‘SEEING SCIENTIFICALLY’
An introduction to Science and Technology
Studies
Delivered 16.04.2014 as part of the UCL Outreach Widening
Participation Year 12 Masterclasses Programme
(http://www.ucl.ac.uk/prospective-students/widening-participation/wp-home)
Oliver Marsh
Department for Science and Technology Studies
University College London
http://www.ucl.ac.uk/sts/students/marsh
© Oliver Marsh 2014
Introduction Activity:
Take the object on your desk and look at it ‘scientifically’.
Some suggested things to think about:
• What interesting ‘scientific’ questions could you ask about it?
• How might you get ‘scientific’ answers from it?
• How could you make sure other scientists believe your answers?
• What have you been taught by science lessons (or science books, websites,
documentaries…) that might come in use?
• What ‘unscientific’ things should you avoid, and how will you try to avoid
them?
NOTE: DO NOT ASK ME WHAT ‘SCIENTIFICALLY’ MEANS – TRYING TO
WORK THIS OUT IS THE POINT OF THE EXERCISE!
(So don’t worry about actually getting scientific answers from your object…)
Share the object and discuss your thoughts in groups.
You have 10 minutes, and then we’ll all have a class discussion.
© Oliver Marsh 2014
NATURE
Things that exist and happen
in the world, independent of
humans
SCIENCE
Humans talking about those things
© Oliver Marsh 2014
SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY STUDIES (STS)
Humans talking about humans doing science, and its
connections to other things humans do.
Three ways of doing this…
PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE: Asking the very basic questions, like ‘what is
science?’ and ‘how do we know science is actually true?’
HISTORY OF SCIENCE: Looking at how scientific ideas, tools, and jobs
developed in connection with other historical situations (governments,
economic situations, wars…)
SOCIOLOGY OF SCIENCE: Looking at what scientists do nowadays,
including how they work as social groups and what happens when they
meet other groups (like the general public).
(the first two have been around longer, so Science and Technology Studies is
sometimes called ‘History and Philosophy of Science’ (HPS). Some people even call
it ‘History, Philosophy, and Sociology of Science, Technology, and Medicine’….
© Oliver Marsh 2014
So what is ‘science’?
“Science is what scientists do”
(yeah great, thanks for that Ernest…)
Ernest Rutherford,
physicist, chemist,
discovered the nucleus
Universally correct statements,
not personal opinions
(‘Objective’, not ‘subjective’)
Trying to connect things up,
not just leaving them as
isolated observations
(finding ‘causes’ and ‘laws’)
Based on observing
things actually
happening in the world –
not just guesses, wishes,
or lies…
(‘Empiricism’)
© Oliver Marsh 2014
Scientists look for RIGHT ANSWERS…
…But this can mean different things to different scientists:
Many scientists want to find THE TRUTH – they want to discover things that
are really there, and understand how they really work. (REALISM)
… “How does one alter the charge on the
niobium ball? ‘Well, at that stage,’ said my
friend, ‘we spray it with positrons to increase the
charge or electrons to decrease the charge.’
From that day forth I’ve been a scientific realist.
So far as I’m concerned, if you can spray them
then they are real.”
- Ian Hacking, philosopher of science, in his
book Representing and Intervening
© Oliver Marsh 2014
Scientists look for RIGHT ANSWERS…
…But this can mean different things to different scientists:
Some scientists want to find answers THAT WORK without fully understanding why
they work (INSTRUMENTALISM)
• Ian Hacking can’t actually see the things he’s spraying, they’re too small – so how can
he be certain that they’re positrons?
• Similar effects can be brought about by lots of different causes, and you may not
know which is the ‘correct’ cause – see, for example, homeopathy (this is called
‘under-determination’)
• ‘Made up’ things (like energy) can be really useful when maths gets hard.
• Can anyone ever fully explain something?

• Surely it’s better to just say ‘the experiments are giving
the same answers as my predictions (and medicines are
working and bridges are staying up), isn’t that good
enough?’
• But lots of scientists would find that quite boring…
Richard Feynman, awesome
physicist (if a bit sexist…)
© Oliver Marsh 2014
Historical Example – THE ‘FUNDAMENTAL FYSIKS GROUP’
During the 1940s1970s Quantum
Physicists made
progress by the motto:
‘SHUT UP AND
CALCULATE’
… but what’s really
going on in these
weird quantum
processes?
