Keeping Science Accountable – The Sokal Affair

In 1996, a physicist named Alan Sokal submitted a paper to a non-physics academic journal. The paper argued that the idea of an objective physical reality was a social construct to keep scientific power in the hands of the elites. The paper was accepted and published. Three weeks later, Sokal publicly announced that the paper had been a joke, its logic and technical language either made up or used nonsensically, and the reason he submitted it was to test the integrity of the journal. This became known as the Sokal Affair.

Sokal exposed a fact that can sometimes make scientists uncomfortable: science is not inherently superior to all other collaborative methods of determining truth. It has to earn that status by being intellectually rigorous, which means defining terms clearly, making hypotheses that are falsifiable, accounting for all variables, taking unbiased data, and analyzing the data with the best, most applicable statistical methods available. If a journal allows papers that do not live up to these standards, that journal is no longer a vehicle of science, but of dogma.

After Sokal revealed the paper to be a hoax, there were cries of foul play. He had, after all, intentionally published a paper with false data and results. Fabrication is considered profane among scientists, and can result in the author being ostracized from the scientific community. However, the reason for this is because it spreads false information. Sokal’s purpose was not to spread false information, but exactly the opposite: to expose and prevent the spreading of false information by the journal.

Within the past few years, a team of academics followed in Sokal’s footsteps by submitting several bogus papers to a few different journals. Many of these papers, including a passage from Mein Kampf with key words swapped out, were accepted. Luckily, the Mein Kampf plagiarism wasn’t actually published. This became known as Sokal Squared, and also received blowback. It should be noted that Sokal Squared was not meant to discredit the fields being studied, but to expose the fact that it was being done wrong in these particular journals.

I believe the authors in the Sokal and Sokal Squared affairs did absolutely nothing wrong. In fact, what they did is perfectly in line with the scientific process, which is to continually test ideas from every different angle to see whether they can stand up to it. I think that every academic journal, from the natural sciences to the humanities, from the most prestigious to the peripheral, should be regularly put to a Sokal Test. By this, I mean that people from different fields of study, or who are not professional academics, should write nonsense papers using the journals’ jargon, and see if they get accepted. Anyone writing a hoax paper should be required to reveal the hoax within a reasonable amount of time. Journals that fail the Sokal Test will lose reputation points, and those that pass will gain prestige.

Science is an amazing vehicle for understanding the universe and what happens within it. It is naturally competitive, its scholars each putting forth their own theories and doing their best to prove everybody else wrong. To do this, they use every legitimate trick in the book: making sure all significant variables are accounted for, checking the data collection methods for bias, and many others. But these feedback processes are largely self-contained within each discipline, which means they can become corrupted and watered down. Instituting a Sokal Test would be an effective and equitable way to keep journals accountable to scientists in other disciplines, and to everyone who is interested in true scientific knowledge.

The Event Horizon Telescope – Science and the Human Spirit

Black holes are extremely dense. A black hole the mass of the sun would be the size of a small village. They are also extremely dim, giving off no light of their own. The only light that comes from a black hole is from its accretion disk, a swirl of matter bunching together and heating up as it falls into the black hole. All known black holes are extremely far away, in the hearts of star clusters and galaxies. And on Wednesday, the Event Horizon Telescope collaboration released humanity's first photograph of a black hole.

Our first honest-to-God image of a real black hole.

The galaxy the black hole hides in.

The Event Horizon Telescope is one of several modern feats of staggering ingenuity. Eight radio telescopes in Hawaii, Arizona, Nevada, Mexico, Chile, and Antarctica, were synchronized and pointed at the center of the galaxy M87, where a black hole 6.5 billion times the mass of the sun lies. Working together, these telescopes used interferometry to act as a single telescope the size of the entire Earth. This gave them the resolution they needed to collect a long-exposure picture of a supermassive black hole in radio waves.

The universe is stranger and more amazing than we can imagine. From the plains of Africa, to agriculture, to metallurgy, to the industrial revolution, to computers, to supercomputers, we curious humans have explored our world and created new devices of exploration in a cycle that grows ever more impressive. We do things that are bigger than ever before, and then we start on new projects that are even bigger. Someday we will have particle accelerators that go around the sun. Telescopes the size of the solar system. We will resurrect species that have gone extinct. Build artificial minds as versatile as humans, or even more so. Though we cripple ourselves with wars, and greed, and ideological disputes, there is a part of us that sees mystery and just wants to explore. And this spirit of curiosity within us moves us to bridge the gaps, to harness the synergy that arises when many work together for a common goal. And that goal: to learn more about this wonderful, strange, mysterious universe we find ourselves in.

