Anyone want to do a book club leading up to Barnraising?

[Liz Barry]

Hi folks, 

Last year at barnraising there were awesome convos about replicability and expertise and the way these play out in DIY tech and enviro monitoring. Rumor has it that since then more than a few people have been reading up on these hot topics!

Would anyone be into a book club type thing to make our next round of convos at this year's Barnraising even more awesome? Or any another lead-up type of idea?

What do you think?

Liz

--

Liz Barry
director of community development
@publiclab

publiclab.org

+1-336-269-1539

Love our work? Become a Public Lab Sustaining Member today!

[Gretchen Gehrke]

Sure!  I am currently reading (finally) "Technoscience and Environmental Justice" edited by Gwen Ottinger and Benjamin Cohen. 

[Becki Chall]

I love this idea!

📖📖📖📖

--

Becki Chall

Development Director

Public Laboratory for Open Technology and Science

810-287-3940

www.publiclab.org

Love our work? Become a Public Lab Sustaining Member today!

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "plots-barnraising" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to plots-barnrais...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to plots-ba...@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/plots-barnraising.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

[Mathew Lippincott]

A Field Guide to Bacteria by Betsey Dexter Dyer is on macro (non-microscope) signs of bacteria.  I would like to do a reading group on the macro signs of the nitrogen cycle and then do field trips to identify nitrifying/denitrifying zones, anoxic waters, and runoff.

This is the kind of info that contextualizes water monitoring and puts people in the expert position of identifying where to test for runoff from CAFOs, WWTP's etc.

http://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/?GCOI=80140100959640

[Gretchen Gehrke]

+1 for "A Field Guide to Bacteria" by Betsey Dexter Dyer.  

I am really, really interested in CAFOs, eutrophication, etc and I think this could be a HUGE area for community science, especially with so much opacity around big ag, and specifically around the poultry industry.

[Shannon Dosemagen]

Maybe since there is about two months (!!) until Barnraising, we should think specifically about the theme and pick two books or rather than a book club, do an article club and have one each week or every other week.

On Thu, Sep 10, 2015 at 1:10 PM, Mathew Lippincott <mathew.l...@gmail.com> wrote:

--

@sdosemagen

[Scott Eustis]

+1 field guide to bacteria, I think hits a lot of interest points

she doesn't cover smells, does she?  :)

Scott Eustis
504 484 9599

 
Public Lab mailing lists are great for discussions, but to get attribution, open source your work, and make it easy for others to find and cite your contributions, register for the website, and describe your work in a research note.

[Liz Barry]

I was going to propose "Are we all scientific experts now?" by Harry Collins, which is a cute small orange book

http://www.amazon.com/Are-All-Scientific-Experts-Now/dp/0745682049

even more appealing when compared to smelly bacteria

--

Liz Barry
director of community development
@publiclab

publiclab.org

+1-336-269-1539

Love our work? Become a Public Lab Sustaining Member today!

[Scott Eustis]

wrong, smelly bacteria are the best

[Shreya Subramani]

I'm in!

[Ann Chen]

Great idea! Add me to the book club list please.

Ann

Sent from a phone

--

[Bronwen Densmore]

Count me in!

[Gerald McCollam]

I'm in! 

Gerald McCollam

cell: 347-739-0146

[Gerald McCollam]

This book seems to go right to the heart of the matter (for me at least) and is indeed a handsome orange color and not smelly as far as I can tell. I'm going to read. 

On Thu, Sep 10, 2015 at 3:00 PM, Liz Barry <l...@publiclab.org> wrote:

--

Gerald McCollam

cell: 347-739-0146

[Benj. N. Sugar]

I'd be in for "Are we all scientific experts now?"

It's the right length and it has wide interest appeal.  

Certainly we could have multiple groups.

The "Law of Two Books" as it were.

[Yagiz Sutcu]

sounds like a good idea!

-yagiz

[Liz Barry]

"Law of Two Books" heh heh heh Benjamin!

These are such good ideas it's exciting that there is excitement about reading. Let's definitely have the two books going for whoever wants to. 

For the bacteriaphiles, is it the whole book that we would read? Would someone want to take a stab at breaking out into the best chapters and milestones over the next two months for reading them?

Here's my suggestion on the potential timing of two short reads about science, politics, expertise:  

1. Read this web article in time to discuss on October's OpenHour (Monday, October 5, at 1:00pm EST (see other timezones below)) http://www.nature.com/news/reproducibility-will-not-cure-what-ails-science-1.18339 (this builds on last week's OpenHour on "Transparency in Environmental Policy and Science")
2. Read the short orange book "Are we all scientific experts now?" (if people like, i can look into a bulk order somehow) https://books.google.com/books?id=5n5PAwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false in time for 

How does this sound?

Schedule for Open Hour on Monday, October 5

Location	Local time	Time zone	UTC offset
New York (U.S.A. - New York)	Monday, October 5, 2015 at 1:00:00 PM	EDT	UTC-4 hours
New Orleans (U.S.A. - Louisiana)	Monday, October 5, 2015 at 12:00:00 Noon	CDT	UTC-5 hours
Portland (U.S.A. - Oregon)	Monday, October 5, 2015 at 10:00:00 AM	PDT	UTC-7 hours
London (United Kingdom - England)	Monday, October 5, 2015 at 6:00:00 PM	BST	UTC+1 hour
Jerusalem (Israel)	Monday, October 5, 2015 at 8:00:00 PM	IDT	UTC+3 hours
Corresponding UTC (GMT)	Monday, October 5, 2015 at 17:00:00

--

+1 336-269-1539

@lizbarry

[Jason Wang]

Hey Public Labs Id like to be removed from the mailing list. Thank you

Jason

[Liz Barry]

Hi Jason, 

I removed you from -barnraising :) see you on -chicago

--

+1 336-269-1539

@lizbarry

[Patrick Coyle]

+1 for Are we all scientific experts now?

