Failure: Why Science Is So Successful, by Stuart Firestein
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Failure: Why Science Is So Successful, by Stuart Firestein
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The general public has a glorified view of the pursuit of scientific research. However, the idealized perception of science as a rule-based, methodical system for accumulating facts could not be further from the truth. Modern science involves the idiosyncratic, often bumbling search for understanding in uncharted territories, full of wrong turns, false findings, and the occasional remarkable success. In his sequel to Ignorance (Oxford University Press, 2012), Stuart Firestein shows us that the scientific enterprise is riddled with mistakes and errors - and that this is a good thing! Failure: Why Science Is So Successful delves into the origins of scientific research as a process that relies upon trial and error, one which inevitably results in a hefty dose of failure. In fact, scientists throughout history have relied on failure to guide their research, viewing mistakes as a necessary part of the process. Citing both historical and contemporary examples, Firestein strips away the distorted view of science as infallible to provide the public with a rare, inside glimpse of the messy realities of the scientific process. An insider's view of how science is actually carried out, this book will delight anyone with an interest in science, from aspiring scientists to curious general readers. Accessible and entertaining, Failure illuminates the greatest and most productive adventure of human history, with all the missteps along the way.
Failure: Why Science Is So Successful, by Stuart Firestein- Amazon Sales Rank: #140831 in Books
- Published on: 2015-10-01
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 5.30" h x 1.20" w x 7.10" l, .0 pounds
- Binding: Hardcover
- 304 pages
Review "If there is any justification for man's ability to overcome his own limits of reason, 'FAILURE' stands as a shining example." - New York Times Book Review
"Energetic...a close examination of how repeated failure refines problems, clarifying the way forward." - Nature MagazineAbout the Author Stuart Firestein is the Professor and Chair of the Department of Biological Sciences at Columbia University, where his highly popular course on ignorance invites working scientists to come talk to students each week about what they don't know. Dedicated to promoting science to a public audience, he serves as an advisor for the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation's program for the Public Understanding of Science and was awarded the 2011 Lenfest Distinguished Columbia Faculty Award for excellence in scholarship and teaching. He was also recently named an AAAS Fellow.
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24 of 27 people found the following review helpful. Fascinating thinking, but more pugnacious than it has to be By Aaron C. Brown This book is a collection of essays around the topic of failure. It's deliberately provocative, many of the author's points would be uncontroversial if framed differently. Suppose you set out for a restaurant, get lost, choose another place at random, and it turns out to be better. This is the pattern of many examples in the book, which are said to prove that failure can be good. The usual way of expressing the same thought is that randomization can sometimes be a good search strategy. Or consider the commonplace observation that the best baseball hitters fail about seven times out of ten (the author has the professor disease of using the smallest excuses to digress; in this case instead of the simple statement above the reader is treated to a discussion of the treatment of walks in hitting statistics and the careers of Joe DiMaggio and Ted Williams and the typography of baseball statistics and the income of good baseball hitters). This is not "failure" in the usual sense. It's a game. If the batter "fails" 70% of the time, then the pitcher "wins" 70% of the time. It wouldn't be much fun to watch if these numbers were 0.1% or 99.6%, so the rules would be changed to bring it into reasonable balance. The game is the thing that wins, if it is satisfying to play (or for professional sports, lucrative to market). Nobody holds a basketball hoop between their knees and drops a basketball into it so they can "win" 100% of the time, they go to the free-throw line and try to hit 60% or some other difficult but attainable goal.For another example, suppose you have a number of potential approaches to a problem. You chose one, and it does not give a useful solution. You haven't failed, you have taken a step in a project to solve the problem. That project may succeed or fail, it's not meaningful to assign success or failure to a specific step.A closer call is the author's example of Charles Darwin's "failure" to learn about and appreciate Gregor Mendel's work, or to make similar investigations on his own. This is indeed a failure in that Darwin would likely have improved his understanding of evolution had he done this. But why is this any different from saying Darwin could have written Leaves of Grass or been the clean up hitter for the Cincinnati Red Stockings? If Charles Darwin was a failure, then the rest of us are looking pretty sad.That's not to say that these essays are not good, they're just not related to the main topic of the book. The author has interesting and original things to say about search strategies, research designs and the history of science. An overbroad definition of "failure" makes them seem more tendentious than they are. There's nothing wrong with that in itself, but it will mislead readers who attempt to link the various discussions. Better to take these truculent riffs as independent essays. They make up maybe half of the book.In the other half of the book, the author builds a case based on overlapping arguments. He considers the nature of science both from the bottom up perspective of what researchers actually do, and the top down