communicative calculus in science

The brilliant Michael Nielsen observes:

The contrast between the science comment sites and the success of the amazon.com reviews is stark. To pick just one example, you’ll find approximately 1500 reviews of Pokemon products at amazon.com, more than the total number of reviews on all the scientific comment sites I described above. The disincentives facing scientists have led to a ludicrous situation where popular culture is open enough that people feel comfortable writing Pokemon reviews, yet scientific culture is so closed that people will not publicly share their opinions of scientific papers. Some people find this contrast curious or amusing; I believe it signifies something seriously amiss with science, something we need to understand and change.

Science, like some types of blogging, occurs within a field of intense status competition.  Leaving reviews on Amazon doesn’t.  That’s a key explanation for the much different human behavior in commenting on scientific papers and leaving reviews on Amazon.

Can intense competition for (social/group) status occur without persons carefully regulating with whom they communicate and what they write?  Communication and sociality evolved together, hence at least some aspect of communication and sociality are likely to be difficult to change independently.  Wikipedia limits individual status competition by pushing into the background the names of contributors.  At the same time, among active Wikipedia contributors who become socially engaged with each other, all the usual types of human communicative behavior undoubtedly occur.   In evolved human psychology, males are likely to be more behaviorally oriented toward status competition, while females are likely to be more skilled in social communication.   In science, which imperfectly encompasses female and male scientists,  quite complex and obscure patterns of communication can easily occur.

Changing assets in scientific status competition can lead to more public goods.  Nielsen insightfully describes how this  occurred with the development of scientific societies and scientific (public) journals.   Open source software projects invest contributors in the success of a common, public symbolic work.  I have no doubt that new communication technology can help science operate in a way much more beneficial to the public than science currently does.

Tagged: knowledge