[From Bruce Abbott (951212.1910 EST)]
Mary Powers 951212 --
I'm sure physicists are as nasty to each other as geologists,
paleontologists, linguists, psychologists, etc. - but they can
evaluate each other's math - they are all playing the same game
by the same rules. It's kind of a telling criticism of
psychology as a science that those who are the most involved in
making it a science (i.e. quantitative) cannot do this. I know
your math is somewhat limited, and mine is extremely so,
requiring both of us to either get off the stick and learn it or
take it on faith from someone we trust. For us, and others like
us, Bill is introducing a set of grown-up rules into a game that
has so far been been played with kid's rules (like letting one's
grandson use 2-letter words in Scrabble). Unfortunately, the
kids think they are playing by grown-up rules, so when Bill
published something like his "Quantitative Analysis" paper, its
significance went unremarked, and a pseudo-quantitative paper
published at the same time (Myerson & Miezen) was perfectly
acceptable.
Mary, the reason Physicists (and chemists, a few physiologists, and a
smattering of others) can play the math game is that they HAVE at least the
fundamental "rules," worked out over many centuries, on which to build. Yet
even in these areas there are problems to be worked out in which the
application of these rules is far from clear. Those physical chemists I
talked about were doing empirical studies of glass compositions because the
chemistry involved is simply too complex, with too many unknowns yet to be
determined, to work out predictions based on the basic laws of chemical
reactions. Mathematics itself demonstrates that the precise weather
predictions meteorologists hoped to make in the future are not even
possible, owing to nonlinear dynamics. And meteolology is just an
application of physics. Yet in most fields (and particularly in those still
seeking their fundamental "laws" that will make quantitative structural
models possible, there is plenty of room for math-challenged people like you
and me to make a contribution. For whatever reason, I had great difficulty
with mathematics, although I always wanted to work in science. My problems
in math forced me to abandon physics after only a year and a half as a
physics major; I looked around for something else that would satisfy my
scientific appetite and stumbled onto the psychology of learning and memory.
I suspect many of us in experimental psychology saw psychology as a place
where we could make a contribution to science without having to become
proficient in advanced mathematics, although I know many experimental
psychologists with excellent mathematical skills. Many other areas offer
similar opportunities: it doesn't require more than simple algebra to
compare and plot the ratio of tibia to fibia size, for example, and thereby
develop a useful tool for judging the height of an extinct dinosaur from
perhaps a single bone. Most of the grunt work in these fields consists of
systematically observing, recording the observations, classifying/organizing
the data, identifying regularities, replicating findings, and trying to
develop and test hypotheses to explain the observations. No set of rules
about matter and energy is going to quantitatively predict a three-spined
stickleback or tell you much about how it lives its life--to learn about
these things you have to go out and observe.
What is happening in EAB is that structual models of physical systems,
derived by applying established quantitative rules to known structures
(known because they were built) have now been shown to apply to what
appeared to be dauntingly complex living systems. Suddenly, what was mainly
an empirical discipline working to discover basic relationships and organize
them, can no longer assume that the traditional mathematical tools and
systems analyses of the physicist and engineer can be of no help in
comprehending the behavior of living organisms. Suddenly those tools and
principles become not only applicable, but required of anyone who wishes to
do theoretical work in this area.
A lack of expertise in methods of no demonstrated use in their area of
research is nothing any scientist should be ashamed of. The "grown-up"
rules of which you speak are not "grown-up" rules, they are just rules that
can be applied successfully when the right foundation has been laid for
them. That may take some doing, so when the field is ready for those rules,
it is said to be "mature," but that doesn't mean that those who did the
groundwork were doing "kidstuff."
Pejoratives aside, your assessment of the reviewers of Bill's paper (and of
the Myerson & Miezen paper, Killeen's papers, and many others like it) is
quite correct. As it becomes recognized that the kinds of analysis which
have become traditional in engineering, physics, chemistry, and some other
specific areas within other disciplines can be applied with great profit to
the problems of interest to experimental psychologists, mastering these
analytic techniques will be recognized as an essential component of training
in the field. Until then, we will continue to see reviewers approving of
nonsense mathematical treatments and failing to comprehend the real thing
when they run into it.
So how do we get this process going? It already has a start. Some of us
have seen what can be done, and we're not going to be content with less from
now on. We'll be carrying that message to others in the field and, because
we are bona fide members of that community, we will be listened to. When
the guys with all the grad students and grants find out what we've been up
to, they'll be begging their colleagues in physics and engineering to
collaborate with them and to teach their students these techniques. How do
I know? I've already seen it happen with Chaos theory. There _are_
experimental psychologists with excellent mathematical talents. They just
don't know what to do with them -- yet.
Regards,
Bruce