When I was formulating my presentation about social research in conservation, I stumbled upon basic science rules in a behavioral research method book by Paul Cozby and Scott Bates (2015).  I grew fond of how these rules have applied around me lately.

First, data play a central role in science. Data reflect systematic observations, which can be obtained in many ways. The powerful sentence from the book was, “Scientists have a ‘show me, don’t tell me’ attitude.” I’ve seen people who have this attitude, and they are not particularly researchers (professionally). A resort manager in Maumere, who really cares about the facility, walks around the resort every day to ensure the employees do things in detail. I read an article in National Geographic February 2018 edition about a classical method in making Batik and found an heir of one of Batik’s business empire do the Batik by herself together with her employees, even though her children don’t wish to continue the business.

Second, scientists are not alone. They have to share their results with other scientists and the public. My partner gave me a book to me as an early birthday gift, titled “From Gutenberg to Zuckerberg” by John Naughton. Several days before, he told me a story of one of the greatest inventions of mankind: the printing machine. It created a massive impact, including religious transformation. It was described in detail by Naughton, and science has a huge debt on the invention. The book was so expensive that only certain people had access to it. After the invention, the science dispersal was so much cheaper, and it provided people who didn’t have the fortune access to science, then gave birth to extraordinary scientists. However, the printing machine invention also shaped humans to develop a new skill: reading. In the book, it was said that human doesn’t have the reading skill (and this skill means gathering scattered information in the lengthy article into structured information, involving word processing, language comprehension, and catching clues given by the book’s author) by their evolution, and it created an individualized society. When we read, we create a personal space, not talking to anyone, and also create an imaginary boundary for other people. Well, science and books (or papers) create a lonely society when it is shared? Maybe.

Third, science is adversarial. Scientific findings or writings should have falsifiability aspects, that any findings can be falsified by new findings supported by data. We may conclude that science should keep moving and being reproduced over the years to advance itself. The science of psychology today faces difficulty in being accepted because around 90% of the research failed to be reproduced (not because of its method, but because the data showed unstable findings). But then I ask myself, how about the other fields? Do they find the same failure in result reproducibility? A recent survey in Nature Journal revealed this replication crisis is happening: more than 70% of research findings failed to replicate former researchers' results. I only can find several skeptical scientists that are skeptical of their own findings. But I can understand. We scientists spend so much effort in research, time, funding, and sometimes emotional pain. We tend to avoid the loss by saying our findings are questionable. The truth is, saying "maybe" in a scientific publication is as important as in a popular publication. When I wrote a preface for my children's book that is being reproduced currently, I put that “maybe” when explaining how the animal story for children can be linked to their attitude towards animals when they grow as an adult. That hurts my ego that I think people who read will feel unsure about whether they should believe in my science or not, but I think the truth deserves to be told. The truth about science that we seldom tell to the public: is that the ultimate truth will never be known. The basic concept of level of significance in the statistics.

Fourth, scientific evidence is peer-reviewed. Cozby and Bates wrote that this process reflects that science is a free market of ideas where the best ideas supported by data can build upon others’ research to make further advances. When we talk about the free market, we know that it is a system where anyone can sell or buy products, and the prices are determined by unrestricted competition and privately owned businesses involved. And I think we welcome the era where multidisciplinary research is started to emerge, and any scientist can give feedback on scientific findings from another field. I love this era; I just don’t love how some people respond to this approach. Every time I am asked by someone who wants to ask me about the social research methods, I passionately answer I’d love to, but I am thinking will people receive my feedback? My experience proved otherwise, with around an 80% chance. For example, my friend in the conservation area shared a review paper about inferring interview results in conservation papers – mostly qualitative. It was published in May 2017. I’d only wish those people talked to social scientists who have already developed many new ways (and even statistics!) of gathering information from human subjects. In my (very) personal opinion, this is the time when we have to redefine “peer” in peer review. I do really enjoy working with teams from various backgrounds. I currently work in a full fledge Biologists team, and honestly, I also miss working with artists, programmers, analysts, advertisers, and writers as a team.  That diverse “peer” provides me a chance to learn bigger things, invent a new solution faster, and give me a new way to perceive things in people’s shoes.

Another story that really caught me personally from Naughton's book was the history of the World Wide Web in CERN, when Tim Berners-Lee was a young prodigy who tried to offer a proposal to make a communication system between computers worldwide to his boss, even skipping it to his boss’s boss. He waited long until he got the green light and found another one to work with him to build the system. Together with Robert Cailliau, he put the foundation to WWW and Hypertext Transport Protocol (HTML) that helps the dispersal of information around the world until today. I find this story appealing because of Berners-Lee's comment about Cailliau: “Robert’s real gift was enthusiasm.” Yes, I think science, or everything in life, can achieve its potential when the people who are working on it put great enthusiasm into it, and I’ve witnessed some. When someone is becoming a rational enthusiast, I think s/he will acknowledge the four basic rules of science easily (and that can be wrong, too). I can put credit to my current boss, who is really enthusiastic in his field, that by being so, it allows him to hear any feedback from me, who is a newcomer in conservation, or any of my crazy idea for communicating our new findings. Naughton says a great invention came from a developer's itch. I do really hope to see enthusiasm survives along with our itches to make progress toward a better humanity.

In an Airport,
and feeling thankful for space science that successfully predicted last night's super blue blood moon,

February 1st, 2018