discipline he's engaged. An Architect is arrogant when topic is about constructing a building or a residential estate where he know details, but can be ignorant and lost when topic is about Biology or Chemistry.
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I think for me, it's part being a person. To be proud and have pride of what you know and accomplished in each field of expertise.
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Jean ----- "The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing." - Albert Einstein "The good life is inspired by love and guided by knowledge " - Bertrand Russell
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04-June-2007, 03:13 AM
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I think your liable to see quite a different reaction.
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04-June-2007, 03:20 AM
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However, if he says "Hey, that's wrong." in the nicest possible way, or if his name was Edward Witten, or ...* *There's a delightful passage in Zee's "Quantum Field Theory", Chapter I.2 ("The professor's nightmare: a wise guy in the class", my bold): "Suddenly, a very bright student, let us call him Feynmann, asked, [...]"
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04-June-2007, 05:10 AM
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There's a difference between arrogance and justifiable pride in one's accomplishments. I want people who've put decades of work into a field I couldn't understand in twice the time to be proud of what they've done. They should be. I don't even find people saying, "You couldn't hope to understand it" or being annoyed that someone who's not studied as much as they informs them that they're wrong to be arrogant. I think it's perfectly reasonable in many cases. I couldn't hope to understand particle physics! I could study for decades, and my eyes would still glaze over at every equation. It just doesn't interest me, and I'm not good at it. Since I haven't done the studying, I probably don't know enough to correct them.
Certainly there are arrogant scientists, and I'm certain everyone who works in science can name at least a few. However, pride in one's accomplishments, as I say, is not arrogance unless it's taken to extremes.
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Gillian "Now everyone was giving her that kind of look UFOlogists get when they suddenly say, 'Hey, if you shade your eyes you can see it is just a flock of geese after all.'" "You can't erase icing." "I can't believe it doesn't work! I found it on the internet, man!"
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04-June-2007, 07:27 AM
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That actually happened to my Dad (who also happens to be a particle physicist). He and another professor were working some problem in their office lounge when some snot-nosed undergrad wandered in, looked at the board for about 2 minutes, and - completely ignoring the two professors - walked over, and corrected it. He ended up being one of Dad's grad students. Dad's also a Civil War historian (with an emphasis on the Mississsippi River campaigns). Knowing him for my entire life, I've never seen him arrogant - though I have seen him slice people off at the ankles. I've never knwn him to offer an opinion on a subject he has not studied - at least to some extent. He's certainly willing to admit being wrong - but he will also demand you prove your assertions. I suppose that might be seen as arrogant...
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04-June-2007, 08:28 AM
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Re: Arrogance in scientific disciplines
This is more engineering than science, but the principles are the same.
There's little about geometric dimensioning and tolerancing (ANSI/ASME Y14.5) that I'm not familiar with. However, I recoil sharply when anyone refers to me as an "expert" on this material. Accepting such a moniker is setting one up for a fall. Instead I will say I know a few things about the subject and those things I know I'm sure of. Anyone who wants to find fault in my textbooks, training manuals, etc., is welcome to do so, as long as they are trying to achieve something positive. Those who are just trying to tear down a discipline because they don't like it, or don't comprehend it, are easy to detect up front. Funny that when such negative persons are dismissed they often hurl accusations of "arrogance" at those of us who know what we're doing. Where have we seen this kind of behavior before? CT? ATM? 
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A person's name, or a mark representing it, as signed personally or by deputy, as in subscribing a letter or other document.
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04-June-2007, 08:33 AM
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My understanding of the phrase "tilting at windmills" is that it means an attack that is misguided, and likely to go unnoticed by the object of the attack, but which may well harm the Quixotic attacker himself. So my best guess at what you are saying is, "Over the past 10-60 years, people have attacked the tenets of mainstream astronomy. However, the attacks have been so ineffectual that mainstream astronomers have ended up feeling more confident than before about their theories." If this is what you mean, it seems to be at odds with planetary astronomy, given that just about everything we believed about Mercury, Venus, Mars, and the moons of giant planets sixty years ago has been entirely overturned. Generally speaking, I suspect "arrogant" is sometimes a word used by the ignorant to describe the confident. (Which is not to suggest there is no such thing as arrogance in science.) It also makes me think of the inane line often trotted out in discussions about life on other worlds: "It's very arrogant to believe we're the only life in the universe." (I have some thoughts about that which I might share on another occasion.)
