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The Amateur's RevengePosing as a physicist—and getting away with it.

By Jon Lackman
Posted Thursday, Oct. 5, 2006, at 12:40 PM ET
Harry Collins.

W.H. Auden once remarked, "When I am in the company of scientists, I feel like a shabby curate who has strayed by mistake into a drawing room full of dukes." Scientists often do have an aristocratic air. After all, they know things—important things, nature's secrets—that the rest of us could never understand ourselves. Or could we?

In a recent experiment of his design, British sociologist Harry Collins asked a scientist who specializes in gravitational waves to answer seven questions about the physics of these waves. Collins, who has made an amateur study of this field for more than 30 years but has never actually practiced it, also answered the questions himself. Then he submitted both sets of answers to a panel of judges who are themselves gravitational-wave researchers. The judges couldn't tell the impostor from one of their own. Collins argues that he is therefore as qualified as anyone to discuss this field, even though he can't conduct experiments in it.

Collins' feat startled the scientific community. The journal Nature predicted that the experiment would have a broad impact, writing that Collins could help settle the "science wars of the 1990s," "when sociologists launched what scientists saw as attacks on the very nature of science, and scientists responded in kind," accusing the sociologists of misunderstanding science. More generally, it could affect "the argument about whether an outsider, such as an anthropologist, can properly understand another group, such as a remote rural community." With this comment, Nature seemed to be saying that if a sociologist can understand physics, then anyone can understand anything.

Well, maybe. It will be interesting to see if Collins' results can indeed be repeated in different situations. Meanwhile, his experiment is plenty interesting in itself. Just one of the judges succeeded in distinguishing Collins' answers from those of the trained experts. One threw up his hands. And the other seven declared Collins the physicist. He didn't simply do as well as the trained specialist—he did better, even though the test questions demanded technical answers. One sample answer from Collins gives you the flavor: "Since gravitational waves change the shape of spacetime and radio waves do not, the effect on an interferometer of radio waves can only be to mimic the effects of a gravitational wave, not reproduce them." (More details can be found in this paper Collins wrote with his collaborators.)

To be sure, a differently designed experiment would have presented more difficulty for Collins. If he'd chosen questions that involved math, they would have done him in for sure; he knows next to none of the mathematics that gravitational-wave physicists use. But many scientists consider themselves perfectly qualified to discuss topics for which they lack the underlying mathematical skills, as Collins noted when I talked to him. "You can be a great physicist and not know any mathematics," he said. To take an extreme example, you needn't have solved gravitational equations to know that you shouldn't jump out a window. So, if Collins can talk gravitational waves as well as an insider, who cares if he doesn't know how to crunch the numbers?

Alan Sokal does. The New York University physicist is famous for an experiment a decade ago that seemed to demonstrate the futility of laymen discussing science. In 1996, he tricked the top humanities journal Social Text into publishing as genuine scholarship a totally nonsensical paper that celebrated fashionable literary theory and then applied it to all manner of scientific questions. ("As Lacan suspected, there is an intimate connection between the external structure of the physical world and its inner psychological representation qua knot theory.") Sokal showed that, with a little flattery, laymen could be induced to swallow the most ridiculous of scientific canards—so why should we value their opinions on science as highly as scientists'?

Sokal doesn't think Collins has proved otherwise. When I reached him this week, he acknowledged that you don't need to practice science in order to understand it. But he maintains, as he put it to Nature, that in many science debates, "you need a knowledge of the field that is virtually, if not fully, at the level of researchers in the field," in order to participate. He elaborated: Say there are two scientists, X and Y. If you want to argue that X's theory was embraced over Y's, even though Y's is better, because the science community is biased against Y, then you had better be able to read and evaluate their theories yourself, mathematics included (or collaborate with someone who can). He has a point. Just because mathematics features little in the work of some gravitational-wave physicists doesn't mean it's a trivial part of the subject.

