Advantages of Science
Modified: 2024-12-25 7:56 AM CST
Science does bring many advantages to those who use it. Here are
several:
- 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
- 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.
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