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PeterDonis
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I don't know. Do you think there is no value in this kind of discussion?Tom.G said:Is it time to put this thread out of its misery?
I don't know. Do you think there is no value in this kind of discussion?Tom.G said:Is it time to put this thread out of its misery?
Even in that forum, we still apply the rules about valid sources. There is an extensive literature on quantum interpretations, including both textbooks and peer-reviewed papers, so in that respect the QM interpretations subforum is no different from any other of our science forums. (Similar remarks would apply to the Beyond the Standard Model forum, which is the other subforum where the subject matter goes beyond "mainstream" science to areas that many view as more speculative.)TeethWhitener said:PF has an entire section on physically meaningless quantum interpretations populated by very smart professional scientists.
What I'm trying to do is explain the rationale for PF's policy about valid references. I did not make up that policy; it's right there in the rules:TeethWhitener said:Honestly, @PeterDonis, in this thread it just feels like you're trying to win an argument rather than consider other viewpoints.
My question to everyone in this thread who has argued anything along the lines of "we should be able to ask questions based on pop science sources" is: apparently you think the above rules should be changed, since those rules do not include pop science sources as valid references. How and why do you think the rules should be changed?Greg Bernhardt said:
- Acceptable Sources:
Generally, discussion topics should be traceable to standard textbooks or to peer-reviewed scientific literature. Usually, we accept references from journals that are listed in the Thomson/Reuters list (now Clarivate):
https://mjl.clarivate.com/home
Use the search feature to search for journals by words in their titles.
In recent years, there has been an increasing number of "fringe" and Internet-only journals that appear to have lax reviewing standards. We do not generally accept references from such journals. Note that some of these fringe journals are listed in Thomson Reuters. Just because a journal is listed in Thomson Reuters does not mean it is acceptable.
References that appear only on http://www.arxiv.org/ (which is not peer-reviewed) are subject to review by the Mentors. We recognize that in some fields this is the accepted means of professional communication, but in other fields, we prefer to wait until formal publication elsewhere. References that appear only on viXra (http://www.vixra.org) are never allowed.
“Traceable” in the policy seems to be open to at least two different interpretations. Plenty of claims in pop sci are traceable to peer reviewed literature. I therefore see no reason for the rules to change. However, you seem to be interpreting “traceable” in some stricter sense, perhaps with an eye to how faithfully represented that literature is by a particular pop sci work. So maybe you want the rules to change to reflect that.PeterDonis said:My question to everyone in this thread who has argued anything along the lines of "we should be able to ask questions based on pop science sources" is: apparently you think the above rules should be changed, since those rules do not include pop science sources as valid references. How and why do you think the rules should be changed?
Yes, and in such cases, our response is generally to try to redirect the discussion to be based on the peer reviewed literature that the claim is traceable to, at least if the discussion goes beyond a simple question and answer or two. (This assumes that the pop science source reasonably represents the literature; I'll address the case where it doesn't below.)TeethWhitener said:Plenty of claims in pop sci are traceable to peer reviewed literature.
No. I'm just pointing out that the traceable cases are rare in comparison to the total number of questions we see based on pop science sources. And in my experience edge cases where the boundary of "traceable" is not reasonably clear are extremely rare.TeethWhitener said:you seem to be interpreting “traceable” in some stricter sense
If we can trace the actual literature, cases where the pop science article misrepresents the literature (which are unfortunately common, even when the pop science article is written by a scientist who should know better) are fairly easy to handle, at least as far as pointing out the discrepancy goes. (The OP of such threads doesn't always receive the news very well, but that's a separate issue.)TeethWhitener said:perhaps with an eye to how faithfully represented that literature is by a particular pop sci work
I think the source of the source problem is, that the acceptable sources list just does not really fit the Curious Average Joe. Who will 'learn' some popsci first, and then can only expect to get a wall in the face here for the first question.PeterDonis said:How and why do you think the rules should be changed?
