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gjm comments on Open Thread March 7 - March 13, 2016 - Less Wrong
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But I do. Given this paper which many people suspected to be Sokal-style satire (it's not), I very much doubt the quality of research put out by the recipient of the grant, Mark Carey.
Why did the NSF spend any money on feminist glaciology research?
My guess is that this particular bit of "research" was largely done by one of the other named authors, but they have some rule that the more senior person's name goes on everything. Carey's list of publications doesn't look particularly bullshitty. (Note that he's a historian rather than a scientist; these do not purport to be science publications.)
Because it gives out grants for broad general projects, and the proposal for funding for this broad general project didn't say anything about feminist glaciology, and it would not be a good use of anyone's time for the NSF to vet every single thing done by any academic it funds. (That's my guess, anyway.)
I looked at a random paper called "The History of Ice: How Glaciers Became an Endangered Species" and I was like: well, at least he studies something about glaciers per se, i.e. how they became endangered.
Then I clicked at the abstract and saw this:
So again, it's not about glaciers per se, but about, uhm, the cultural symbolism of glaciers.
So it's still the same thing. When talking about "glaciology", I expect something like "here are the physical processes how glaciers are made, and how they melt", but instead the guy produces something like "here is what glaciers mean in fairy tales, and here is how glaciers are compared to penises by feminists". The difference is that to write the former, you actually have to study the glaciers, while to write the latter, you only have to collect stuff people said about glaciers.
Technically, "collecting stuff people said about something" could be called science, but then it's not a subset of glaciology but rather a subset of culturology or whatever. And even in that case it should be done more scientifically, i.e. include some numbers. For example, if we are really collecting "stuff people said about glaciers", I would like to see data about how many people believe that glaciers symbolize penises, et cetera. Without those data, the research is worthless even as a subset of culturology.
It's not about glaciers persay, but it very much is about 'glaciers in popular culture'. You could call what he does scholarship as opposed to science, but either way it's something related to glaciers, that people might be interested in.
It reminds me of a scene in The Twelve Chairs where Ostap Bender, a con man, pretends to be a chess grand master and gives a lecture about chess, for money, despite actually being quite a bad chess player:
The idea is: pretend to be an expert on X despite not being an expert on X. After saying a few introductory words about X, move to a meta level where you already have an experience in bullshitting. Many people will not notice the trick, because they will automatically assume that you moved to the meta level because you are such an expert on X that everything object-level is already beneath your status and now you are using your vast wisdom to generalize. While in fact you are merely talking high-status sounding platitudes.
Ostap pretends to be an expert on chess, then he switches the topic to an idea of chess, and then he presumably makes the whole lecture about ideas in general. The feminist glaciology researchers pretend to be experts on glaciology, then they switch the topic to patriarchal oppression in glaciology, and then they write an article about patriarchal oppression in general, sprinkled with some glaciology trivia.
To illustrate what I mean, I will now give you an outline of an article about feminist zymurgy that you could write in an afternoon. I actually don't know what "zymurgy" means, I just noticed it twenty years ago as the last word in my English dictionary and it somehow stuck in my memory; all I remember is that it is some kind of science. Doesn't matter; I can still write an article about feminist zymurgy! Here is the outline:
If there is some wannabe Sokal reading this comment, feel free to use this template, and please tell me the results.
Now look it up and find out whether your example is less or more appropriate than you thought. ;-)
He is a historian, studying history of science. That subject is exactly about studying what people (scientists) are saying.
"Collecting stuff people said about something" is pretty much a definition of the classic form of the discipline of history. History is based on written primary sources; that's why "prehistory" refers to the time before written sources. More recent history has added archaeology, economics, statistics & demography, and other sources in addition to documentary ones — but the core of it is still about using what people wrote in the past as sources for what happened in the past.
(To ask whether history is "science" is kind of like asking whether medicine is "chemistry". History is much older than natural science as a discipline, although a great deal of current history makes use of scientific evidence. This doesn't mean that all [or even most] historians have a scientific mindset or make good use of scientific evidence, of course.)
