[article in progress, incomplete]
Science commentary Sabine Hossenfelder’s recently published a video What not to do when doing your own research. I do an enormous amount of my own personal research, some scientific and some for employment, but the vast majority to satisfy general needs. While Dr. Hossenfelder operates from the perspective of a credentialed expert physicist inside academia, I operate from the different position of an expert generalist working in industry. I thought it might be valuable to explore my own contrasting thoughts on the subject.
Sabine immediately (and, I think, correctly) distinguishes between academic research and general problem solving. Academic research, or “foundational research,” seeks to advance the frontiers of human knowledge by performing experiments or investigating new theories. What I will term “general research” means to answer a question - to uncover knowledge that may be known to some, but not to the individual. Note that the word “re-search” literally means to “go and search again”. Academics must gather knowledge, ex. via a literature search, as a necessary step to foundational research, but when they speak of research they are usually referring to the formation of knowledge that is new to society, not just new to the researcher.
To be a modern human is to be presented with a series of problems that need to be solved and require information: How should I exercise my body to keep healthy? What kinds of food should I eat vs. avoid? What does this notice from the tax authority mean and what should I do about it? Should I take this new experimental treatment that my doctor is advocating? Solving these questions requires general research, so this topic is quite important to most people.
As an expert generalist I find that credentials are often overrated (Sabine herself eschews the title “Dr.” although she is a credentialed PhD), but background is very important in understanding perspective. I will compare and contrast my background with hers to set context.
Sabine’s background
Sabine is a European academic theoretical physicist, an author, and now a science educator. Her training as a physicist means she operates from an empirical (evidence-based) worldview. As an academic means she has access to specific academic resources and experience with the rigorous discipline of formal publication.
When operating as a science educator, Sabine is not really just Sabine, she’s operating as the spokesperson for a team of researcher, writers, and editors - a fact she discusses her video. Thus when speaking on her channel, she represents the Sabine Hoffsteader/Science Without the Gobbeldygook brand, which we will call “ScienceWTG.” This is an aggregate intelligence of which Sabine is merely a part (I do significant personal research in aggregate intelligence and this forms a primary analytical lens through which I view the world). Like any aggregate intelligence, it has its own emergent objectives and constraints that influence its messaging and may differ from Sabine’s personal views.
My background
My bio describes me as an “American technologist and expert generalist originally trained in physics” with “deep skills in AI, cognitive science, and software architecture.” Like Sabine, my fundamental approach to the world was shaped by my training as a physicist. Unlike her I do not have a PhD and do not operate in academia - I did some graduate-level physics work, but found the now decade-long track to a physics PhD too long and left to work in industry. I am familiar with academic publications and have published, but not nearly as much as a professional physicist, to whom that process is fundamental.
Due to her ScienceWTG work, Sabine is broadly educated for a scientist. As an expert generalist my education is much broader still, encompassing areas ranging from law to cognitive science to work theory (see my learning notebook). I currently work for Amazon Web Services in a role called a “Technical Account Manager” which at Amazon is a technical and business role responsible for solving complex multi-dimensional problems for enterprise customers. Note: my opinions are my own; I do not speak here for Amazon or any prior or future employer. This work regularly takes me into new problem domains. General research is a fundamental skill I use constantly as a professional problem solver, and even more in my personal life.
Other
Sabine and I are both musicians and singers, and both in long-term marriages (she has children; I don’t). Neither of us lives in a monastic cell; we both have broader engagement with the world that presents us with unexpected problems requiring general research.
Reviewing our backgrounds shows that while we have different professional experiences, we share similar foundational training in research and are both in positions to have worthwhile opinions on general research and how to do it. With that established, let’s proceed to the points on agreement and disagreement on how to do your own research
Sabine immediately challenges a recent academic movement to denigrate non-academics “doing their own research,” particularly using the Internet. Here I agree. The Internet is to date the most powerful information tool developed in human history. The many thousands of scientists and technologists who built the modern web, including which I number myself, did so to empower humanity. Science is a methodology and research skills are techniques. Neither the instruction or use in either is confined to an academic priesthood and in fact the university system’s ability to teach these topics, even in the STEM fields, seems to be rapidly degrading. Note that this topic is raised on a YouTube video, in which Sabine in part advertises an internet educational platform (brilliant.org) on which she herself offers a quantum mechanics class. The university’s ability to teach and defend the core civilizational concepts of intellectual curiosity and a culture of academic freedom seem to be declining, even as it increasingly faces challenges from alternate educational platforms. This trend does not bode well for the university.
Scientists are trained to a culture of skeptical empiricism and free inquiry, but paradoxically the academic system tends to formulate a culture of dogma. I believe this happens because of a cognitive bias: academics, who necessarily focus their attention on foundational research a the edge of our human knowledge, often consign general research such as the literature studies they do in a field to the domain of “things that are known” and thus do not require further examination.
Yet examination of the history of science shows it to be littered with the detritus of entire established bodies of theory where the things that were known turned out on closer examination to not be so well known. Physics was famously thought to be mostly understood in the late 1800’s, immediately before Einstein showed that our fundamental understanding of basics such as time, length, and gravity were wrong. Shortly thereafter, the quantum revolution showed our understanding of matter itself to be completely incorrect. The science is never settled. Thinking otherwise fundamentally misunderstands the process of science itself, in which scientists build models and validate them subject to experimental limits. Even trained scientists regularly fall into this trap. The conflict between the human cognitive bias to classify (”settled”, “not settled”) and the mechanism of skeptical scientific inquiry leads to the famous observation that science advances “one funeral at a time” (which appears to be true). We should respect, but not deify, academia.