Scientists and “Being Smart”, part 1: Relating to “Normal”

The always wonderful Chad Orzel has just written a new book and New York magazine published a fascinating excerpt that’s been resonating a lot with my friends, science-minded and non-science-minded alike. Orzel relates how people often tell him that he’s so smart when they learn that he’s a physicist. While it is incredibly flattering to have other people say you must be smart, Orzel points out it comes with an unacknowledged downside:

There’s a distracting effect to being called “really smart” in this sense — it sets scientists off as people who think in a way that’s qualitatively different from “normal” people. We’re set off even from other highly educated academics — my faculty colleagues in arts, literature, and social science don’t hear that same “You must be really smart” despite the fact that they’ve generally spent at least as much time acquiring academic credentials as I have. The sort of scholarship they do is seen as just an extension of normal activities, whereas science is seen as alien and incomprehensible.

A bigger problem with this awkward compliment, though, is that it’s just not true. Scientists are not that smart — we don’t think in a wholly different manner than ordinary people do. What makes a professional scientist is not a supercharged brain with more processing power, but a collection of subtle differences in skills and inclinations. We’re slightly better at doing the sort of things that professional scientists do on a daily basis — I’m better with math than the average person — but more importantly, we enjoy those activities and so spend time honing those skills, making the differences appear even greater.

A friend in law school argued that this can be a benefit: people seem to have fewer uninformed opinions that they’re compelled to share regarding fluid dynamics than philosophy. I think that’s true to a point, though people also have lots of uninformed opinions on issues that are more controversial, like GMOs, ecology, and climate science. What I think is useful to consider is the nature of how all these fields relate to their people’s lives. People use the end results (whether that’s a tangible product or knowledge) of scientific and engineering research, but they don’t need an understanding of those systems to be able to use their products. People are in sociological, cultural, and political systems everyday and so they have at least a folk or commonsense understanding of how those things work, and so they react when people in these fields tell them their knowledge is incomplete, if not often wrong.

But you also see this a bit in misunderstanding of science: part of the reason people have strong opinions on things like food, ecosystems, and the climate is that they also interact with those systems everyday, and so they have a folk understanding of those too. The discrepancy between someone’s folk understanding and that of a scientific observer is why we have the”this winter is cold so global warfming is a myth” meme. There’s a reason this meme is so resonant to some, though. It’s common in science communication to just treat non-scientists as empty buckets waiting to be filled with scientific information that they’ll appreciate (or maybe even “f***ing love” it), and to assume the major limit in public understanding of science and scientific issues is that they just don’t know enough. This is called the deficit model, and what’s key to know about it is that it is typically wrong. It’s true that a random non-scientist won’t know as much about a given scientific field as someone actually working it. (There is a good chance they know something about it and you should engage that, though). What’s really important, though, is that people don’t engage with science in a vacuum. Everyone brings their own baggage, in the forms of folk knowledge, cultural assumptions, moral values, and more. Scientists, and science communicators more broadly, need to engage with those issues beyond just pure scientific knowledge to truly engage with the public, otherwise people think you’re treating them like idiots.

It’s also generally more interesting to approach science communication this way. Sure, I like informing people of the latest trends and results from research (and studies show people are interested in science news) or other neat concepts that come up in my work and as someone in the field, I’m more aware of this information. But I’m not going to have an equal back and forth about the topic of my old research with most people at UVA, except for the dozen or so people working on similar projects, because it took several years to get to that point. And that can be fine! I know I listen to law students, history majors, sociology majors, philosophy majors, policy students, biologists, and more have incredibly deep conversations on their areas of expertise all the time and learn a lot just from listening.

Even without finding someone who studies the sociology of science and technology, though, I can probably have an interesting conversation with almost anyone about social or ethical implications/questions related to my work. When I did work on the CO2 converstion project, lots of people right away grasped at the implications for climate change work. And that’s the kind of conversation that’s probably most helpful in grounding science and engineering into normalcy.