Even if Collins didn't demonstrate that he is qualified to pronounce on all of gravitational-wave physics, he did learn more of the subject than anyone may have thought possible. Sokal says he was shocked by Collins' store of knowledge: "He knows more about gravitational waves than I do!" Sokal admitted that Collins was already qualified to pronounce on a lot, and that with a bit more study, he would be the equal of a professional. If, as astrophysicist Stephen Hawking put it, scientists peer into "the mind of God," then Auden may have been right to feel like a "shabby curate" in their company. What Auden didn't realize is that he could have done something about it.

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Jon Lackman is a writer in New York.
Photograph of Harry Collins © Cardiff University 2006.
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Remarks from the Fray:

In science, who you are doesn't matter. What you say does. That's the heart of science, part of what makes it so egalitarian and appealing.

I am a physicist, so I get to spend a good part of my day working with math and computers trying to understand experimental data.

If I make a claim about nature based on that daily work and write a paper on it, the affiliation under my name -- and the letters after it -- matter a lot less than the substance of my argument.

If I did the same work at night, after my shift as an accountant or a waitress, and submitted the same paper, it would still be judged on the strength of its arguments.

If my claims about nature are hokum, they probably won't be published. When hokum gets published, it is challenged (or sometimes ignored).

If Collins can answer his self-posed questions accurately, he is to that extent a physicist. Insofar as I can wax enthusiastic about physics on this message board and hold your interest, I am a pundit.

--illua

(To reply, click here.)

What the hell combination of insanity and cluelessness do you need to have to conclude that the experience of a man whostudied a particular field for over thirty years has any application to the general case? Most sociologists don't know what physics IS, let alone having a passion for it that leads to a private study of an obscure field of it for three bloody decades. That's the point, as the writer must know full well, and this unique observation is irrelevant to the general case. […]

This is a non-story of such epic proportions. A man who studied a field for over thirty years now knows something about that field! Wow, two-cultures problem over, all sociologists are as knowledgeable as physicists now! Retract the Nobels! Physics is solved!

--ben-sf

(To reply, click here.)

I suspect that scientists are so hung up on credentials because of the number of crackpot notions out there, from intelligent design to homeopathy. Credentials give them a way to at least have some preliminary screen for the crazies.

And let's not make believe that credentials don't mean anything. Credentials are earned by actually learning something, and serve as proof that the person who earned them has at least a certain baseline of understanding that most people don't share. You can, of course, learn everything a lawyer learns in law school on your own, but not too many people will take the time.

And yet, it's entirely possible to be an expert without credentials. This fact is recognized at varying levels in many fields. Astronomy is a particularly good example, since most discoveries of comets and other solar system objects are made by amateurs these days - the pros are busy looking much further away. It's also possible in the arts. I know several collectors of studio craft who know as much as most curators in that area, and whose opinions are valued (and occasional sought out) by the professionals.

And that brings us to The Fray, and the Internet in general. I won't say that the advent of the Internet has changed the balance between the credentialed expert and the uncredentialed amateur, but it has done two things that alter the equation.

First, the Internet has made resources available to everyone that used to be available only to people in a particular field. Much of this is the result of what I tend to think of as generosity on the part of the professionals who have made data available on the web, although in many cases it probably had as much to do with showing off their expertise as anything else. However, there's also an incredible amount of government data, ranging from the NIH web site to state laws, that you now can find just by typing a few words into a search box. Because of this, and probably for the first time since the last days of the 18th century, a smart, educated person has the ability to learn enough to become an expert in many fields.

The second, and probably more important factor, is that the Internet has created a platform for people to demonstrate and validate their expertise. The Fray is a good example. We all know that there are people who write on particular topics here who know those topics quite well, and Fray readers don't seem that interested in claims based on authority - they want facts and logic. (Well, mostly.) While sometimes it may take a while to separate the wheat from the chaff, it becomes evident in the long run. You can see the same effect with blogs - the best ones provide news analysis and opinion as good as anything you'll find anywhere else. Most bloggers have no credentials other than their actual knowledge, and for the really good ones, that's all they need to get an audience.

Now I'm under no delusion that credentialing ever will go away, if for no other reason than that it's usually the best way to obtain actual expertise, but because of these two phenomena I do suspect that we'll see more and more talented amateurs working their way into the pantheon. That can't possibly be a bad thing.

--randy-khan

(To reply, click here.)

(10/6)

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