In article <6oj46t$cb7$1 at morgoth.sfu.ca>, hitchcoc at sfu.ca (Chris Hitchcock)
wrote:
> In article <pnorton-ya023080001407981739090001 at tjnews.tju.edu>,
> Pamela Norton <pnorton at hendrix.JCI.TJU.EDU> wrote:
> > In a previous post, I defended "criticism" but I think that what I
> >really had in mind was skepticism; replace the last three words of the
> >quote with the words "research science". I think what many posters objected
> >to falls into the cynicism category. Do we all agree that cynicism is bad
> >but skepticism is good?
>> I think it is much easier to tear down than to build up, and that, Popper's
> and Kuhn's theories not-withstanding, science needs both. I am preparing
> a course for the fall in "Gender Issues in Biology" for a mixed audience
> of women's studies and biology students, and some of my concerns are to
> develop critical skills in the domain of gender research. But I want those
> skills to include not just the "tearing down" skills but also the skills
> to recognize what is a real contribution of a piece of work, to ask not
> just "What is bad in this? Where did it go wrong?" but also to ask "What
> is good in this, what new viewpoint does it present, how do these observations
> contribute to the field?"
>> I got much more training in tearing down than in recognizing good points,
> and I think it sometimes paralyses me with fears of doing things badly.
> I'm sure that's some of where this comes from.
>> Chris.
I am in complete agreement that good work must be recognized; and that
examining both the strengths and the weakenesses of a work is valuable.
There are very few papers or bodies of work that are purely good or bad.
However, I think that the emphasis in training on recognizing
weaknesses is necessary - you must learn to be your own harshest critic,
_with respect to your work_. Any time I see a result, my own or anyone
elses, that looks too good to be true, I become skeptical. My experience
has shown that this skepticism is warranted, and with respect to the work
in my lab serves the important function of ferreting out artifacts or
inadequacies of experimental design at the earliest possible stage. Chris
expresses fear of doing badly; I'm not exactly certain what she means by
"badly". I'm not afraid of making mistakes, I'm afraid of publishing them.
Perhaps my experience as a PI is atypical, but I spend much more time
trouble shooting problems by picking apart experiments than I do
formulating new hypotheses. However, I think that a well-developed sense of
skepticism is essential for both exercises.
Pam
--
Pamela A. Norton, Ph.D. Associate Professor of Medicine
Thomas Jefferson University
Philadelphia, PA 19107 p_norton at lac.jci.tju.edu