This is also why I tend to hate saying I “dumb down” things if I’m talking to people outside of my fields. There’s 11 schools at UVA and over 100 academic programs and I know people in all those are “really smart” and they are also all smarter than me in several things. (And of course, as Orzel points, this extends way beyond other people in academia or even college graduates; it’s just that my life is still mostly school.) The reason I change how I talk isn’t because these other people outside my lab and department are dumb; it’s to acknowledge that they all have expertise in different areas than I do and I want to share some of my expertise with them (without forcing them to also have all my training) in a way they can appreciate. Meeting people where they are is generally just good practice and science communication is no exception.

News Publications without Science Sections

Inspired by Dr. Danielle Lee’s recent Twitter musings that STEM coverage directed towards minority communities is rare, which is compounded by the lower recognition that black scientists, engineers, and technologists get in their professional communities and the lack of STEM-focused coverage in African American media, I was curious to see how other major “thought leader” publications fared.

No Science or Science-Related Sections

JET – Though the website seems more lifestyle-focused than I expected, so maybe this is unfair

The National Review – Okay, their website is confusing, because I see a “Space” tag that doesn’t actually lead anywhere and they evidently have a “Planet Gore” section that is devoted to what they view as climate change hypocrisy. “Human Exceptionalism” is probably notable as the only column that routinely talks about bioethics in mainstream political publications.

No Science Sections, but Tech(nology), Health, or Other Science-Related Sections

The New Republic – Has a Technology section, which mainly seems to exist chronicle technical developments as they relate to politics or the economy

The Atlantic – Has Health and Tech sections, with science stories kind of split between them

EBONY – Has health (subsection of Wellness) and tech (subsection of Life); tech seems more consumer focused

The Daily Beast – has a combined “Tech + Health” section

ABC News – Has Tech and Health sections, and strangely, in that order

CNN – Has Tech and Health sections

MSNBC – Has Health and a “Green” section

NewsOne – Has a Health section

Some surprises

In contrast to ABC, CBS News has a joint Science and Technology section and a separate Health section and NBC News has separate Health, Tech, and Science sections.

Similarly, Fox News has separate Tech, Science, and Health sections, and I would have expected them to parallel CNN in structure. Also, I’m really surprised that they list Health as the last of those sections since if the stereotype of Fox News watchers/readers as being older holds true, I would expect them to be more interested in health and wellness articles.

Japan Owned Everyone at Coupling Catalysts in the 1970s – Why?

In a slightly distracting science blog crawl, I came across something really interesting. I was looking at the Everyday Scientist’s past Nobel prize predictions and was wondering who the Sonogashira he predicted to win and was surprised to see excluded from the Nobel. The Everyday Scientist predicted Kenkichi Sonagashira would be included in the 2010 Nobel Prize in Chemistry if it was for the study of coupling reactions, a class of chemical reactions catalyzed by metals that help link together hydrocarbon chains, along with Richard Heck and Akira Suzuki. The prize did end up being award for the study of coupling reactions, but it went to Heck, Suzuki and Ei-ichi Negishi instead of Sonagashira.

Negishi is Japanese, but born in the Japanese puppet state in China called Manchuko in the 30s, got his PhD in America and spent the rest of his career in America. Suzuki did a post-doc in America, but after that, he did all his work in Japan, mainly at Hokkaido University. Heck is an American. None of them were at the same university, at least from cursory glances at their profiles, so I’m really curious about whether or not they collaborated (obviously, you don’t need to be at the same institution to collaborate in scientific research, but it tends to be really easy if that’s the case).

What’s really interesting is looking at the list of specific coupling reactions that have been researched, and the discoverers of each.

