Looking for a couple of resources about science...

[GaYellowDawg]

I'm having a hard time tracking down sources originating from the scientific community that have some sort of definition or demarcation of what exactly the "scientific community" is. Can anyone refer me to something?

Also, I'm looking for some sort of source originating from the scientific community that defines what a "legitimate" peer-reviewed journal is.

Basically, imagine this: you're talking to someone who's bought into intelligent design. You criticize ID as not having been published in a legitimate peer-reviewed journal or having any kind of acceptance within the scientific community. The person replies, "what constitutes a legitimate journal? And what exactly is the scientific community?" I'd like to be able to say something like "the National Academy of Sciences says that..."

Any suggestions on where to look? I've been "Google Scholar"ing my head off and I've run out of search terms.

[mike_c]

1. well, I'm a working scientist and a zoology prof...

...and I think you're probably up against a hard place, I'm afraid. First, the "scientific community" is a rather amorphous place. It includes academic scientists like me, but it also includes LOTS of non-academics, administrators, government types, and so on. IMO terms like "the scientific community" are just too broad and ill-defined to use in arguments like the one you cite except as generalities with no more real meaning than the term "fundies." Yes, there really is a "scientific community," but it isn't monolithic in any sense.

The question of "legitimate peer reviewed journals" is also pretty slippery. Ultimately, the legitimacy of any journal is subject to readers' consideration of its editorial policies and their acceptance of its review policies. As far as I'm aware there are no independent standards or accreditations we can consult. The line between the "legitimate" lit and the "gray lit" can be blurry-- it's up to the reader to decide what's hinky and what isn't. Case in point-- anyone can start a journal dedicated to publishing papers promoting intelligent design, undermining biological evolution, and so on. Readers will evaluate its legitimacy on at least three fronts-- their own interest in material of that sort, the authors' credentials, the journal's review process. There ARE members of the "scientific community" who promote ID-- they're a tiny minority, but they exist, so presumably authors with "legitimate" credentials submit papers to such journals (and readers who are sympathetic to that view likely extend legitimacy more broadly than you and I might). Likewise, if there are "legitimate" authors to populate a journal, that same pool supplies "legitimate" reviewers. Whenever you publish in a journal your name is added to the editors' list of potential reviewers of similar manuscripts in the future.

So ultimately, "legitimacy" is in the eye of the reader.

[GaYellowDawg]

4. Thanks. Oof, but thanks.

I'm writing a prospectus for a science education dissertation and wanted to try to hammer down some sort of argument for what the scientific community is. Needless to say, Wikipedia doesn't cut it, so I thought I'd try here.

[HereSince1628]

2. Not a definition but a list...

http://www.eurekalert.org/links.php?jrnl=A

As all ecologists know, boundaries around populations are arbitrary. That doesn't mean biased. Population boundaries are generally set with respect to the limits of phenomena that are to be considered.

As a former editor for a scientific journal I can tell you that getting proper reviewers isn't always easy. The key issue is that the peers have expert knowledge about a subject, and that their knowledge is broad for an entire field rather than a narrow point of view on a single ideological position.
Consequently, the BEST peers to review the intellectual work of ID'ers are not empirical scientists, but rather philosophers who are interested in the metaphysical.

BTW, Intelligent design really isn't a scientific proposition. It is a legal strategy, and like all legal arguments it tends to be quite nit-picky on a narrow range of semantic issues and appeals to arguments of authority. Intelligent design doesn't provide much in the way of arguments that allow the construction of a body of supporting evidence that is subject to criteria of potential falsifiability on the basis of empiricism. Indeed, it is mostly a re-statement of Palley's philosophical Argument from Design. IMO it leads to a theistically impoverishing vortex of diminishing opporunity for a "God Of The Gaps." If theists want to mount a stand in the gaps, they are bound to lose their footings as science erodes the very foundations of their postion from beneath their feet.