perspective of the advancement of knowledge, and argues that failure is integral to the process. The aggressive pursuit of wrong ideas leads to more progress than the kind of disinterested skeptical falsification that is welcome in polite society.While this is a strong case, I consider him too quick to dismiss researchers who criticize statistical and methodological sloppiness in modern science that leads to too many results not standing up to replication. Yes, replication is never the independent textbook process, and false results fall away on their own (diminishing the reputations of the people who claimed them) as part of the healthy give-and-take of research. And yes, you don't wait to publish until you've nailed down every possible confounding factor and can present an experimental recipe that gives the correct result 100% of the time in all conditions. But the critics aren't asking for those things. They're saying people are publishing results with mere hints of experimental validation, and presenting misleading statistics. This is not the honest, healthy failure that accompanies any hard endeavor, this is bad science.There is also extensive criticism of the modern process of awarding grants, along with the related topic of government interference with scientific research. While I agree with all his points, he does not probe deeply into how we got to this point. Moreover, he is deeply contemptuous of both business and politics. The reader gets the impression that he thinks everyone should work hard to produce surplus to hand over to the government, which in turn should shovel it out to scientists and trust them to spend it wisely. I suspect he has more sophisticated thoughts than this on the matter, but he doesn't discuss them in this book. Raising those issues would compel him to address questions like why someone should be forced to contribute to research he doesn't believe will benefit him, or whether scientists can rely entirely on government funding while maintaining independence, transparency and pursuit of general good instead of government aims. He might also have to think about why scientific progress seems to be strongly linked to successful free enterprise economies, or how much advancement of knowledge has come from applied researchers trying to make a buck (or win a war) as opposed to subsidized theorists.The final major topic of discussion is the choice of research fields and approaches. Too many people pile into the most attractive approaches and the fields that seem to offer the most promise, not enough effort is expended in alternatives. There are sound career reasons why researchers make these choices, and grant procedures reinforce them as well. It would be good if we could diversify the social research portfolio (the author demonstrates a weak grasp of portfolio theory when he refers to this as "hedging"; hedging would mean betting against the research success of the main group; and contrary to his assertion, every investor will not tell you that hedging is good).Overall these are some wonderful essays on important topics that will engage any reader interested in either the theory or practice of science. There's a lot of different stuff in here, including some nonsense and some rants that owe more to the author's heart than his head, but there's nothing dull. This is a thought-provoking, original, important book.
7 of 7 people found the following review helpful. If You Want to Succeed in an Uncertain World, Read This Book By Chip Hauss I have been a Stuart Firestein fan since I heard him interviewed on the BBC following the release of his previous book, Ignorance, which helped me structure my own less enjoyable book on national security as a wicked problem.As Firestein himself points out a few times, Failure is a less unified read than Ignorance.But don't let that deter you. This book is at least as important as his earlier one because Failure is at least as central to scientific life as ignorance and probably even less understood.His conclusions ring even more true in my own fields of peace studies and political science. As he points out, one almost never follows the canons of the so called scientific method. That's probably a good thing because there is a lot of stumbling around searching for answers and going down blind alleys whether you are a scholar or a practitioner or both as I am.For those of us in the applied social sciences, his lessons about failure are probably even more important than they are in the biological and other "hard" scientific world Firestein inhabits. Among peacebuilders, we often utter words like "fail early" and "fail well," but we don't really believe it because our funders have so far been unwilling to support projects that don't have a huge a priori likelihood of success. We may write about our failures (e.g. The Arab-Israeli peace process), but we rarely do so in a way that serves as a springboard for improving our work, though my own organization, the Alliance for Peacebuilding, is spearheading an effort to enhance the way we evaluate and learn from our work.This would have been a remarkable read even if it were as dull as the books most of us academics write.Luckily, it's not. Firestein's self-deprecating sense of humor permeates each chapter.In short, a wonderful book that is already on the "to read" piles of my academic and activist colleagues.
6 of 7 people found the following review helpful. A thoughtful and honest view towards science. By Ever García People misunderstand the purpose, or perhaps the logic or system, of science. In this book we can see a *brilliant* perspective towards what science really is. I could realize how wrong I have been about how it works, and I feel glad that I actually got to read this book. I am thinking of becoming a scientist/engineer and this book has opened my mind to what I am really going to experience.I recommend this book because it tells clearly how science works, and gives meaning to it altogether.What an excellent book. I wish it'd be longer.
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