@vanhees71 , @Rive , and @AndreasC above have given pretty good synopses of how I feel here, but I think this quote above is where you and I likely disagree the most. Maybe it’s because we frequent different sections of PF, but I don’t often come across pop sci discussion that can’t be traced fairly straightforwardly to the literature, even if that means I have to do some googling. (I’m leaving aside cases where OP says some variant of “I read somewhere,” where I think asking for concrete sources is acceptable/necessary.)PeterDonis said:I'm just pointing out that the traceable cases are rare in comparison to the total number of questions we see based on pop science sources.
I don't see anything wrong with what you are saying here. I don't object with telling people that pop sci is not a good source, etc. But, after that is done, then what I believe is that if the question nevertheless makes sense but op is not advanced enough to understand a highly technical discussion, it is preferable to attempt a level appropriate answer to the extent it is possible, or say that you have no way to answer it in a level appropriate manner and point to the required background, rather than closing the thread or telling them they should read graduate level original papers to have their question answered (which won't happen).Vanadium 50 said:I think "what if" is not a very productive direction - we're not going to come up with a flowchart that addresses every possible case. Further, trying to set policy nu looking prinarily at edge cases usually just makes a mess.
If someone says "I heard that", it is entirely appropriate for PF - not just the staff - to ask "where?".
If the answer to that is not a very good source, PF. - not just the staff - can say so. "This is a popularization and cuts a lot of corners
should be an acceptable answer. And yes, I know not everyone accepts it.
On the general issue of popularrizations, if they were as good as textbooks, there wouldn't be any textbooks, Who would bother?
Finally, if you want to argue that threads should be closed by non-participating mentors, because having participating mentors close it is n not a good look ("Shut up, he ecxplained", I agree. But that's hardly worth a thread on it.
Just note that that's not quite in alignment with what @Tom.G said. What you are saying is clearly true about the signal to noise ratio in threads/on PF, but @Tom.G was talking about engagement. Pop-sci is a common - perhaps the most common - source of engagement between the public and "science". Pop-sci reduces the apparent barrier to entry into science and is what prompts many to come here and ask questions....or even, later, become scientists themselves.PeterDonis said:My experience as a moderator of this forum has been that the rare cases where a pop science source actually sparks a good question...
Bear in mind that you don't see the ones that get deleted by the moderators.TeethWhitener said:I don’t often come across pop sci discussion that can’t be traced fairly straightforwardly to the literature
These two statements are contradictory. Which do you pick if push comes to shove?vanhees71 said:I don't think we need a change of the general PF rules on "acceptable sources". I only think one should not completely ban discussion of popular-science sources
So you are saying PF's goal should change? The "About PF" Insights article currently says:russ_watters said:In my opinion our goal should be to bring as many into the fold as possible while maintaining as high of standards as possible.
Our goal is to provide a community for people (whether students, professional scientists, or hobbyists) to learn and discuss science as it is currently generally understood and practiced by the professional scientific community.
I have already mentioned Wikipedia more than once. A Wikipedia article that footnotes valid sources (textbooks or peer-reviewed papers) for its key claims (which most articles in scientific areas do) meets the "traceable" requirement and is therefore acceptable as a reference.vanhees71 said:Last but not least there are also quite reliable (semi-)popular sources like Wikipedia
I think the "traceable" language in the rules covers this.Rive said:some kind of recognition should be granted for valid questions originating from some (!) popsci sources as starting point
I think the "traceable" language covers this too, because for a question to "nevertheless make sense", the source it is coming from is going to have a reference to actual literature somewhere. At least that's what I would expect based on my experience.AndreasC said:if the question nevertheless makes sense but op is not advanced enough to understand a highly technical discussion, it is preferable to attempt a level appropriate answer to the extent it is possible, or say that you have no way to answer it in a level appropriate manner and point to the required background
"Does not make any sense" is a very wide category. Yes, some questions will not make sense in a way that can be explained. But most won't. The distinction here is the one Pauli was getting at with his phrase "not even wrong". A question that doesn't make any sense in a way that is wrong might be repairable. A question that is not even wrong, not so much.AndreasC said:if the question does not make any sense, it's still instructive to tell someone their question doesn't make sense and why.
Yes. But in my opinion that statement is narrower than the reality already, and misleading. Even contradictory. The second line implies this is a forum intended for professionals only, and that isn't the case. How does k-12 homework help fit with that second line?PeterDonis said:So you are saying PF's goal should change? The "About PF" Insights article currently says:
"Our goal is to provide a community for people (whether students, professional scientists, or hobbyists) to learn and discuss science as it is currently generally understood and practiced by the professional scientific community."
