World Wide Web of Science

The latest issue of Scientific American has an interesting article on the use of the internet for scientific research. The web is revolutionizing the way a lot of scientists do things by making it easier to communicate, access resources, acquire data online, and collaborate in ever larger and more productive ways. It’s also changing the fundamental way in which scientists communicate with the public, in some cases making the very thought processes behind scientific research accessible to a wide audience.

One of the advantages of being a mathematician specializing in data analysis is that scientists in most fields need my skills; one of the disadvantages is that I lack the skills to acquire for myself the very data which is the fuel for my work. I depend on other scientists (both professionals and amateurs!) to do the field work and the theorizing, but they depend on me for sophisticated analysis and experienced interpretation when the data have been acquired. It’s a powerful symbiosis, enabling each participant to make the most effective contribution.

Just by making communication (especially of data) so much easier, the internet has made such collaboration faster and more effective. I’ve collaborated with neuroscientists in Bangalore, India, to analyze sodium-ion channel conductivity data, as a result of which I’m a co-author of a paper in the European Journal of Neuroscience. But I don’t really know what sodium-ion channels are, and neuroscience is a topic about which my knowledge wouldn’t fill the space available on a postage stamp. Only the internet makes transmitting data, results, and discussion fast enough and inexpensive enough that such long-distance teamwork is practical. One disadvantage is that I’ve never seen the faces of my collaborators on that project.

The web helps me in other ways too. When I need a scientific paper my best chance of finding it is online. Now that I work in industry rather than academia my access to scientific libraries is limited to a very narrow field. But outside that field I have an excellent chance of finding a copy of any paper I want on the web. Even before works are published, they are often available (as submitted manuscripts or preprints) in various online archives; the Arxiv system is a revolutionary blessing, not just for me personally but for the entire scientific community. I have the highest regard for those fields, and those researchers, for whom open access to published research is a priority.

It’s not just collaboration and publications that can no longer do without the internet. When I first got interested in climate science I was pretty ignorant of the subject. I have a strong background in physics but mainly about the more esoteric theoretical stuff, so I had a lot to learn; the internet has made it so much easier. Also, contrary to what some readers may think I tend to carry skepticism to an extreme (my wife teases me about it). I remain at least a little skeptical of scientific claims unless I’ve seen the data for myself. And I know just how easy it is for even skilled researchers to err in data analysis so I always want to do it for myself; only when I personally have “run the numbers” do I have complete confidence in the soundness of scientific claims. That’s not to say that I consider the findings of other researchers unreliable, quite the contrary; I just have a hard time feeling comfortable accepting conclusions until I’ve seen it with my own eyes.

The internet has made astounding amounts of data available at the touch of a few buttons. Want to know the temperature history of Boston? Go to GISS and you can get data back to 1880, go to the GHCN version 1 and you can get it well before that. Does the Vostok ice core data excite you? It’s easy to find. Do you want to see for yourself how sea level has changed, or estimates of total solar irradiance, or historical sunspot counts, or any number of other sets of data? They’re there, they’re available, they’re usually pretty easy to find. I’m a data analysis junkie, and the climate data on the internet could keep me busy for a number of lifetimes. It’s only because of easy access to vast amounts of climate data, that I’ve become so strongly convinced that global warming is real, man-made, and one of the greatest threats to modern civilization.

If you’re reading this, then you’re aware of the existence of blogs and other community-based internet forums. This enables easy and rapid communication among all sorts of people, including a public view inside the minds of working scientists. I’ve benefitted immensely from the intimate and up-to-date reports on new discoveries in climate science to be found in the blog posts on RealClimate. I’ve also learned a lot from the commentary there, often from interested lay readers. And I’ve learned quite a bit, and been directed to many valuable resources of which I wasn’t aware, by readers right here on this blog.

There’s a downside to the internet explosion as well. As powerful a medium as it is for the rapid and widespread communication of scientific information, it’s equally potent for the communication of misinformation. Nearly everybody I’ve met who thinks global warming is a fraud, was convinced by information obtained online. I can sometimes tell, from the (mis)information supplied and the arguments chosen, exactly where they got their faulty opinions. I don’t care to argue in this thread about the validity of global warming; if you yourself are convinced it’s a fraud, then you can consider advocates of my own belief to be equally guilty of using the web to spread misinformation.

In part, web access to data and tools makes misinformation not just more easily communicated, but that much more possible. It’s just as easy for someone else to download the Central England Temperature data as it is for me, and there are enough analysis tools available online to enable the web-savvy to analyze the dickens out of it. This has spawned an army of armchair quarterbacks, working feverishly to draw conclusions from climate data. It’s especially risky business from my perspective, because data analysis can be a very intricate endeavor and over my career I’ve learned how strewn is the battlefield with land mines, even for those who are trained in it. It’s extremely difficult for amateurs to undertake without missteps, and in fact it just might be the single most common sources of erroneous results by professionals in peer-reviewed publications. These days anyone can run a bunch of numbers through a black box to get other numbers. Very few indeed are good at knowing what they really mean.

The blogosphere also generates a lot of heat in the form of arguments over the truth or falsehood of climate science. It can get downright nasty at times. Passions are inflamed, and the anonymity of blog commentary (even those who comment under their real names don’t exchange glances with their fellow community members) lowers the threshold of civility in conversation. This, in my opinion, necessitates moderating comments on a blog with any significant readership.

But that conflicts with the unrestricted freedom of expression which I passionately regard as the foundation of a free society. I have no problem deleting long strings of grotesque obscenity. I do have a problem deleting (and avoiding!) insulting commentary. I’m not sure where the line properly falls between what may have “redeeming social value” in spite of offending some readers, and I don’t believe I should be the sole arbiter of what might have some redeeming value.

Still, I envy the blogs that are more strongly moderated. Even those who agree with the regulars at ClimateAudit can’t deny that the commentary there is less than perfectly civil. RealClimate is so much easier to take because there’s such a high standard imposed by the moderators; it’s not perfectly civil but it’s much more so than ClimateAudit, or this blog for that matter.

But protecting readers’ sensitivities isn’t very high on my priority list. The real reason I so strongly envy the more civil discussions is that they’re so much more productive. When anger is aroused, the signal-to-noise ratio of the blog commentary drops. I believe that there’s nothing wrong with calling a scoundrel a scoundrel. But I also believe that increasing the information content of what’s said is one of the merits in restraint.

Perhaps the best solution is not to let the scoundrel through the door in the first place. This is reminicent of censorship, but it’s not really! A blog is the “intellectual property” of the blogger, and although I defend the right of scoundrels to express themselves publicly I’m certainly under no moral obligation to let ‘em do it in my house. But it’s always a tradeoff; even a scoundrel may have something worth saying, and even idiocy can lead to enlightenment if only through its clear refutation. I have yet to figure out where the lines fall or what the best practice is. I probably never will, I’ll have to be satisfied if I keep getting closer without ever actually getting “there.”

But of this much I’m confident: the internet has made science, communication, and my work so much richer in possibilities and opportunities, that taken all in all it’s one of our most prized creations. As a younger man I concluded (and I still believe) that the two most potent creations of the human race were the invention of writing, and the spread of the moveable-type printing press. I would now add a third “wonder of the world” to that list: the computerization of the masses. Play ball!