Reaction	Year	Discoverer 1	Nationality	Discoverer 2	Nationality	Discoverer 3	Nationality
Kumada coupling	1972	Makoto Kumada	Japanese	Robert Corriu	French
Heck reaction	1972	Richard Heck	American	Tsutomu Mizoroki	Japanese
Sonogashira coupling	1975	Kenkichi Sonogashira	Japanese	Yasuo Tohda	Japanese	Nobue Hagihara	Japanese
Negishi coupling	1977	Ei-ichi Negishi	Japanese
Stille cross coupling	1978	John Stille	American	Toshihiko Migita	Japanese	Masanori Kosugi	Japanese
Suzuki reaction	1979	Akira Suzuki	Japanese	Norio Miyaura	Japanese
Hiyama coupling	1988	Tamajiro Hiyama	Japanese	Yasuo Hatanaka	Japanese
Buchwald-Hartwig reaction	1994	Stephen Buchwald	American	John Hartwig	American
Fukuyama coupling	1998	Tohru Fukuyama	Japanese	Hidetoshi Tokuyama	Japanese	Satoshi Yokoshima	Japanese
Liebeskind–Srogl coupling	2000	Lanny Liebeskind	American	Jiri Srogl	Czech

As you can see, there are a lot of Japanese researchers on this list. Few of them are from the same institutions according to their Wikipedia profiles or easy Google searches. And the 1970s show a  flurry of activity. It’s not weird for an initial discovery to quickly kick off a lot of related research and lead to other discoveries, which seems to be the case here, or for one country to end up having a leading edge in a certain field of research, but the combination of both in such an originally niche field seems fascinating, especially because of the small degree of institutional overlap. (Also, it’s interesting that no name appears on the list twice, which you might expect in related discoveries). I’m not super familiar with organic chemistry, so is having a reaction named after you not as a big a deal as I think it is?

Was there something unique about the nature of organic chemistry in Japan at the time that led to such an efficient expansion and application of knowledge? New journals that came out to help spread knowledge in the community? A new push in research focus by funding agencies? Did some conferences or scientific organizations help encourage collaborations on a broader scale?

I’d love to see someone take this on an as some sort of case study in the history and/or sociology of science. I feel like there would be something fascinating here. What’s also interesting, as referenced in this New York Times article on the Nobel prize, is that many of these reactions didn’t catch on in industry until the 90s, so applications probably weren’t behind the original breakneck pace.

 

That Science Survey is More Complicated Than You Think… and it Has Some Good News

The Web has been abuzz with the results of the National Science Foundation’s latest Science and Engineering Indicators report. In particular, people are freaking out over the “Public Knowledge about S&T [Science and Technology]” section that goes over the results of a survey that looks at the Americans’ knowledge of science and technology as well as their perceptions on scientific and technological issues. One of the most popular headlines points out that 26% of American think the Sun goes around the Earth. And that’s… bad. There’s not a really good defense of that.  (Though consider that America had a school dropout rate of over 10% through the 90s to the early 2000s, so that probably explains  a good hunk of that.)

It’s also pointed out that less than half of respondents knew that human beings evolved from earlier animals.  But if the question is rephrased to say “according to the theory of evolution, human beings, as we know them today, developed from earlier species of animals” (emphasis added), 72 percent of respondents answer true. Rephrasing also greatly changes the nature of responses to the Big Bang question. Only 39% answer true to “the universe began with a huge explosion” , but 60% say true to the statement “according to astronomers, the universe began with a huge explosion.” (It’s also worth pointing out that astronomers really wouldn’t call the Big Bang an explosion if they’re being technical.) So yeah, I don’t get why people don’t want to “believe” the science, but I’d give them credit for being familiar with the scientific theory.

I’m also surprised that there isn’t much criticism of the questions being asked. Science education reformers nearly always complain that current science education is too focused on memorization and not being able to apply the scientific process. But nearly all these questions are basically checking to see if a person knows the relevant fact to answer the question. I think the questions are fine, though, as I think they do reflect science literacy. And I tend to think science literacy is more important to the average person.

The other thing most people don’t mention is the comparison between Americans’ performance on the test and that of people in other countries (China, the EU, India, Japan, Malaysia, Russia, and South Korea) doing similar surveys. The EU average actually was even worse than the US on the heliocentrism question (only 66% knew the Earth went around the Sun). The US had the most correct responses to the question about whether all radioactivity is man-made (the correct answer is false). And we were the only country where a majority of respondents knew that electrons were smaller than atoms and that antibiotics cannot kill viruses. As a random, but interesting, aside, Japan was the worst of the rich countries in understanding that the father’s gene determines the sex of a baby and it makes me wonder if the “eating lots of meat while pregnant means you’ll have a boy” myth referenced in some anime really is super common in Japan.