The word was "fold". Not caring about our membership/post rate numbers is a good way to kill the forum. In my opinion, too high of a quality bar is pointless if the forum disappears because of it.PeterDonis said:That says nothing about bringing as many people into the field as possible.
Plus, what does "bringing as many people into the field as possible" mean? Does it mean we want them to become scientists? Or just PF members?
Btw, since this sort of comment has been made by several posters in this thread, please note that in the original thread that spawned this one, this was not done. I responded to the OP by pointing out that the book they referenced was a pop science book, and posted a link to the Wikipedia article on false vacuum decay. I recommended reading the sources linked to in that article as well, but the link I posted was to the article (which, as has already been said, meets the requirements for a valid reference since it footnotes its claims to the relevant literature). (I also gave a basic answer to the general question.)AndreasC said:telling people to basically come back when they finish their Masters
Fair enough.russ_watters said:I don't want to go much further along this line of discussion until I have something more concrete to propose, and not here - in the private forum.
Traceable means the source has to have references explicitly stated somewhere. If the only way to "trace" something in a pop science source to the literature is a combination of guessing and Googling, that's not traceable in any useful sense.AndreasC said:Something can be traceable even if the op doesn't or can't trace it though.
How many times in the history of science has the current understanding been wrong, only to be changed by future discoveries? Take the Big Bang theory for instance. The recent JWST discoveries have challenged that.PeterDonis said:What if there is no such explanation? What if every possible "pop-sci-like" attempt at an explanation is wrong, or leads to misunderstanding instead of actual understanding?
As one who has had posts deleted, this is a strong put off. That's why I seldom get on this site. I think it would be better to reply to the person, "this did not contribute to the thread" rather than delete the post and the thumbs up that came with it.PeterDonis said:Bear in mind that you don't see the ones that get deleted by the moderators.
I did a quick check of 3 such instances -- your posts that were deleted were reported by other members, not cherry-picked by the Mentors. It's always important to try your best to find good sources for assertions in posts in the technical forums.StandardsGuy said:As one who has had posts deleted, this is a strong put off. That's why I seldom get on this site. I think it would be better to reply to the person, "this did not contribute to the thread" rather than delete the post and the thumbs up that came with it.
Wrong? Almost never once a field becomes a science (i.e., based on experimental testing).StandardsGuy said:How many times in the history of science has the current understanding been wrong, only to be changed by future discoveries?
No, they haven't. They have led to quite a bit of discussion about the precise values of some of the parameters, but they have not challenged the framework of the theory itself.StandardsGuy said:Take the Big Bang theory for instance. The recent JWST discoveries have challenged that.
StandardsGuy said:How many times in the history of science has the current understanding been wrong, only to be changed by future discoveries? Take the Big Bang theory for instance. The recent JWST discoveries have challenged that.
This is, in fact, a built-in flaw in pop-sci; it's over-hyping of new discoveries or even past ones to generate interest. Clickbait.PeterDonis said:Wrong? Almost never once a field becomes a science (i.e., based on experimental testing).
An approximation that gets refined by further discoveries? Lots of times.
No, they haven't. They have led to quite a bit of discussion about the precise values of some of the parameters, but they have not challenged the framework of the theory itself.
Questions can neither make sense nor making no sense. They are questions! If a question indicates a misconception of the questioner, one can point that out as well.PeterDonis said:"Does not make any sense" is a very wide category. Yes, some questions will not make sense in a way that can be explained. But most won't. The distinction here is the one Pauli was getting at with his phrase "not even wrong". A question that doesn't make any sense in a way that is wrong might be repairable. A question that is not even wrong, not so much.
My point is that for some questions, "misconception" is too generous a term: they are so far off base that it is not even possible to point out a misconception or reframe the question. That's what the phrase "not even wrong" is intended to convey. There has to be a point at which the only reasonable moderation decision is to delete the thread to keep the signal to noise ratio of the forums acceptable.vanhees71 said:If a question indicates a misconception of the questioner, one can point that out as well.