Brittany Christopherson's Comments on two chapters in Penrose and Katz

"Writing in The Sciences, Chapters 1&2"

The idea of secrecy in the scientific community immediately put me in a mad dash through my history notes and the extensive search results of Google. As the book points out, “scientists generally agree that secrecy is bad for science” (10). While the justification the author uses for this relates to the advancement of science, I believe there are public implications as well. The event that I instantly associated with this idea of secrecy was the Manhattan Project. This was a confidential, government based project so it was a given for it to be under extremely tight wraps. But the secrecy was a double edged sword. If the scientists went public with all of their progress throughout the project, public fear would have absolutely been through the roof. At the same time, the whispers in the dark about a project the average person knew little, only instilled a different fear. So secrecy within the scientific community in relation to the public arena often comes down to the fear from knowing too much and not understanding the implications versus the fear of the unknown. Thus just as secrecy within the scientific community can be detrimental, so can the usually more accepted withholding of information from the public. I am not advocating a complete glass enclosure of the scientific realm, but rather that there be greater communication with those outside the scientific arena to allow for multi-disciplinary discussion of research. We often forget that the academic world is not comprised solely of scientific disciplines, or what is generally considered to be “science.”

On the flip side, secrecy to an extent is necessary within even tight knit circles of science. There is a flaw in character sometimes related to originality. “Since historical priority is awarded to the scientist(s) whose manuscript reaches a publication first, scientists who do original work and want that work recognized and used by the field must write and publish as quickly as possible” (11). What might this imply? We are sometimes selfish and if free information is served up on a research silver platter, we will take it, change it a bit (hopefully improving upon what we are given), and publish it as our own. Do we have a moral obligation to give credit to someone else if their work hasn’t yet been published? It almost becomes a matter of he said/she said of who really originally had the idea. So if recognition is the goal, some secrecy is necessary.

Technology is an utter necessity in science. It has become the means by which we know. We use technology to communicate and share ideas. Electronic resources are a requirement of any research paper. Technology also has sped up the research process, as well as the publishing of findings. On page 41 of the text, the author discusses the importance of technology in teaching science. I plan to teach eventually and as it stands, teaching science without technology is completely unheard of. Technology allows us as teachers to explain concepts that diagrams alone cannot illustrate effectively. Technology eases communication between student and professor and vice versa. Whereas using technology to conduct a humanities course sometimes degrades the quality of the course, interactive learning provided through technology in the scientific disciplines enhances the comprehension and mental immersion of the student. Take a basic physiology course, and the PhysioEx (online interactive experiments) assignments may seem like a gift as they can be done anywhere, anytime. You go through the process, and have the option of repeating the experiment repeatedly without the constraints of a traditional lab. This is not to say labs should be replaced with virtual labs, but simply that from a learning/teaching perspective, technology is an asset in science education. Keeping up with the latest and greatest in technology is difficult though. The academic community has norms, just as the scientific community. It is a constant battle between the traditions of education and what is preferred by, and beneficial to, the student.