Finally, there is some good news. Even if American’s don’t ace the science literacy questions, they do care about science. Over 70% of Americans say the benefits of scientific research outweigh the harms, and about another 20% say the harms and benefits are about equal. Only Canada, Denmark, Finland, and Norway had more people than the US disagree with the statement that “modern science does more harm than good”. Over 80% of Americans think the federal government should fund basic scientific research, and a third of Americans thought we need to increase science funding. The scientific community is nearly as trusted as the military, just shy of 90% confidence by members of the public. Nearly 90% of Americans think scientists and engineers work for the good of humanity and most disagree with the idea that scientists and engineers are odd or have narrow interests. So even if they might not have the best understanding of science and technology right now, I’m hopeful about Americans in the future. But the narrow reporting on this survey may not help.

We Can Teach Science Through Anything

NPR recently interviewed The Urban Scientist Dr. Danielle Lee about her science education and outreach efforts using hip hop. And the article seems surprised. But we shouldn’t be. Science is affected by culture and science impacts culture, but at its core, science is a way of understanding the universe. And so, just like other ways of understanding, it can be communicated in multiple ways. We can have operas about particle physics and covers of pop rock talking explaining marine biodiversity. Or, like Dr. Lee, we can incorporate cultural artifacts into science education. That works just as well, since if science is about the way the world works, then we’re bound to find scientific explanations popping up in culture.

 

An Open Letter to Humans of New York from a Person Who Wears a Lab Coat

Because open letters seem like the preferred form of expressing Internet concern these days, here’s one of my own.

Dear Humans of New York (or HONY, as we nearly all end up calling you),

I really love your project. I think it’s cool. I follow you on Facebook and nearly every update that ends up in my news feed makes me smile. This week I was super excited to see the photo and quote below during lunch one day.

“I’m not sure what I want to do, exactly. But I know that I want to wear a lab coat. Everyone I’ve met who wears a lab coat is helping people.”

Especially because after lunch, I was planning on preparing samples to do an experiment. Which also meant I was planning on putting on a lab coat.

So I was a bit disappointed to see that on a page typically so affirming of everyday people, the comments seemed markedly more negative than usual. The top comment was your own remark “unless they’re cooking meth.” I don’t watch Breaking Bad, so maybe that’s just not my cup of tea.  What worried me more, though, was that so many of the middle comments seemed to say “Yeah, except [insert name of some unpopular science-focused company here]”. Monsanto and Pfizer seemed to be the two most popular ones.

I’m not going to defend Monsanto’s and Pfizer’s political and legal maneuvers. But the people doing those aren’t typically the ones in the lab coats. And I’m not going to say all their products are wonderful, or even neutral but used to nefarious ends (though it’s worth pointing out some nasty chemicals Monsanto has made were ordered by the government for purposes of war, so maybe people should focus more on a government and society that condones such action instead of blaming the company in a vacuum). But a lot of their products have done good for people. Monsanto was one of the first mass producers of aspirin in the US. They were one of the first companies to sell LEDs.

Blaming companies for manufacturing chemicals before scientists realized they were dangerous (sometimes with a gap of decades) seems to be blaming people for not having incredible foresight. (If you bought a cell phone before the mid-2000s, consider the trade off you made in getting a cell phone before a scientific consensus on cell phones’ effect on human health was formed). It also ignores competing interests. PCBs, another chemical Monsanto produced, are now recognized as incredibly hazardous chemicals. But they were also crucial in electrifying communities, because they were one of the best early  insulators to prevent utility poles from catching fire from power lines. While they are definitely harmful, they were made because some people in a lab coat thought they may help society.