New (very popular)
books about on the
philosophical
questions behind
quantum physics…
Quantum Physicists start
asking new questions,
doing new experiments,
and discover new (and
very important) things…
(Nonlocality, Bell’s Theorem,
Quantum Information Science…)
The full story is in David Kaiser’s excellent book ‘How The Hippies Saved Physics’
http://www.alibris.co.uk/booksearch?S=R&qtit=how+the+hippies+saved+physics&qauth=kaiser&qtopic=&qisbn=&qsort=p&afsr
c=1&utm_medium=affiliate&utm_source=b4uyWwyIxag&utm_campaign=3&siteID=b4uyWwyIxag-iFk.VCX6owODL_ajmp6xuQ
(Or just read the Wikipedia article)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_Fysiks_Group
© Oliver Marsh 2014
BUT for most scientists these are background issues, which
they don’t think about regularly – they don’t really use
words like ‘realist’ or ‘instrumentalist’, and happily mix the
two.
In their day job they’re more concerned with getting ‘right’
answers than asking what sort of ‘right answer’ they’re
talking about.
But how do they get these answers anyway? Is there some
sort of ‘scientific method’…?
© Oliver Marsh 2014
Is there a ‘SCIENTIFIC METHOD’?
Lots of scientists say YES and it goes like this:
1. You come up with a theory about how the world works
2. You make a precise prediction based on that theory
3. You do an experiment based on the prediction
4. If your prediction was right, well done your theory might be right.
(But you should probably make more predictions and do more experiments to be
sure. And someone else should probably also ‘replicate’ your experiment to
check.)
BUT If your prediction was wrong, SCRAP THE THEORY
IMMEDIATELY and go back to step 1
I said this was the most
important step for science, a
view I called ‘falsificationism’
Karl Popper, important
philosopher
© Oliver Marsh 2014
PROBLEMS WITH THIS SIMPLE VIEW:
History points out that lots of science doesn’t work like that really...
Lots of great theories didn’t have strong experimental support for quite a while,
but people stuck to them anyway (Einstein’s relativity, for example)_
Sociology says this doesn’t include everything scientists do in the 21st century
world…
(We’ll discuss that after the break)
Philosophy says this means we’d never be sure we’d got a right answer…
© Oliver Marsh 2014
Is there a ‘SCIENTIFIC METHOD’?
Lots of scientists say YES and it goes like this:
1. You come up with a theory about how the world works
2. You make a precise prediction based on that theory
3. You do an experiment based on the prediction
4. If your prediction was right, well done your theory might be right.
(But you should probably make more predictions and do more experiments to be
sure. And someone else should probably also ‘replicate’ your experiment to
check.)
© Oliver Marsh 2014
Is there a ‘SCIENTIFIC METHOD’?
Lots of scientists say YES and it goes like this:
1. You come up with a theory about how the world works
2. You make a precise prediction based on that theory
3. You do an experiment based on the prediction
4. If your prediction was right, well done your theory
might be right. (But you should probably make more
predictions and do more experiments to be sure. And
someone else should probably also ‘replicate’ your
experiment to check.)
Just because something has always happened in the past,
doesn’t mean it will definitely happen that way in all times
and places. The sun might not rise tomorrow; gravity might
work differently in other galaxies; you just have to assume
that laws are universal. I call this ‘The Problem of Induction’
David Hume, very important
philosopher from 300 years ago
© Oliver Marsh 2014
SO WHERE DOES THIS LEAVE US?
1. ‘Science’ is actually quite messy
2. It’s hard to strictly define ‘science’, though finding objectively
correct answers seems to be important.
3. But making strict rules of how to ‘do science’ is even harder different people (and places and times) do science in different
ways.
4. If you try and ‘neaten up’ science with a single definition or
method, you meet all sorts of problems.
So… does that mean science is just “anything goes?”
Paul Feyerabend, anarchist
philosopher of science
© Oliver Marsh 2014
BREAK
© Oliver Marsh 2014
Maybe science isn’t about producing ‘right answers’, but rather
about producing RELIABLE and CONVINCING KNOWLEDGE
Hey, David, we’ve discovered the Higgs Boson!