[GaYellowDawg]

3. Thanks

I'm painfully aware of ID as pseudoscience. I'm getting my PhD in science education. One of the arguments of my dissertation is going to be that the "knowledge" that science educators are concerned with (e.g., prior knowledge) ought to be defined as something along the lines of "that which the scientific community accepts as legitimate sciencific knowledge." Of course, that means I've got to give some sort of working definition of "scientific community." I thought the ID example was a decent application of how my definition might be used.

[HereSince1628]

5. I refer to it in my classes as "Shared contemporary conceptual understanding"

I think I got there from writings of Philip Hedricks and an ecological systems modeller named Spain.

I don't think you'll find any definition of scientific community, because scientists don't formally organize into them. They do form societies.
If you approach it as an ecologist might, you'll find that the boundaries of communities are quite fuzzy, some folks argue they don't actually exist.

It's the same issue for concepts such as "THE BODY OF SCIENCE." No one constructs such a thing, it simply accumulates in people's heads and in libraries and other archives.

In general boundaries are always easiest to place around clusters or groups. Clusters and groups being made up of individuals interacting within some economy of nature. It's undoubtedly easier to create isobars of degree of association for members of a natural community than for an intellectual community.

As a science educator you are also painfully aware that state legislatures and Departments of Public Instruction make up their own rules about what is the content of science curricula. Unlike state legislatures and DPI's science works by consensus rather than through mandates and litigation.

Good luck on your dissertation

[TZ]

6. Have you gone to the National Science Foundation website?

You might find something there helpful. They are considered a pretty reputatble science organization.If you can't find what you need there, you could probably find links there that could help.
http://www.nsf.gov/

[Muttocracy]

7. NSF is a federal government agency, not just an organization n/t

[TZ]

8. Many govt agencies have the most accurate scientific info though

Health---NIH, NIAID,NCI
Physical sciences-NIST.
NSF also has a section devoted to education/classroom teaching. Very helpful.

[caraher]

9. At least when Bush isn't suppressing it! ;)

As for the "scientific community," it probably is not easy to define but isn't that hard to identify. In fact, I think a good shot at a definition might start with academic scientists and the authors of papers in journals they respect, and fan out to include scientists working in government or industry. "Outsiders" are not hard to spot: someone building a perpetual motion machine in his garage, people banding together to form their own small communities specifically because the scientific establishment rejects their work (think cold fusion and the Discovery Institute).

Now this kind of definition may sound awfully presumptuous, but only if you buy the notion that what the scientific community endorses at any given time is The Truth! Sometimes the established orthodoxy is overthrown, usually from within the community (a Kuhnian revolution). The fringe people are the kids who don't like losing the game and announce they're taking their ball and going home. Does this in itself imply that their ideas are wrong? No. But in far, far more cases than not, their work does not pan out, and the scientific consensus prevails.

(The romantic notion of the lone genius creating breakthroughs for which the establishment simply is not ready sustains many of the fringe people. But if you press them for historical examples of people who we rejected by the establishment but were proven right in the end, you tend to hear names like Galileo. Certainly there was a rejection, but the authority behind it was certainly not a scientific community!)

Concerning evolution versus the various flavors of creationism, I think there's actually a serious problem with the idea that evolution is a scientific theory. Suppose one tries to apply Popper's notion that scientific propositions must be falsifiable. What finding could possibly invalidate evolution driven by natural selection as the template for any more detailed account of how species emerge or go extinct? It's a principle on par with, say, the assumption all scientists make that the natural world operates according to principles we can discover or formulate, and does not capriciously change in ways that render science itself impossible.

This is why no version of creationism could ever possibly be part of a science of biology. To appeal to deities and designers is nothing less than giving up scientific explanation. ("Magic Man done it?") Natural selection as a principle simply is essentially THE scientific way to understand life.

[Muttocracy]

10. right, I just meant it's not an academic society

sorry, overly rapid posting!

[jody]

11. I'm interested, did you find an answer to your question?

[GaYellowDawg]

12. Yes...

I ended up defining it as a dynamic group of communities of practice, with communities of practice merging and splitting depending on who participates and collaborates with whom.

Are you a UGA fan? Student? Prof?