Economics: Motivations and Incentives

[Retrospective note: this post is more of a case study of the modern American economy, and not as general as I would like. To see an updated version of this discussion, click here.]

In order for an economy to run, work must be done. Producing and distributing goods and services takes labor and organization. So naturally, the question arises, what motivates people to do these things?

The most common motivation for individuals throughout history, past and present, is the threat of poverty and starvation. You work, you get paid, you pay your bills. But given the opportunity, people will also work for other reasons. Some like the promise of wealth and moving up in the hierarchies of company and society. Others work because it provides joy and purpose to their lives. Still others have a strong sense of duty, and cannot rest unless they have given their fair share of effort toward supporting society. Others see problems in society, and their compassion moves them to help.

People also generally like to do what is right, especially if it is easy. For instance, if recycling means taking a load of trash in your car to a facility twenty miles away, not very many people will recycle. However, if there are conveniently-placed blue bins all over the place that somebody else takes care of, almost everybody will recycle.

The economy does not primarily run on individual people, though. The real power behind an economy is in its businesses. Yes, businesses are run by people, but the businesses themselves can be looked at as if they have their own motivations. It is an emergent phenomenon. If we want to understand the driving force of an economy, it is businesses’ motivations we have to look at.

Like people, businesses have a variety of motivating forces. Some businesses want to provide high-quality services. Some aim to solve problems for humanity. But by far, the most significant driver for businesses is profit. Money allows businesses to grow and become more powerful, so the biggest, most powerful, most economically significant companies are the ones who orient their capacities toward making more money.

Naturally, profit-oriented companies want to increase their prices and lower their wages as much as they can, while still having people buy from and work for them. This is not aligned with the purpose of the economy, which is to meet people’s needs and provide an environment in which they can pursue meaningful lives. The most commonly championed counter-force to these self-centered practices is competition. In a competitive market, more workers apply for the companies with the highest-paying wages, and more customers buy from the companies with the lowest prices.

However, because competition makes wages higher and prices lower, companies don’t like it. So they try to get around the competition, by either putting the other companies out of business, or buying them out. Thus, competitive markets are unstable, because if one company pulls ahead a little bit, they have an advantage that grows at an accelerating rate. This leads to monopolies, companies that control a product’s entire market.

Companies are also prone to causing collateral damage. Pollution, for instance, as well as other kinds. If it is more cost-effective to dump your chemicals in the river than to properly dispose of them, you’re going to dump them in the river. Of course, it is best for all companies together if they don’t pollute, but for each company individually, it is more advantageous to pollute no matter what other companies do. This an example of the Prisoner’s Dilemma.

It is also a senescent behavior. Senescence is a term from biology, which refers to the deteriorative processes of aging. In economics, senescent behaviors are actions that give short term gains, but have negative effects that build up in the long run. The quintessential example of a senescent behavior in the economy today is carbon dioxide emissions, which build up slowly in the atmosphere over time, only causing problems after many years.

Luckily, there are ways to mitigate or guide the profit incentive so that it serves human interests. If a large number of people come together in a social movement and refuse to buy a certain company’s product, the company will lose out on profit unless they change their behavior. Workers can band together in unions to demand more reasonable wages and benefits. And the government can add incentives, like minimum wages, taxes, subsidies, regulations, and plenty of others.

Of course, companies will fight against anything that would reduce their profits. Not all companies, of course, but a significant fraction. They will try to use the government to reduce taxes, limit unions, repeal important regulations, and otherwise turn the tables in their favor.

It is important to note, however, that things are not black and white. It is not simply the good people versus the bad companies. Many companies do a lot of good for humanity, and we want the Elon Musks of the world to be free to do their thing. The key is smart legislation. It is not enough to simply be “for people.” When coming up with policies, it is important to make decisions based on the numbers and the science, so that we know it will help, and not accidentally make things worse.

Finally, we must remember that companies love to replace workers with machines, because a machine costs a whole lot less than a human. As robotics and artificial intelligence continue to get better, the space of economically relevant human tasks continues to shrink. This is both good and bad. Good, because companies can offer their goods and services for even cheaper. Bad, because people are having a harder and harder time finding work. We will talk more about this in discussions to come.