What ails science

DTLR rarely tackles political matters related to current events.  Unfortunately recent years have seen the erosion of public support and trust for science and especially scientists, and this blog cannot completely ignore these trends.

Earlier this month in Science, Megan Ranney (Dean of the School of Public Health at Yale) reviewed a new book by Michael Mann and Peter Hotez, Science Under Siege.  I have not read this book and am not closely familiar with the work of either author, though I did meet Prof. Mann once at a book signing of his.  Since I haven't read the book I won't comment on it.  Instead I'd like to highlight some passages from Dean Ranney's review that I completely agree with.  Among her criticisms of the book, we find this:

It could also have done more to highlight the ways in which science has been undermined from within, such as the rise of poor-quality open-access journals or the publish-or-perish ethos that drives some scientists to unethical behavior.  If we are to restore trust, we must confront the problems within our ranks alongside the far more powerful external threats.   

Not only is the above passage sound in my opinion, the situation is even worse.  Many conventional practices in the sciences that are considered ethical and "normal" are actually traditions of methodological sloppiness.  Examples include HARKing, the winner's curse, the file drawer problem, and the "garden of forking paths" (Gelman and Loken). This has been well documented in Science, Nature, and this blog over its lifetime; for an introduction, see Richard Harris' book, Rigor Mortis.  Scientists need to fix their own house and earn each others' trust before we can expect the general public to support and trust what we are doing.

Moreover, Dean Ranney goes on to say "the book misses the fact that many people are rightfully fed up with the state of the world and that many lump scientists (and science) in with all the other structures that they feel have failed them."  She continues:

People's distrust of science is certainly being fed by bad actors and a vitriolic online culture. But it is also seeded by individuals' and communities' own experience with broken systems.  Think of the opioid epidemic, which resulted from a confluence of not just many of the same factors that Mann and Hotez identify but also the well-meaning recommendations of scientists and doctors; or the need for organizations such as ACT UP...to force access to trials and medications in the early days of the AIDS epidemic.  Populism has always been a strain in American society, and it gets stronger when people feel abandoned.  We will not make progress on antiscience sentiment until we collectively fix the underlying structural issues, for the sake of all.  Nor will we make progress without creating space for everyone to be part of the solution.

In my view, these comments by Dean Ranney deserve to be circulated more widely than in its current form as part of a book review.  Sadly I suspect the wisdom reflected in these words could be ignored by the vast majority of the scientific community, due to lack of awareness. Hence I highlight them here.

Environmental physics in the undergraduate physics curriculum

Earlier this week, the U.K.'s Physics World featured an excellent op-ed by Peter Hughes about environmental physics education.  He noted the importance of the topic, its practical value, and its incredibly wide disciplinary scope.  His definition, for example, is as follows.

Environmental physics is defined as the response of living organisms to their environment within the framework of the physics principles and processes. It examines the interactions within and between the biosphere, the hydrosphere, the cryosphere, the lithosphere, the geosphere and the atmosphere. Stretching from geophysics, meteorology and climate change to renewable energy and remote sensing, it also covers soils and vegetation, the urban and built environment, and the survival of humans and animals in extreme environments. 

He writes mainly from the perspective of the British university system.  One of his conclusions is "I believe a module on environmental physics should be a component of every undergraduate degree as a minimum, ideally having the same weight as quantum or statistical physics or optics."

While the thought is commendable, let's consider some reasons why it might not fly very far in the United States.

First, at many universities there already exist a robust academic ecosystem in the Earth and environmental sciences, with departments spanning soil physics in the school of agriculture, to atmospheric and oceanic sciences, geosciences, hydrology, civil and environmental engineering, and so on.  I live near a university where most of these disciplines have their own departments.  A physics student interested in this topic would be well advised to pick one of these disciplines as a minor or double major.  I personally find the multidiscplinary aspect of these fields to be quite exciting, but the key is to get out of the physics department and work directly with people who are well trained and active in one or more of these fields.

This leads to my second concern, which is that most physics faculty in the United States are ill equipped to teach or do research in any of these fields, with the possible exception of energy-related technologies.  I claim that within academia, environmental physics is primarily carried out by non-physicists (unless geophysicists are included - however, mostly they are found outside academic physics departments). Let's take a basic subject like fluid mechanics, which is essential for meteorology, climatology, and physical oceanography.  Most physicists have never taken a full class in this subject, and would hardly be qualified to teach one, given the outrageous things they teach about fluids in introductory physics classes.  A crowning example of this is the still often taught "explanation" of aerodynamic lift using Bernoulli's equation.  Granted, some physicists do work with fluid mechanics on a daily basis - plasma physicists, some astrophysicists, some condensed matter physicists, for example - but their focus is not necessarily on the aspects of fluids (like rotating frames of reference) relevant to environmental issues.

Third, it is difficult for me to imagine what, from this incredibly wide field of Earth and environmental physics, could be stuffed into a single undergraduate class.  It would end up being highly dependent on the individual professor teaching it.  I don't know if the Brits have managed to create a standardized curriculum for environmental physics.  

I see there are a few U.S. universities that involve their physics departments in environmental physics, but this is still rare here.  Kudos to them.  For the rest, the fastest way to get a program up and running is to partner with the other departments at the university that have been doing environmental physics from their birth.  In the longer run, physics departments would have to start hiring faculty explicitly in environmental physics.  It could take a decade or so to build a strong program, and not all departments would be well positioned to do so, especially given the hostile funding situation for academia currently prevalent in this country.

While I don't foresee environmental physics being on part with quantum physics, statistical physics, and optics, perhaps eventually it could be on par with solid state physics, astrophysics, or other elective physics courses in the undergraduate program.  However it would take a level of effort and commitment that may not be available in this time of shrinking enrollments and disappearing funding.