I’ve been plowing my way through Jared Diamond’s new book and one thing that constantly sticks out in my mind is the amount of couching and discliaming and explaining he needs to do everytime he provides a new thesis so that people in the general public won’t run out and call him racist/sexist/determinst/reductionist etc. The case of the Harvard professor who posited possible genetic differences in sex may lead to better performance in males at maths unfortunately learned what happened when you don’t wrap such statements in a blanket of disclaimers when dealing with the public.
What I’m looking for is examples in any particular field where something is regarded by people within the field as so obvious that to point it out would be tedious and repetitive yet it has to be clearly and succintly pointed out when presented to the public. In the example above, the principle would be that (hard) science is descriptive, not prescriptive. Scientific hypothesises are about what IS happening, not what SHOULD be happening and scientists pointing out a fact are in no way condoning it.
A couple of other examples off the top of my head are:
In biology, evolution is not regarded as a controversy, the scientific establishment as a whole, regards evolution as a rock solid theory that is very unlikely to be false.
In economics, protectionism, as a general rule, is wrongheaded and leads to the opposite effect to what it’s intended.
In theological scholarship, biblical fundamentalism is a relatively recent and mainly american movement.
In nanotech, “grey goo” was concieved of by a couple of wild-eyed futuristic authors who wern’t very good engineers and the idea now seems very unlikely for a number of engineering reasons.
These are all perspectives of a layman on the outside looking in and I am perfectly happy to concede that they may be inaccurate or not nuanced but I’m having a hard time thinking of examples in fields I’m more familiar with since they probably seem so obvious to me that I’m unaware of them being controversial.
Fear of anything termed “radioactive” people seem to have a preconcieved notion regarding radiation that can’t be swayed. For example I remember a news story talking about the media “discovery” that smoke dectectors contained a radioactive element, with the goal to mislead, instill fear, and sell news stories.
In a large city I formerly live, in the late 80’s or early 90’s the power company made a huge deal about how they “converted” a brand new, never used nuclear power plant into a coal burning plant. Of course the part left out was that it cost consumers 30 million dollars to downgrade the facility to a plant that gives off more pollution and provides less power at a higher cost. Despite the safety and cleaness of the plant , this was done because of controversy created by a local figure said they “didn’t want another Chernobyl in our city.” To make matters worse it later turned out that they didn’t know any details about what happend at Chernobyl, and thought that it happened in another part of our state…duh
Couching/disclaiming/explaining is also done within one’s discipline as well. Scientists often hedge their bets, so to speak, especially with research that’s pathbreaking or within a discipline where there may be several competing theories on a particular topic and one’s research lends itself to one of the competing theories.
Depends on the discipline - In general, you are correct, but science is often concerned with not just description but prediction as well. Good description is necessary for good prediction. And with good prediction arises the prospect of good prescription.
I wouldn’t go so far as calling it wrongheaded; rather the underlying assumptions that economists make regarding free and fair trade make the arguments for protectionism either illogical or inconsistent (I suppose one could call that wrong-headed). One could certainly make a case for certain kinds of protectionism under certain circumstances that wouldn’t necessarily be inconsistent/illogical with many of the underlying assumptions of free and fair trade. But one would need to modify some of those underlying assumptions - or even posit entirely different assumptions altogether.
I can’t think fo any in my discipline (geography) off the top of my head, either. Plate tectonics, maybe. The fact that maps can (and do) lie - for a host of reasons (different projections provide different ways in which the world or a region is visually displayed. Example: Mercator versus Peters projections).
Another is the misconception that geography (the discipline) is primarily concerend about where questions/issues. Where questions/issues are important, but more so in the context of geographers asking/exploring other questions/issues. Not where, but why where or how where, if that makes any sense.
Example: Why is New York City the economic focal point for the United States? What were the processes involved that allowed New York to rise as the economic focal point of the US? Was it partially the result of physical geography (site)? Or was it in conjunction with other elements (location relative to other urban settlements - situation)? What part did population, transportation, economic activity, political activity, etc. contribute to all of this?
I don’t think prescription means what you think it means.
Using the Harvard controversy as an example, a descriptivist would simply say that men have a genetic advantage over women in math/science, whereas a prescriptivist would make some comment as to the rightness of the situation (i.e., “That’s (not) the way it should be.”).
