This is pretty important stuff when it comes to scientific journals. You often see people talk about how these journals ought to be open-access and free to the public. That's good and I agree... but scientific papers aren't written for the general public, and people need to understand that. Publications are made with particular expectations about their audience: their training, experience, knowledge, and that they'll approach the topic with the appropriate amount of skepticism. Throwing just plain-anybody into the mix would not be constructive. Are the threads in r/science very constructive at all? More often than not, no.The nasty comment thread polarized the opinion of readers, leading them to misunderstand the original article.
That's a novel direction to take it, but I think you can make arguments both ways. On the one hand academics need some slack to go off and come up with their own arcane lingo and practice at pace, because otherwise they'd never get anywhere. But on the other hand, detaching from the rest of the world feels unhealthy. Especially since much academic research is publicly funded, surely it behooves them to eventually show the public what they've done and how it improves the world? If you don't eventually make advances accessible to lay people there's no way to be sure you're in fact doing something of value. You use the word constructive; can you elaborate on what you mean by it? I think people talking on forums is constructive even if they get things wrong -- as long as how confident people are that they're right isn't too far from reality. That's really where this study shows up a flaw; people exposed to nasty comments seem to turn dogmatic, which is far worse than being wrong. I'm not very certain of any of these sentiments. I'm not sure how much slack we should give areas of academia. I'm not sure how much delta to tolerate between people's confidence and reality.
It's like you say, basically. While "constructive" may be vague, it's certainly not constructive for people to be picking sides without actual understanding of a topic. The article kind of dances around with this idea: what if there were public comment threads on the actual journals? What if the actual literature was actually married to these ugly discussions? Papers would be permanently colored by these perceptions, and it would change how they are treated. I don't disagree, but the counterpoint is that actual research is a lot more nuanced than that. Few problems are as simple as: X will solve Y, from which everyone will benefit. Our scientific understanding in so many areas is very deep and specialized and even understanding these things on a basic level may necessitate years of training. Indeed many people are working on problems which are several steps removed from anything that's applicable, but nonetheless necessary. Making sure that research is of value is definitely important, but when you're trying to convince the public of value it becomes very easy to mislead or oversell your work. How frequently is cancer cured in scientific journalism? While the public should know about scientific advances, I don't have as much certainty that they can appropriately appreciate and understand their significance, let alone make judgements about it. The article does a very nice job of highlighting how groupthink actively disrupts this.You use the word constructive; can you elaborate on what you mean by it?
If you don't eventually make advances accessible to lay people there's no way to be sure you're in fact doing something of value.
On the contrary, I find it extremely constructive to pick sides. The world is complex, and if we wait for 'all the facts' to roll in, we'll basically never form an opinion on anything. Instead, I think we should constantly form opinions based on what we know and understand, but try to also form opinions about how sure we ought to be of ourselves. Sport is more fun to watch if you pick a side to root for. Similarly, picking a side is a neat way to make yourself care temporarily about a subject. I think my phrasing of 'making advances accessible' is flexible enough to admit abstract research. Indeed, I claim it will happily support art and literary criticism. Making things accessible doesn't imply convincing others that it's concretely useful; that is too subjective a metric. Instead, it means being able to explain what you did, and to set it in context so that the average educated person can put on a belief system as a frame of reference. "If I care about art, what X has worked on is..," etc. The true goal of expertise is to transcend complexities to arrive at simplicity -- and to describe the voyage as a story. Often the expert requires data to back up his hypothesis, and understanding the intricacies of a proof, or the body of evidence -- that may be something only an expert can do. But once the work has been vetted the conclusions should be understandable by outsiders. Few people have read Darwin's Origin of Species. I am told much of it is evidence of various species adaptations. But it is a great work because the conclusions have spread far beyond its direct readership. Robert Sapolsky is one of my favorite examples of this, for his ability to explain arcane theories of biology without requiring any biological background whatsoever. Similarly, I picked up Morse Peckham at some point and got a sense that I learned something...it's certainly not constructive for people to be picking sides without actual understanding of a topic.
..many people are working on problems which are several steps removed from anything that's applicable..
..even understanding things on a basic level may necessitate years of training.