For ENGL 3150 Online

1. 1
Science as a Social
Enterprise (Part 1)
Adapted from Penrose & Katz, Writing in the Sciences (2010)

2. Science as a Social
Enterprise (Part 1)
Adapted from Penrose & Katz, Writing in the Sciences (2010)
2
1) What did Barry Marshall and Robin Warren claim in their
technical letters in the Lancet?
2) What did Marshall claim at the conference?
3) Who would such a claim affect?
4) How was this claim received? At what point did it become
accepted? Why?
5) How long did it take for Marshall and Warren to win the
Nobel Prize?
Questions

3. Science as a Social
Enterprise (Part 1)
Adapted from Penrose & Katz, Writing in the Sciences (2010)
3
1) The methods/science itself (4)
-Marshall admitted that he was more interested in
curing patients than in developing adequate
methods and conducting large clinical
experiments. He though clinical success of
patients would be good enough.
2) Adherence to conventions of the field (5)
-Marshall induced acute gastritis in himself to
prove that it could be cured with antibiotics. This
made critics even more skeptical.
3) Prevailing assumptions in scientific disciplines (5)
-Stomach had been considered too acidic for
bacteria to survive
The Shaping of Knowledge in Science
Science is accepted and rejected because of:

4. Science as a Social
Enterprise (Part 1)
Adapted from Penrose & Katz, Writing in the Sciences (2010)
4
1) Scientific beliefs and assumptions are “social” in nature
2)Communication is central to the growth of scientific knowledge
3) Persuasion is an integral part of scientific communication
4) Scientific fields are governed by explicit conventions about how
and what to communicate
5) Collaboration and cooperation are central to the development
of scientific theories, research, and knowledge
The Shaping of Knowledge in Science
Five important points about how science is shaped (6)

5. Science as a Social
Enterprise (Part 1)
Adapted from Penrose & Katz, Writing in the Sciences (2010)
5
1. Science is shaped by the values of the dominant culture
(assumptions, goals, biases, problems)
The Social Nature of Science

6. Science as a Social
Enterprise (Part 1)
Adapted from Penrose & Katz, Writing in the Sciences (2010)
6
2. Scientists in a discipline constitute a community (who develop
systems of assumptions and beliefs that govern the way we think)
a. Consider the nine-dot problem
b. Kuhn’s “gestalt” switch
The Social Nature of Science

7. Science as a Social
Enterprise (Part 1)
Adapted from Penrose & Katz, Writing in the Sciences (2010)
7
3. “Paradigms” (Kuhn) are learned tacitly through
observation and imitation and explicitly through
education, textbooks, and specific practices.
a. Marshall was “outside the current paradigm” (8)
Students of science engage in learning paradigms
b. Paradigms constrain thinking; yet they also
provide support and context for discovery
c. Discovery of new paradigms is reliant upon
previous paradigms
The Social Nature of Science

8. Science as a Social
Enterprise (Part 1)
Adapted from Penrose & Katz, Writing in the Sciences (2010)
8
4. Science often involves subjective dimensions
(value-laden judgments, personal desires, personality,
and style) (pages 8 – 9)
a. Subjective and personal must be validated by
social convention
b. “Paradigm shift” occurs when values of a
community shift towards new assumptions—
known commonly as a “scientific revolution”
(Thomas Kuhn)
c. What is a recent paradigm shift?
The Social Nature of Science

9. 9
Science as a Social
Enterprise (Part 1)
Adapted from Penrose & Katz, Writing in the Sciences (2010)
9
1. Centrality? Isn’t the science itself central? Without
communication, science becomes personal,
redundant, and futile (10)
The Centrality of Communication in Science
2. “Communication is the engine that drives the social
mechanism” of science (10)
3. Credit is given to the scientist who communicates a
discovery first
a. Royal Society of London (17th Century)
credited for urging publication and protecting
the rights of an author
b. Goal was to have open communication
among scientists

10. 1010
Science as a Social
Enterprise (Part 1)
Adapted from Penrose & Katz, Writing in the Sciences (2010)
10
4. Publishing quickly has become a common practice
a. Watson and Crick’s letter about the double-
helix structure of DNA in Nature is a famous
example
b. Learning to write quick and well is imperative
in science
5. Peer review is the gatekeeping mechanism in
science
The Centrality of Communication in Science

11. 1111
Science as a Social
Enterprise (Part 1)
Adapted from Penrose & Katz, Writing in the Sciences (2010)
11
6. Funding agencies (NSF, Dept. of Energy, National
Institute of Health) oversee who gets money to
conduct research (12)
7. “Pre-publication” is when scientists publish
something outside of peer review just to get their
name on the research
8. Papers must be tailored to journal editors—they
must also be accessible and testable, following
scientific method that tests hypotheses (12)
The Centrality of Communication in Science

12. 1212
Science as a Social
Enterprise (Part 1)
Adapted from Penrose & Katz, Writing in the Sciences (2010)
12
9. Francis Bacon known for instigating the idea of
replication to address untrustworthiness of the senses
(13)
10. Hypotheses, theories, experiments, and results are
primarily presented, obtained, and critiqued through
publication
The Centrality of Communication in Science