Similarly, lots of people seem to call out Pfizer for drug prices (again, not really controlled by the scientists) or for making Viagra. It’s worth pointing out that Viagra was initially looked at as a treatment for high blood pressure and chest pain (angina), and treating those seems like something that would be really helpful. During clinical trials, one of the researchers discovered its more well-known properties and realized it wasn’t as effective at treating angina. But eventually Viagra did get approved for use as a treatment for pulmonary hypertension because the same mechanism also helps relax the ventricle and relieve stress on the heart. One of the reasons Viagra is marketed so much is because it turns a good profit to help fund Pfizer’s research into new drugs. Other comments seemed to view all bioengineering with suspicion. I wonder how many of those skeptics shared that Upworthy video about “injecting a dying girl with HIV” to cure cancer (ignoring how much that oversimplifies the issue) and thought it was so inspiring. Even though the modified virus is also an act of genetic engineering. People should also realize the girl’s in a small early trial, which means all the potential dangers aren’t known.

It’s also interesting how there seems to be uniquely negative focus on this young man’s career aspirations for looking at medicine or a technical field. You don’t see a remark under your other posts about aspiring artists saying we hope they don’t end up ordering ethnic cleansing, forced sterilizations, and euthanasia as part of a eugenics program if they don’t succeed. Or a comment under a post about a performer saying “I hope this person doesn’t join a religion that routinely locks practitioners in confined spaces for months at a time as a form of torture.” And while posts about old couples typically get charming sentiments, this thread is filled with lots of Viagra jokes with the punchline that old people having sex is awkward and shouldn’t happen (or based on jokes about vaginas being tired, men who take Viagra seem to either become rapists and/or sexually incompetent). I honestly don’t know if you moderate your Facebook page or not, but the very different tone of comments on this post seems striking.

HONY, your work typically challenges our preconceived notions of people and that is part of the reason it’s so rewarding to see. That’s why I’m disappointed that in something about my own field, this doesn’t seem to be happening. I don’t place that blame all on you. It just makes me a bit sad.

Sincerely yours,

A trivial scientist

Hard Scientists Should Care About the NSF’s PoliSci Woes

Alex Berezow wrote an op-ed in USA Today defending the decision to defund the NSF’s political science programs aside from projects “promoting national security or the economic interests of the United States”. Berezow is also co-author of Science Left Behind, a book looking at anti-science tendencies on the left half of the political spectrum, which I blogged a bit about last November. And then the piece tapers off into something about scientists being too Democratic and they’re like a lobby and it just kind of becomes a generic cut the budget piece by the end. Needless to say, I’m not much more convinced by this op-ed than by the book or his interview with reason.

He starts by pointing out that political scientists are predictably outraged, but is confused why natural scientists are angry. He links to theoretical physicist Sean Carroll’s post on the funding cut and calls it an overreaction because he quotes “First they came”. Nazi overtones might be a bit much, but the analogy of continually chipping away at something seems valid. Berezow seems to think the fact that “relevant” political science could still be funded means a hard scientist shouldn’t ever worry about this. But a lot of hard science isn’t immediately practical. Carroll works in cosmology, which is basically abstract physics and abstract astronomy, so it seems entirely reasonable for him to worry about cuts to grants for research projects that won’t generate immediate economic benefit. We’ve already seen an attempt to go down the slippery slope with Lamar Smith’s proposed amendments to limit NSF funding in all fields to only projects relevant to economic or defense interests.

Berezow also claims that scientists act like too much of a partisan interest group since they only attack Republicans. While it’s true the Coburn amendment was approved by a bipartisan vote, that was part of a compromise to keep funding the government past sequestration. And Republicans have repeatedly offered similar amendments in the past, even when there weren’t such pressing budget concerns. It also seems ironic that despite two of Coburn’s amendments being incorporated into the bill, he still voted against it. Part of the logic behind the scientists are an interest group claim is how often they identify with Democrats. The survey does show that scientists are more Democratic and liberal than the general public.  This may lead to a disconnect between scientists and the public on some issues, and it merits study, but there’s no clear mechanism explaining it. But Berezow also seems to be including social scientists in his definition of scientists. The survey everyone talks about is focused on natural scientists. While some social science fields are also filled with liberals, I believe that political science and economics have a stronger Republican/conservative presence. 

