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A Computer Previous Page | Contents | Zoom in | Zoom out | Front Cover | Search Issue | Next Page M S BE aG F 8 THE KNOWN WORLD to do it but had enough doubts about the process to test the safety of their machine. “Accordingly, Dr. Dudley, with his characteristic devotion to the cause of science,” explained the report, “lent himself to the experiment.” They taped a coin to one side of his head, placed a photographic plate on the other, and exposed him to the X-ray machine for an hour. The experiment produced no useful outcome, but it may have spared the child. “The plate developed nothing,” they reported. But three weeks after the experiment, Dudley lost all of his hair in the area where the X-rays had been directed. “The spot is perfectly bald, being two inches in diameter,” they noted. “We, and especially Dr. Dudley, shall watch with interest the ultimate effect.” THE ELECTRICAL ENGINEERS START ORGANIZING Twelve full months passed before the scientific community began to develop a coherent approach to the study of X-rays. The key article is a report from the American Institute of Electrical Engineers (AIEE) that appeared in December 1896. “We were very much surprised, something like a year ago, by this very great discovery,” the report begins, “but we cannot say that we know very much more about it now than we did then. The whole world seems to have been working on it for all this time without having discovered a great deal with respect to it.” This report also reveals much about the nature of scientific practice at the time. It was a record of a discussion among a half-dozen senior scientists, all of whom lived within easy travel distance to New York and could easily congregate there for a meeting. Most important, they represented most of the major research universities and, among them, knew most of the scientists who could contribute to the field. When they discussed and debated ideas, they were speaking for an entire community. COMPUTER The report is strong and detailed but a little cautious as none of the participants wished to offend the others or give a conclusion that might be disproved later. The majority of the group concluded that X-rays were a form of electro-magnetic radiation and that they “most likely consist of vibrations of such small wavelengths as to be comparable with the distances between molecules of the most dense substances.” That hypothesis would be the basis for the serious study of X-rays. The flood of papers has continued to rise, as scientists from laboratories near and far try to make a name for themselves. THE POWER OF PUBLICATION Scientific periodicals have always had a central role in the process that turns chaos into order, although that role has often changed. At the time of Röntgen’s discovery, the editors of the oldest and most prestigious scientific journal in the English language, the Philosophical Transactions, stated that they selected articles for publication because of “the importance and singularity of the subjects, or the advantageous manner of treating them.” At the same time, they rejected the idea that they were validating or proving the science of any article that appeared in the Transactions. They didn’t pretend “to answer for the certainty of the facts, or propriety of the reasonings contained in the several papers so published,” they explained, “which must still rest on the credit or judgment of their respective authors.” The editors could take such a stand because the scientific community was still relatively small. Readers had other information to help them assess the articles. Moreover, they actually knew most of the people and laboratories engaged in active research and contributing to the field. The role of periodicals changed substantially over the next 50 years. By the middle of the 20th century, scientific periodicals were acting as validators—institutions that verified scientific research. “Science is moving rapidly,” noted the editor of the journal Science. He argued that scientific periodicals “in every discipline should take their responsibilities with respect to critical reviews” of every paper submitted to them. As an editor of a leading journal, he felt that Science needed to set the standard for scientific publication and regularly published articles that described the process of peer review, the rules that should guide reviewers, and the kinds of judgments that editors should make. At the same time it was promoting peer review, Science’s editor acknowledged that the expansion of scientific research was making it difficult for editors to validate every article that reached their desks. “With the great flood of manuscripts that today’s editors receive, in every scientific discipline, it is not possible to spend so much time and effort debating details,” he wrote. And as the century progressed, the flood of manuscripts only increased. THE ORIGINAL COLD FUSION As the waters rose, so rose the calls for scientific periodicals to test and validate the papers that they published. These calls reached a high point in 1989, when a pair of researchers announced to the public that they had made a discovery every bit as dramatic as the story of X-rays a century before. Two chemists “started a scientific uproar last month by asserting that they had achieved nuclear fusion at room temperature,” reported The New York Times. The writer added, “Many scientists remain skeptical.” The story of cold fusion lived for two years as laboratories A Computer Previous Page | Contents | Zoom in | Zoom out | Front Cover | Search Issue | Next Page M S BE aG F
A Computer Previous Page | Contents | Zoom in | Zoom out | Front Cover | Search Issue | Next Page M S BE aG F tried to make sense of the report. As the narrative unfolded, it quickly turned into a debate over the process of validating scientific ideas. Many claimed that the scientists who had performed the original experiments had taken their ideas too quickly to the public press. Their supporters argued that traditional laboratories were too skeptical of new ideas and that the scientific journals wouldn’t protect the patent rights of the discoverers. As the excitement of the moment faded and the realities of the story became clear, most commentators concluded that the public had not been well served. “Some scholars lunge too hastily for glory,” editorialized Times science writer Nicholas Wade. He told scientists to never announce their claims “until your manuscript has at least been accepted for publication in a reputable journal.” Nothing has become easier since the cold fusion controversy or those first exciting days of X-rays. Science has expanded. The number of subdisciplines has increased. The flood of papers has continued to rise, as scientists from laboratories near and far try to make a name for themselves. In that flood are ideas good and bad, breathtakingly original and utterly derivative. They’re the gift of painstaking research, the theft by 15 minutes of edits with a word processor, an instantaneous forgery by a clever bit of code that mocks the way that scientists write. By themselves, scientific journals aren’t the only institutions that attempt to organize the utter chaos of scientific research. They’re part of an infrastructure that includes laboratories, funding agencies, professional societies, review boards, and other institutions. These organizations will have to continue to grow and evolve as editors and publishers grapple with the forces acting on the scientific community, just as my young physician friends will have to mature into wise doctors who know how to draw disciplined judgment from the anarchy of energetic speculation. David Alan Grier is an associate professor of international science and technology policy at George Washington University and is the author of When Computers Were Human (Princeton, 2005) and Too Soon to Tell (Wiley, 2009). Contact him at grier@computer.org. _____________ UMassAmherst ISENBERG SCHOOL OF MANAGEMENT _____________________ APRIL 2010 A Computer Previous Page | Contents | Zoom in | Zoom out | Front Cover | Search Issue | Next Page M S BE aG F 9
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