Certain cultural values?

The existence of scientific culture

I searched the internet for some sort of definition of "scientific culture" (1,2). It's a rare beast; there's hardly anyone talking about it in the way I'm using it here. There are plenty of plaints to instill a "scientific culture" in the young or in various societies and nations i.e. lobbying for scientific literacy. There is a fair bit of that fallacy where culture is used as a synonym for ethnicity (topic for elsewhere). And there are some comments by the great Carl Djerassi on the unspoken nature of Scientific Culture which I have included. But not much. Philosophical iconoclast (or iconoclastic philosopher - you decide) Paul Feyerabend reckoned that the practice of science is so diverse that you can't define it meaningfully. But what do philosopher's know, eh? So I have decided to have a stab at it.

It is unquestionably true to say that scientists operate within a science-specific group of values, behavioural norms and artifact sets. By some definitions that's a culture. The social system of science has its customs, rules and taboos. That's culture too. To be a scientist involves working to those values, adhering to those behavioural norms, using those artifacts, following those customs, abiding by those rules and avoiding those taboos. (In particular, it involves deploying the scientific method, the sine qua non artifact of science.) Whether behavioural norms and so on can be defined by themselves is always a tough problem since it's difficult to articulate them without just contrasting them with abnorms. This doesn't give them much explanatory power but it does crystallize something else about how we define a culture: definitions are always in reference to an outgroup.

According to those aforementioned definitions, a culture consists of a sense of community fostered by identification of outsiders, sets of behaviours that are understood to be expected or taboo and which are reinforced regularly, and salient artifacts of recognized importance. I've tried to cover all these but, as the culture of science as practiced around the world comprises a multitude of things (shut up, Feyerabend!), I doubt I have been comprehensive. Not everyone operating within the subculture of science will agree with my lists or maybe even recognize them, but I think that, if my lists don't define the culture of science, they at least suggest a sort of Glasgow Coma Scale in which higher scores indicate the presence of increasing degrees of scientific culture. This wooliness is what happens with cultural definitions: who wants to attempt a precise definition of Inuit or Maori or any other cultural group after hundreds of years of European expansionism and assimilation? No cheating by resorting to geography!

Elements of the culture of science

In no particular order, incompletely refined, and subject to change (by me or by posterity):

Values of science

These aren't the fragments of any "Hippocratic Oath for scientists" (like Pugwash's suggestion) either. Rather, they are statements codifying universal concept of recognized worth to science and scientists. They also might not have general currency in other cultures, at least when taken together.

• Dispassionate observation is mandatory
• Peer-review is good
• There is utility in understanding nature
• Curiousity is to be encouraged
• Nothing is unquestionable (including this list!)
• Objectivity is to be sought
• Learning is by doing
• Seek elegance
• Synthesis is creative
• Credibility comes from consensus acceptance of one's ideas and results
• Science is the best way to interrogate the world
• The task in hand is Discovery

Behavioural norms in science

These delineate the expectations of scientists en masse and identify the limits beyond which individuals will be deemed to be acting as members of the outgroup and therefore worthy of censure (see Taboos below).

• Giving credit where credit is due (research collaborations, co-authorships, acknowledgements, honest peer-review of competitors' work, comprehensive citing of sources)
• One may question anything, even the pronoucements of authorities (Clarke's first law)
• Peer-reviewed journals are the forum to create reputation

Science's artifact sets

Some of these are part of the current system but not mandatory for all periods in history. Nevertheless, today it is important to note the importance to science of the following:

• The Scientific Method
• The peer-review system
• Accumulated knowledge published in peer-reviewed journals and stored in archives
• The personal record (e.g. lab book)
• The lab coat (a totem, by no means all scientists wear one)
• An extensive jargon (too large for any one person to know it all)
• The periodic table[41]

Science's customs

These are not universal and certainly not required for those who are scientists-in-the-head but have a different day job.

• Publish, publish, publish
• Education is followed by apprenticeship, which is then followed by independence
• Your apprenticeship may involve you supporting your mentor's reputation in return for their support of your early career (i.e. put your supervisor's name on the paper, says Djerassi)
• High mobility and poor career structure
• Get a doctorate
• Continuous exposure to a mixture of bright people with common interests and jargon but wildly different backgrounds

Rules of science

• To examine the effect of one variable, control for all other variables
• Do not speculate without evidence
• State your assumptions
• Cite your sources
• Keep meticulous records, providing enough information on your observations to be replicated by others
• Assume that the universe is consistent, parsimonious, parsable, and explicable (i.e. act, even if you are not, as though you are a scientific realist
• Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence (Occam's Razor)
• When new data does not fit old theories, either may be incorrect (Occam's Broom)
• Theories are as strong as their explanatory power: a theory that explains many observations is better than a theory that explains only a few
• Hypotheses must generate testable predictions

Scientific taboos

• Subjectivity and denial in the face of the evidence
• Fabricating data
• Withholding data
• Plagiarism
• Failing to give credit or appropriate citation
• Abusing the privilege of being a peer reviewer

Scientific shibboleths

It is important for members of any subculture to identify their allies, usually by exclusion. So, for the culture of science, what is the outgroup? I think that this changes in different contexts, as one might expect for a subculture. Subcultures exist within other cultures (commensally? parasitically?) and members may not be exclusively wedded to them. Mainstream scientific culture might therefore use simple cultural badges that can co-exist with the trappings of the host culture. It is clearly adequately rigorous but utterly impractical in most cases to identify co-members of the science subculture by observing their use of the Scientific Method. Pending that, other heuristics are required. The most obvious is location: everyone in the science department of the university is to be presumed, pending further information, to recognise the values and taboos listed above. The outsiders are exactly that: outside.

In many culture systems, the algorithm for identifying the alien uses language (and for subcultures, outsiders are those who do not know the shibboleths or the slang). This may be true of the scientific culture as well, though one consequence would be that it consists of a loose agglomeration of many subsubcultures, since I doubt there is anyone who can move with ease through the specialized jargon sets of all fields of scientific endeavour. The same applies to modes of dress: these are useful signifiers for many subcultures but I listed the lab coat above as a totem rather than a ubiquitous feature because many scientists don't wear one at any time in their careers. Note however that, for the outgroup, labcoats are one of the most salient identifiers for members of the scientific culture, which is why quacks and snake-oil salesman adopt them to sell their pills and diets to the public.

"You know my methods, Watson. Now use them."

To conclude: To operate within the culture of science, preferably as a Compleat Scientist, you must identify and identify with other scientists, use the scientific method, share your observations and interpretations, credit your sources, acquiesce to peer review, and keep asking questions.

That last item is the important one: philosophizing aside, why else would you be considering calling yourself a scientist?!