One of my parallel non-fiction reads right now is The Tangled Tree by David Quammen. It's a history of the understanding of horizontal gene transfer, so it's sort of a meta-story: how the narrative of the origin of species has changed, especially how the shape and form of the representation of evolution's history as a tree has changed. It's also a collection of stories about the scientists who worked on, are working on, the rather non-linear development of that knowledge. It's well written and though I haven't finished it yet, I'm enjoying it and would recommend it.
I'm reading it now because my second son is going to study biology this year with an emphasis on evolutionary biology. My oldest chose that topic when it was his turn, and it's easy enough for me to repeat it (since I already designed the curriculum), and it's a convenient type of homeschooler biology because it doesn't require a lab.
(What's less convenient is finding a high-school level textbook. I am here to tell you not to even try to find a commercial evolutionary biology textbook that is aimed at the homeschool market. I use an introductory college text that is supposed to be accessible to non-STEM majors.)
The college text is a few years old. Most of the principles in it are still intact (especially since it is mostly about what happens in the world of multicellular animals). But I'm aware that the evolutionary tree re: unicellular life has changed a great deal since genome-sequencing got easier and cheaper, and I needed a quick refresher that would bring me closer to up-to-date so I could add some corrections.
Of the major branches of scientific knowledge, biology is my weakest (I never took a class in it after ninth grade, and my ninth-grade teacher was crappy, those two things probably having something to do with one another). So I picked up a book written for a popular audience, and I'm enjoying it, and learning enough that I can know when to say "oh, hey, the information going into the diagram on page eighty-whatever has probably been superseded---let's Google that to double check it." So far so good.
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I pick up popular books about other fields of science from time to time as well, including ones that I'm much more familiar with. You all know that I have a great side interest in linguistics, for instance, and I periodically read popular stuff about that, especially applied fields like translation. I have a couple of others going at the same time as The Tangled Tree. One of them is a biography of Claude Shannon, who (to put it succinctly) invented all the mathematical theory behind data compression. I got interested in this because Mark was telling me about the math and we became curious about the person who came up with it, and now we're working through it as a read-aloud together. Another one is a bit of applied educational psychology which I'm reading to see if I can understand one of my offspring just a little bit better in order to help said offspring focus on learning. I also have a history of the synthesis of the transuranium elements lined up, for after Mark and I finish the Shannon book, maybe for me to read aloud while he drives during our next road trip.
I usually enjoy what I learn from such books. But I have to tell you, I sometimes put them down with a feeling of unease and disappointment in myself. It's difficult to put my finger on, but I think it's because I wonder if I have lost my ability (or the required patience) to dig through the literature itself, in a kind of atrophy of mental muscle.
If that's happened, I don't regard it as an interior fault. There are structural factors that come into play, such as the fact that for the first decade after my transmogrification it was a severe hassle to get hold of academic publications without an academic or industry affiliation. (And it's not a lot better now, a subject about which I can rant at length, although it's moving in the correct direction.) And also the nontrivial problem, left to the reader, of arranging the physical space and the boundaries on the scholar's, or the creative's time.
There's also the sheer volume of the literature---one always relies on word of mouth, social media now too of course, literature reviews that come out in this or that field and that summarize the changing shape of consensus or present multiple sides of an active debate. The cream (or the flotsam, or even the scum!) rising to the top: "Have you seen so-and-so's paper?" Where do you start if you want to go straight to the primary source? The only thing that makes sense if you value your time, and don't have students to track it down for you, is to begin with the tertiary or higher-order publications that catch your interest, and trace the citations backward. We've done this with the Shannon book (to some extent), finding Shannon's master's thesis and reading enough of it to be certain that understanding the math behind it very well would require us to brush up with our old textbooks. It is fun to do, this backwards-tracing, but it requires you to have a certain level of trust in the authors of the tertiaries-and-higher. And that requires those authors not so much to be honest and smart scientists, but more honest and smart journalists.
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Behold the "Gell-Mann amnesia effect," which I unironically lift from Wikipedia:
The Gell-Mann amnesia effect describes the phenomenon of experts believing news articles on topics outside of their fields of expertise, even after acknowledging that articles written in the same publication that are within the experts' fields of expertise are error-ridden and full of misunderstanding. The term was coined by author, film producer, and medical doctor Michael Crichton. He explains the irony of the term, saying it came about "because I once discussed it with Murray Gell-Mann, and by dropping a famous name I imply greater importance to myself, and to the effect, than it would otherwise have", and describes the term in his talk "Why Speculate?" in which he says:
"Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray's case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward — reversing cause and effect. I call these the 'wet streets cause rain' stories. Paper's full of them.
"In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know."
The Gell-Mann effect is not a universal phenomenon, and some believe that there is increased distrust in news media when one notices errors in reporting.
I'm aware of the Gell-Mann effect, and in the back of my mind as I read popular histories of science, or explanation of this or that phenomena, I've always got this tickle in the back of my mind of: did this particular long-form journalist get it right? Am I accepting this narrative because the writing is clear and the presentation is convincing? Am I actually being misled here? Would I think this matched up if I went back to the primary sources, the peer-reviewed articles, and formed my own judgment?
And then I don't go back, most of the time, because I have to prioritize other activities in my rather full life.
And I think that is why I feel a little sad when I read these books. Trained as an academic, I learned how much I don't know. Being a bit of an iconoclast, and not being hampered by any desire to be a team player, I walk around with a metaphorical mental stamp in my pocket that says "[citation needed.]" I learned to say: I do not know enough about this subject to have an informed opinion.
Years out of the academy, I also have ceased needing to have an opinion on everything. But I haven't ceased wanting to know enough to have an opinion, and so I feel a little sad that I can't track everything down enough to do so.
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One way for me to mentally make peace with that slight discontent: I have developed an even stronger interest in sci-comm as sci-comm, in the way that technical information is adapted to suit the needs and background levels of the various audiences. I'm endlessly fascinated with the way complex information changes, or remains constant, as it is transmitted to different ears or eyes and minds through different media.
Taking a step back and evaluating: is this clear? is this correct? is this maintaining my attention? what is working and what is not? This is a tool of detachment (I don't have to feel part of the intended audience) and also a way for me to think about what I am thinking. I'm not sure whether it makes me a good scholar or a bad one, or really if it's just proof of being an ex-scholar; but it makes me feel more comfortable because I feel I've preserved my integrity. These questions are something I can get at directly and immediately, unlike the content itself. Of that, I must be satisfied (much more often than I'd like) to take someone else's word for it.
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