Also, if politicians are going to go after interest groups, there are many with more votes to grab than a scientist bloc. In 1999, there were only about 3.5 million people with STEM degrees working in science and engineering fields. But if we’re talking about scientists as a interest group, we need to separate them from the engineers. Engineers are more likely to work in industry instead of in the public sector or academia than scientists, and also tend to be more evenly split along party and ideological lines. In 2011, about 35000 people graduated with doctorates in physical, life, and social sciences and engineering. Although this includes engineers, the fact that this only looks at people graduating with doctorates increases the odds that they will be doing basic research for the government or academia. Not all of those people are American citizens, though, and so they won’t vote. I don’t know the number for social sciences, but international students now make up almost half of all natural science and engineering grad students, so that already narrows the voter pool to like 25000 new group members a year (assuming nearly all social science PhDs are American citizens, for some reason). And not all these people will end up being funded by the government, either in a government agency or by public grants to universities. 27% of life science PhDs, 54% of physical science PhDs, and 71% of engineering PhDs went to work in industry in 2011. Factoring that in, a “government-dependent scientist” bloc would only grow by about 14000 votes a year. I think that is the rounding error of a decent get out the vote project.

 

A doctorate in the universe

Probably one of the hardest choices I made in college.

The Careers section of Science has an interesting article about specialization in science, by the author of this wonderful grad school guide. I agree that the specialization of science is something people often don’t know about, leading to pop culture icons who seem to be able to do research in completely unrelated fields. And it can have it’s drawbacks. Every few years, another article seems to lament the increasing specialization of science.

But it’s worth pointing out that specialization isn’t unique to science; it seems common in “analytical” fields, for lack of a better term. Most medical doctors end up specializing in residency (and there is a specialty crisis in medicine too). And while people may not think of it, lawyers generally practice in a specific field of law, but unlike a science PhD or medical residency, I don’t think that would show up on just by looking at education. But ask a question about patent law to a civil rights lawyer, and they might not have an immediate answer. And virtually every person in academia has to specialize in their own field.

But like Ruben says, just because we work in a specialty, it doesn’t mean we can’t learn about anything else.

Can Engineers Popularize Science?

This is a very selfish and random post, but it’s an idea I’ve been musing over for a while as I’ve slowly been trying to establish a regular blogroll to get news and ideas. Over the last several years, there’s been much talk about science outreach, the teaching (or reaching out, if you will) of scientific research and concepts to non-scientists. Sometimes you’ll also hear the term “popularization of science” to describe the same thing. And sometimes you’ll hear about engineering outreach, but more often it seems to be wrapped up in the broader idea of STEM outreach. And you almost never hear of “popularization of engineering” to the broader public. The one exception I noticed was in college, when I saw several scholarships and programs that would be marketed to, or only open to, engineering majors. And then despite my previous rant on some of the technical distinctions between science and engineering, I would typically still try to see if I could count as a physics major with some engineering background. It’s not my fault Rice didn’t have a formal applied physics major. Also amusing, I still remember the time someone told me they thought physics was in the engineering school because “it’s so hard, it seems like it should go there” and I felt incredibly satisfied by that statement… this tangent has gone really weird places.

I typically don’t hear of engineers doing science outreach, aside from community service done by large science/engineering companies (in Houston, I think ExxonMobil was a sponsor of the Sally Ride Science Festival) or events sponsored by engineering programs at universities. And they seem nonexistent in the broader pop cultural view of popular science. When people think of “pop science”, it’s a lot of who pops up most on TV, like Neil deGrasse Tyson,  Richard Dawkins, and Carl Sagan and maybe even Richard Feynman for those of an older generation. If you watch more documentaries, then you may know Brian Greene, Michio Kaku, and other people who seem to make the History/Discovery/Science channel actual-science-show-not-a-terrible-show-about-antiques circuit. The one exception is Bill Nye, who seems to be making a comeback in culture as a science pundit. Nye studied mechanical engineering and worked as a engineer at Boeing before he would eventually become the Science Guy. The science blogosphere is also really well-developed and is made up of science writers and scientists who blog in their free time. For the purpose of this article, I looked up “engineering blogs” on Google and came up with no websites with regular postings that still seemed active (excluding corporate blogs mainly meant for publicity).