Storing stuff costs money and manpower. Bulk purchasing can be “overdone” and in many cases the bulk discount did not offset the cost of storing, racking, cycle counting, inventorying, accounting for, depreciating, blah, blah, blah the extra product for as long as it takes you to go through it.
My biggest bugbear of people wanting to ignore reality, in musicology: The Bach passions were intended to be performed one-to-a-part. Yes, that means your choral society can’t all take part.
Also, I should point out that this:
is a very specifically American matter. Creationism isn’t a big deal anywhere else (hell, we have Darwin on our banknotes - imagine that one in Georgia )
For practical purposes, the law “is” whatever the judge sitting in that particular case says it is. A lawyer’s job is to persuade the judge to interpret the law in a way favorable to his or her client’s interests.
Good one. I recently heard a talk show making a big deal about how a Halliburton subsidiary shipped Am-241 by FedEx, which subsequently got lost. Am-241 is the same radioactive material used in smoke detectors. As a scientist I’ve ordered samples myself, and each time it was shipped to me by regular parcel post.
Possibly, because I understand the term (prescriptive) largely from a modeling perspective. For example, one can describe economic behavior within a given economic system. If we are able to accurately describe this behavior, then we are able to take the next step and predict certain behaviors/activities that coud/may take place within the system (price increase in X will reduce demand for X). If our predictions are reasonalby accurate, we can take the next step and make prescriptions on such a system (“given that X and we want to do Y, was is the optimal level of Z?”).
After my wife and I had been married for some years, she was shocked – SHOCKED – to discover that when I wrote speeches for my clients, I did not simply take their comments and polish them, but, in fact, started with a one sentence topic provided by my clients, did extensive research, and wrote (or in her words, “made up”) all the words that they would say.
Until that time she was convinced that the typical politician or executive type, whose major concern was making the goals for the next quarter and who often could not respond to “good morning” with a grammatically correct sentence, could put aside all other duties, and sweat out 3,000 or so words on the future of the dairy industry, or the importance of the Podunk factory to the company’s financial stability.
To this day, she still thinks it’s cheating, and that I’m an enabler.
Among medical and health manufacturers animal testing is a given. Everything from condoms to catheters has to be certified safe before it hits the market, and that means testing in vivo. Protesters are generally regarded as somewhat pathetically delusional among us, because while the lip gloss in their purse might be stamped “not tested on animals”, the fact is that the contact lenses on their eyes, and the pins in their knees, and even the ink in their tattoos has probably been through our labs.
I can think of three famous examples, but am not sure that I am actually correct with these examples (bad memory) only that there are three examples. Anyhoo:
1 Copernicus*does all the math to determine that everything rotates about the Sun. He waits 40 years to release the math and when he does, he makes it so that everything rotates about the Sun except the Earth–which the Sun rotates about.
2 I vaguely believe that I recall hearing that Darwin used a lot of bonus biblical references when suggesting evolution in his books.
3 Aristotle suggests openly that the Earth may be round**, he is subsequently forced to drink hemlock to kill himself.
It may be silly, but certainly adding in stuff to placate the masses and (in times previous) the church, can seem to be wise while still allowing the idea to get out there if history is to be a teacher.
Indicated name may be incorrect
** Indicated name and the idea that was suggested may be incorrect
That Accutane is a killer, or drives young people everywhere to suicide.
In fact, Accutane is highly effective, and for most people causes only minor problems, such as dry skin or headaches. Yes, very occasionally there will be increased liver enzymes (which usually resolve with discontinuation of the medication), depression, or pseudotumors on the optical nerves. These problems are rare, considering the vast numbers of people that have used Accutane since it’s debut. Testing is strictly enforced throughout and after the five month course. Considering the extreme physical and emotional repercussions of acne, which can last a lifetime, Accutane is a wonder drug.
I think it would be fair to say that the majority of librarians, at least in the mainstream ALA, believe across the board mandated filtering to be stupid, wrongheaded, and at least with current software obviously a bad solution for many, many reasons which mostly don’t have the first thing to do with porn. I was shocked as hell to realize that much the general public seems to think we’re perverts for holding this opinion.
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