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04-June-2007, 08:49 AM
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Some scientists came out to investigate. Sure enough, the meters appeared to register efficiency of about 120%. However, looking further, the scientists realised that these final readings were based on a series of readings that had rather broad tolerances, so they were meaningless. So, no extraordinary evidence for this extraordinary claim. But the ones who thought they had overturned thermodynamics made dismissive remarks about these arrogant scientists clinging to their beliefs. Yawn. *I forget the exact details.
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04-June-2007, 09:26 AM
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I also noted when I was in grad school that at least some people in particle physics seemed to think that being in particle physics implied that they were smarter than a given scientists in any other field. I will certainly cop to having that view while I was studying that field!  I got that arrogance knocked out of me when I switched fields to tox instead. There are brilliant people in every field, and there are plodders in every field. The distribution of IQ scores over a given range is probably the same for all fields of science. 'AngryPhysics' talks about this in his/her latest blog entry. Quote:
Nope. I'm sure you are very accomplished in your field. So am I in mine. I'm sure you possess a wide array of surface knowledge about other scientific disciplines. So do I. But, there is a difference between saying that one has knowledge of a field outside of one's zone of expertise and claiming to be or acting like an expert in a field outside of one's true zone of expertise. It is a fine line that is very easy to step over sometimes; I have stepped over it myself on occasion . I am not claiming that you have stepped over it, Eta C, but I have seen it done by others on more than one occasion. It is great to be a Renaissance person. It is not okay to claim universal expertise. To do so is not only arrogant and fallacious, it is also misleading, particularly for the layperson. That is the point of my thread. Quote:
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__________________
The dose makes the poison--Paracelsus (1493-1541) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paracelsus I don't know. That's why I'm asking--Noclevername Intelligence may not be clearly defined, but you know stupid when you see it--Noclevername Science is a way of thinking much more than it is a body of knowledge--Carl Sagan (1934-1996)
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04-June-2007, 09:32 AM
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If you have read Jurassic Park, then you will know that geneticists are the most arrogant scientists. (Mathematicians are always justifiably correct, so that doesn't count as actual arrogance.) Paleontologists are the humble saints of the scientific community.
In reality? Anyone has the potential for it. Talk to an artist some time. Say something controversial, like, "while Renaissance art may be passable in terms of technical ability, it wasn't until the Impressionists that composition became anything more than laughable." You will see. At my school, business students think they run the show. A big streak of arrogance seems to be a prerequisite for entering that programme. I've yet to meet any real scientist whom I considered to be arrogant in terms of refusing to talk about his research. Ask a scientist about the work in his field and it is generally impossible to shut him up. That's my experience, anyway.
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"It's turtles all the way down."
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04-June-2007, 11:00 AM
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The greatest explorers were brilliantly arrogant
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Science is a temple of knowledge and should not be seen to wave at every new comer who wishes to rock the boat. That would lead to science taking notice of people with all sorts of ideas. There are dangerous upstarts who hold that there is no truth, no math, just observations, like me with less than a year of study self taught in a variety of fields. I don't know which field I haven't taken a potshot at and they all stand pretty firm, not that I have applied any real pressure, that I can safely leave to the universe. Science needs arrogance a positive righteous arrogance if it is to be strong and to show leadership, have the confidence to run full with the wind (and yet being prepared to beach and ride out the storm) so needs to be seen ready at the wheel to bring her hard around if that be the call. Captains of ancient boats were always an interesting lot and many fine tales told of them. Now if science wishes to attract the next generation of leaders and not just crewmen it needs to promote its great captains with great pride. Science must have direction even wrong direction as lack of direction leads to mutiny (not an option). Youth needs to hear more of the Bligh's and Horatio's of science and be drawn to a life of intellectual heroic adventure. The boats of science are now an armada and will hold course until the beacon ahead is clearly a lighthouse. There is an amusing story of that happening and a challenge to the lighthouse was issued but that is another story. Arrogance is such a human trait, I believe the public needs science in all fields to be deeply protective and therefore stable. This way all sciences are beacons and provide the comforting stability we lesser mortals need for our happy, uncomplicated little lives.
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04-June-2007, 11:05 AM
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Re: Arrogance in scientific disciplines
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Back to ATM w' ye, get back!
__________________
A person's name, or a mark representing it, as signed personally or by deputy, as in subscribing a letter or other document.
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04-June-2007, 12:07 PM
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04-June-2007, 12:17 PM
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I have my line of expertise in my chosen field as an Industrial Engineer where I can say I know things under that subject. And I know others have their own fields of expertise too. Being arrogant , doesn't necessarily be on the negative side, it's being able to say what you know by heart.
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Jean ----- "The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing." - Albert Einstein "The good life is inspired by love and guided by knowledge " - Bertrand Russell
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04-June-2007, 12:28 PM
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