It’s also interesting to note that the scientists I pointed out, besides Dawkins, all have physics backgrounds. And they’re all either in astrophysics or “theoretical” physics, which is what I typically call “fundamental” (along with random elements of quantum mechanics) or more technically rigorous people consider “quantum gravity”. And while I love reading about astrophysics and think things like string theory and the LHC are cool, it’s strange that pop culture only seems to put those branches in the limelight. They don’t make up the majority of work in physics.

Articles sent to the pre-print site arXiv, by field. Left is total number of articles, right shows the percentage of articles in each year from the field. CS is computer science, hep is “high energy particle physics” (think LHC), the cyan covers a mixture of fields that loosely covers “quantum gravity”, and cond-mat is condensed matter physics.

And the breakdown seems even more clear when you look at membership in physics groups. Dr. Hossenfelder looks at the numbers in Germany:

More data that tells you that the vast number of physicists aren’t working on anything related to quantum gravity can be obtained from the number of members in sections of the German Physical Society. The section on Particle Physics (which includes beyond the standard model physics and quantum gravity) has about 2,500 members. The section on Quantum Optics and Photonics has more than 3,000 members, Physics of Semi-conductors 3,800, Low Temperature Physics 1,450, Atomic Physics together with Hadronic and Nuclear Physics come to about 3,000, Material Physics together with Chemical and Polymer Physics and Thin Films another 3,500. Not all sections have membership numbers online, so this doesn’t cover the full spectrum. But this already tells you that “most physicists” don’t even do high energy physics, certainly not quantum gravity, and have no business with multiverses, firewalls, or “micro-landscapes of black holes”.

So why does it matter if, say, string theory gets nearly all the limelight? Because it’s not what all of physics is and it’s becoming a PR problem, because people don’t understand what these other fields of physics do. Pop physics books talking about quantum mechanics will often mention how computer transistors work on purely a quantum mechanical level. And that’s true. But making the transistors is very much an act of solid-state physics and understanding how structure and material properties relate to quantum behavior. It’d be like thinking only a surgeon is a doctor, and not the general practitioner you have a check-up with. (This also can extend to science in general. PZ Myers has pointed out that in philosophy of science circles, “science” often just seems to mean physics unless there’s a biology context to the discussion, like evolution.) And these other fields may be easier for non-scientists to relate to. By talking about crystal planes, I can explain why metal is flexible and glass is brittle (and I did this for an open house my department had).

And so this is why I’m confused by how little engineers seem to be involved in the science/tech blogging communities and science outreach. Engineers are definitely at the intersection of scientific concepts and everyday life. This would seem to make them perfect for explaining how science affects people. But aside from Bill Nye, you don’t see much of this. And I really want to know why. Are engineers too busy? Is it because most aren’t in academia, with its obligations of public service and education? Or do people want to hear more from scientists than from engineers?

Who’s afraid of technical “solutionism”?

There seems to be a growing trend of articles in political and cultural circles critiquing the “solutionism” of Silicon Valley; the tech industry’s willingness to identify ever more societal problems that could be solved with increasingly clever devices and software.  Bloggers at the Economist and the New York Times have been looking at an article in the New Yorker, and possibly it’s associated book The Unwinding, by George Packer (in fact, it wasn’t until I was typing this up that I realized they both were referring to the same thing).

I have not read all of thew New Yorker article because it’s behind a paywall, but a follow-up by Packer gives some of the thesis:

My analysis of the Valley’s politics isn’t about left-right in the usual sense. It’s about a particular brand of utopianism that sees solutions for social and political problems in the industry’s products and attitudes.