Ouch!
I think you're wrong about that. You don't think he self-identifies as a scientist? Among other things, he is one of the IPCC authors... :-/
Here's his university home page. Associate Professor of History; "Mark Carey specializes in environmental history and the history of science", etc. I don't see anything suggesting that he thinks he is a scientist.
The IPCC's reports make some attempt to assess the impact of (any given degree of) climate change. It seems perfectly reasonable for someone who's spent much of his career looking at things like "the global history of human-glacier interactions" to be involved in that.
That webpage says: "He is working in particular on detection and attribution of climate change impacts", and the IPCC publications listed are: "A new social contract for the IPCC"; "Detection and attribution of observed impacts"; "Polar regions". The first two of those are explicitly about the effects of climate change on human societies; I bet his contribution to the third is too. ... Ah, yes, both of those two are parts of something called "Climate Change 2014: Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability".
So: no, indeed, I don't think he self-identifies as a scientist, and I don't see any reason why he should.
Just to be sure, you think that if you ask him "Are you a scientist?" he will say "No" -- right?
That's my guess. Maybe he'd want to hedge it a bit. I certainly wouldn't expect an outright "yes".
Given how clear I thought I already was, I'm wondering whether you have a gotcha in mind and are about to present me with an interview where he calls himself a scientist, or something. I will be happy to recant to whatever extent the evidence justifies doing so.
Nope, no gotchas. It's just that I feel very certain that he would call himself a scientist and perceive himself that way. It's strange to me that you think otherwise. Clearly one of us is mistaken :-)
At least one of us. (He might hold some intermediate view of himself that would surprise us both.)
Here is an article he wrote. Some brief quotations, which seem to me like things he wouldn't have written if he numbered himself among the scientists:
("Our capacity and willingness to collaborate with scientists".)
(Not, e.g., "why we need more people like me who are both scientists and historians", but collaboration between these groups. The general thrust of the paper is that scientists need to listen to environmental historians, who have useful and distinctive things to contribute.)
I can't find anything Carey's written, or anything written about Carey, that suggests to me that he would call himself a scientist.[1] Why do you think he would? (Is it, e.g., just out of a sense that science is high-status and therefore people doing anything with any connection to science will tend to call themselves scientists?)
[1] ... Except for a passing mention of "social scientists" in the paper I linked above, which may indicate that he reckons historians "social scientists". If he defines "scientists" so broadly as to include historians generally then meh, maybe he would call himself a scientist, but he would probably also willingly agree that he isn't what-most-people-call-scientists. My guess is still that he would answer "no" to "are you a scientist?", though as I say he might want to hedge.
This is a silly discussion, but, briefly, try to look at the situation from the inside point of view. Carey is a professor at a university, he gets grants from NSF, he publishes books and papers in peer-reviewed journals. A "scientist" is a high-status label and refusing to call himself a scientist would banish him to the bottom of the totem pole in his social circles.
You probably think of science as "hard sciences". But there are also soft sciences, aka social sciences and I believe historians, sociologists, etc. would not take kindly to being told that what they do is not science. Their internal perspective is that they engage in science, not in diddling with pot shards in their navels.
Look at yourself :-) and avoid the typical mind fallacy.
Here's an interview with Carey. His initial description of himself is as a "historian of science and environmental historian", but later on he does refer to "social scientists like myself".
So, you were right and I was wrong (in, at least, a way I predicted I might be): he does, at least in some contexts, call himself a scientist.
(Is there something about my style of posting that encourages people on LW to bulverize me so much?)
Anyway, you could simply have answered yes to my question "Is it, e.g., just out of a sense that science is high-status and therefore people doing anything with any connection to science will tend to call themselves scientists?".
I'd try actually asking Carey, but right at the moment I think it would be tactless. (The story of the feminist glaciology paper is doing the rounds and I wouldn't be surprised if he's deluged by people asking "do you consider yourself a scientist?" with hostile intent.)