I don’t think you have, I think your sensors are
just picking up something that looks like the
Higgs Boson (underdetermination)
No David, we’ve checked the results against
everything we know that looks like a Higgs
Boson and it isn’t any of them
But what if there’s something you don’t know
about? Even just one unknown factor could
make your whole theory wrong, you need to
keep testing to check (falsificationism)
We’ve been testing since the 1990s!
But that doesn’t guarantee you won’t
get a different result tomorrow. And
anyway, have you ever found a Higgs
Boson anywhere outside the Large
Hadron Collider? (problem of induction)
SHUT UP DAVID WE
OUTNUMBER YOU
© Oliver Marsh 2014
BUT HOW DOES THIS OUTNUMBERING COME ABOUT? HOW DO
SCIENTISTS EVER AGREE ON WHAT IS ‘RELIABLE’ OR ‘CONVINCING’
KNOWLEDGE?
… and this is where ‘seeing scientifically’ comes back in
Scientists are a group. To join this group, you need to be trained. This training helps
you to ‘see scientifically’
© Oliver Marsh 2014
BUT FOR SCIENCE THIS ‘SEEING’ IS MORE COMPLICATED THAN JUST
USING YOUR EYES…
‘Seeing Scientifically’ also involves:
• Choosing what to look for and what to discount as irrelevant
• Looking at evidence and deciding if it’s convincing
• Can you see all the important details, or is something relevant missing?
• Does it look like the science – particularly the really good
science – you’ve seen in the past?
I collected these factors together
into a single word ‘paradigm’
(though I didn’t define this word very clearly and
there’s been lots of arguments about it…)
Thomas Kuhn, historian and
philosopher of science
© Oliver Marsh 2014
But, as we discussed earlier, there is no one ‘correct’ paradigm.
Instead paradigms change over time…
•
•
•
•
Isaac Newton, natural
philosopher and very
strange man from 400 years
ago
•
•
•
•
•
I got results by trying things out with my apparatus, and
writing down precisely what happened each time.
I was trying to prove that I’d found something new to
other ‘natural philosophers’
I recorded everything in lots of detail so that other people
could do my experiments too (and then they’d have to
believe me…). The fact that I was a gentleman, and so
probably trustworthy, helped too.
(But, unlike most other people at the time, I also didn’t try
to give underlying causes for things like gravity - if the
maths and experiments worked, I was satisfied. Because
my work was so successful, this became the fashion
amongst scientists – a new paradigm)
We get results by getting lots and lots of different
equipment to look at the same event.
We’re testing the predictions made by theorists.
This gives loads of data which we compare using
computers. We also cut out background ‘noise’
We don’t give answers in terms of ‘this happened’
or ‘this didn’t happen’, but rather in probabilities)
Instead of giving all the details of our experiments
– there would be too many – our papers include
links to other people’s work which people can
follow if they don’t trust us.
© Oliver Marsh 2014
I talk about this in my paper ‘Discipline and the
Material Form of Images’
Mike Lynch,
sociologist of science
I discuss this in my paper ‘Towards an
Analysis of Scientific Observation’
Trevor Pinch,
sociologist of science
© Oliver Marsh 2014
WHAT HAPPENS WHEN SCIENCE GOES BEYOND SCIENTISTS?
SCIENCE COMMUNICATION
PUBLIC ENGAGEMENT WITH
SCIENCE (‘PES’)
© Oliver Marsh 2014
So when scientists are talking to the
public, what sort of things do they need to
think about?
© Oliver Marsh 2014
Activity (for after the break):
Take a controversial science-related topic (climate change, medical
scares, teaching creationism in schools…)
1. Pretend you hold the opposite opinion to the one you actually do.
2. Try and think of (good) arguments for this opposite opinion.
3. Think carefully about what might happen if the two sides were to
meet. What good things might they be able to do to resolve
disagreements? What bad things might they do which stop
productive discussion? (Think about some of the material we’ve just
discussed…)
Either think about this on your own, or form small groups (2-4 people).
When we’re all ready we’ll have a class discussion.
