The 'scientific community' consists of the total body of
scientists, its relationships and interactions. It is normally divided into "sub-communities" each working on a particular field within science (for example there is a
robotics community within the field of
computer science).
Objectivity is expected to be achieved by the
scientific method.
Peer review, through discussion and debate within journals and conferences, assists in this objectivity by maintaining the quality of research methodology and interpretation of results.
Membership, status and interactions
"Membership" of the community is generally, but not exclusively, a function of
education,
employment status, and
institutional affiliation. Status within the community is largely a function of publication record.
Sociologists who have studied scientific communities have often found that
gender,
race, and
class can be strong factors for an accepted entrance into the community.
Scientists are usually trained in
academia through the
university system. As such,
degrees in the relevant scientific sub-discipline is often considered a prerequisite for membership in the relevant community. In particular, the
PhD with its
research requirements functions as a kind of
entrance examination into the community, though continued membership is dependent on maintaining connections to other researchers through publication and
conferences. After obtaining a PhD an academic scientist will continue through
post-doctoral fellowships and onto
professorships. Other scientists will find employment in
industry,
think tanks, or the
government. Independent researchers tend to be regarded less-highly, though in principle scientists are judged on the caliber of their contributions.
Members of the same community do not need to work together. Communication between the members is established by disseminating research work and hypotheses through articles in
peer reviewed
journals, or by attending
conferences where new research is presented and ideas exchanged and discussed. There are also many informal methods of communication of scientific work and results as well. And many in a coherent community may actually ''not'' communicate all of their work with one another, for various professional reasons.
Speaking for the scientific community
Unlike in previous centuries when the community of scholars were all members of
learned societies and similar institutions, there are no singular bodies which can be said today to speak for all of science. In the
United States the
National Academy of Science sometimes acts as a surrogate when the opinions of the scientific community need to be ascertained by
policy makers or the national
government, but the statements of the National Academy are not binding on scientists nor do they necessarily reflect the opinions of every scientist in the community. Nevertheless, general
scientific consensus is a concept which is often referred to when dealing with questions that can be subject to
scientific methodology. While the consensus opinion of the community is not always easy to ascertain, generally the standards and utility of the
scientific method have tended to ensure that scientists agree on a standard,
mainstream corpus of
fact explicated by
scientific theory while rejecting ideas which run counter to this realization. Scientific consensus is of such importance to science pedagogy, the evaluation of new ideas, and research funding that critics of the consensus often bitterly complain that there is a
closed shop bias within the scientific community toward new ideas (see articles on
protoscience,
fringe science, and
pseudoscience). In response
skeptical organizations have devoted considerable amount of time and money to
debunking the claims of those who balk at scientific consensus.
Philosophers of science argue over the
epistemological limits of such a consensus and some, including
Thomas Kuhn, have pointed to the existence of
scientific revolutions in the
history of science as being an important indication that scientific consensus can, at times, be wrong. Nevertheless, the sheer explanatory power of science in its ability to make
accurate and
precise predictions and aid in the design and
engineering of new
technology has ensconced "science" and, by proxy, the opinions of the scientific community as a highly respected form of
knowledge both in the
academy and in
popular culture.
Political controversies
The high regard with which scientific opinion is held in Western society has caused a number of
political controversies over scientific subjects to arise. A persistent conflict between
religion and science has been often been cited as representative of a struggle between tradition and progress or
faith and reason. The combative relationship has been cited back to the beginnings of
natural science when
Galileo was tried before the
Inquisition for preaching blasphemy regarding heliocentrism. In more recent times, the
creation-evolution controversy has resulted in many
religious believers in a supernatural creation to attack the
naturalistic explanation of origins provided by the sciences of
evolutionary biology,
geology, and
astronomy.
In the decades following
World War II, many in the scientific community were convinced that
nuclear power would solve the pending
energy crisis by providing "energy too cheap to meter". This advocacy led to the construction of many
nuclear power plants, but was also accompanied by a global political movement opposed to nuclear power due to safety concerns and associations of the technology with
nuclear weapons. Mass protests in the United States and Europe during the 1970s and 1980s along with the disasters of
Chernobyl and
Three Mile Island led to a decline in nuclear power plant construction, while the
hubris of the scientific community was cited as a reason to distrust the eggheads.
In the last decades or so in the
United States, both
global warming and
stem cells have placed the opinions of the scientific community in the forefront of political debate. There have been some who have labeled the
Bush Administration as "anti-scientific", and if the scientific community was seen as a part of the traditional establishment in the 1980s it has now been painted as being aligned with more liberal political elements.
See also
★
Epistemology
★
Objectivity (philosophy)
★
Scientific consensus
★
Cudos
References and external articles
;Sociologies of science
★
Bruno Latour and Steve Woolgar, "''Laboratory life: the social construction of scientific facts''". Beverly Hills : Sage Publications, 1979.
★ Sharon Traweek, "''Beamtimes and lifetimes: the world of high energy physicists''". Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1988.
★ Steven Shapin and Simon Schaffer, ''
Leviathan and the Air-Pump: Hobbes, Boyle, and the experimental life''". Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1985).
★ Karin Knorr Cetina, ''Epistemic cultures.'' Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999.
; History and philosophy of science
★
Thomas Kuhn, "''
The Structure of Scientific Revolutions''". Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962.
;Other articles
★ Peter M. Haas. "''
Introduction: epistemic communities and international policy coordination''". International Organization, v. 46, n. 1, winter 1992, pp. 1-35. (
PDF)
★ "''
Producing Communities’ as a Theoretical Challenge; Social order in scientific communities''". TASA 2001 Conference, The University of Sydney, 13-15 December 2001. (
PDF)
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