When is Barnraiser again? At Cocodrie again?

Thanks, Pat

[Stevie Lewis]

Hi Pat, November 20-22nd in Cocodrie. Check out the Barnraising Page :) 

Does someone want to edit the wiki adding in a reading group and suggested articles/books to catch up on before? 

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Public Lab Writing Group" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to public-lab-writing...@googlegroups.com.

[Stevie Lewis]

Adding these to the Barnraising page:: 

- "A Field Guide to Bacteria" by Betsey Dexter Dyer.  

- "Are we all scientific experts now?" by Harry Collins.

[Liz Barry]

Hi all, 

Here is a link to the first 5 pages of Harry Collins's book on expertise:

http://i.publiclab.org/system/images/photos/000/011/957/original/Collins-001-005.pdf

I plan to batch out more pages like this in the next 10 days, we're only aiming to tackle the first 79 pages, and there's not much text on each page. 

--

+1 336-269-1539

@lizbarry

[Liz Barry]

Hey folks, 

Did you enjoy that first five page bit on how mid-20th century hopes for a brave new world of "Better Living Through Science" spiraled out into widespread disillusionment and cynicism by the end of the century?

Yeah? I figured you would. :) 

Well, then you'll love the next part, getting into ClimateGate, the financial scandals of "experts for hire" by the worst corporations, and the framing of the thesis "are we all scientific experts now?". 

http://i.publiclab.org/system/images/photos/000/012/036/original/Collins-006-016.pdf

This installment is a short 11 pages, which puts us through almost a quarter of what we're gonna read together. 

--

Liz Barry
director of community development
@publiclab

publiclab.org

+1-336-269-1539

Love our work? Become a Public Lab Sustaining Member today!

[Philip Silva]

So thrilled that the Public Lab community is grappling with Harry Collins. Looking forward to many thought-provoking and challengin conversations to come out of this in the future... 

Phil

____________________________________________

Philip Silva

philip...@gmail.com | www.philipsilva.com | SpaceOfFlows @ Twitter

[Liz Barry]

Here's chapter 1

http://i.publiclab.org/system/images/photos/000/012/181/original/Collins-017-048-small.pdf

This chapter begins by showing how public perception of science changes over time. Collins introduces "science studies", and explains that what academics say about science also changes over time: 

1. Wave 1. Pre 1960s. AKA Science is Awesome and Has All The Answers. At first, it was all about studying how Science got to know things for sure with 100% certainty. Like how to go from observations to theories. There was never any challenge to the idea that "our scientific ideas were good because they were testable against reality." (p22)
   
2. Wave 2. 1960s AKA "Reality" Is More Contingent Then We Thought. Also LASERS. Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions was published. The idea that "certain new ways of thinking had a revolutionary effect on the way scientists interacted with the world". For instance, after the theory of relativity, "for scientists, the very constituents of the world changed". (p23-24). "if the world changes in the course of scientific revolution, then the world is no longer a fixed point [...] an anvil against which all theories can be hammered into shape. (p26). And then, replication gets weird: p30-33 scientists all over the world arguing over the validity of results they got from replicating an experiment because no one was sure if they'd exactly built their laser like the first group had. Hello, "Experimenter's Regress." Hello, "tacit knowledge" that seems to only pass through in-person contact. I feel like we've met before. By the 1980s, "science is 'a continuation of politics by other means.'" (P38). Multiple expertises are recognized and seen as democratic, traditional science expertise is called into question and seen as elitist. (p44-45) 

And so onto chapter 2. Sorry, no CliffsNotes but it's about how the understanding of different types of expertise has gotten more sorted out lately -- I can't wait to talk about it with us. 

http://i.publiclab.org/system/images/photos/000/012/182/original/Collins-049-079_small.pdf

--

+1 336-269-1539

@lizbarry

[Liz Barry]

Hi folks,

Almost barnraising time!

I made a deck to explore some ideas about expertise. It's mostly from this Collins' reading, so it might be like a reading guide in a way. 

https://www.dropbox.com/s/ezfh6drvqyqsryd/2015-11-06-expertise.pptx?dl=0

Right at the beginning there's a little additional framing from the conversation with Daniel Sarewitz and all the folks on that Live Call in October. 

At the end i link Collins' concepts of "apprentice-based" expertise in science:

“When one is in the arena of novelty and uncertainty – when one is dealing with things that are not as well-developed as your fridge or your car – practical success turns on tacit knowledge which is not so far from the tacit knowledge of the handyman or handywoman.”

...to Etienne Wegner's concept of social learning in "communities of practice". Like us!

I tried to add a lot of notes about how i might talk through this deck, and I'm looking forward to a discussion session on this stuff at Barnraising with some more ideas from you all!

Yours, 

Liz

--

+1 336-269-1539

@lizbarry

[Chris Fastie]

Hi Barnraisers,

I just posted a research note (rant) about Harry Collins and other things that might be discussed in Cocodrie. Sorry I will miss the discussions. Don't forget to take notes!

https://publiclab.org/notes/cfastie/11-17-2015/harry-collins-and-his-sociologist-stones

Chris