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No one starts with a peer reviewed journal article. Most, if not all people, start with a cool experiment or demo or see or handle a cool critter/plant.
PhD here.
Be interested in whatever you want. Someone else said speculative fiction. I’m not aware of a scientist who didn’t grow up reading that. Just be curious and care about if you’re correct.
Young people now just don’t have easy access to popular science from people who are telling them the truth, and I don’t know what to do about that. You need to learn how the basics of reality work before you can gain the proper level of skepticism.
PhD - Pet (herbivorous) Dinosaurs
Reviews a paper -
“Oh my, I had no idea so many scientists are absolutely terrible at writing and basic math.”
Fair point. Communication is hard, and scientific writing is for a specific group not a general audience.
Alternatively:
“I like science when it directly contributes to my quality of life or proves me right, but not when it proves me wrong or needs funding.”
I like it when other people do science and then tell me about the exciting parts.
Penn and Teller said they love being cheerleaders of science and I’ve always liked that take when discussing the difference between science and science communication.
Honestly this is fine.
As long as we get the smart people into the real shit, most of us are allowed to specialize in other aspects of society. This is by design.
Just please, believe our smart people.
Oh and remove all profit motives. Until next time!
Just give me some new stuff to pump into my veins! I am vaccine-maxxing!
Actual peer reviewed articles are usually 3 paragraphs of new content then 95 percent boring math and graphs to try and prove that. The popular articles written on them are more interesting and useful.
Relevant Cyanide & Happiness:
Mmmm science bum
Is human hair being the same material as nails really considered a flashy fact? That’s about as “tedious” as you can get
I don’t think we should gatekeep people educating themselves, no matter how mundane. Especially if it’s mundane.
I like doughnuts. That doesn’t mean I like baking them or reading the recipe.
The…
The article is the dognut.
The CGI space image with the caption is the powdered sugar leftover from the doughnut. I like to snort it, myself.
Uh, I am not a fan of dognuts, nor am I fully comfortable with the process of getting them.
Show me on the donut where the reviewer touched you.
I’d say that the article is the recipe, since it’s a set of instructions for how to reproduce the doughnut. The doughnut might be the fruits of whatever the science discovered
No.
The article is the product of scientific research. Its the final product. It the thing.
All that other stuff is derivative. The donut is the paper.
Sure, sorry no one says “I love the applications and derivatives of science” but like yeah people like the donut (the application of the recipe) and not the recipe. Just like people can appreciate the applications of science (cool tech and stuff) without enjoying the underlying research and math and such.
Science is discovery. Engineering is applications. Science literacy is not confusing the two.
Science isn’t done, in a “spiritual sense” other than for the discovery. If you are pushing research forward with a specific goal in mind: Thats engineering.
If you have a question, and you have an open mind and are willing to accept the conclusions your evidence forces you to make whether you like it or not: That’s science.
Sometimes science informs engineering in awesome and clever ways. But the point of science isn’t engineering, which is what the vast majority of people interpret science as being.
What about fucking them?
People love to whine about the “credential class” but literally nobody is going to slog through gen-ed courses without some kind of short term incentive structure. Like we actually know what this looks like because of the Internet - without the academic ivory tower, everyone just cites wikipedia articles to each other until the last expert dies, at which point wikipedia itself slowly dissolves in Brawndo.
You can like science without being a degreed research scientist. There is plenty of good science content out there that’s easy to understand.
I agree with you, but I think this is referring to a phenomena of people who say the love science but actually just want to be thought of as a person who loves science. In the post they mention fake pictures with misattributed quotes which seems to be a byproduct of personality through consumerism. The idea of science is something people know they should care about so they “consume” it, but in late stage capitalism media caters to the lowest common denominator and people allow their interest to erode into just a signal. If they allow that to continue then they really cared less about the accuracy and quality of the “science” they are consuming and more about the act of consuming it.
There was a time when the layperson would get magazines or read articles that discussed their interests in an approachable way. That has fallen by the wayside and now people professing those niche interests are more likely to just signal having them than actually meaningfully participate in the subculture.
Or I might just be ranting and upset that a lot of people claim to be invested in subject X while not meaningfully understanding it. It feels like a societal shift, but maybe it’s just a bad day.
Gopd angle because original take wasn’t landing for me.
Me: I love science
Me, trying to design an experimental with adequate controls: frustratedly curse-mumbling in a dark room filled with crumpled-up statistics papers
Ah shit, I got good results but accidentally changed two things on that test run.
But that’s the thing. The average person has no need to know the deep nuts and bolts of science. Being enthusiastic and engaged with it is far better than willingly being blind and ignorant.
For instance, you don’t need to understand the exact mechanism of how anesthesia works in order to very much appreciate it when you’re undergoing testicular surgery.
I miss my Jstore membership
They like science fiction… Half of that is “science” i guess
