Advantages of Science

Modified: 2024-05-23 (8:59 PM CDST)

• Rapid Communication--Science allows its methods and results to be spread widely and quickly.
  • The rapid spread is due to the public nature of science combined with the technologies of information dispersal.
  • Today, computer networks, social media (e.g., Twitter, Facebook, X, TikTok, etc) and electronic mail are the fastest ways of communicating new discoveries.
    • All universities are now connected to the Internet, a global computer network, and students routinely connect to it.
  • Another fairly rapid method that scientists use are scientific meetings. Meetings are held at all levels, from international ones all the way on down to local ones. Psychology faculty regularly attend national and regional scientific meetings, such as the
    • American Psychological Association (APA),
    • Association for Psychological Science (APS), and regional meetings.
    • Southwestern Psychological Association (SWPA) is the regional group serving Arkansas.
    • Psychology students frequently attend such meetings.
  • Finally, publication in journals and books is another, but slower, method of communicating results and methods.
  • The typical lag time for publication, that is, the time from when a manuscript is accepted until when it is published, is about 9-18 months, depending on the journal.
  • The lag time for a book may be as long as 3 years or more.
  • So, what you read in journals is year-old science, and what you read in books is older still.
  • What you hear at meetings is new and hot, and what you read on electronic mail may be red hot.
• Reliable Data--By only accepting data that can be reproduced, science assures itself that its data are reliable.
  • So, when some new discovery is made, the first thing that happens is that others attempt to reproduce that discovery.
  • The "cold fusion" episode of a few years ago is a good example.
    • Two chemists claimed they had observed fusion at room temperature. (The sun is a fusion engine, it's not room temperature, is it?)
    • But, when others attempted to reproduce those results, they could not.
  • Thus, cold fusion is not accepted as a scientific finding.
  • More recently, the APS has pursued a new policy to promote more research designed to replicate new results.
• Intellectual freedom--One of the biggest advantages of science, but one that is not always lived up to, is intellectual freedom, the intellectual freedom to go where the data lead.
  • In science, one's opinions, hopes, and desires for how some data from a study may turn out count for nothing next to the data themselves.
  • For example, let's say that I am a scientist who believes that people with red hair have lower levels of intelligence.
  • So, I conduct an experiment, but I find that the intelligence of red-haired people is no less than that of non-red-headed people. Now, as a scientist, I have to believe my data not my opinion.