[Fis] Scientific communication

[Pedro C. Marijuan]

Dear Mark and FIS colleagues,

It was a pity that our previous replies just crossed in time, otherwise 
I would have continued along your thinking lines. However, your 
alternative focus on who has access to the "Brownian chamber motion" is 
pretty exciting too.

Following our FIS colleague Howard Bloom ("The Global Brain", 2000), 
universities and the like are a social haven for a new type of 
personality that does not match very well within the social order of 
things. It is the "Faustian type" of mental explorers, dreamers, 
creators of thought, etc. Historically they have been extremely 
important but the way they are treated (even in those "havens" 
themselves!), well, usually is rather frustrating except for a few 
fortunate parties. A long list of arch-famous scientific figures ended 
very badly indeed.

So, in this view, people "called to the box" are the Faustians of the 
locality... But of course, other essential factors impinge on the box 
composition and inner directions, often very rudely. SCIENTIA POTESTAS 
EST: it means that as the box's outcomes are so much influential in the 
technology, religion, culture, richness, prosperity, and military power, 
etc., a mixing of socio-political interests will impress a tough 
handling in the external guidance and inner contents of the poor box.

And finally, the education --as you have implied-- that very often is 
deeply imbued with classist structures and class selection. The vitality 
of the Brownian box would most frequently hang from these educational 
structures --purses-- for both financing and arrival of new people. And 
that implies further administrative strings and been involved in 
frequent bureaucratic internecine conflicts. The book of Gregory Clark 
(2014, The Son also Raises) is an excellent reading on class "iron 
statistics" everywhere, particularly in education.

E puor si muove! All those burdens have a balance of positive supporting 
and negative discouraging influences, different in each era. Perhaps far 
better in our times, but who knows... The good thing relating our 
discussion is that, from immemorial times, all those Brownian boxes 
around are wonderfully agitated and refreshed by the external 
communication flows of scientific publications via the multiple channels 
(explosive ones today, almost toxic for the Faustian).

Maintaining a healthy, open-minded scientific system... easy said than done.

Best regards
--Pedro





El 16/10/2016 a las 16:07, Mark Johnson escribió:
> Dear Pedro,
>
> Thank you for bringing this back down to earth again. I would like to
> challenge something in your first comment - partly because contained
> within it are issues which connect the science of information with the
> politics of publishing and elite education.
>
> Your 'bet' that "that oral exchange continues to be the central
> vehicle. It is the "Brownian Motion" that keeps running and infuses
> vitality to the entire edifice of science." is of course right.
> However, there is a political/critical issue as to who has ACCESS to
> the chamber with the Brownian motion.
>
> It is common for elite private schools in the UK (and I'm sure
> elsewhere) to say "exams aren't important to us. What matters are the
> things around the edges of formal education... character-building
> activities, contact with the elite, etc". What they mean is that they
> don't worry about exams because their processes of pre-selection and
> 'hot-housing' mean that all their students will do well in exams
> anyway. But nobody would argue that exams are not important for
> personal advancement in today's society, would they?
>
> Similarly, elite universities may say "published papers are not that
> important - what happens face-to-face is what matters!". Those
> universities do not have to worry so much about publishing in
> high-quality journals because (often) the editors of those journals
> are employed by those universities. But when, at least in the last 10
> years or so, did anybody get an academic job in a university with no
> publications?
>
> I draw attention to this not because it seems like a stitch-up
> (although it is). It is because it skews what you call the "Brownian
> motion". At worst we end up with the kind of prejudice that was
> expressed by Professor Tim Hunt last year
> (https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/jun/10/nobel-scientist-tim-hunt-female-scientists-cause-trouble-for-men-in-labs).
> More fundamentally, the doubts and uncertainties of the many are very
> important, and in this system, they are not only not heard, but in the
> increasingly rarefied and and specialised exchanges in the "Brownian
> motion chamber", as the elite scholars endlessly discuss ontological
> arguments for the existence of information (!), everyone else is
> effectively locked-out.
>
> The economic crisis and the economists is a good example of this kind
> of pathology. It was pretty obvious that the economic system was
> heading for trouble quite some time before 2008; it was also obvious
> to a few economists on the fringes (who became very unpopular) that
> economics was in a mess many years before, concocted out of spurious
> mathematical models and a published discourse which would admit little
> else. As Tony Lawson says here (this is worth watching:
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b_vMLHis5cE), after the crisis it's
> easier to claim that economics is in a mess. But doing something about
> it is a different matter.
>
> As a side note about Brownian motion: Tony Lawson is based in
> Cambridge as has, over the last 20 years, held a bi-weekly seminar
> series open to all called the Cambridge Realist Workshop. Some of the
> brightest minds in the University attend these. They all have deep
> discussions about economics, ontology, society... basically, about
> "everyone else". But "everyone else" isn't in the room.
>
> This is the problem. Were "everyone else" to be there, for it to be
> truly open, honest and democratic.... I think we would have a better
> science of society, information, education, etc... A small step to
> achieving this is to communicate our doubts in different, more open
> and more creative ways.
>
> Best wishes,
>
> Mark
>

-- 
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Pedro C. Marijuán
Grupo de Bioinformación / Bioinformation Group
Instituto Aragonés de Ciencias de la Salud
Centro de Investigación Biomédica de Aragón (CIBA)
Avda. San Juan Bosco, 13, planta X
50009 Zaragoza, Spain
Tfno. +34 976 71 3526 (& 6818)
pcmarijuan.iacs at aragon.es
http://sites.google.com/site/pedrocmarijuan/
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