© Oliver Marsh 2014
BREAK
© Oliver Marsh 2014
BREAK
With thanks to @BeckiePort
https://storify.com/BeckiePort/ove
rlyhonestmethods
© Oliver Marsh 2014
Activity:
Take a controversial science-related topic (climate change, medical
scares, teaching creationism in schools…)
1. Pretend you hold the opposite opinion to the one you actually do.
2. Try and think of (good) arguments for this opposite opinion.
3. Think carefully about what might happen if the two sides were to
meet. What good things might they be able to do to resolve
disagreements? What bad things might they do which stop
productive discussion? (Think about some of the material we’ve just
discussed…)
Either think about this on your own, or form small groups (2-4 people).
When we’re all ready we’ll have a class discussion.
© Oliver Marsh 2014
© Oliver Marsh 2014
Post-Normal Science?
•
Lots of scientific issues today deal with complex systems (the climate,
economic behaviour), so trying to be 100% sure of your answers is very
difficult.
Lots of these issues also affect people, so we can’t just keep on saying ‘wait
while we do more research’. We have to accept some uncertainty when we
make decisions.
•
•
We have to think about what is ‘scientifically right’ in terms not just of
experiments and mathematics, but also of morality.
•
The only way to do that is to include everyone who might be affected by the
science in decisions over whether the science is good or not.
•
‘Seeing scientifically’ will also include judgements of what is safe and fair –
an important role for non-scientists.
•
So maybe it’s a good thing ‘science’ is so broad, flexible, and hard to pin
down – that gives us something to build on...
WHAAAAT?
© Oliver Marsh 2014
Thank you for listening
All these slides will be uploaded onto
http://sidewayslookatscience.wordpress.com/
If you have any questions, or want
recommendations on what to do next, please
feel free to email me at
oliver.marsh.13@ucl.ac.uk
© Oliver Marsh 2014
Pictures thanks to…
Slide 2: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/46/General_Sherman_tree_looking_up.jpg
http://images.nationalgeographic.com/wpf/media-live/photos/000/010/cache/messier-81_1086_600x450.jpg
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c9/Sedimented_red_blood_cells.jpg
http://www.bayerus.com/msms/msms_about/images/jemison_m.gif
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-J1cN1d13vkk/UT42CFv8W7I/AAAAAAAAArw/2sn-asDHv5A/s1600/DSC01902.JPG
http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/272628main_NSH_Science_story.jpg
Slide 5:
http://www.bulletin.uwaterloo.ca/images/2011/1003hacking.jpg
Slide 7:
http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/culturelab/2011/06/27/SCAN0057.jpg
Slide 9:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/43/Karl_Popper.jpg
Slide 12:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1c/Allan_Ramsay_-_David_Hume,_1711__1776._Historian_and_philosopher_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg
Slide 15
http://d.ibtimes.co.uk/en/full/417228/cern.jpg?w=601&h=400&l=50&t=50
Slide 16:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/45/Duck-Rabbit_illusion.jpg
http://www.tomlichtenheld.com/childrens_books/images/books/duckrabbit/duckrabbit_illustration2.jpg
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-hRsHmRqRCqk/T77nRG0hQBI/AAAAAAAABD8/xVav0XObrXc/s400/old-lady-youngoptical-illusion%5B1%5D.jpg
© Oliver Marsh 2014
Pictures thanks to…
Slide 17:
http://savpeople.com/images1/thomas-kuhn-9.jpg
Slide 18:
http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Books/Pix/pictures/2009/1/26/1232964114343/Sir-Isaac-Newton-001.jpg
Slide 19:
http://phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/files/2013/04/brain-990x622.png
http://cdn.phys.org/newman/gfx/news/hires/howcanweusen.jpg
http://i1.ytimg.com/vi/j5HcIdI5Ckc/hqdefault.jpg
http://i.ytimg.com/vi/85Wi31ePsIw/0.jpg
Slide 20:
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-d_g6uh7prZA/T_75sIVcgVI/AAAAAAAAAoE/PTGmjcpeQ2g/s640/grant-museum.jpg
http://news.bbcimg.co.uk/media/images/53438000/jpg/_53438503_53438502.jpg
http://www.centrallondonhumanists.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/darwinday2014.jpg
http://wineandcrisps.files.wordpress.com/2013/01/dara-and-brian-cox.jpg
http://www.ucl.ac.uk/museums/about/grant-visitors
http://uclexcites.files.wordpress.com/2014/02/img_5281.jpg?w=750
© Oliver Marsh 2014